ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, March 12, 1997 TAG: 9703120100
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FRAZIER MOORE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The tobacco industry is playing bad guy on not one, but two TV dramas - ``The Practice'' and ``Feds.'' Besides telling powerful stories with tobacco as the heavy, both shows deliver an uncompromising message: Cigarettes kill.
Indeed, not only do cigarettes kill, but so does a cigarette maker if provoked, according to a story ``arc'' that begins tonight on CBS' ``Feds.''
On this, ``Feds''' second episode, federal prosecutors launch an investigation into fictional Southeast Tobacco Co., suspected of hiding from the public the dangers of a chemical added to its cigarettes.
Before the case is wrapped up several episodes from now, assistant U.S. Attorney Resor (Adrian Pasdar) will find that, like the label warns, tobacco can be hazardous to your health.
A key witness plunges from an upper-story window. Resor himself is framed for a crime and thrown into jail. A Gestapo-like arm of the tobacco industry emerges, its mission to protect tobacco's secrets at whatever cost. As Resor and his cohorts try to pierce what comes across as a Tobacco Evil Empire, the tone is as sinister as a Cold War spy novel's.
A more subdued storyline, but with the same archvillain, helped launch ABC's ``The Practice'' last week. The show's struggling law firm takes on a client who sues a huge tobacco company for contributing to his wife's death after a lifetime of smoking.
This tale concludes several weeks from now, with the trial against fictional T.L. Michaels Tobacco.
``They put out a product that, when used as directed, causes cancer,'' attorney Lindsay Dole (Kelli Williams) tells the jury in a riveting monologue that lasts nearly eight minutes. ``In the short time I've been delivering my opening statement, they took in another million dollars or so - and 50 more people died.''
On ``The Practice'' and ``Feds'' alike, tobacco proves as hissable a baddie as any dramatist could wish for. And it comes by this role honestly, declared ``Feds'' executive producer Dick Wolf (who also produces ``Law & Order'' and ``New York Undercover'').
``As villains, they're almost too good to be true,'' Wolf said of cigarette makers. ``They make millions of dollars for killing people.''
``The tobacco industry served all our story-telling purposes,'' agreed David E. Kelley, ``The Practice's'' executive producer. ``It's a nice, antagonistic Goliath for our show's lawyers to go after.''
Like Wolf, Kelley said bashing tobacco wasn't the point.
``If that's a byproduct of our storyline,'' he added, ``we're thrilled to do it.''
But the awesome power ascribed to tobacco on these dramas is the same real-life power it can mobilize against networks that air stories daring to depict the industry in unflattering ways.
ABC, for one, feels that power all too keenly, to judge from Kelley's experience.
ABC, said Kelley, ``was really skittish. Their legal counsel was calling us daily. They literally told us, `You cannot say that cigarettes are addictive, because it hasn't been proven yet.'''
ABC spokeswoman Janice Gretemeyer responded, ``We would never broadcast any program that falsely defames any particular industry, or misleads the public with false statistics for the sake of drama.'' For whatever reason, nothing about ``The Practice'' but tobacco worried the network.
``On the other storylines, ABC was great on content, they didn't interfere,'' said Kelley, never loath to press hot buttons on his new show, or others including ``Picket Fences'' and ``Chicago Hope.''``We got to tell our tobacco storyline,'' he allowed, ``but the impression we got was, they [ABC lawyers] were feeling the lumps from the [tobacco] lawsuit.''
Still, Kelley said his impression was that ABC's lawyers were "feeling the lumps from the [tobacco] lawsuit," referring to the $10 billion lawsuit ABC settled last year with two tobacco companies over a network newsmagazine report about nicotine additives in cigarettes.
A few months after the settlement, ABC lawyers were fighting Kelley, even quibbling over how the fictional Laramie brand's mascot could be drawn for a poster displayed in the courtroom. He couldn't be a mammal, play a musical instrument, wear sunglasses or flash a thumbs-up, Kelley was told.
What viewers see instead is a cool-looking, cigarette-smoking alligator twirling a basketball on the tip of his finger. As if it makes a difference.
LENGTH: Medium: 80 linesby CNB