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Ally-Ween

This week's episode of Ally McBeal starts with a Halloween slumber party where the "girls" of the show watch scary movies and argue about whether or not they are lonely and desperate. For the show to work, of course, they'd better be. And this week, they demonstrate that indeed they are - forming a club so they can throw themselves at men, not individually but en masse, like love-deprived lemmings. Now that's scary.

The Not-Yet-First-Wives Club

After rebuffing her ex, Brian, yet again, Ally decides to form the club she and the girls have discussed. She explains that they have been "pathetic" because they value their personal lives, yet don't really "work" at them. But in a burst of pathological narcissism, Nelle asks why she should work at dating, when dating only leads to marriage, which leads to childbirth, which leads to breast-feeding, which would destroy her breasts. Nelle should beware. She seems almost as obsessed by her breasts as Billy was last season, when he imagined them pneumatically enlarging - and we all know what happened to him.

Despite Nelle's criticism, Ally goes ahead and forms her club and then volunteers to go speak to an eligible man - specifically, her colleague Marc Albert - on the club's behalf, and ask how Marc would go after finding an eligible woman. Unfortunately we learn that Marc's strategy seems to consist of seducing transvestite clients in the firm bathroom, a ploy that, while effective, may not work for everyone.

Nevertheless, an unknowing Ally still goes to Marc for advice. He contends that all men are basically chasing models, but that in his experience, if a man attends a party for models, none of them show up, because they're all so competitive with each other.

Any New Yorker can testify the sad truth is otherwise: Models run in packs. Women who are merely attractive and see them coming may want to flee. However, in the kinder, gentler world of Ally McBeal-land, it is "raining men" - for the models are all no-shows - when the party is given.

Larry, the lawyer played by Robert Downey Jr., and Brian both appear at the party only to see Ally dancing with several other guys. Upset, Brian grabs the mic and reveals Ally and her friends' strategy of having a "model's night" to get men for themselves. Then he wallows in his own pain, remarking over the mic that "a breakup can be painful but I'm happy to see you're coping, Ally." So much for our hope that he might go quietly. Now he's not only dull, repressed, and British, he's also an angry stalker. What's a girl to do?

Ally confronts Brian about his public comment, but she admits her party was disrespectful to him and apologizes. He should really be apologizing to her - and to the viewers. I can't wait for Robert Downey, Jr. to emerge from the wings, where he's been waiting so patiently and so drug-free.

She-Male Problems

This week, Fish's client, Cindy, wants to sue her employer, because she was fired after she refused to take her company's mandatory insurance exam. The reason she refused to take the exam? She's really a man.

After spitting their coffee out in disbelief when they hear this news (Note to lawyers: Try to maintain a calmer demeanor than this), Fish and Ling agree to take Cindy's case and they quickly win it - receiving an injunction from the court reinstating Cindy at her job.

The court's decision is clearly correct. After all, Cindy was willing to pay for her own insurance, so what basis did her employer have to require her to take a physical? But the constitutional arguments Fish bumblingly presents probably aren't the winning ones. Instead, there is probably a clause - or an implied promise of "good faith and fair dealing" - in Cindy's contract that makes this firing wrongful.

In any case, Cindy does win, even if for the wrong reasons. This leaves her free to flirt with Marc, after they "meet cute" in the bathroom, and to dance with him in the usual fishbowl setting of the bar that the whole cast frequents.

Seeing Marc and Cindy together, Fish's impulse is to reveal to Marc that she is biologically a man, but Ling reminds Fish that Cindy's revelation about her sex organs is within attorney-client confidentiality. Fish begins to tell Marc the secret anyway, but he chickens out and claims, weirdly, that Cindy's a virgin instead. (And that is supposed to drive Marc away?)

Cindy overhears this and drags Fish aside. Angrily, she informs Fish that she's had boyfriends; she simply tells them she's Catholic - and thus, presumably, that she opposes premarital sex. Fish, in turn, accuses her of misleading Marc.

Later, apparently feeling guilty, Cindy eventually tells Marc she has "a past" and "used to be kind of a different person." But Marc asks "Can we just go out a few times before I hear about it? I like a girl with secrets." Happily, they kiss - while Fish and Ling again look on, and Fish confesses that if he knew Ling had been a man in the past, he'd "vomit."

