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At the beginning of this episode, a new guy - let's call him Starbucks Guy - aggressively hits on a highly- lipsticked Ally, even going so far as to kiss her without permission. In response, he gets a cold cappuccino over his head. Barista meets fashionista? (And Sandinista as well, apparently.)

Ally's rebuff of the Starbucks Guy reveals a winning combination of smarts and style. Although her intelligence and elan desert her at later points in the episode, those qualities were on display throughout the rest of this wonderful episode, which had subtle points to make about sexuality, hierarchy, aggression and caffeine. A few of my favorite things, as the song says. (Stay tuned for some original legal lyrics at the end of this review.)

I. Why A Lesbian Appeals

Fish starts off our legal case du jour by demonstrating a fixation on lesbians worthy of Howard Stern himself. Like Howard, Fish would be fascinated even by, say, Lesbian Dwarf Throwing. As long as a lesbian is involved, he's game. And in particular, he's avidly interested in Georgia's beautiful, lesbian client who (like Georgia herself) is enmeshed in a divorce.

The firm of Fish & Cage represents the lovely lesbian's ex-husband - who doesn't want to pay alimony. Ally argues - on appeal - that the marriage should be annulled, and he should therefore not have to pay alimony, because it is fraudulent to conceal one's sexual orientation from a fiancé. (Carmen Electra, are you taking notes?) Hell hath no fury like a man scorned.

Unluckily for Ally, one of the appellate judges ends up being...Starbucks Guy. Call him Judge Starbucks Guy now. Clearly he orders everything "with Power" now. Quite appropriately, Judge Starbucks Guy offers to recuse himself - in case Ally thinks he might be biased (nay, homicidal) just because she doused him twice with latte. But Cage urges Ally not to take the judge up on his offer, on the ground that he is still the most likely of the panel members to rule in the ex-husband's favor. As a result, neither side asks the judge to recuse himself - and he does not do so on his own. As with many judges, the idea that he might be biased even if no one is willing to say so aloud in court is quite foreign to him. Sexual rejection is pretty powerful stuff, inspiring many to kill the messenger - even if the messenger uses decaf. I think His Honor should have recused himself.

During the argument, the Hon. Starbucks Guy turns out to be very sharp - throwing hypothetical questions at Ally about whether, for example, she believes a bisexual fiancé must disclose that fact, and whether her theory of disclosure would hold true in a marital union based on friendship and companionship, rather than sex. (The horror! The horror!) Unfortunately for viewers (and women lawyers), Ally is completely unprepared to address hypotheticals that, while clever and a bit offbeat, also could have been expected. Flustered, she loses the argument. It would have been nice to see Ally earn her salary - and show off a woman's intelligence - by giving as good as she got, even if she had to lose in the end. But the show's writers apparently thought it cuter for her to stutter, and flutter, and stammer, and fluster and, basically be a girl. Or at least, our stereotype of one. (At least she didn't turn into Little Girl Ally right there.)

Having lost, Ally improperly rushes to confront the Judge in chambers ex parte (that is, without the other side present). His honor should kick her out, but instead he argues with her some more. He points out that in Massachusetts, divorce is "no fault." She responds - more astutely than she did in the courtroom - that the issue is not about divorce, but about annulment; was there a marriage to begin with? The judge suggests persuasively that the "no fault" system might erode if any concealment of sexual proclivities could justify an annulment.

The Judge certainly has a point (he makes a nice caramel latte, too!): If Ally's theory were accepted, people could start to argue, in support of an annulment, "You concealed from me that you were a promiscuous, unfaithful person who couldn't be faithful" - thereby accomplishing an "end run" around the no-fault divorce system by presenting arguments that amount to accusations of fault in the context of an annulment. He also suggests that sexuality is mutable - one might not know his or her orientation with certainty when entering into a marriage. Pretty acute for Ally McBeal. I haven't seen a judge who was both this smart and this sexy since Alex Kozinski. But he's wasted on Ally - for reasons to be explained.

II. Bisexu-Ally

At the end of their meeting in closed chambers, Ally swears at Judge Starbucks Guy, and he has her jailed for contempt of court - introducing a sort of bondage & dominance aspect into their relationship. Ally - perhaps a secret masochist? - goes for it. Showing that absolute power corrupts...Ally. (Don't all groan at once now.)

When the Judge visits her in her cell, they flirt and he sentences her to "community service" - to make espressos for him. She refuses, but then gives in. He "trains" her; she flicks foam on him. We learn that Ally loves froth almost as much as she loved soap suds in the Carwash Guy episode. (Or, really, anything that is white and carbonated. Say no more, say no more.) They flirt. They kiss. It looks like Ally might actually be...happy. And she might actually have met someone smart. And nice. But don't hold your breath.

