There's something about Harry

Since the dawn of recorded TV time — that is, the days of I Love Lucy and The Steve Allen Show — quirky, kooky, distinctive characters have propelled successful prime-time series.

While Vivian Vance still is regarded as one of history's greatest second bananas and William Frawley cracked his share of wise as Fred Mertz, Lucille Ball was most often her own best foil, placing herself in outrageous costumes and entanglements. Allen, founding host of The Tonight Show whose monumental contributions to television sadly are fading into history, assembled a legendary band of lunatics to assist him when NBC ordered him to overtake The Ed Sullivan Show in the '50s, including a hyper-jittery, pre-Barney Fife Don Knotts, Louis Nye ("Hi-ho, Steverino!") and America's first famous "Hispanic" comedian, Bill Dana as Jose Jimenez.

Often the breakout character doesn't emerge until the show is on the air and the writers find their legs. Happy Days was a watery replica of American Graffiti until Henry Winkler became "The Fonz" and the show skyrocketed. Family Matters required Urkel to flourish, Cheers needed "NORRM!" Seinfeld would have been a solid but hardly historic sitcom without Kramer, and How I Met Your Mother might have been a one-season washout if producers hadn't encouraged Neil Patrick Harris' Barney to become ... well, Barney.

The interesting trend in recent years is that the oddball supporting character is providing a boost to TV dramas as well as comedies, spotlighting actors you can't wait to see enter the screen and miss the moment they depart. What would America's top-rated scripted series, NCIS, be without Pauley Perrette's Abby, or Criminal Minds without Kirsten Vangsness as Garcia? When it appeared White Collar had killed off the platitude-spouting Mozzie (Willie Garson) last year, fans of the show flooded chat rooms and USA Network message boards until producers were forced to admit his shooting wasn't intended to be as fatal as it looked.

If you've been watching court-TV wonderbrain David E. Kelley's latest creation, Harry's Law on NBC (10 p.m. Mondays, Channel 4 in Detroit) — and if not, why not? — you have experienced Idiot Boxing's choice for the most delightfully eccentric, oddly engaging bit player in this or many a previous TV season: Christopher McDonald as flamboyant defense attorney Tommy Jefferson.

Harry's Law would be worth watching if only for the magnificent Kathy Bates in her first starring TV role as ballsy, no-nonsense lawyer Harriet "Harry" Korn, and her surrounding cast (Nate Corddry, Brittany Snow, Aml Ameen) is more than serviceable. But the interactions are spiciest and the scenes most memorable when fast-talking, egocentric, comically insecure Tommy takes part.

McDonald, a familiar and welcome face in movies and television (and forever immortalized as the deliciously arrogant Shooter McGavin in Happy Gilmore), has managed to embody virtually every unctuous, teeth-whitened, snake-eyed lawyer with a daytime TV commercial. Does the bottle-blond Jefferson have an ego? Beyond calling Harry's eager associate Adam Branch (Corddry) a "bug" at every opportunity, blessed with the name of one of America's founding fathers to trade upon, he prefers to ennoble himself as "Tommy."

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