Okay, in my defence, I am a Reasonable Person. I have no television. I never watch television. I don't speak television. I went to high school when Depeche Mode were called "The Mode," The Tragically Hip were called "The Hip," and The The were called "The The." Things become part of popular culture, and they get abbreviated. So how I was I to know that I wasn't watching Ally McBeal? That I was instead watching Ally, which was not the same thing? I still probably wouldn't know, if Kim hadn't explained it to me later on ICQ, when I mentioned that I had thought Ally McBeal was an hour-long show. I felt like my Sarnian room-mate must have felt when I told her that the thirty-seven-page book it had just taken her the better part of a month to read was actually an abridged version of Of Mice and Men, not the full meal deal. Actually, she didn't care. And actually, after I stopped laughing, I didn't care either. But really, is the show so complex that they have to offer these weekly bite-sized morsels? Is the show wasting away like Ally is? I wonder. At any rate, I'm now pleased to bring you...
November 2nd's Ally -- That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore...
The scene opens with Ally McBeal (Okay, I may not be a TV watcher, but I still know which one is the title character) and a Sassy Black Woman watching Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? (The good version. No Redgraves here.) So they get to the part where Joan Crawford opens the dinner tray to find a dead rat. I'm assuming most of you have seen this film. As the rat is revealed, the SBW pounces on Ally, who obligingly jumps up and shrieks "That wasn't funny!" In a speech pattern I've never heard before or since, the SBW goes Owen Meany on us with "YES IT WAAAAAAS!" "No, it wasn't," sulks Ally. "Trust me, from where I'm sitting, it was funny," says SBW. SBW and I are not sitting in the same place. Ally tilts her whiny head to one side and says, "Cruelty is funny to you? Pain?" Geez Louise, Ally, she only pounced on you in a tense moment during a film you'd already seen. Let's not overstate the issue. "How many times do you have to watch that movie?" asks SBW. Ally emotes that she likes that movie, because "they don't make movies about real relationships anymore." Well! In a charming mlange of non-sequitur and disdain, Ally counters, "What do you watch? The Sound of Music?" First of all, these two seem to be having a slumber party. I assume they know each other pretty well, so Ally probably knows whether SBW likes musicals or not. Second of all, this is obviously a crappily scripted segue into some rambling plot point. Surprise! SBW does in fact like The Sound Of Music! "What's wrong with The Sound of Music?" she demands. "Nothing," says the woman who deplores cruelty and pain, "If you don't mind Julie Andrews being a-live." That's the way she says it: "a-live." "You have something against Julie Andrews?" asks SBW in a way that makes you think that the original line was "You got somethin' 'gainst my girl Julie?" but David E. Kelley didn't want to give in too much to stereotype.
That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore: The half-hour Ally
"Doesn't everyone?" counters Ally, fetching some ice cream from the freezer. Methinks Ally doesn't know any drag queens. SBW professes fondness for Julie Andrews. Maybe she is a drag queen! Ally is aghast, and tries to find words harsh enough to describe the voluptuous horror of Julie Andrews. "She's...so..." She tilts her head to one side. "Perky!" she spits. SBW denies the perkiness factor. Ally The-Anti-Perky McBeal gets even more disgruntled. "Sister Maria? Mary Poppins?" Don't dis Mary Poppins, thinks me; that's where I first learned about suffragists. "What about that Blake Edwards movie?" asks SBW, "the one where she bared her breasts?" Whale-oil-beef-hooked, as they say in Nova Scotia, SBW isn't a drag queen after all. Nope, she's actually the best straight man on the planet, because now Ally can say that her breasts were perky. I patiently wait. "You know Renee, I saw that movie, and you know what? Her breasts were perky." Way to ruin the timing of such an obvious joke. She continues, trying to redeem herself as a comedienne, "She had little optimistic nipples." Well, thank you David E. Kelley. "Ooooooh-kay," say