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This episode of Ally continued the "roving lawyers" theme. They can't just argue in a courtroom; they can't just argue to a judge. Recall, if you will, that Ally argued her case to a Reverend in the premiere. (Or do you only recall that car wash? I don't blame you.) This time around, it's Nell arguing to a high school principal. We were also treated to the "roving, singing lawyers" theme, as Ally fantasized the whole cast in a sort of sprawling musical number focused, as always, on her. On top of all that, there is the "roving, kissing lawyers" theme - Nell kisses her 15-year-old client to make him look cool in front of his classmates. I am breathlessly waiting for the roving, banjo-playing, gondola-poling, rose-selling lawyers to appear on the scene.

Why so many roving lawyers? Clearly, lawyers merely arguing cases in court has become too boring for prime time. This is ironic for a show purporting to be about a profession where court time (not, alas, extra kisses or more singing) is what we are supposed to crave. Nevertheless, I'll start with the "legal plot" (such as it is) before I get to what I really want to discuss: Prozac.

Those Darn Girl-Kissin' Boys

Let's begin with that kissing fifteen-year-old, Kirby. The first thing I want to say about Kirby is: he's adorable. In fact, I was disappointed not to see him on the ceiling in a cheerleader uniform with rose petals hemorrhaging from his chest, à la American Beauty. (Okay, I did see him that way, but only in my mind, later).

Like Tobey Maguire's character in The Ice Storm, Kirby was the mussy-haired-geeky boy of my high school dreams. Come to think of it, even in my thirties, mussy-haired has its definite appeal. And not just post-coitally.

Predictably, the girls in Kirby's high school just don't see it that way. Out of sheer frustration, he kisses one without her consent. She slaps him and gets him suspended, whereupon Nell shows up to represent the boy. Pretty pricey remedy for a high school suspension. "There goes the money we were saving for orthodontia. . . ." At this point, I feared more anti-sex-harassment hysteria (see, e.g., my Nov. 1 review) of the don't-shoot-the-towheaded-girl-kissing-three-year-old-boys variety. Instead, the episode made a nice point: sometimes, ugly sex-harassment-type situations can be solved by people simply relenting and being decent. Not a solution to which lawyers often turn. But they do here.

Specifically, Nell and John Cage convince the cute, popular girl Kirby kissed that her life will go on if she reconsiders the complaint she filed - and, in any case, her life will never be as miserable as Kirby's due to the burden imposed upon him by his sheer geekiness. The girl is convinced, and relents. Simple as that.

People should relent more in life. Instead, lawyers are taught to chomp down relentlessly, until the adversary chews his leg off and runs off, howling, into the darkness. Bonus points if he sprays blood and promises you his firstborn.

Not only does Nell teach the popular girl about the virtues of restraint, but she also takes it upon herself - as his lawyer - to make Kirby popular, just like the girl, by kissing him in front of the whole school. Which raises the pressing legal question: who should be called first, the Bar or the police? Let's hope jailed schoolteacher/sexpot Mary Kay LeTourneau doesn't have a TV in her cell.

Forget the handsome prince. Personally, I'd rather see Kirby still in the basement playing Dungeons and Dragons with his dweeb friends than turned suddenly "popular." But it's hard to resist that "cafeteria Pygmalion" high-school-movie dream - dweeb turns prince or princess with a little kiss, or a little makeup (think Ally Sheedy in Breakfast Club), or, say, a harmless little wager where someone bets that the geek is an incorrigible geek and is proven wrong (Ten Things I Hate About You or She's All That). Personally, and just for once, I'd like to see the geek prove incorrigible. But that will have to wait for another show.

Those Darn Pill-Takin' Women

This episode convinced me I really am Ally's alter ego - if I hadn't been convinced of that already. Like her, I fought the idea of taking Prozac - fearing I would lose to that small pill my individuality, my creativity - even my ability to dream and love. Like her, I felt shame about filling the prescription at the drugstore. Like her, I stared at the prescription bottle a long time after I finally had it filled. But here's where we diverge: I took the first green-and-white pill - thereby making a concession about myself, and paradoxically feeling stronger with the concession. Ally, however, flushes the whole bottle.

Ally and I are not so different, after all. Even buying the Prozac made me feel better. Filling the prescription, still more so. But at just about the time the Prozac was scheduled to start working, I stopped taking it, because I knew by then I could make it on my own (well, on my own with a little placebo effect and talk therapy….) And if I could make it on my own, I knew I wanted to. That's what Ally decides, too.

