Change of Course (104)



Season 1
Head Cases
Still Crazy After All These Years
Catch and Release
Change of Course
And Eye for an Eye
Truth Be Told
Questionable Characters
Loose Lips
Greater Good
Hired Guns
Schmidt Happens
From Whence We Came
It Girls and Beyond
Till We Meat Again
Tortured Souls
Let Sales Ring
Death Be Not Proud

Season 2
The Black Widow
Schadenfreude
Finding Nimmo
A Whiff and a Prayer
Men to Boys
Witches of Mass Destruction
Truly Madly, Deeply
Ass Fat Jungle
Gone
Legal Deficits
The Cancer Man Can


Paul Lewiston: We represent a company, the CEO of which needs immediate legal assistance. Lee Tyler. Brilliant woman. Kind woman. Also a kleptomaniac. She's about to go on trial tomorrow for stealing a $200 scarf. Ordinarily a small matter. Here's why it's not. If she gets convicted of this crime, she violates a morals clause in her contract. She's out as CEO. And since she's the one who hired us, we stand to lose our biggest client. We have exhausted all conventional means to make this go away. We have failed. We now need an attorney with some experience in perhaps unconventional means.




Sally Heep: Is that fair?

Alan Shore: I don't understand the question.




Lori Colson: He says he grew up watching Perry Mason and he promised himself he would one day do a criminal trial.

Paul Lewiston: Certainly you're not going to let him.

Lori Colson: He seems to have his wits about him. The truth is is he's probably more equipped than me. I think the best thing would be for me to supervise and let him first chair.

Paul Lewiston: You really think you're up to this?

Edwin Poole: I did clinical work in law school. The rules of evidence are the same as civil. There's no great mystery to it. Also, he came to me in a dream last night and he told me to try this case.

Paul Lewiston: God?

Edwin Poole: Perry.




Warren Litch: Your honor, at this time I would like to discharge counsel.

Judge Peter Harding: Denied.

Warren Litch: It that case, it should be known that this woman didn't even bother to meet me until yesterday. My own lawyer. I mean, she didn't even know my name. She is unprofessional, she is unprepared, and, on top of that, she's fleshy. I want me a thin, wiry attorney. Somebody hungry for justice.




Alan Shore: Denny. I need you at 12:30. It'll take five minutes, tops. I need to trade a little on your prominence. Your heft.

Denny Crane: What do you want me to do?

Alan Shore: I don't want you to do anything or say anything. I just want you to be. Be all that you can be. One of the few, the proud.

Denny Crane: You don't want me to say anything?

Alan Shore: Just those two little words that tend to shock and awe.

Denny Crane: Denny Crane.

Brad Chase: Feel free to mock me all you want, but don't you dare ridicule our troops.

Alan Shore: Just so I'm clear. I should feel free to mock you?




Alan Shore: Let's make this brief, Miles. We represent a woman who is charged with stealing a scarf from the store where you work. Which is precisely what she did. You saw the whole thing. So we find ourselves between a rock and a hard place, Miles. The rock being our client, C.E.O. of a Fortune 500 company, who has made it abundantly clear the only acceptable verdict is "not guilty", and the hard place being you, Miles. The eyewitness. But maybe you aren't so hard after all. Am I right?

Miles Tibbet: I'm not sure what you-

Alan Shore: Sally has given me some information which regrettably I'm ethically required to attack you with in court. For example, since I know you take beta-blockers for your anxiety, some possible side effects being dizziness, confusion, I am duty-bound to raise it. Also, the idea that you invited a few friends down to the courthouse to hear you testify, it would be malpractice for me to not make a small snack of that. Of course, I'll have to get into your inferiority complex, stuff about if a girl smiles at you she must be a hooker. That sort of thing.

Miles Tibbet: But I never said-

Alan Shore: I'm talking, Miles.

Sally Heep: Alan-

Alan Shore: I'm talking, Sally. You collect autographs, Miles. That must be fun. Standing around on cold, drizzly nights waiting for famous people to give you a cursory glance, a moment of their time, perhaps, if they take pity on you. Do people often take pity on you, Miles? Wouldn't surprise me. I'm seeing a pattern here.

Pity. Anxiety. Inferiority. All those "ity" words.

Miles Tibbet: This isn't fair.

Alan Shore: You're right, it's not. But you have a job to do, and so do I. Yours is to sell socks and suspenders. Mine is to cross-examine people like you and crush them. This man here would fire me if I didn't.

Denny Crane: Denny Crane.

Alan Shore: He would fire me, Miles, if I didn't explore every nuance and shadow of your personality. Every secret place and insufficiency in the hours that you will spend in that witness chair, Miles, in front of all those friends you invited. And when I'm finished with you, even they will think you are a vindictive, pathetic little sycophant who has falsely accused and probably framed a fine woman for something she never did and never would do only so that you could get at long last your moment of attention. By the time I'm done, I'll have you believing you put that scarf in her handbag. Lee Tyler can afford to hire any attorney in the world. She's chosen me. Do you wonder if I'm any good, Miles? Do you really wonder?




Denny Crane: Sally, that was not a pleasant meeting. Typically, when associates are unhappy, I give them a hug.

Sally Heep: I don't want a hug, Mr. Crane.

Denny Crane: Okay. May I have one?




Warren Litch: How do I not get in that chair?

Lori Colson: Edwin did a good job.

Warren Litch: If I don't say I didn't do it, then-

Lori Colson: I can't put you in that chair.

Warren Litch: Why?

Lori Colson: Because you did do it and I cannot put a witness in the chair to lie.

Warren Litch: I have a right to testify.

Lori Colson: But it would have to be in the narrative. Best case scenario, you'll trip all over yourself. Worst case, one of the jurors will know why it's in the narrative.

Warren Litch: Then why can't you ask me questions that would allow-

Lori Colson: Because I can't. We have rules, Warren. One is I cannot put you up there to knowingly lie. Our best strategy here would be to argue the prosecution didn't satisfy its burden.

Warren Litch: This is my life on the line here. And you keep talking about a system of rules and regulations? I'm in this for my life here. And you're supposed to be in this for my life, too.

Lori Colson: Well I'm not. Don't get me wrong. I will give you the very best defense I know how. But I will not allow myself to be in this for you. I will play my part in a system that I have an enormous amount of allegiance to, but I will never be in this for you.




Sally Heep: Do you care about me, Alan?

Alan Shore: I care a great deal for you. That's why I'm going to give you some very sound advice. Run.

Sally Heep: What?

Alan Shore: This is a bad business. It is an often filthy, dehumanizing, mean-spirited job. I assure you I take no pleasure in it. It just comes easily to me. But…you… are not that way. So I suggest you think long and hard about whether you really wanna wake up every morning with all the promise that morning conveys and come here. Which I say to you only because I care.

Sally Heep: You are such a liar. Pretending that this stuff doesn't affect you. That you can just brush it off.

Alan Shore: I'm afraid I can.




Alan Shore: Don't try and get in my head, Sally. You won't like the mess.

Sally Heep: You weren't telling me to run from the law the other night. You were telling me to run from you. Maybe you think it's my relationship with you that's ultimately dehumanizing. So being an incredibly decent man, which you are underneath all your stuff, you decided to warn me.

Alan Shore: I'm not trying to push you away.

Sally Heep: Are you trying to keep me? We either go forward or go in opposite directions because I don't like where we are now.

Alan Shore: By forward you mean---

Sally Heep: You know what? I think I'll just move forward.






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