‘Boston Public’ Recalls High School--on Pluto

Producer-writer David E. Kelley’s new classroom drama, “Boston Public,” is a compelling argument for home schooling. And a good reason to avoid Fox at 8 p.m. Mondays.

What planet is this, anyway?

Aging history teacher Harvey Lipschultz (Fyvush Finkel) tries to banish a female student from Winslow High for going braless, and his coming classroom lecture about women having “lumps known as breasts” will later provoke prime time’s first anti-bra rebellion and riot.

Unstable teacher Marla Hendricks (Loretta Devine) leaves a note on the blackboard saying she’s “gone home to kill myself.”

Teacher Harry Senate (Nicky Katt) shoots a gun in class.

Teachers rage at each other in the hall.

Principal Steven Harper (Chi McBride) repeatedly slams a school bully hard against the lockers.

A seductive student blackmails a teacher over their sexual contact.

A mean-spirited girl uses computer graphics to create and distribute nasty gossip and pornographic images of teachers.

A boy is found locked inside his locker wearing only a diaper.

Yes, high school as we all fondly recall it. On Pluto.

Unlike Kelley’s commendable lawyer drama, “The Practice”--now three episodes into its fifth season--his “Boston Public” is excruciating to watch. Unlike his last-season flop, “Snoops,” and wittily over-the-top “Ally McBeal”--which resumes meekly tonight--”Boston Public” is surely meant to be taken seriously.

Yet Winslow High is less a school than a pounding migraine where embattled principal Harper’s head is permanently attached to an ice bag that, after just 10 minutes of this numbing crossfire, you’d like to borrow.

This is a combat zone where teachers are as erratic as students.

Especially so is the fussy, bow-tied Lipschultz, as shackled to his elderly crackpot stereotype--close kin to the buffoon that Finkel played in Kelley’s “Picket Fences”--as “Boston Public” is to the clumsy devices that drive its mayhem.

That includes obviously mismatched Lipschultz and Hendricks being grafted together as history co-teachers so that students can watch them angrily get into each other’s faces over Thomas Jefferson. It also includes having Senate pack that pistol in class yet still keep his job.

Say what?

And after he shoots it, no one rushes in to see what has happened. Doesn’t anyone respond when a gun is fired in this school?

Actually, yes. Outraged parents storm Winslow school and protest the gunplay. Yet how would they have known about it?

Meanwhile, vice principal Scott Guber (Anthony Heald) wants to date social studies teacher Lauren Davis (Jessalyn Gilsig), English teacher Milton Buttle (Joey Slotnick) is ridiculed by his students and football coach Kevin Riley (Thomas McCarthy) and a father pressure Harper to reinstate a failing football star.

The hour’s artsy ending is especially pretentious given the largely farcical material preceding it. Future episodes are no better, the worst coming when a boy is hung by his feet from the school roof and Lipschultz intercedes on behalf of a reportedly homosexual football player by urging the entire team to “welcome the gay linebacker into your shower.”

Just who will be desperate enough to welcome “Boston Public” is uncertain.

It’s Ding Dong School compared with “The Practice,” Kelley’s tough, well-acted hour about a small firm of chin-stroking, self-doubting, idealistic attorneys who are good for at least one moral crossroads per episode.

This is the most conflicted, angst-ridden law firm in history.

Already this season, Bobby Donnell (Dylan McDermott) has suffered a courtroom loss that is tearing him apart because he knows that his client was convicted of murder on false testimony. Which ethical Helen Gamble (Lara Flynn Boyle), the prosecutor who tried the case, is trying to reverse, putting her career at risk.

Bobby’s wife, Lindsay Dole (Kelli) Williams), and Ellenor Frutt (Camryn Manheim) are tied in knots themselves over a civil case they appeared to win, then appeared not to win, but now may have won--or at least made things much better Sunday night for their deserving clients. The heroine here is Ellenor, who put herself and the firm at risk by boldly taking on a biased judge.

At risk, also, was the firm’s big softy, Jimmy Berluti (Michael Badalucco), who looked beyond legal ethics Sunday night and instead chose the greater good of lying to his pregnant crackhead client in hopes of saving her life and that of her 8-month-old fetus.

That loose end still dangles. And the episode’s last scene of a little puddle of flesh, the crack mother’s prematurely born infant at just 3 1/2 pounds, went straight to your heart.

“The Practice” is not a series built on surprises. You can usually chart where it’s going by following the easily read map of its moral crises. But the storytelling and acting--whether Steve Harris’ seething Eugene Young or Manheim’s unsinkable Ellenor--are mostly first rate.

Kelley’s masterwork, though, remains “Ally McBeal.” When it’s good, that is. And it isn’t especially good in the opening weeks of its new season while reaching into its familiar trick hat and producing deja vu instead of a rabbit.

Its biggest challenge has always been living up to itself. Yet the only thing fresh about tonight’s show is that good actor Robert Downey Jr., who plays the newest male in the life of Calista Flockhart’s still-unfulfilled-after-all-these-years Ally. They’re very good together.

Otherwise, John Cage (Peter MacNicol) has his nose whistling again, there’s some funny business with Richard Fish (Greg Germann) and the show’s characters are at least as libidinous as ever. So much so, in fact, that a coming episode, narrated by Ally, is so penis-minded that it could nearly pass for “Sex and the City.”

These bedsheets are pretty well rumpled, though. “Ally McBeal” follows “Boston Public,” so here’s a thought. Give the nose whistle to Harvey Lipschultz, and call it a day.

“Boston Public” premieres tonight at 8 on Fox. The network has rated it TV-PG-DLV.