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By Joyce Millman

Sept. 20, 1999 | He was born in Maine, captained the Princeton hockey team and went straight from law school to a prestigious Boston law firm, but he found his true calling as a Hollywood scriptwriter. Now, he's the most prolific and honored writer-producer in TV, but he still clocks out every day at 6 p.m. to go home to the wife and kids. Jock, writer, family guy -- if David E. Kelley weren't real, John Irving would have made him up.

Last week, the 43-year-old Kelley became the first producer to win Emmy awards for best drama series (ABC's "The Practice") and best comedy series (Fox's "Ally McBeal") in the same telecast. Those latest Emmys take their place on Kelley's mantle beside the half-dozen others he previously won for "The Practice," "Picket Fences" and "L.A. Law." Next week, Kelley has two new series premiering (well, one and a half): the ABC private-eye comedy-drama "Snoops" and a series of "Ally McBeal" outtakes fashioned into a half-hour oddity called "Ally." Kelley also wrote this week's season opener of "Chicago Hope," the CBS medical series he created in 1994, abandoned and then revamped last May to save it from cancellation. Kelley's TV reputation -- no, his legacy -- is secure; even movie bombs like "Lake Placid" can't tarnish his halo.

Snoops 9 p.m. Sundays, starting Sept. 26, ABC The Practice season premiere 10 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 26, ABC Ally 8 p.m. Tuesdays, starting Sept. 28, Fox Ally McBeal season premiere 9 p.m. Monday, Oct. 25, Fox   Joyce Millman Joyce Millman's column appears every other Monday in Salon Arts & Entertainment. + Biography + Archives

By all accounts, Kelley is perfectionistic, yet humble, about his work. In Hollywood, a town not known for its heart, people absolutely love him. Did I mention that he's married to Michelle Pfeiffer? Or that, with his rugged, tousle-haired good looks, he could be the lost frickin' Kennedy? Kelley is golden, he's charmed; he's Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and Wayne Gretzky rolled into one.

He is so overrated.

Full disclosure: I was rooting for "The Sopranos" to win the Emmy over "The Practice" and for "Everybody Loves Raymond" to win over "Ally McBeal." But this isn't sour grapes. I've been wrestling with my extremely mixed feelings about Kelley's work for a while now, wondering how a writer capable of something as wonderfully realized as the small-town parallel universe of "Picket Fences" could also give us something as staggeringly messed up as "Ally McBeal" (and wait until you see "Snoops"). Or how someone who created characters as subtly complicated as Helen Gamble, Eugene Young and Bobby Donnell on "The Practice" could repeatedly bash you over the head with heavy-handed sermonizing on "L.A. Law," "Picket Fences" and "Chicago Hope." Kelley has to be the most schizo writer on TV.

Kelley operates within a very narrow comfort zone. The ex-lawyer in him can't resist pushing ethical issues (the right to die, civil liberties vs. community safety) in viewers' faces in the most sensational way possible; in a horrible scene from an early "Chicago Hope" about euthanasia, the camera lingered on an anencephalic newborn (actually, a realistic-looking animatronic doll), born without most of its brain or the top of its skull. Gratuitous moments like that notwithstanding, the crowd-pleasing TV scribe in Kelley knows that voyeurism pays off, often veering into the sort of nasty freak-show comedy that gets viewers talking the next day: dwarf lawyers on "L.A. Law" and "Ally McBeal"; a man's fondness for a pet pig on "L.A. Law" and a pet frog on "Ally McBeal"; a pervert who breaks into people's homes to bathe in their tubs on "Picket Fences"; the dancing baby, co-ed bathroom and behind-the-knee G-spot on "Ally McBeal." The season opener of "Chicago Hope" (9 p.m. Sept. 23, CBS) centers on a priest whose penis was severed under mysterious circumstances. If you've never seen any of these shows, you might wonder, What's the difference between Kelley and Jerry Springer?

Well, a lot of Emmys. Obviously, Academy members (and viewers) love Kelley's erratic brand of blunt messages and dewy magic realism. Me, I've tried to give Kelley a chance, really I have. I've come to appreciate "Picket Fences" in cable reruns (9 a.m., weekdays, FX) for its sense of the miraculous in the most mundane of settings, and for its central theme of how communities and parents are torn between doing what's ethically and legally right and what makes them feel safe. But I still cringe, watching "Picket Fences," when Kelley goes into full-bore message mode, setting up thuddingly obvious "debates" about, say, religion vs. science or justice vs. revenge.

I don't know how "The Practice" has managed so far to escape Kelley's preachy and sensationalistic tendencies. He writes every episode, and the show has pushed its share of hot buttons, with story lines about lawsuits against tobacco companies and gun makers, about nannies accused of murder and Kevorkian-like assisted-suicide crusaders. The show has also featured such sideshow attractions as a severed head in a medical bag, a lawyer who barfs before every big court appearance and an erudite gay serial killer who keeps getting away with murder. But somehow, none of this seems freakish. "The Practice" is comparatively restrained, somber, realistic. Maybe Kelley identifies too strongly with his hard-working, conscience-stricken Boston lawyer characters (Dylan McDermott's Bobby Donnell in particular) to want to screw with them, "McBeal"-style. Still, I fear for where Kelley might take the show; it's just a mood swing away from dancing babies and Mini-Me, Esq.

Next page | Kelley's she-roes