BOSTON PUBLIC: CHAPTER ONE {SERIES PREMIERE} (TV)
Summary
One in this series of dramas exploring the tempestuous relationships between the jaded administration and the precocious student body of a volatile public high school in Boston. In this premiere episode, exhausted but devoted principal Steven Harper faces a series of crises that range from amusing to potentially explosive. As the program opens, an unpopular math teacher takes umbrage with Harper's support of a technology-savvy student's right to mock him openly on the student's wildly popular satirical web site, but things turn more serious for Harper immediately. When Lauren Davis, the head of the social studies department, fails the football team's star tailback for referring to Abraham Lincoln as "the inventor of the log" in a test answer about the sixteenth president, the boy's father arrives at the school in a rage, and Harper is forced to come to Davis's defense. Mentally unstable teacher Marla Hendricks dazedly walks away from her job teaching the troublemaking students who take special disciplinary classes in the basement of the school, known as "The Dungeon," so Harper hands the job over to brash young teacher Harry Senate. On his first day teaching the group, Senate brandishes a gun loaded with blanks in a dramatic attempt to prove a point about respect. Despite the severity of the act, Senate is only mildly disciplined. Harper's attention is again diverted by a scandal of an entirely different stripe; it seems that the principal's insistence that a buxom young student wear a bra to school has prompted a lawsuit from the girl's parents. Before he can address this matter, Harper finds himself in the middle of a violent confrontation between a diminutive student and a thuggish bully who have had problems with each other in the past. After the hoodlum seriously assaults the smaller student off school grounds, Harper physically attacks the bigger kid by throwing him very hard against a metal locker. At the end of the program, Senate is confronted by the braless young female student, who asks him to abuse his power and allow the failing tailback to play in the night's big football game. Senate insists that he can't do anything about the situation. "Then I might let our little secret get out," she whispers to him conspiratorially. Commercials deleted.
Details
- NETWORK: FOX
- DATE: October 23, 2000 8:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 0:44:31
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: T:63168
- GENRE: Drama
- SUBJECT HEADING: Drama; High schools - Drama
- SERIES RUN: Fox - TV series, 2000-2004
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- David E. Kelley … Executive Producer, Writer
- Jonathan Pontell … Co-Executive Producer
- Michael Listo … Supervising Producer
- Pamela Wisne … Producer
- Philip Neel … Co-Producer
- Thomas Schlamme … Director
- Danny Lux … Music by
- Thomas Newman … Theme Music by
- Chi McBride … Cast, Steven Harper
- Jessalyn Gilsig … Cast, Lauren Davis
- Anthony Heald … Cast, Scott Guber
- Loretta Devine … Cast, Marla Hendricks
- Nicky Katt … Cast, Harry Senate
- Sharon Leal … Cast, Marylin Sudor
- Joey Slotnick … Cast, Milton Buttle
- Fyvush Finkel … Cast, Harvey Lipschultz
- Thomas McCarthy … Cast, Coach Kevin Riley
- Rashida Jones … Cast, Louisa
- Sarah Thompson … Cast, Dana Poole
- Lamya Jezek … Cast, Cheryl Holt
- John Francis Daley … Cast, Anthony Ward
- Zachary Ty Bryan … Cast, Malcolm White
- Avery Kidd Waddell … Cast, Jason Harrelson
- Antwon Tanner … Cast, Kevin Jackson
- Courtney B. Vance … Cast, Walter Harrelson
- R.F. Daley … Cast, Michael Ward
- Amy Correa … Cast, Washington
- Arlen Escarpeta … Cast, Scott
- Susan Allison … Cast, Emily Ward
- James Kohli … Cast, Doctor
- Ruth Silvera … Cast, Screaming Parent #1
- Cheryl Francis Harrinton … Cast, Screaming Parent #2
- Jesse Matthew Garcia … Cast, Screaming Parent #3
- David Mersault … Cast, Screaming Parent #4
- Rod Damer … Cast, Screaming Parent #5
- Jennifer Dibert … Cast, Giggle Girl #1
- Alicia Anderson … Cast, Giggle Girl #2
- Zarah Little … Cast, Giggle Girl #3
- Christopher Neiman … Cast, Attorney George Fenn