Although Fish is presented on the show as a particularly benighted member of the male gender, the show seems partially to share his view - or to assume that almost all men share it. Otherwise, why wouldn't Cindy have been able to have boyfriends in the past without lying and telling them she's Catholic? It seems less unlikely that she'd find men who could deal with her sex-change, than that she'd be happy living sex-free under the guise of a religion that isn't really hers. But the show chickens out and takes the latter option.

Will Marc be able to deal with the sex change? We can only wait for the next show to see, but I'm not hopeful. Remember how Ally rejected a man she was dating because he was bisexual? I have a feeling this hetero-sexist show is not going to be able to handle homosexuality (or here, transgender) once again. But I hope that next week I'm proven wrong.

More Harassment For Viewers

Meanwhile, in one of the show's legion of sexual harassment cases, a man - shock! - sues a woman for sexual harassment. This scenario is old hat to the courts - which have moved on to consider cases of same-sex and bisexual sexual harassment. On Ally, however, it is still supposed to be shocking merely that a man is the plaintiff. Yawn. This would have been a tired plot even last season. And if I see one more sexual harassment case on Ally, I'll encourage viewers to file suit against the show. Leave me alone! No more harassment!

The male plaintiff - who is Georgia and Renee's client - asserts that his boss, a female architect, is a "sexual predator" who fondled him and seduced him. Later, he claims that when he no longer wanted to sleep with her, her sexual pressure on him made it impossible for him to stay at work and so he left.

Cage and Nelle represent the woman defendant, Myra. When Nelle cross-examines the man, she mocks him for saying that he felt intangible "pressure" from his boss to have sex with her after their first encounter, when she never made any explicit threats; and emphasizes that the sex he initially had with his boss was entirely consensual.

Although as usual, cross-examination on Ally McBeal feels more like a speech by the lawyer - a mini-closing - than an examination of the witness, these are certainly the right points for Nelle to be making. She targets all the intuitive weaknesses in the man's claim of vague "pressure" exerted on him. In the end, he sounds like Al Gore claiming that unspecified "powerful forces" control our lives.

When Myra's put on the stand, she testifies that she's proud of her ability to seduce - and in a later conference, proceeds to try out that ability on Cage. Once rebuffed, she apologizes for being "so forward" and says she's learned to do so because she's attracted to "shy men" - "the nice guys." Initially, Cage doesn't take this leaden hint - though his nose is whistling like crazy, as some kind of a strange nasal erection substitute. However, her meaning finally dawns on him, and they sleep together.

In his closing, Cage argues that men and women are truly "different" and that sexual harassment law should protect only women. He also claims that the male plaintiff was not really harassed, but is trying to get the jury to punish a seductive woman as a slut. "We do not approve of women who want sex," Cage argues. "This country puts the Scarlet Letter on women who lead with their libidos." Cage also makes fun of the male plaintiff's putting himself forward as a victim.

We're meant to think this strategy wins over a suddenly feminist jury, convincing it to reject the antiquated view that sexy women are bad. But in the end, it's Cage's views that seem antiquated (men can't possibly be victims; women bosses can't possibly be so powerful as to truly pressure a man to leave his job; the jury should protect the woman, not the man).

After the end of the trial, Cage asks Myra out, but she protests that she has another date. Later, she suggests another one-night stand in the future, but he demurs, "I'm not that kind of guy." All in all, Myra's character comes off as a poor woman's version of Samantha on Sex and the City - with the same sex drive and independence, but none of the sense of humor or girl-bonding camaraderie. And Cage, in his own way, seems just as sexist as the more obnoxious Fish, rejecting the "slutty" woman for a "good" woman.

A last note: In Ally's final reflection of the show, as she dances (oddly) with Cage, she says "I have a friend who refuses to get a pet because they die in the end, and it's too painful. Maybe it's the same with relationships." Maybe it's the same with dramedies too. Let's just hope the already-excellent Robert Downey, Jr. and Anne Heche - arriving, according to press reports, later in the season - will show that rumors of Ally McBeal's death have been premature.

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