Episode Report Card Gwen: C | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Women Are Dogs, Too
By Gwen | Season 4 | Episode 18 | Aired on 04.15.2001
John's office. Cassandra informs John, in her ever-changing but always weird voice, that life is short and that she's in Boston to pursue him. He agrees to take her to lunch. Life must be short and desperate.
Courthouse. We find out that Larry and Ally are up against each other in the online-date case. They trade banter and then make a wager -- the case winner gets a two-hour foot rub from the loser. At first I'm thinking that this will be interesting. Will Ally win? We all know Larry's the better attorney, but she's the character after whom the show is named. Plus, the whole show is her hallucination. How could she lose? I'm thinking all this, and then Ally's client shows up, and he's...he's...he's a "little person." I roll my eyes and slump back into my chair. Ally does her trademark phony giggle of discomfort. I don't dare comment on the heinousness of this subplot because I'd hate for someone to get on the forum and accuse me of making fun of tall people.
Conference room. Jackson, Ling, and their client Michael listen to Sylvie, the plaintiff, ranting about how Michael ruined her wedding. Michael was Sylvie's ex-boyfriend and still-close friend, so she invited him to her wedding. When the minister asked if there were any objections, Michael yelled, "Stop." The plaintiff was "horrified." She says this several times and Jackson mocks her. Ling applies lipstick and ignores the proceedings. Sylvie is rather amusing in her self-righteous anger, so of course this is one of the few times we'll see her. "It went off with a hitch, and I am damaged. Look at me!" she screams. Michael, who'd been sympathetically doleful up to this point, looks at Sylvie and smiles. I actually liked this scene. I don't know why. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that my neighbors are smoking marijuana on the balcony outside my window. Did I mention that the boring "I'm not comfortable" lawyer is representing Sylvie? No, that's right...I didn't. Good. That's the way I planned it.
John bitches to Richard that he's worried by Cassandra's pursuit of him. Cassandra walks in and John screams. Before leaving the room, Richard fingers Cassandra's wattle and then smells whatever he got from it. Left alone, Cassandra and John have a dull conversation about Melanie and relationship mourning periods. John offers once again to go to lunch.
Courtroom. Melanie testifies that she joined an online dating service because she wanted to find a man who didn't care about looks. She and Douglas emailed each other for six months because they were in love, doing all the things that in-love people do such as liking the same books and cracking jokes and stuff. Then she met him and found out that he was a "little person," and though she knows it's not politically correct, she doesn't want to be with him because of that. She's suing him because she quit her job and spent a lot of money to move from Illinois to Boston in order to be with him. As Ally cross-examines, my closed-captioning calls her "Ms. Meal" instead of Ms. McBeal. Melanie goes on and on about how she and Douglas had planned to walk in through the Boston Common in the spring, holding hands as "two anonymous people in love." Now that she knows he's three feet tall, however, there ain't gonna be no walks in no park. Ally Meal pauses her questioning so that everyone can register their expressions of sympathy. Then she asks whether Melanie even tried going on a date or two with Douglas after meeting him IRL. (In Real Life. See? I'm down with the online-dating lingo. I'm a hep cat.) "No. I could never," Melanie solemnly declares. We see the jury's sympathetic chagrin and the little guy's expression of "I'm not only heartbroken, I'm totally humiliated, too."