This season's premiere begins with a retina-searing montage of Ally's past sexual adventures and mishaps. We get the Ling kiss, the generously endowed sculpture model, the latte abuse of the bisexual judge, and even a Young Ally and Young Billy scene. These are accompanied by bell-tolling and ominous horns. Lastly, Ally reprises her goofy statement of last season to Brian: "I have a boyfriend." Will wonders never cease?
At the bar, Vonda and Renee sing "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow." Renee's long sheath dress has been made from the hindquarters of a very large, shiny zebra, and her hair is pomaded back. I think she's wearing a minimizing bra, too. Vonda is wearing vinyl pants and a top from Contempo Casuals. Ally and Brian watch from their favorite table. Ally moans, sways, and fingers her mouth, saying that it's one of her favorite songs ever. She wonders why Renee didn't mention she'd be singing that night. Brian suggests that it was part of a special surprise. Maybe there's a man at the bar who wants to ask one of Renee's friends to spend the rest of his life with him. He draws it out much longer than that, actually, but I'm sparing you. He's slipped a Service-Merchandise-looking sapphire ring onto Ally's finger. She gasps, seemingly with excitement. He asks, "Ally McBeal...will you...move in with me?" Renee and Vonda do the warped-record thing while Ally opens her eyes as wide as she can and makes a special effort to keep her hand out of her mouth.
The theme song begins with that special "scratch" effect not heard since the likes of the rap-cassette playing from my boyfriend's mini-pick-up woofers in 1989. We get a flashy montage of skeletal faces, hopping text, strobe light effects, and hyper-actively mugging cast members. Welcome to Season Four.
"What kind of fool do you think I am?" Renee belts. "You seem stunned," Brian tells Ally. She is. He presses her for an answer to his question. She says she has to think about it in a way that lets us know she'll be dumping him before the hour's up.
At their apartment, Ally and Renee share a bed. "It's not that I don't wanna move in..." Ally starts. "It would mean you would have to stop sleeping with me," Renee finishes for her. There's an overhead shot, and I can't help but notice that a single Renee breast is wider than a whole Ally torso. Renee says that for these kinds of decisions, there's only one person who can know the answer. I wait for Ally to say, "Al Green," but instead they both say, "A therapist." A therapist? Oh, come on. Why not just write to Ann Landers?
At the morning meeting, Richard tells us about Ringer et al vs. Keebler. Nelle looks like she stayed up all night drinking, fell asleep on someone's carpet, woke up late, and then had a few more drinks. She asks how John managed to get an annulment proceeding to be heard in front of a jury. John explains that he did it in some totally contrived way, and then his nose whistles. Richard asks if he's nervous. John says he's practicing throwing the whistle because he's "up against Raditz" in this case. Mark is incredulous. Ally has an announcement to make. She pretends that it's important and relevant to the firm's business that Brian's asked her to move in with him. They're underwhelmed. Ling says Brian's boring. In a failed attempt at humor, John makes it seem that Nelle's nose has whistled.
"Seven hundred thousand dollars?" asks John's client, Maureen Ringer. That's how much her husband Wayne Keebler wants to settle for, apparently. Maureen interrupts John several times. He yells at her and then says about her husband, "Maybe the man walked out on you so he could complete a sentence." Maureen reminds John that she walked out on him. Then John reveals that he and Maureen are old friends. I'd hate to see the way he behaves unprofessionally with his enemies. John warns his alleged old friend that he'll have to say severe things about her if they go to trial. Maureen says that she'll resign herself to being called fat, ugly, and lonely, but she won't be called a fool. Don't make any plans, Maureen.
Ally walks into Tracy's office and finds Robert Downey, Jr., there moving his stuff in. He can move his stuff in with me anytime, heh, heh. Just kidding. He is the most attractive man they've had on the show for a while, though. Isn't that sad? Ally asks for Tracy, and he tells her Tracy moved to Foxborough. She took all her files but Ally's and didn't leave a phone number. Robert D. J. introduces himself as Larry Paul. He asks what the problem is. She starts to tell him about Brian asking her to move in with him. "Bastard," says Larry. "My advice is dump him." He launches into the same less kind, less gentle, John Gray-type crap that Richard's spouted for the last three seasons. Every male character on this show either has the same philosophy, or else he rolls his eyes at the others until he adopts it, too. Larry guesses that Ally and Brian aren't having good sex. She blurts out that it's terrible, then amends that it's not great. Larry advises her to be brutally honest and dump Brian. Ally glares at him and leaves. He whistles and says, "Tried to help..." This $1.99-romance-paperback hostile sexual tension shtick is getting so, so old. Why does Ally have to do this with every man she meets? Does anyone act like this outside of television programs anymore?