SBW and myself in unison, "what is going on?" "High School," intones Ally into her ice cream. "I was voted most likely to become Julie Andrews." Holy shit. I should have gone to her high school! None of that namby-pamby "Best Smile" "Best Buns" rigamarole. "Most Likely To Become Julie Andrews!" Now that is a distinction I might have striven for. "I'm not anything like her, am I?" pleads Ally. SBW informs her that she is not, and then continues, like she has a direct pipeline to Ms. Andrews's psyche, "and neither is she. She regrets making those movies because people got the same idea that you did." Yeah. I'm sure that old Jules's biggest career regret was being in The Sound of Music. Really. She's just kicking herself. Like Liza regrets making Cabaret. Puh-leeeze. I sense that Ally is as unconvinced as I am, but she lets it drop. "I-I think people do think I'm kind of prude-y" she continues. "Sometimes when I go into the Unisex [UNISEX?], Billy and Richard will be telling a joke, and they'll stop when I come in. It is like they are afraid they are going to pierce my virgin ears." SBW gives a shout-out to Susan Faludi, assuring Ally that they are just "men being men." She advises Ally that the way to get into the Dirty Joke Club is to tell one of your own. She promises that they'll hand her a cigar. Ally looks titillated, or maybe she's hungry. "Do you know any?" she breathes in wonder, and I start to really hate this show. SBW seems to concur, for she gets up to leave. Sadly, Ally stops her, and demands that SBW tell her "just one joke!" She promises not to faint. If only I could make the same vow. SBW concedes. Drat. The joke begins. "All right, this man is walking down a beach. It is a beautiful night, no one around for miles -- all of a sudden he spots this girl. No arms, no legs, just a torso. And she's crying. So he goes up to her and asks what's wrong. She says, 'I'm twenty-one years old. I have no arms, no legs, and I've never been kissed,' so he bends over, and gives her the most gentle kiss -- it is so romantic. Her tears just stop. She says, 'Thank you.' He keeps walking when [sic] he hears her crying again. He goes back and says, 'What now?' She says, 'I'm twenty-one years old. I have no arms, no legs, and I've never been screwed.' [Here I pause the tape, just to see Ally's expression at the word 'screwed'. She is, without a doubt, agape. Back to the joke.] He picks her up, chucks her into the ocean, and says, 'You're screwed now!'" Oh. The hilarity. SBW giggles at her own joke. Ally and I don't laugh. That was stupid, I think. "That was disgusting," says Ally. SBW seems genuinely surprised that Ally isn't laughing. "This woman has no arms and no legs and you are making fun of her sex life?" They bicker about which one of them is pathetic. I nominate both of them.
That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore: The half-hour Ally
SBW starts to sing, "Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens." Ally stamps a foot. "I'm not being Julie Andrews!" You certainly aren't. She'd be acting. "That poor woman is drowning and you're singing about sleigh bells and doorbells and schnitzel and noodles. It is sick! Sick! Sick!" She goes to her room and slams the door. Cut to a really choppy and fast-paced opening, during which I still didn't notice the show was called Ally. I did notice, however, that Vonda Shepard gets, what? Third billing? I also notice that Carol Kane has had some work done, and is now calling herself Jane Krakowski.
"Ho ho ho!" A gleaming child fills my screen while Sears tells me about their new portrait backgrounds, including "the new classic family" one. Oh. A wreath and fireplace. Classic. Then there is one of those orgasmic shampoo commercials, which I refuse to acknowledge. Then a little gap-toothed kid named Luke prances around wearing glasses while Vogue optical gushes about how much they love him. Then, holy shit! It is a commercial so old I think I saw it last time I watched television! It is a Ponderosa commercial! Ew...they pan down the crusty buffet and the announcer brags about the aptly named "All-you-care-to-eat weekend specials." That is too funny. How honest! How grody! The commercial seems to only list Maritime locations, so I guess that leaves most of y'all out. Wanna go, Steph?
