Episode Report Card Alex Richmond: D+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT One Hundred Yawns
By Alex Richmond | Season 5 | Episode 10 | Aired on 01.20.2002
Frank's sister is pissed, demanding, "Since when is it a lawyer's job to enable someone's madness?" When you hire Ally McBeal, is when. That's what it says on her card: "Enabling Madness Since 1997." Dude, FIRE Ally and get another freaking lawyer! Frank tells his sister he's dying of cancer, and her tune changes from hysterical to quiet. Let a dying man jump off a roof, because he wants to fly! Please? Pretty please? Today, before chemo starts? "Well, then. Can I see these new and improved wings?" Sure! Three o'clock? No, really.
JBJ pops into Ally's office. She stammers and asks why he's there. He's looking for Elaine, his date. She laughs in his face. It's okay, he's going to dump her, because she sang to him and it sucked. Ally drags him into her office and says JBJ cannot dump Elaine for her singing. Elaine walks in. JBJ asks Elaine to have dinner with him. Whatever.
Staff meeting. John Cage is all, why are we meeting? To save the company. Because a loveless John means no good business. Although they've been doing pretty well so far this year. Glenn sings "We Gotta Get You A Woman." Everyone claps in time and sings along. It's a musical intervention. No, really. John walks out, and Nell Carter is lurking nearby. She takes the next verse, and the chorus. The whole office is into it. Elaine takes a line and belts it out. I can't believe this is happening.
Frank stands in his old bedroom, as the guy that was suing him just a few hours ago negotiates the details of Frank jumping off his roof. Ally stands there, too. This is such bullshit. Frank is all, I can do it! The guy leaves the room. Ally hallucinates a little boy standing by the window. Then, she hallucinates a little girl. Frank blathers on about how it'll be so great to jump off the roof. He asks that Ally stand on the other side of the river, since that's where he'll "be coming down." Yeah, great, is this episode over yet?
Not yet. Frank stands with his wings as his worried-looking sister, Ally, and a cop stand around. Oh, do cops let people jump off roofs if lawyers say it's okay? The sister says she wishes their parents were alive. "They'd be proud." Oh, that is HORSESHIT! This episode is a disaster. Enron-ish, even. They hug. I barf. Ally is all, "I feel like I've known you forever." Franks says he isn't "dying today." He tells her to stand by his sister, and that they "have known each other forever." Fake mysticism alert, whoop whoop!
John and Richard are fighting about the intervention. Richard says they're "getting old," and that the place they're in now "is not it." John is all, "Wow," because since when does Richard want to fall in love and have a family? Seriously.