Ally McBeal

I'm in the middle of season four as i write these words. It's been a few years since the last time i watched Ally McBeal but somehow it was time again to visit the old gang at Cage & Fish.

I absolutely fell in love with this show, it's characters and story's a few years ago and I'm falling in love all over again. This show, it's heart, gentleness and (sometimes)idealistic look at life and love can get me to weep like a little schoolgirl (and I'm a man, age 32).

The story's about fulfilled and unfulfilled dreams, lost loves, Christmas spirit, special friendships,The passing of time and meandering moments, etc. have me glued to my television once again.

An absolutely brilliant TV show. It genuinely deals with the abserdity of law (with amazing detail) and life. John Cage and Richard Fish are, without a doubt, the funniest characters in the show. Ally is also very good. It's one of those shows which makes you say "I wish my life was like that..." and you strangely join the show on an emotional ride. I think we can all safely say that we miss Happy Boyle... ...a must watch.

For David Kelly the creation of this law firm must have come to him as he envisioned what L.A.Law would've been in it's most bizarre form. If you told viewers beforehand some of the quirks and cases the main character, and the firm, would entertain I'm sure the "test" audience would have responded with a collective thumbs down. This is why the success and following of the show is all the more astounding.

I have watched from the first episode and look forward to it every week. From the first time we saw Ally get sexually harassed in her old firm, to her first sighting of the baby cupid on roller skates with a bow and arrow we have embraced her quirks and her flaws. We have hung on every "theme song", everytime she saw Al Green and most recently Barry Manilow, and we have learned to clutch onto all the zaniness of the other characters as well.

Be it John Cage stuttering(pa..pa..pa..poughkeepsie), to the great "Fishisms" of his partner Richard Fish, to Billy's Robert Palmer girls, to Elaine's face bra, etc. etc. These characters are now part of our tuesday conversation at the water cooler. And in America that is when a show has made it!

Season three had it's mindnumbing sameness to it, but the introduction of Robert Downey Jr. has brought new life to a stagnant show. At the time of this writing it was announced Downey Jr. had signed a new 8 episode deal so it should be interesting to see where the show goes.

Ally McBeal was ahead of its time. I found the first three seasons compelling, but after that it was not so much. Ally McBeal and The Practice were the two series I watched. Ally McBeal was first, and then The Practice, and it was my evening viewing in my younger days when I could stay up and watch whatever was on the tube.

David E. Kelley's a talented man, no doubt about it (and since he's married to Michelle Pfeiffer, many would add "sickeningly lucky" on top of that); when you have a CV that includes writing for Steven Bochco shows and successfully launching your own Twentieth Century Fox-affiliated company (and let's not forget, "girls club" has been his only real flop on the tube - even "Chicago Hope," which is doomed to be the Billie to "ER"'s Britney Spears, still ran for six years), on top of being the primary writer for your shows, it takes more than mere luck.

"Ally McBeal" was a delight for the first four years - though many claimed it would have been better without Calista Flockhart, I doubt it. True, the other characters and actors were of equal or better value - who'd want the show to be without Greg Germann as Fish, the world's most likeable inconsiderate wattle-obsessed dolt ("Ally, it's not my nature to be concerned about people, but what's wrong?") - but the show did clearly have Miss McBeal at its centre; and let us not forget that for all her insecurities, her looniness, and horrible luck in her personal life, she was in fact a pretty good lawyer when you think about it. Certainly better in court than Fish...

The people and writing were always funny and easy to take, apart from Lisa Nicole Carson as Renee* (in a TV special about the show, "This Life"'s creator Amy Jenkins said she thought Renee was smug. I agree), and adding the sultry and classy Lucy Liu to the cast was a chance that worked - her reduced role in the latter episodes, though understandable from her point of view, was a sad sign of the show's degeneration, but when Julianne Nicholson and James Marsden arrived and Peter MacNicol left that was it... and as for that child - spare me. The fun and the thrill were gradually seeping out, and Cage/Fish stopped being a place you wanted to visit. Episodes like the one where a man wanted to fly didn't help either - the toll of writing nearly every episode by himself must have affected Mr. Kelley. (Also note how that bar suddenly let people more famous than Vonda Shepard take a turn on stage. And as for Sting being allowed to act... although in fairness, Mariah Carey's episode was better than "The Bachelor" or "Glitter.")

In the end, I was searching my soul one night, and found there was so much more to life than watching a dying series. But one poor season after four good ones isn't a bad average. Thanks for the first 80%, David E. Kelley... youuuuu stinker! (He said affectionately.)

*About Lisa Nicole Carson; in all the articles written about how skinny all the women on the show were, nobody seems to have noticed that Miss Carson and Jane Krakowski are, as they say, really built.