My own self

Everyone's alone, Ally. It's just easier to take in a relationship.

- Richard Fish

Three years back, I stumbled over some Ally McBeal-reruns, watched them, and decided that hey, I would like to sit down and watch this show from end to end some day. I've not done that yet, but two months or so ago, I finally got started on the project.

I watched Ally McBeal during its original Norwegian run the gods know how many years back, but I never managed to follow it regularly enough to catch every single episode. I saw most by far, but not all, and not completley in the right order, what with summer-reruns and waiting for new seasons. I liked it. I remember my early-teenage self having two important reasons why: Peter MacNicol's John Cage and Greg Germann's Richard Fish. Two delightful supporting characters of wit, eccentricity and, in their own ways, a curious moral integrity - an integrity which in Fish's case went straight against most of his character traits.

They amused me to no end. John's courtroom antics, Fish's delightfully cynical yet strangely optimistic philosophies on life, John's inner music and bathroom gymnastics, Fish's rampant greed and cheuvinism. It was hilarious, and it was exciting. The other characters weren't bad either, even if the title role was rather whiny at times. Still, the main strength being two secondary characters didn't exactly put it up there with my favourite TV-shows ever.

Upon catching the reruns, what struck me the most was how good the dialogue was - not just that of Cage and Fish, but that of their entire law firm. I hadn't noticed this in my early teens; the characters had registered as funny, but I hadn't realised that this was as much because of the dialogue as the acting. The second thing that struck me was how powerful and filled with sentiment the show was. (If you add a much stronger politically angled perspective it shares this trait to a very large extent with D. E. Kelley's other quirky lawyer show, Boston Legal, which I've previously reviewed season 1, 2, 3 and 4 of, and plan to one day get around to writing a post on the final season of as well). The emotion, the ups and downs of these characters, they register, as do the issues they deal with - sometimes in spite of their ridiculous lawsuits and insane eccentricities, but also sometimes because of them. This was not something I really expected from my memories of the show, but with the added maturity of ten years, it was something I picked up on quite a lot.

Now that I've seen the first two seasons from beginning to end, these two impressions have certainly only gotten stronger. They have, however, been joined by more. First, Ally McBeal is a show that manages to mix the melancholical with the perky, and the angsty with the hopeful. I sometimes get sad or blue from watching an episode, but if I watch three, I'll usually have balanced out to pretty happy again. The main character is an emotional roller-coaster, and this actually translates very well to me as a viewer. (Yesyes, I am an enormous sap who lets good TV get to his emotionals state. Bygones).

Which brings me to a second point - Ally McBeal herself is far less annoying. Oh, sure, every once in a while you feel she deserves a good kick in the rear or bucket of cold water in the face, but for the most part, she's kind of likable. Much like most of her collegues, I now find her to be ridiculously self-absorbed, vain, self-pitying, naïve and also quite the drama queen - but also much like most of her collegues, I find her genuinely sweet and caring personality to be mediating this to the point where she's strangely likable. This obviously improves my enjoyment of the show greatly and also helps me understand how the show could ever have gotten as popular as it did in the first place.

A third point is that while I as a kid remembered the courtroom cases strongly from the show, having now seen other lawyer-shows, I realise that hey, this show is mainly a drama with elements of both soap and comedy. But a lawyer-show? Well, I suppose. Most episodes, though, spend five or six times more time on even secondary characters' personal lives than on actual cases they do as lawyers. The law-firm is simply the framework for this show; it is a show about people whose jobs happen to be as lawyers, not a show about lawyers who happen to have interesting personal lives.

Fourth, McBeal is not the only character who looks more fun and interesting in hindsight. So do the rest. I always enjoyed Lucy Liu's Ling, but I've now found a lot of interest in Portia de Rossi's Nelle as well, and the remaining characters as well are almost to a one more interesting than last time around. Thus, while I still love Cage and Fish, they're suddenly no longer the characters making the show worth watching - now, they're but icing on an already quite tasty cake.

As for the two seasons, well, the addition of Ling and Nelle in season 2 was awesome in many ways. It added a level of sweetness to both Cage and Fish through their romantical entaglements that I would never have wanted to be without. It is also delightful to see the rest of the firm reel in hostility against the arrival of the two ice-cold super-women. Further, where season 1 was largely a rather sad albeit optimistic story of how Whipper leaves Richard, Ally doesn't want to be with John, and Billy doesn't want to be with Ally, season 2 has more ups and downs.

Oh, and I love the way this show uses music. I absolutely love it. The dance-scenes in particular are amazing. I love it so much when they all start dancing in the unisex bathroom, or for John's birthday in the downstairs bar. It's hilarious, exciting and so incredibly sweet it's almost saddening all at the same time. There is an incredible sense of the pure joy of life bubbling through this show, and it has smitten me.


Ally McBeal might still not be my favourite show, but I'll say this - of truly massively popular shows, I've very rarely seen any that deserved it more. I'm very excited about checking out season 3 now, even though it'll likely have to wait until this fall. I believe that already with the first two seasons, though, Ally McBeal has proven that it deserves a spot somewhere in the lower half of my top ten TV-shows-list. Considering how much TV I watch, that's an enormous accomplishment.