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Ally McBeal
Love her or hate her, welcome to the weird and wonderful world of
Ally McBeal, a mini-skirted (in fact micro-skirted), power-dressing
neurotic with a law degree and conflicted ambitions. As she says,
she wants it all, just the dreams of the everyday lawyer - career,
marriage, babies and a place in human history. Clearly another child
of the Me Decade, where everything is possible, nothing should be
denied, and the Superwoman can have it all. She wants three kids,
a devoted husband ("my one fish in the sea"), and a spectacular
career. As she tells us, she is a victim of her own choices.
The first time we see Ally, she is staring out a window, recounting
through flashbacks (in a typical "Ally" voiceover) how
she and Billy became childhood sweethearts and then lovers. She
came to Cage Fish & Associates following an unfortunate experience
at her old law firm, where she was sexually harassed. And Ally's
not the only woman in the firm who's single and none too happy
about it - "I want to help save the world, but I just want
to get married first".
What is immediately different is our entrée to Ally's
interior life (as American therapists like to say). We know not
only what she's thinking, but we can see it as well in some wild
fantasy sequences in her Walter Mitty world. Does this seem disconcerting?
Does it make you wonder at the goings-on in your own head? YES!
In truth we are cringing at ourselves, at the endless conflicts
and attachments that relentlessly invade our consciousness. How
about the sequence where Ally wonders what she would look like
with larger breasts and presto, there they are, Pamela Anderson
in a waif-like frame. Her assistant seems "big headed"?
Watch her head swell! How does she feel in a male dominated meeting?
Watch her shrink to the size of a child.
It's all a bit incestuous at the small boutique Boston law firm
of Cage Fish & Associates. Ally goes to work for the archetypal
avaricious lawyer, Richard Fish, and finds herself in the same
firm as her childhood sweetheart Billy (they played doctors in
their younger days and graduated to lovers). She followed Billy
to Harvard Law School, but he is now married to beautiful lawyer
Georgia, whom Ally would love to hate but ends up liking (sort
of). At the start of the second series the two women engage in
a bit of fitness boxing, and as expected, all those pent up hostilities
come to the fore with all the effectiveness of a pile-driver left
hook.
When things get tough Ally heads for a night-club to be entertained
by Vonda Shepard and take to the floor with the Dancing Twins
- yes, identical twins who dance in perfect harmony. And by the
way, have we told you about the unisex bathroom? Seriously. This
promotes the first rule of characterisation: keep to an absolute
minimum all instances where one character appears alone.
Cast
Calista Flockhart .............. Ally McBeal
Greg Germann ................... Richard Fish
Gil Bellows .................... Billy Alan Thomas
Lisa Nicole Carson ............. Renee Radick
Courtney Thorne-Smith .......... Georgia Thomas
Peter MacNicol ................. John Cage
Jane Krakowski ................. Elaine Vassal
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