Oops - after about a second in which unalloyed happiness seemed possible for Ally - the Judge confesses that he's bisexual. In a nice echo from the legal plot, he realizes that, given the arguments Ally made in court - and confesses to him that she believed - she'd want to know now rather than later about his sexual orientation. But Ally cannot handle it - just as she couldn't handle the implications of her kiss with Ling. She tells him that she doesn't date; that she "auditions potential husbands" and otherwise doesn't "waste her time"; that she associates "promiscuity" with "bisexuality"; and that she fears that a bisexual man has needs she "can't fulfill." She also confesses she's "more homophobic than I ever imagined."

The judge convincingly rebuts each of Ally's points about why bisexual men are supposedly bad, and does so in so endearing a manner that at this point I was falling in love with him. Some ambivalence on Ally's part - and a personal Ally soundtrack that includes "I've Looked At Life From Both Sides Now" - ensues. (Incidentally, I'll keep to myself what exactly I think it is that he really has looked at from both sides, because I think even FindLaw won't let me print that.) But, in the end, Ally keeps envisioning the judge kissing men, and lying in bed with men, so she rejects him. She confesses: "Sometimes prejudice wins out."

Indeed. It seemed so sad to me that even as Fish was enjoying imagining lesbian sex, Ally was having nightmares imagining gay sex. Of course, both the dream and the nightmare are intensely depersonalizing - the person is irretrievably lost beneath the fantasy or phantasm. As a show, Ally would be much more interesting with a long-term, genuinely gay or lesbian character - or even a straight or bi- character with genuine gay urges that he or she can admit, rather than immediately disavowing them (as Ally did after she kissed Ling). Instead, heterosexual neurosis carries the day, and homosexuality and bisexuality only serve to either get the characters off, or frighten them off. What a narrow, scared, straight life they lead.

Ally should listen to the song more closely: "I've looked at life from both sides now/Win and lose, and still somehow/It's life's illusions I recall/I really don't know life at all." Ally, take a risk one of these episodes. Even though you're a sitcom character, you break my heart.

III. Hierarchy and Other Aphrodisiacs

The other subplots in this episode echoed the theme of hierarchy-as-eroticism that appears in the main plot about Ally and the Judge. As a result, this was a particularly strong episode.

In one subplot, Billy and his assistant, Sandy, begin to get involved, despite some reluctance on her part because of how it may affect her job. In a weird reversal, Sandy ends up ordering coffee from Ally (during Ally's submissive-barista stint) and getting the advice that she should, indeed, go out with Billy. Interestingly, Sandy sets "ground rules" - including a "no physical contact in the office" rule - but then immediately allows Billy to violate that rule by kissing her. Would you like that interoffice relationship "with Power" or without? As your barista, I'd like to know.

In another subplot, Nell - like Ally and perhaps Sandy too - seems to find hierarchy appealing. She confesses to Cage that she's an elitist who wouldn't date a barista or a janitor, and that not only does she not know the name of Billy's assistant, Sandy, she doesn't even feel bad about not knowing it. When Cage is disturbed by this, Nell retorts that, "men make class distinctions; they just base them on body parts"; as Nell points out, the reason Cage knows Sandy's name is because she's very pretty. Nell also admits, without shame or guilt, that she's fallen for Cage due to his whole "package" - that is, in part because he's a senior partner with money. To placate his friend Cage, Fish argues that Nell's elitism is good because money equalizes "short, strange little men" like Fish and Cage with sexy blue-collar men. And Nell suggests that if Cage doesn't enjoy the fact that his money and power make him sexy, he should just return to being the dweeb he was in high school.

It's all rather mean and cold - and not at all the way a couple who were really going out would interact - but because it parallels Ally's relationship with the judge, it resonates with the rest of the episode. What women find erotic, this episode suggests, is men's ability to exercise power - to pay, to buy, to decide, to jail, to be the boss, and even to own the cappuccino place and force you to make their latte, baby, on pain of contempt. There's truth in this, though it's not the whole truth. It's troubling, and important, and a good topic for the show.

Next Week on Ally: Ally meets Tina Turner. I hope this doesn't mean that anyone has to meet Ike Turner. At least, not without a pit bull to protect them.

I promised you a musical number at the start of this review. Now I leave you with some lyrics to sing to yourselves, not aloud, and certainly not after your first infusion of caffeine in the morning: What's Law Got To Do, Got To Do With It? What's Law, But A Badly Written Motion? What's Law Got To Do, Got To Do With It? Who Needs A Law, When A Law Can Be Broken? And so on.

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