New feature this fall: completely unnecessary voice-overs by Ally. She does one while sitting in her office, twiddling her pens. In fact, it's a voice-over over a Vonda song. It's something about how her life has no meaning unless she's sharing it with some hapless victim or another. On her desk, Ally has a glass bowl adorned with a single red heart. That makes me think of the comic strip Cathy. I bet it's Ally's favorite. She and Cathy have the same hair. Someone off-screen yells to Elaine, "Hey, we need a few more minutes of tape! You get to be in a scene. Hurry up!" Elaine is in such a rush to catch this opportunity that she doesn't rinse all the conditioner out of her hair. She shows up at Ally's door with a limp, '70s-feathered, Drew Barrymore-looking 'do and a funky red dress. Ally says she was just daydreaming about her future with Brian. Elaine picks up on Ally's lack of excitement at the prospect. She lectures that the good guys are all wearing condoms these days and so it's harder to trap them by getting pregnant. In a poorly executed CGI effect, Ally clicks a remote and causes Elaine to fall through the floor. Then she sarcastically thanks Elaine, who smiles, flips her hair, and leaves.
Maureen is on the witness stand telling John and the court that her marriage had seemed perfect at first. The companionship was great, but the sex wasn't. She didn't even get any on her wedding night. After that, they had sex extremely infrequently because Wayne, her husband, claimed he just didn't have the libido for it. Aside from that, though, everything was "great" until the one fateful day necessitating a flashback. Maureen was off to a health spa in Vermont, but her flight was cancelled. She came back home. As she's telling this, ominous music plays and we get the Maureen's-eye-view through her dining nook, out to the deck and the pool. For a second I think she's going to reveal that her husband has the same fish fetish as Troy McLure. Instead, she finds Wayne and some blonde in the pool with their clothes on. They were kissing and Wayne was cutting a wet t-shirt off of the blonde with a pair of scissors. Okay, first of all: way to get your scissors all rusty, buddy. Second, way to show nipples on Ally McBeal, you guys! A t-shirt in a pool as part of an annulment case -- it's genius! And I thought last season's breast-smothering murder case was good! Maybe week we can have a lawsuit against a plastic surgeon, and John and Richard can illustrate faulty nipple placement. The possibilities are endless, really. There's no reason not to show breasts every single episode, is there?
Maureen says that Wayne had been sleeping with Diane the Wet T-Shirt Girl for more than two years and that he'd planned to marry her after he got out of his "bad marriage." Hence, her union with Wayne was a fraud, says Maureen. She wants an annulment.
Brian walks into Ally's office, where she's mutilating a plant with a pair of scissors of her own. Does this fall under PETA's jurisdiction, I wonder? He wonders why she hasn't made her decision yet. After much stuttering, Ally admits that she hasn't really enjoyed the sex she's had with Brian. "Are you capable of having good sex?" he asks her. "Is it me, or is it you?" She says it's a "rhythm thing, it's a compatibility thing, it's a -- it's a heat thing." Brian asks if she's indicting the relationship because of sex.
"I never said that," says Maureen. Defense lawyer Raditz questions her. John throws a nose whistle in his direction. It's not funny, but the judge acts like she's holding back a smile. Raditz asks if Wayne was seeing Diane before he married Maureen. He wasn't. They babble some more and then Raditz sarcastically asks whether mere dishonesty between spouses is grounds for an annulment. Maureen is busted into silence.
In the elevator, John asks if Maureen's okay and then tells her that litigation is adversarial by design. They emerge in the Fish & Cage office. Maureen emotionally asks John if it's at all possible that a man could be sexually attracted to her. She runs off. Richard walks up and says, "What a beast. How's the trial going?" She's not even ugly, but whatever. We're operating under Kelley standards, I guess. John socks Richard and then asks him for a big favor. Richard says he'll do it as long as it's not money. John asks him to pretend that he's attracted to Maureen. "Oh, John, she looks like a hamster. I'd sooner pop a chubby for a tree frog," says Richard. What's with all the animal name-dropping? Maureen runs up to Richard, startling him, and saying that she used to have a tree frog. He leers at her and winks broadly. "Wha-what are you doing?" she asks. He asks if anyone ever told her she was beautiful. She says no. He stage whispers, "Shocker," to John and then says he has to go. "Was he making fun of me?" Maureen asks. John points out Nelle and says that she found him sexy when he channeled Barry White. He tells Maureen that if she doesn't believe in herself, no one else will.
