A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME: I've been watching the recently released Picket Fences: Season 1 DVD's, and it's really remarkable how well the show (15 years old come fall) has held up. Fences was David E. Kelley's first solo creative effort (he co-created Doogie Howser and had run L.A. Law beforehand), and you see a lot of his standard themes coming up--the nobility (if annoyingness) of the criminal defense attorney, the absurdity (and simultaneous nobility) of the law, and a view of government that is simultaneously highly idealistic and deeply cynical. Yes, the pacing is often far slower than we've become used to, but it's well worth spending time with this, which is a parent not just of the subsequent pieces of the KelleyVerse, but (less directly) of shows like Gilmore Girls, Everwood, and even C.S.I.