It was sad enough when Calista Flockheart starved herself into twig-hood, but now it seems Fox is skinning the meat from the once-innovative series AllyMcBeal and replacing it with tasteless flesh. Once upon a time, there existed a series robust enough to contain comedy, drama, romance, philosophy and social issues. It pushed the envelope in ways no other show dared, using a courtroom theme to put major issues on trial: everything from political correctness to sexual harassment, childhood romances to society's over-idealized, oversimplified image of love. Women and men alike could identify with Ally's angst-ridden quest for self-knowledge and self-esteem, flanked by a quirky cast of characters that never managed to become cliches.
Then the show slowly began to starve itself. Characters threatened to become nothing more than the sum of the quirks that made them interesting. When first introduced, John Cage, a.k.a The Biscuit, provided one of television's rare views of an sexually confused heterosexual man, a sensitive and complex character who fell short of the masculine ideal but always resisted falling into the "nerd" bin. Over time, the show bled the depth out of The Biscuit, sinking him into a flat tasteless pastry composed of little more than gags involving toilets, frogs, and nose whistles. Georgia, the beautiful and talented but insecure wife of Ally's childhood sweetheart, used to struggle with her immature husband and attempt to reconcile her friendship and her rivalry with Ally. Before long, Georgia barely saw any airtime at all, practically reduced to cameos.
Even Ally used to be an intensely thoughtful, introspective character whose inner monologues framed the course of each show's events. Soon she became quirkier, brattier, less connected with reality and someone with whom we identified less as a protagonist. The law firm's cases slipped from cutting edge to sensationalistic.
Yet, glimmers of hope (and good writing) persisted all last season. Plot lines ranged from Biscuit's unwieldy romance with dazzlingly attractive Nell (who grows both frustrated and intrigued as he runs from her sexuality) to Ally finally attempting an affair with her now-married ex-boyfriend Billy, only to have all involved deal with the very real consequences over several shows. The writing even continued its tradition of dabbling heavily in "metafiction," plot and dialogue that actually served as a commentary on the show itself.
No such luck in the third season's opener. Ally, after two seasons of struggling to find the ideal romance everyone tells her doesn't exist, decides this episode to make love with a random man in a car wash. The incident, completely out of character, provides wet and steamy clips that run again and again in gratuitous flashbacks. This from a show that used to preach feminist values?
Well, men get their chance to be objectified too. This occurs in a nonsensical subplot in which Ally's roommate Renee and recurring guest character Whipper Cone (a strong female judge who now suddenly and implausibly demotes herself to lawyer) start their own law firm and demand all male applicants take off their shirts during the interview. Even if one accepts this requirement as kosher (far weirder things have happened on this show), and that interviewees are built like Fabio, the ogling scenes are clearly nothing but eye-candy.
Of course, female fantasies (heterosexual ones, anyway) are a theme for the episode. In a subplot that never gets resolved, Biscuit is indignant and astonished that Nell fantasizes about other men. In the main plot, Ally convinces a minister (played phenomenally by Roy "My Favorite Martian" Walston) to perform a wedding ceremony despite the bride-to-be's last-minute bachelorette "fling." Her husband, it seems, didn't satisfy her sexually. The moral: Women should be allowed to have their kicks, too.
The problem: Ally discovers the groom-to-be is the man she hooked up with in the car wash.
Suddenly, it's time to stop the wedding again, apparently on the grounds that (now stay with me here) since the groom was such a good lover to Ally in the car wash, and such a poor lover to his fianc?©e, this is surely a sign he is marrying her for her money and the wedding should be cancelled. Puh-leeze! That's as thin as Flockhart herself. A castaway line from Ling (the sardonic Asian, who is blissfully as biting as ever) says it better: "[Ally] feels upstaged by the bride and this is a way to make [the wedding] about herself."
Ally wrecking other people's lives to service her own twisted morality is nothing new. Not exploring the full ramifications of those actions is a tragic departure. A season ago, the characters would have engaged in intense debate about the kind of passion one feels in fantasy versus the kind of passion shared in a long-term relationship. The threat of boredom and the desire to have one's self-esteem reaffirmed would have been examined. Instead, we get more replays of the Ally sex scene, along with previews for next week's show that promise "the most hauntingly erotic sequences ever filmed on television."
If I wanted that, I could watch any of Fox's usual sex-fests that never claim to be great cinema. Ally McBeal used to be far more. Is Fox spurning me to court the voyeur crowd? Lord, I hope not. Perhaps this episode was a fluke, and the provocative plots will return. A show that two seasons ago dared to have Ally say "happiness is overrated," questioning the entire American quest for love and fulfillment, is destined for greater things than evening soft porn. Leave the nutrition-less eye-candy to Fox's other anorexic heroine, Jennifer Love Hewitt, and put the meat back in Ally McBeal. Or, in language that network marketing execs will understand: shape up, or viewers like me will start "searching our souls" (as Ally's title song goes) and searching the channels for something better.