Back to the show. Ally is in an office doing a St. Vitus Dance surrounded by her co-workers. Oh. Wait. That is the quick-cut technique employed to show the passage of time. I'm catching on. She's telling her friends SBW's joke, daring them to find it funny. The chick who was on Melrose Place assures Ally that she doesn't. That guy who was in The Shawshank Redemption and now has hair like a little boy says that dirty jokes are supposed to be sick. Hands up if you really think this is a dirty joke. Hands up if you think it is instead a stupid joke. I thought so. Ally prattles on about this woman's sad childhood in a way that makes me wonder if she's ever heard a joke before. I guess she hasn't. Melrose Chick clues into this. "Ally," she explains with all the patience of a primary teacher talking about the tooth fairy, "it's a made-up thing." How did Ally get through law school? How do they work with her? They try a bit more to explain the concept of "joke" to her, to no avail. I guess this scene is over.
That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore: The half-hour Ally
So it is! But don't fear because sure as shootin' there's another scene. Ally and SBW are in a boutique. Ally is trying on clothes, so they must be in Gap Kids. Ally is moaning about "not liking [her] butt." SBW says she looks great. No one asks me. Ally thinks the dress is too conservative for a date. SBW reminds her that the date is with a Rabbi. Here my friend Anna, who is Jewish, must interject: "Why on earth would a Rabbi date a non-Jew?" Thanks, Anna. Even more to the point, why would a Rabbi date a dumb-ass non-Jew? Rabbis are usually pretty learned. Moreover, they eat. "Well, I've never dated a Rabbi before," says Ally in this really uncalled-for 'nyah nyah nyah' tone. The line and its delivery are so out of place, we are obviously getting set up for another punchline. "I hope he's more fun than the priest," she says through clenched teeth, with her eyes rolling back in her head. I wonder if, to her, "date" and "exorcism" are the same thing. "Why don't you tell him my joke," suggests SBW. Nooooo! I scream. Please can we not hear anymore about the 'joke'? Please? I'll be good, I'll even learn the characters' names. 'No,' replies God/David E. Kelley. The merriment continues, complete with the Rabbi's yarmulke's being called "his little beanie." My friend Anna gets really pissed but to David E. this is funny. This is com-ed-y. To sum up: Ally still thinks the dirty joke isn't funny. SBW still thinks it is. The sun is still in the sky, Matchbox 20 still sucks with teeth, and Kim Campbell is still the only woman who has been Prime Minister of Canada. We. Get. It. SBW seems to think Ally is the only person who wouldn't laugh at the joke. I think that SBW doesn't know many people. Ally challenges SBW to tell the joke at 'The Bar." While I wish this were a reference to the gay bar in my home town, alas it is not. SBW is beside herself in breathy convulsions, "At the bar? A-a-a-a-all right" she manages to stammer out. She says that if the joke bombs, Ally has to get up and tell her flea joke. Ally has a joke? WTF? Ally wants no part of this flea joke business, nor do I. SBW badgers Ally about being too conservative and prudish, and I feel like we are trapped in a loop. Haven't we already had this scene? Ally spins on her heels which almost sends her head into trajectory, but she manages to speak enough to agree to the bet. Cue handshake, cue scene.
In the scene, Ally and SBW are sitting down at some café, still talking about the goddamned joke. Ally is informing SBW that she has her all figured out, and that telling this joke is a "win-win situation" for SBW, which makes us realize that the bet is pretty daft, right? But anyway. Ally whips out Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious by Sigmund Freud, which is a real book -- I looked it up on Indigo.ca -- and reads, "A person who likes to tell dirty jokes has concealed inclinations to exhibitionism." Well knock me over with a feather. "Freud?" scoffs SBW "That man was obsessed with sex!" Ally makes an 'I'm so sure!' face and says "Freud?" disbelievingly. Well, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that the same woman who made it to her 30s without hearing any jokes also made it through university without hearing that Freud was obsessed with sex. I've got a joke for Ally: Q. What's the definition of a Freudian slip? A. When you say one thing and mean your mother. Ha! Okay. SBW, not to be outdone by my joke, calls Freud a "little spanker." Ally is irate, but she can't really speak because she is eating her daily french fry and food is so unfamiliar to her mouth that her tongue is going into spasms. SBW continues, "Don't be whipping out Freud on me, girl" I was wondering when she'd end a thought with the word "girl." "I got that guy sussed." I guess the cockney slang is supposed to cancel out the ebonics, so we don't think that David E. Kelley is such an ass after all. Doesn't work. They glare at each other. End of scene.