L.A. Law Had a Surprisingly Dark First Christmas Episode - Sitcoms Online Message Boards

TMC · 12-22-2025, 08:22 PM

https://popculturereferences.com/l-a...stmas-episode/

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We continue our look at some notable 1980s Christmas episodes by looking at a surprisingly dark first Christmas episode for L.A. Law.

L.A. Law was launched by Stephen Bochco and Terry Louise Fisher, and the pairing won the Best Drama Emmy for its first season. Fisher was pushed out in a conflict with Bochco, but the show really became remembered for the work that one of its first season writer hires, a former lawyer named David E. Kelley, did when Kelley became more and more of a driving voice on the series. He eventually became the showrunner of the series, and the three years that Kelley was the main voice on the show (I think he only technically was the showrunner on Seasons 4-5), Seasons 3-5, the show won the Emmy for Best Drama each year. The show followed a Los Angeles law firm on its various criminal and civil cases. Criminal law was frequently depicted on TV, but L.A. Law made even civil cases compelling. The show was notable for its mixture of comedy and drama. Some of the cases were just downright wacky, ya know? It ran for eight seasons.

It routinely had Christmas episodes, and its first one was its most acclaimed, so even though there were more “Christmas-y” episodes in the show’s run, this was the best one by far, netting an Emmy nomination for Best Writing in a Drama Series for show writer William Finkelstein (he lost to the pilot episode).

Harry Hamlin’s Michael Kuzak was the firm’s top litigator, and he also had a strong desire for social justice causes. He was acquaintances with another defense attorney, Sid Hershberg, who had a nervous breakdown, and dumped all of his cases on Michael, including that of Nina Emmons, a young woman whose daughter was killed by the police after they broke down her door looking for a guy who had lived there previously and she fired at the intruders (their return fire killed her baby). As an attempt to punish her from suing the city for wrongful death, she had been arrested for the felony murder of her own daughter, and due to Sid’s incompetence, had been sitting in holding for months.

Michael is able to get her out of prison, and he’s sure he can get the criminal case kicked AND win her wrongful death suit, but she just wants the case gone, and if they’ll agree to drop the criminal case, she’ll settle the wrongful death claim. Kuzak gets her $100,000 anyways, but the scene with the city attorney is CHILLING as he callously tells Kuzak that, come on, what damages are you going to get on a dead baby in the inner city?

Meanwhile, Sid is back in court, and he asks Michael to come see him try a case. He gives an impassioned closing:

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You see, the prosecution would have you believe as they do, that this case should not be wasting your time. That the defendant is a common whore in the garden-variety solicitation case, and that she should just take her medicine, do her 30 days or her 6 months, then do her parole and be be done with it.

(Michael walks in at this point, and Si acknowledges him)

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One could argue what real difference does it make if she goes to prison or goes free? She isn’t famous, nor is she rich. When she dies, she will not rate even one line in the newspaper. There may well be no one there to grieve. She will live out her life, be it long or short, in the sort of… pervading anonymity permits us to dismiss her and dismiss her without a second thought. I have to ask myself how many more of us are dismissed in the same manner on this rock-hard Earth? When the reaper’s scythe is on the back swing, what distinguishes any one of us? What do any of us do with our lives that mark us as worthy of consideration? Quite honestly, I’m at a loss to say. Is it that once we had dreams? Or a birthday? Or maybe that we’ve been children. That we’ve known Christmas. What I always thought about Christmas was about is a kind of free pass. A time of saying, hey, you don’t have to earn it. We’ ll consider you, the least of you, and we’ll do it strictly on faith. But Christmas goes, the audition continues… And each one of us is sent back to hammer on his own personal anvil with the idea that we will be hamming until our hearts stop and someone kindly lays us to rest. I hope you have listened to Lurline Connors, and I hope you will consider her. I thank you… for listening to me.

And then Sid pulls out a gun and dies by suicide right there in the court. Kuzak, naturally, is a WRECK by the end of the episode, especially after he attends Sid’s funeral service, and barely anyone shows up.

In a HAPPIER plot, Abby (Michele Greene) is reunited with her son, who had been kidnaped by her ex-husband. She had to agree to drop all charges if her ex returned the son, and the son now hated her for what he saw as abandoning him. Her ex had stopped drinking, and he let her have the son for Christmas, and her son forgave her.

There’s an absurd plot where Arnie Becker (Corbin Burnson) has sex with his client’s ex-wife (Christine Healy. I love Healy’s work, but it is kind of funny seeing her as a sexpot).