Episode Report Card Alex Richmond: C | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Love Is All Around
By Alex Richmond | Season 5 | Episode 16 | Aired on 04.14.2002
Matthew Perry is poking around Ally's office, looking at the stupid tiny toys on her desk and eating her stupid jelly beans. He mugs hugely after eating a stupid jelly bean. Dude. There are no jelly beans on earth that taste that bad. Even those annoying Jelly Bellys don't come in Ass flavor -- yet. Save the canned hambone action for that other stupid show you're on which we don't recap. Or maybe this is a reference to his rumored pill-popping tendencies? Could I be more annoyed by Matthew Perry's too-familiar tics? Oh, my bad, he's only been on screen for fifteen seconds. I could probably be more annoyed than this. I don't want to be, but the odds are not in my favor. Anyway, he's performing some kind of corporate head game in which he, the "woo-ee," is visiting the "woo-er" to see how desirable the position offered may be, but without the formal structure of the interview they have scheduled. For tomorrow. He spits the offending jelly bean into his hand, then back into his mouth as he offers Ally his hand to shake. She stands stern, arms folded, barking at him that the appointment was for tomorrow, and she'll see him them, sans baseball cap. He's all smiling, bemused, thinking he's smarter than she is, and asking, "YOU'RE Ally McBeal? Senior partner? Do you ever get to court, Ms. McBeal?" What a douche. She crisply sends him on his goofy way, and no sooner than he's gone does Elaine pop her head in the door, wondering if Ally couldn't have been nicer, since the firm wants to hire this douche. Ally is all, "Who does he think he is?" Since the confident are rarely seen within the walls of Fish and McBeal. Elaine says coyly that she "think[s] he knows who he is."
Cue the Mariachi players. No, really. No, really. Lights up on the most clichéd Mexican restaurant you've ever seen in your life. Big huge paper flowers. Triple-tiered skirts and lacy red aprons on the lady waitrons. Tight black cabellero pants on the hombres. Dude, where's my piñata? Nelle and Richard sit at a table. She repeats firmly that she can beat this Lolita person, and that she's heard Lolita "does better against men!" She did in the book, for sure. Richard dismisses her, saying that John is the best litigator they have at the firm. He shoos away the waiter who comes, asking for "a little one that stutters." Then, they see the band. Ai-yai, yai-yai. DEK, you overdid it. John isn't with the band. He's in the band. With maracas. And a honkin' sombrero. He sees his former co-workers, and hollers, "Ai-yai-yai!" Then, they go into a rendition of "The Mexican Hat Dance." Please kill me.