This episode taps into a deep, real fear that many people, especially women, have: the fear that what makes you crazy is also what makes you yourself. Ally keeps hallucinating Al Green (what a lovely hallucination!) and says: "He sings my life." Renee reminds her that there is a real Al Green, living in Tennessee. But that seems beside the point, because this Al Green is the soul of the romantic incarnate. To lose Al (as Ally will if she takes Prozac) is to lose one's soul.

Weirdly, the Al Green hallucinations provide Ally with the very insights most people acquire in talk therapy - a good thing, since her therapist is useless and is, in any case, a refugee from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Some people have such insights once Prozac allows them to stop being viscerally miserable and to start really thinking. Ally has insight after insight without drugs or decent therapy: "I'm less afraid of being alone. I don't fit in John. Cheers."; "To know love, you have to know pain and sorrow." When she fantasizes the chorus of cast members, she remarks, "I was realizing that I have a song in my life with all of my friends. Isn't that a good thing to realize?"

Or perhaps she simply has what they call productive depression.

Ally also realizes that (as I've been complaining for several reviews now) her Carwash Fantasia and Fling-with-Ling lacked, shall we say, realness - a concept therapy inevitably introduces into one's life. Ally sees that while these dalliances seemed daring at the time (and, of course, they did boost ratings!) they were actually "safe," because Carwash Guy and Ling were people Ally "could not fall in love with. As if I were willing to physically love with no threat of sorrow."

I was moved by this, maybe because I relate to it so much. But then, I've never been able to listen "To Sir, With Love" without sobbing. Even in a taxi. So I was a sucker for this episode. Still, it's more than that. Ally talks about what so many women in their thirties experience, or at least what I experience: having fought so long, so hard, simply to have a self, why in the world would you now give any part of that away? Even after hearing Georgia and Billy are fighting, Ally prefers to spend the evening alone, rather than comforting Billy. In so choosing, she serves as a counterpoint to desperate Elaine, who pounces on other women's castoffs - literally picking Billy up off the floor after Georgia Tae-Bos him, and preparing John for Nell ("I'm his fluffer.").

Ally has learned to be alone. She is no one's fluffer, nor was she meant to be. That is hard-bought knowledge, and, as Ally learns, once acquired, it can feel delicious, valedictory and freeing and giddy. It is a lovely thing to be alone. But it's not everything. And if Ally had a real therapist, not Sue Ann Niven, she'd learn that next week.

Those Darn Women-Hatin' Men

But, then again, hell is other people.

Or maybe hell is just Billy.

Having had his consciousness raised by his male chauvinist pig support group, Billy confesses as follows: "I want a wife with a nice body who can raise kids. I don't want her to gain a hundred pounds. I don't want her to be dressing in sexy clothes. I don't want her to be a partner at the law firm. I don't want her working at all. I want her waiting. I want her day just to be beginning, for real, because I'm home. I want to feel more . . . worshipped." And then he adds that he's not ashamed of any of this.

Georgia properly decks Billy. As well she should. Even Georgia - irritating Georgia, with her dimples and perfect skin - can't just suck it up indefinitely.

Fish, attending the support group, joins the chorus: "Women like to be sexual objects. Men are supposed to be providers, women get pregnant. What we want is sex, what they want is money." And then Fish leads the men in a chant: "Honey, give me back my penis."

Do men really feel this way? I guess lots of men live this way. So many of my male friends have spent so much energy trying to convince me that men really are boors who want to bend every woman they see over a rock, that I might have to start believing them. Why are men so intent on convincing us that all (other) men are evil? And please don't answer: so they can sleep with us. Although that may actually be the answer.

Men like Billy, of course, are why Ally is alone. Even at the risk of extending what F. Scott Fitzgerald called the "tin cup of self-pity," I have to say it is much better to be alone than to be with such men. It's the paradox we live with. It's no fun, finally, to be Ally alone. Nor is it fun to be Georgia with Billy - pretty and submissive and just so his.

That's why I have such hopes for Carwash Guy, who will make a reappearance in next week's episode. The tabloids report (and I trust them) that Calista Flockhart is dating Carwash-Guy-Actor in real life. It can only give one hope.

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