Larry is still moving into his new office. Ally's sitting there yakking to him about Brian some more. She asks why she should indict the relationship because of sex. Larry explains that men only get married for the sex. Ally calls him "such a man." Larry smiles and says she already acts like a wife. Ally does her little rapid-fire word-spitting thing that she's wont to do when she's supposed to be turned on. Larry does a rapid, wordy rebuttal that's twenty times more amusing than hers was, albeit as sexist as everything else on this show. The funniest part was, "As you come in here -- looking very much like the women in the magazines, except I don't have the luxury of turning the page --" She tells him he's the biggest ass she's ever met. What -- Billy's forgotten so soon? Larry says, "Perhaps this is where you kiss it goodbye." She stomps out and he wonders what he said. Not enough, buddy. She still wants you.
I'm lingering over the commercials on my video tape because they're so much more amusing and entertaining than Ally McBeal. It's the season premiere and I'm already sick and tired. I've aged a year in the last ten minutes. Why did I say I'd keep recapping this show? It's true that I foresaw the great pleasure I'd take in its eventual cancellation. Can that possibly be worth the hours of my life that have been tainted and lost by this travesty of a program, though?
Ally sits in her office, going on and on to Renee about the man in her life. Renee assumes she's talking about Brian, but Ally was actually fixating on Larry. Renee says that Brian's boring but that Ally should stay with him. Ally indicates that sex with Brian didn't last longer than sixty seconds. Renee concedes that Brian might not be "the one," but then she warns Ally away from a guy who makes her as crazy as Larry apparently does.
Wayne Keebler is on the stand. He says something strange about beans. "...if a couple puts one bean in a jar every time they have sex during the first year of their marriage, and then, for the rest of their marriage, they take a bean out of the jar every time they have sex, the jar will never become empty." Maureen looks like she's mentally digesting this. Either that or she's thinking, "But I only had a few beans in my jar to begin with. This just sucks." John tries to ascertain that Wayne was broke and into dating models when he married Maureen. Wayne claims he did love Maureen when they married, but she pushed him away.
Ally's bothering Larry AGAIN. She claims she came back to apologize. They have some more saucy banter. Robert Downey, Jr., does a good job. I read that he can't stand Calista Flockhart in real life. If that's true, he plays it off pretty well. Ally says something about a tiny penis that pops out like a chicken thermometer. Presumably this is in reference to Brian. If I remember correctly, Ally was the one begging Brian to have sex with her last season. He refused and then sang her part of The Music Man, and then...OH NO IT'S HAPPENING AGAIN! SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME! NOT THE SONGS! NO-O-O-O!!! Okay, remind me not to think about last season's musical finale anymore, please. Larry advises Ally to be blunt in her dumping of Brian. My question is, would a real therapist put up with these constant impromptu mini-sessions?
In the Fish & Cage lobby again, John and Maureen rehash their case some more. Richard passes, greeting Maureen flirtatiously. She excuses herself from a wary John and follows Richard to his office. Closing the door behind herself, she starts grooving to John's favorite Barry White song, tossing aside her purse and jacket. "Eh, Maureen, uh, what's up?" stammers Richard. "I'm involved, actually, with this vicious woman..." He hits his intercom and asks for help. Maureen sings, "Nobody but you...and me..." and the record warps and then Richard screams in slow-motion horror. "What were you thinking?" John's suddenly asking her in his own office. She says she wanted to allow herself to be more sexual after hearing the harsh things that were said about her in the courtroom. John yells that he warned her about that. He asks if she wants to win the case or not. She tells him to do what he needs to do. That's right, John. Humiliate her some more. She's got to learn, damn it. We can't have her thinking that she's worthy of sex. Sure, she's got a pretty enough face, she's rich, and she's not even bigger than a size 18 -- sure, she's way better looking than YOU, John -- but someone has to teach her that a woman of her size will never be attractive to any man. Embarrass her some more, John. Give her some pamphlets on bulimia if you have to. The Barry White technique only works for pudgy, homely men -- NOT for larger-than-average women. Sheesh -- the nerve of some of these fat bitches...
