My own self

"I suppose we better work this out."
"Does it have to be now?"
"Well, it is the season. Peace on Earth...love for your fellow man..."
"Wait. What was that?"
"'Love for your fellow man'?"
"No, before that."
"'Peace on Earth'?"
"Liberal. I knew it!"

- Jeffrey Coho and Brad Chase,
Boston Legal 3x10: The Nutcrackers

If you've read my reviews of seasons 1 and 2 - and you should have, I mean, why on Earth would you otherwise bother with reading my review of the third one? - you know I quite loved this show almost at first glance. And while the snark that enticed me so diminished in season 2, it improved so much in other areas I was still taken, probably even more so.

Season 3 is where the initial crush is finally over and the established affection for the show is what keeps pulling you in. The snark the main character had in such abundancies in season 1 is still more or less missing in action, except for the few situations where Alan Shore gets to do witty retorts to unlikeable or stupid people. Additionally, the forumlaic set-up of the episodes is getting old. They do make choices to spice this up, though. First off, they start the season with a five-episode arc, the longest any trial has any taken on the show to date - and with new characters running the main plot in this mini-arc to boot. Second, as I just mentioned, there's a new big switch-around of characters. This time, though, we don't really lose anyone that mattered, and the two we gain are both very well done and interesting.

Throughout the season, the show is changed further. We see more and more or recurring character Jerry "Hands" Espenson, brilliantly portrayed by Christian Clemenson (whom you might know as Abel Koontz from Veronica Mars or Socrates Poole from The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.), and he has since his first apperances been my very favourite character outside the dynamic duo at the heart of the series, so this is good. Heck, it's excellent. Additionally, we get the recurring character Bethany, a new romantic interest for Denny Crane. At the middle of the season, cast-changes happened again, we lose an old character and get a new one. Not that crazy about this new one, or of Bethany - the once so serious Crane, Poole and Schmidt-firm is turning into Cage & Fish of Ally McBeal-fame; a family of oddballs and eccentrics more than a firm of lawyers. Still, it's a minor nuiscance.

The political aspect of the show gets more pronounced - it's always been big, but it gets less and less veiled, having for instance open references to the American presidential election and the different candidates that were still in play at this point. I like this, though. The show's always been very strongly political in its form and content, and being honest about it isn't a minus. A slight problem, though, is the amount of times the "likable" side wins out in the cases. As Alan Shore at one point remarks, it kills the suspense.

And such remarks are commonplace now. While in seasons 1 and 2, the meta-jokes were increasingly common, they were never as omnipresent as here. Several are outright difficult to explain away in-world, which bugs me. Still, on the most part, they're very funny - annoyingly enough it often happens that the funniest ones are the least subtle - and particularly one at the end of the teaser in episode 22 of this season might be one of the most adorably funny things I've seen in ages.

The season ends stronger than it was throughout, and I have to say that while it doesn't measure up to season 2 or in some ways even season 1, season 3 of Boston Legal is still a solid piece of work with ever more heartwarming scenes between the awesome, awesome characters of Denny Crane and Alan Shore. A friendship for the ages, this one. The initial crush might be over, but this show's earned my trust now, and I'm not going anywhere. On to season 4! As the Buzz Lightyears of the world would say, to infinity and beyond!