Episode Report Card Alex Richmond: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Do We Share the Same McDNA?
By Alex Richmond | Season 5 | Episode 14 | Aired on 02.24.2002
Cage, Fish and McBeal. Ally rolls off the elevator and takes the coffee Elaine hands her. Someone, a "he," is waiting in Ally's office, and "he isn't happy." Ally asks Elaine to call a Dr. Franklin and tell her Ally will be fifteen minutes late. Is that some kind of meta-statement, like this show's fifteen minutes are so fucking over they're considered "late"?
Ally rushes into her office and sees Ray, with his feet on her desk and his giant head cocked to the side. She offers him a job, starting at $225K and with a consideration for partner in three years. He's all, why would I want to work here? She says that there's "fun," people his "own age," a real partner in Richard Fish, and "girls in the bathroom." He looks at her like he smells dog poo. She relays the items that the job will not include: "The right to be a bigot, the opportunity to be a gender-based pig," and being sexist. True: those are DEK's touchstones, and you want to stay off his turf. Ally says Ray can "have autonomy here," that it "can be the most fun job [he] ever had in [his] life," and if he "acts like a tree trunk, [she'll] chop him down." Timber?
Okay, Prom Guy is suing his three friends for what they did to him in high school twenty-five years ago. The "way [they] pulled the rug out from under" him has made him unable to love. Even though he's been friends with them all this time. The lawyer for the defense asks if any therapist has told him to "GET! OVER IT!" Richard objects, and Albert Hall says the case is dismissed, since we all had love, heartbreak, and tricks played on us in high school. The music is mischievous, and Dame Edna pouts. Can I guess where this is going? No, I don't want to ruin it.
Ally and Maddie are in a doctor's office. Ally wants the DNA test expedited: she can't wait a week. The nurse exits to "change the request form," as if labs give you preferences when you get stuff tested. Maddie asks if she will have to go back with Bonnie Boone if she and Ally aren't related. And why are they getting this stupid test done, anyway? Ally says Maddie won't go back with Bonnie, I guess because Ally wuvs Maddie so vewy much and would never-ever-wever give up her daughter, and that she wants to know for sure that Maddie is "hers." Ally doesn't want there to be a knock on the door and someone to say her instant family is "a mistake." Can I say it's "sick and wrong," then? Or "totally artificial"? Or, "devised from the mind of a desperate man who doesn't want his anchor show on the FOX network to tank, or maybe he does after all"? Maddie asks that if the test is negative, will Ally "protect herself against loving [Maddie] too much"? Too late for that, I think. Ally loves Maddie as much as that tiny anorexic figure can love. But Ally just looks at Maddie with her mouth gaping open. No words, just sad music. Again. Some more.