Ally shows up at Brian's office and gives him back his ring. He asks if they're breaking up altogether and she nods. He warns her not to say something insipid under penalty of his vomiting. Ally sees herself getting tired of him after a while, so she won't move in with him or date him anymore. He says that she's waiting for Prince Charming to swoop in and help her act out some stupid childhood fantasy. "Please don't yell at me," she mumbles. "I'm the one getting hurt here. I'll yell. What the hell have we been doing for six months? Why have you been with me?" he demands. You go, Brian! Ally babbles about what a nice guy he is. He just nods and says, "This is what I get for dating someone with the emotional IQ of a teenager." Yeah, good point. Then he tells her, "Get the hell out of here." She stutters a bit and he tells her again. After she leaves, he does the sad chin-in-hand thing. Good riddance, I say.
John lays it on the line for the jury. He says that Mr. Keebler is the good-looking broke guy who used Maureen, the plain, fat, rich girl. The overweight judge furrows her brow. John says that men crave sex and "that's why the penis is shaped like a compass dial." Oh, man, shut up. The defense attorney argues that it's not wrong to marry for money, but even if it were, Wayne Keebler would "still pass the test" because he loved Maureen. "Two people who can laugh together -- that's somethin', huh?" he asks. John drops a jar of beans or something on his table and annoys the judge. I say Maureen should lose her case because she's old enough to have watched enough David E. Kelley productions to know that fat chicks don't deserve sex. QED.
An overhead camera shows us Ally McBeal on a Unisex toilet. Her voice-over is telling us that she likes to think there because "it's the right depository for most of [her] thoughts." Suddenly, Larry opens the stall door. Ally jumps up and bangs on the walls and then falls down. "I should have knocked," says Larry. She asks why he's there, and he says he was worried about her. "If you were a decent therapist, you wouldn't be able to make house calls," she tells him, walking to the sink. Larry laughs and says that he's not a therapist, he's a lawyer. He tells her that it says so right on the new sign on his office door. Okay, let me get this straight. Tracy's old office was in the same building as Fish & Cage? Is that it? Or did Larry the Lawyer follow Ally all the way to the building, into the Unisex? No, I'm guessing that his office is suddenly conveniently close to hers. The better to develop a love interest with, my dear. Or something. So the mystery to solve is why in the world Larry put up with all of Ally's complaining. She wants to know, too. He says she seemed like she needed to talk. As a lawyer, he didn't want to see her "settle" (ha, ha) for the wrong relationship. After explaining this not at all to my satisfaction, Larry steps very close to Ally and says that maybe he'll see her in court one day. Like maybe one day week, right? They shake hands and then he KISSES her CHEEK. Gross. Somebody, bottle the pheromones she stole and then sell them to me.
The jury returns from a quick deliberation and does not grant the annulment. Maureen is stricken. Wayne walks up and tells her he doesn't want the alimony he's entitled to. John and the other lawyer blatantly eavesdrop. Wayne says that he did love Maureen and he wanted to be married to her forever but she rejected the terms they decided to live under. She pushed him away. "Because I wanted to be touched. I wanted a little passion, Wayne," says Maureen. "That wasn't the basis of our relationship," says Wayne. "There may have been fraud here, Maureen, but I wasn't the one to commit it." Yeah, you stupid cow. You should have been grateful for what you had. You got to marry a handsome guy. He was nice to you. He made you laugh. He spent your money and only screwed other women when you were out of town. You had all that and you wanted sex, too? Yeah, right, fatso. Dream on! Maybe you'll be so lucky in your life, if you're a fat man. Until then, like it or lump it. You say you've met fat women who have sex? They were lying to you! It never happens! John offers to walk Maureen home while Vonda croons. Maureen should pay him for the privilege. She's fortunate he's willing to be seen with someone as hideously not-thin as she is.
Vonda continues her Anne Murray song. Brian sulks in his dark office. Larry surveys his own. Ally lies in her bed with a book with a lion on the cover. She does a voice-over about how she was usually loneliest in her life when some guy was right to her. I guess she'd better hurry up and break off a piece of sweet Larry, then.
week on Ally McBeal: Richard and Ling do spit takes on a transvestite who's hooking up with Mark, and the insane redheaded doctor from Melrose Place touches John's ass.