FindLaw | Legal News & Information

Packets, Penises, and Peppermint Sticks: A Very Adult Ally McBeal

This week's show started with Ally flirting with a much older man - an environmental lawyer with a cute smile. Actually, before that the show started with a "viewer discretion" warning about adult sexual content. But I don't think this flirtation is exactly the adult sexual content they meant. A May-December romance, by Hollywood standards, is quite ho-hum. Instead, I think the warning had something to do with the pre-operative transsexual who re-appears on the show this week. Just a guess.

Turning Off Mr. Spigot

A new Fish & Cage client, Wanda Spigot, is suing a sex instructor, who is also a doctor, for ruining her marriage - in what appears to be a bizarre variant of a medical malpractice case. The instructor/doctor's advice? To be submissive, and nice, and sexually compliant. Hardly a risky strategy that would turn off most men - especially as it also involves frequent fellatio.

But Wanda's husband, it turned out, disliked her newly acquired oral sex skills; he said it was like being "on a high wire," in that it was dangerous to look down. Hee hee. Oops - maybe this is the adult content. Maybe I was wrong about the transsexual.

Nelle then asks Elaine to enroll in the instructor's course, "How to Keep a Man Happy," to see exactly what's being taught. The instructor ends up being Florence Henderson, a.k.a. Mrs. Brady, and she advises women to heal men's "wounds" and treat them well at home, since later they must venture out into the Big Scary World of Work.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Brady also breaks into song. Is the increasing amount of musical content in Ally McBeal a sign of a desperate bid to regain future ratings? Please, please producers - just don't waste Robert Downey Jr. on musical numbers.

All this instruction in submission palpably horrifies Nelle, but Elaine seems to enjoy it. And back in a settlement conference at the firm, Mrs. Brady proclaims that she'll win in front of a jury because "I'm lovable." She also points out, quite correctly, that the real reason Mr. Spigot left Mrs. Spigot will come out in the lawsuit, and that may be quite ugly.

Mrs. Brady here demonstrates more legal acumen than any lawyer on the show has done yet this season. (Perhaps she's A Very Brady Litigator?) She's right that likability often determines who'll win a case and right also that plaintiffs like Mrs. Spigot often decide to bring cases, without considering how damaging and hurtful discovery and trial on possible defenses can be (in this case, it would be the other reasons the husband might have left his wife, besides Mrs. Brady's course).

When Nelle interviews Mr. Spigot, he confesses that, indeed, the doctor's course wasn't the only reason his marriage ended. Turns out he never loved his wife, wanted to leave for a long time, and never could. When she became weak, on the doctor's advice, he acquired the balls (oops - this is becoming a Very Adult Review) to leave. Ling points out that causation can still be proven; without the course, the marriage might have stuck. But Nelle counters correctly that no jury is going to fault the course, as opposed to the husband, for the end of this marriage.

Nelle tells Mrs. Spigot this case "encroaches into divorce law" and Massachusetts is a no-fault state, so if she goes to court she'll only be more hurt. Mrs. Spigot seems to agree. Wait - a ridiculous lawsuit averted on Ally McBeal? There may be hope for the show and its lawyers' skills, yet.

The Savage Sage

Fish points out to Ally that he learned his client, Cindy, is a transsexual in a privileged conversation, but bemoans that he can't tell Marc. He's absolutely right that this information is privileged - it was not only revealed in the course of the representation, but was highly relevant to it. (You may recall from last week's episode that she sued her employer for forcing her to take a mandatory medical exam and that she refused the exam precisely because she was a pre-operative transsexual). Indeed, Fish shouldn't even be telling Ally this information. Although Ally's a lawyer, there's no reason the privilege should extend to her, as she was never involving in representing Cindy.

Once the, um, cat is out of the bag, Ally counsels Fish not to tell Marc not because of privilege, but because "Maybe he'll be open-minded about it." Ally also later muses to herself that "all men are homophobes." She should talk; she rejected a bisexual man last season, because she couldn't handle his having slept with men in the past. Now she criticizes Marc for potentially rejecting a transsexual? For a lawyer, she's awfully inconsistent in the positions she takes.

Cindy discovers Ally knows her secret through the usual Ally McBeal comments-overheard-in-the-coed-bathroom scenario. This week's variant of the scenario is especially co-ed, since Cindy herself is arguably both male and female. And this week's variant has Renee (who doesn't know Cindy's transsexual) making loud comments about men's "peppermint sticks" to Cindy.

Cindy is understandably offended and not just by the silly euphemism. As a result, Ally runs after Cindy and discloses that Renee was ignorant about Cindy's sexuality; unfortunately, Ally also implicitly discloses to Cindy that Ally herself is in the know. Not only did Fish incompetently breach the attorney-client privilege by telling Ally, now Ally unwisely compounds his mistake by informing the client of this breach.

Cindy is properly indignant - as she should be, since she told Fish in confidence and under the attorney-client privilege about her secret. But Cindy seems to melt when Ally tells her she should confess her secret to Marc because "he's falling in love with you." She's on the point of doing so, but at the last minute, can't go through with it and asks Marc on a date instead. When he insists on learning Cindy's secret on the dance floor, she conveys to him that she has a penis by holding him close and grabbing his butt, to physically press him close enough so he can feel her packet. Classy. Finally, the adult content!

Fish gives Marc a speech, starting with sensitivity (don't dump Cindy") and ending with usual Fish crassness ("use her as bait to attract another girlfriend who doesn't have a penis"). He then quietly proclaims himself a "sage."

Marc leaves, frustrated. Elaine only quips, "He took it hard." Woo-hoo. More adult content. But later Marc decides he does want to continue to see Cindy and says that he "can't see her . . . as anything other than a woman." Of course, that may change once they get naked. I wonder what the "viewer discretion" warning on that show will be.

Incestu-Ally

Meanwhile, it turns out that Ally and her geriatric date, Michael, only connect on one subject: disco. And she starts regretting the "hard bodies" she is passing up, as lots of gorgeous men pass by her on the street in increasing states of undress (By the time we see the bare-chested, board-carrying surfer mosey past Ally in the chilly Boston fall, we've gotten the joke long ago).

Meanwhile, Ally also meets, by chance, an attractive young man named Jonathan who is also, like everyone in Boston, apparently a lawyer. Distracted by Jonathan, Ally stops listening to Michael over lunch - giggling even when he discusses his wife's death from cancer. Another cute little burst of pathological narcissism on Ally's part - how adorable!

Ally ends up double-booking her time one night, inadvertently arranging to meet both men. She decides to show up for both dates, since they won't overlap. During her dinner with Michael, he confesses he actually hates disco and loves Neil Diamond - indeed, in college he played keyboards for a band that played Neil Diamond songs.

Rather than screaming and running away, Ally actually asks him to play a song; it's "Sweet Caroline." Ally's charmed but she's soon on to her second date with Jonathan.

Later in the show it turns out the two men Ally is dating are father and son - Oops- as she learns when the father, Michael, invites her to dinner with his two children, including Jonathan. We were working up to this type of revelation last season when a still-married Georgia started dating Ally's father - but there, fortunately for those of us who want to keep a G rating for the show, he returned to his wife. Here, there's no wife for Michael to return to - she's dead.

Hmm. A weird love triangle that is quite literally incestuous? So that Ally would become . . . her very own mother-in-law? Thereby replacing Jonathan's dead mother and completing his Oedipal fantasy? And might Jonathan tear his own eyes out as a result of realizing that his lover is also . . . his mother?

Wait, could this be the adult content? Tune in next week to find out. And also for Robert Downey, Jr.'s still freshly unincarcerated performance.

Past Reviews

Message Boards