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Fresh Heche

This week's episode of Ally McBeal begins with a group dinner, during which Richard Fish's tendency to speak his mind - no matter how abrasive his thoughts - is revealed to be a type of Tourette's syndrome-like behavior. The comparison is all the more clever because it is entirely implicit - the viewer is left to draw the analogy himself (or, more likely, herself).

Indeed, Fish's behavior puts the bona fide Tourette's syndrome suffered by Melanie (Anne Heche's character), who is also present at the dinner and speaking out of turn, to shame. Fish manages to insult virtually everyone at the table with his unwelcome candor. The problem, of course, is not just that he says what he's thinking - it's also the uncharitable thoughts he reveals. His only redeeming feature is that these thoughts are, at least, very funny.

Heche in Distress

Later in the show, Melanie, a schoolteacher, reads a children's book of which she herself is the author - about a two-headed woman with two personalities - to the children in her class, as Cage looks on. And when Melanie is called from the room, Cage is left alone with the kids, to tell a story of his own.

The kids start to cross-examine Cage, quite threateningly (in a nice "Turnabout is fair play" scenario - it's fun to see Cage himself be the target of the same kind of biting questions he so bitingly and effectively poses to witnesses). When the children ask him why he's meek, he claims his toes were cut off as a child, leaving the children in terror.

When Melanie returns, she confides to Cage that she's been fired. Ironically, the school claims Melanie was fired "because she frightens the children" - by telling scary stories, making noises, and last month, running over the school superintendent (a crime of which she was acquitted, last episode, on the ground that her Tourrette's made her involuntarily take her foot off the brake.) Of course, it was really Cage - not Melanie - who was the one who scared the kids; most of them seem to worship her.

Cage, of course, volunteers to be Melanie's lawyer. After an insta-hearing, where the judge indicates he thinks Cage has a point, there is an insta-settlement conference between the principal who fired Melanie and Melanie herself. The portly principal, annoyed at Melanie's having blurted out "Fat!" and then squealing, says "Yes, play the squeal card!" Cage then notes that remarks like that make him see zeros - presumably because they are such clear evidence of disability discrimination based on Melanie's Tourette's. Unfortunately for Cage, statements made during settlement talks are rarely admissible as evidence later.

One of the kids in Melanie's class, Lucy, testifies at trial that she's afraid of Melanie - but on cross-examination, Cage gets Lucy to admit that he is afraid of virtually everyone in the courtroom, from Cage (who, unbeknownst to spectators, is believed by Lucy to be toeless) to the toupee-wearing (and to Lucy, animal-killing) judge.

In the end, making a "gut call," the judge rules that since he would be comfortable putting his child in Melanie's care, her firing is judicially reversed. Again the show botches the well-settled legal standards that ought to apply in an employment discrimination and contract breach case like this one, suggesting that rather than following any standards, it's up to the judge's discretion - and his "gut" - to decide.

It's insulting to the legal system to suggest that judges are merely making gut calls - and while Ally McBeal is rarely legal realistic (and certainly need not always follow the letter of the law), there is no reason its judges' holdings cannot more accurately reflect the fact that judges apply rules that are set out beforehand.

Marry Me, My Dar-Ling

Meanwhile, Ling hangs out with the current fiancee of her ex, Randy. The fiancée, Lisa, confesses to Ling that she's threatened by her, because she worries Ling is still "the one" for Randy. But Ling - in an unusually nice moment - ascribes this fear only to "pre-wedding day panic," and says she's sure Randy "mended" when she, Ling, broke his heart.

Randy then visits Ling, who asks him if Lisa really is the girl of his dreams. He says, "Guys don't always get the girl of their dreams," but that he plans to love Lisa "and make her very happy." Later, though, he confesses to Ling that Ling is the one he really loves, and that he needs to know if he has any chance still with her. Ling says that while she usually loves coming between couples (a wonderful Fishian aside), Lisa is a friend of hers, so there's no chance -- "Is that clear enough?"

Ling may seem to be an ice queen as usual, but we sense - and later learn - there's more to this story. Ling confides in Nelle that she may still be in love with Randy, though he's "wrong for a million different reasons." They agree that Fish is only valuable as a source of money and sperm. (I wonder if Fish would appreciate it if others were as candid as he). Still, in the end, Ling tells what she considers to be a white lie, convincing Lisa that Randy has said Lisa - not Ling - is his true love.

