“You teach yourselves the law, but I train your minds. You come in here with a skull full of mush and, if you survive, you’ll leave thinking like a lawyer.” – Professor Charles W. Kingsfield
“A skull of mush,” huh? That sounds about right. The first years at an institute of higher learning are always the hardest. It’s like being a freshman in high school all over again. And when it comes to ivy league schools, well, you better leave your thinking caps on at all times; to help protect the mush inside.
Premiering on television three years before I was born, The Paper Chase is all new to me. I’ve never read John Jay Osborn Jr.’s novel of the same name nor have I seen the film adaptation from 1973. All I knew before watching the first episode was that the actor who plays Professor Charles W. Kingsfield (John Houseman) also played a driving instructor in The Naked Gun. It was his final performance and it went uncredited. (The odd bits of trivia we remember.) The series’ history is tumultuous at best, having been cancelled after its first season on CBS. But its reruns were a success on PBS. In 1983, the series would come back to television, airing on Showtime. It would last another three years. (To my knowledge this is the first TV show to be revived by a cable network.)
Now Shout! Factory, a company I have dubbed the “Criterion of Television,” brings this series to the DVD market.
James Hart (James Stephens) is what you would call a country bumpkin. He grew up on a farm in Minnesota, but he had no desire to be like his father, a farmer. He wanted to practice law. Hart succeeds at scholastics, earning a scholarship to a prestigious, albeit unnamed law school, in the East. The workload is tougher than anything he faced back in Minnesota. To keep his brains from turning into tapioca, Hart joins a study group, led by Franklin Ford III. Franklin (Tom Fitzsimmons) is a bit snooty, and he claims to be a genius in the “pilot” episode. But his genius quality is toned down in the succeeding episodes, because he doesn’t act much like a genius. Also in the group is Anderson (Robert Ginty), Hart’s friend and the playboy of the group, Bell (James Keane), the comic relief character who one day hopes to take over his father’s real estate empire, and Logan (Francine Tacker), a female student who’s a feminist and proponent of political activism. A Nancy Pelosi in the making? Uh-oh.
Of all the classes the most dreaded is Contract Law. If the class is to be dreaded it’s because of Professional Kingsfield. The man is so commanding of his class that if R. Lee Ermey were one of his students, Kingsfield would have the drill instructor balling like a little girl. That’s just how good John Houseman is. Reprising his Oscar-winning role, Houseman leads by intimidation. Never be late to one of his lectures, because if you are you’re better off digging your own grave. Consider yourself “shrouded” for the rest of the year – a walking ghost.
Kingsfield may be a hard ass to some of the 1-L’s (first year law students), but Hart is wowed by the man’s sharp mind, even though he found himself a victim of Kingsfield’s method of teaching: the Socratic method. Hart was shrouded when he was unprepared for the first day of class. That event help to lay the foundation of their relationship, arms length as it may be.
Kingsfield isn’t a mean teacher. He’s an instructor, not a nurturer. He expects his students to work hard. He’s unforgiving if a student misses an assignment, be it sickness or injury. I’m sure we all have our own stories about the teachers we’ve loathed but were nonetheless grateful for having taken the course.
In a day of police procedurals and medical shows, rare is it to see a smart program on network television. TV audiences weren’t prepared for such heady material in 1978, hence the cancellation. Myself, I could care less about law school, but I could relate to the study group’s experiences for that first year. Anyone who’s ever attended a two- or four-year university can relate.
For this first season, Franklin tries to appease his father in the episode “A Day in the Life of…”, who visits one of Kingsfield lectures. There’s some animosity between Franklin and Hart when Hart doesn’t come to the defense of Franklin when Kingsfield asks him a question. But the animosity doesn’t last long; everything is water under the bridge by episode’s end. That’s one of the biggest problems. As the season progresses there’s no continuation from one episode to another. Characters are introduced only to written off when the episode ends. Such is the case with “Moot Court,” where a black West Point grad, Livingston, has some friction with Bell, because of their different work ethics. Later in the episode you understand why Livingston tries so hard in law school. And that’s his only appearance in the series. One and done.
Some of the highlights of the first season include episodes about female equality, sexual harassment, being singled out in class; and the series wouldn’t be complete if it didn’t have an episode about a stolen midterm.
With this DVD release we get no bells and whistles in the form of extras and it’s evident that no restoration has been done in the A/V department.
Nevertheless, The Paper Chase is intelligent and smart, and the cast, especially Stephens and Houseman (the standouts of the series), is all around great. Definite recommended viewing.
Originally produced by 20th Century Fox, the series must have remained in the bowls of the studio vault until Shout! Factory came a knocking. The prints are unrestored, with occasional scratches. The picture is old, pure and simple.
The audio is a mono soundtrack and at times the volume levels fluctuate. I noticed a disparity between transitioning from the theme song to the start of the episode one or two times. It wont aggravate your ears, but in preparation for soft sounds have a remote control near by.
Sadly, there are no special features. Shout! Factory is committed to giving fans the best possible release possible, so Im sure either the material wasnt there, or it would have been too time-consuming to include audio commentaries or a retrospective featurette.
This is more than simply “John Boy goes to College,” The Paper Chase is about personal growth, and adapting to life at a prestigious law school. Intelligent and smart, the cast, especially Stephens and Houseman (the standouts of the series), is all around great. Definite recommendation.
………………………………………
Shout! Factory presents The Paper Chase: Season One. Created by: John Jay Osborn Jr. Starring: John Houseman and James Stephens. Running time: +/- 18 Hours. Rating: NR. Released on DVD: April 7, 2009. Available at Amazon.com.