The morality of her lie is certainly debatable. On the one hand, telling Lisa the truth - that she's Randy's second choice - would have ruined any chance for the couple's happiness. On the other hand, I wouldn't be eager to marry a man who tried to get back with his ex the day before our wedding.

Perhaps Ling did Lisa no favors with her supposed white lie. Couldn't she have split the difference between a lie and the truth, and at least cast some doubt, for Lisa's benefit, on Randy's level of commitment?

Larry In Love - But with Whom?

Meanwhile, Jamie (played by Famke Janssen) - Larry's ex and the mother of his son - drops in from Detroit again. Jamie walks in on Ally and Larry (played by Robert Downey, Jr.) flirting over her strange, fruit-colored hat (it's his first "brim job," Larry cracks).

Once Ally leaves, Jamie implores Larry to give his permission to take their son, Sam, to Canada, where her family is. Larry freaks out at the thought that his son will be in "a foreign country" (calm down, dude, it's only Canada), but Jamie retorts that if Larry's so worried about being close to his son, he should move to Detroit, to give Sam "a sense of family - a sense he doesn't have at the moment." Larry counters that Jamie could move to Boston instead.

As they continue to fight, Jamie tries to seduce Larry by referring to their physical passion for each other, and to the fact that they've had a son together. "I can't do this again," Larry says, "It'd be one time too many." "Just tell me you know it's over," Jamie responds, betting he can't say it. "I know it's over," he says - but then they kiss.

Meanwhile, Ally, knowing she's left Jamie and Larry alone together, is freaking out, too. But self-possessed Renee tries to teach Ally to take a lesson in confidence and restraint, by forcing her to hold pencils in her mouth until she calms down. (Wait! Renee was the one urging Ally to be wary of Jamie the last time Jamie visited, wasn't she? Why is Renee changing her tune now - especially when her first intuition was right on the mark?)

Typically, neurotic Ally is not easily comforted; she chews one of the pencils she's been offered in half. And Ally's paranoia is fulfilled when Larry comes to Ally's office and confesses to her that he kissed Jamie. Ally, upset but firm, tells Larry to leave - and then, in leaving the room, has to literally scramble over virtually everyone in the office; they've all been eavesdropping outside her door. This scene is both a nice twist on a typical sitcom device - where one character is caught eavesdropping on another - and a quick summing up of the firm's super-incestuous atmosphere.

Larry tells Jamie that Ally is "it" - and that, thus, Jamie must leave. Jamie finally does - with the question of where she and Sam will live still unresolved, and the question of whether Ally will take Larry back unresolved, too.

Ally ends up watching a video of Fatal Attraction (but why is Ally rooting for Glenn Close? Close is the Jamie character, breaking up Larry and Ally's happy relationship with her sexual wiles!) Then Larry shows up at her apartment to tell her he wants to talk.

Larry explains to Ally that while it would be easier for him, in many ways, to get back with Jamie, he never will - because "I've never loved anybody as much as I love you, and I'm only at the beginning of loving you." He implores Ally to stay because "You love me too." She says, "Love isn't enough;" he counters that "It's everything."

Then - this being Ally McBeal - Larry sings Ally a song he wrote just for her. It's pretty terrible and so is Downey's singing, so we can be happy that Vonda Shepherd takes over halfway through. By the end of the show, everyone's relationships seem to be going swimmingly - though Ling does seem to have a moment of hesitation over Randy's wedding to Lisa. (As she herself comments, dating Fish makes everyone else look good.) We even see Ally and Larry making up in bed, though some nakedness seems to have been blurred out by the racy-but-not-too-racy Fox.

But be wary of all this happiness, dear viewer - we know heartbreak is coming soon for Ally (and Cage too), if only because Downey Jr.'s stay on the show (like Heche's) is limited. If the show wants us really to believe in these romances, it should sign on the actors for more than a limited number of episodes. Ironically, Ling and Fish's relationship, most in jeopardy at the end of this episode, is realistically the most likely to last.

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