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Children. Or as I observed to a friend recently, "they're a twenty-four hour albatross." He replied: "Or the most meaningful thing we can do with our lives."

This week, Ally McBeal - in a sit-commy, sit-drammy way - decidedly sides with my friend. Indeed, on Ally, a child brings insta-meaning, by way of an insta-custody-battle.

I. Creche, Schmesh

On this week's Ally, Elaine discovers a baby abandoned in a creche-in the baby Jesus' manger, no less. I was waiting for its companion baby, impaled on a menorah. Or the orange-toga clad baby in the airport, readily-cast as a tiny Moonie as he's already bald. Or the Jain baby, with a little veil to keep out all the world's germs. Maybe all babies should be Jains, then they wouldn't all get sick so much.

However, Baby Jesus is, unfortunately, all we get in this episode. In the Second Coming, would you shop for Baby Jesus at Baby Gap?

After finding Baby J., Elaine decides to keep him, but Ally (in apparently attorney-client privileged conversations) advises Elaine that she must return him - or Him? - to Child Services. Luckily, Elaine caves. Otherwise, those conversations with Ally might fall within the attorney-client privilege's crime-fraud exception (since Elaine would have kidnapped the kid) when the cops track Elaine down.

I. Come On Baby, And Rescue Me

Thus, Elaine, with the help of Ally and John Cage, decides to go the legal route, and petition for custody rather than shameless kidnapping. Ally is all in favor of this. Neither she nor Cage points out to Elaine that having a child is, inter alia, a colossal pain in the butt which will interfere with everything from Pilates to pedicures. Instead, everyone gets all gooey about the whole experience, especially Ally - whom I don't see becoming a single mother herself anytime soon. Single motherhood is apparently okay for Ally's secretary, though, because she didn't really have a career anyway . . . . A little class-ism anyone?

As a strategy move, Cage suggests that Elaine start lactating - on the theory that this will help her, as an adoptive mother candidate, satisfy the "best interests of the child" standard. In response, Elaine whips out a breast, and happily begins breast-feeding right there in the office - freaking Cage out to no end.

Men really need to get used to public breast-feeding, rather than seeing it as some weird, quasi-sexual affront. And why do they find milk-engorged, flabby, stretch-marked, chafed breasts sexy anyway? Don't answer that. Please. There are some psychological phenomena even I don't want insight into.

Ironically, at Elaine's initial appearance before the court, Cage argues that the very bonding he himself has, in part engendered now gives Elaine some rights to the child. In a previous review, I quoted the lawyer's maxim: "You don't make the facts." (Always a great excuse for losing). Except Cage here shows that this maxim isn't always accurate. Sometimes, as a lawyer, you do make the facts - especially when the relevant facts continue, contemporaneous with the lawsuit. It's good advice on Cage's part to suggest that Elaine intensify the bonding which will constitute her only argument for rights to the child anyway.

One doesn't have to be a family law specialist, however, to know that 24 hours of custody does not a legal claim make. If it did, there would be some terrific looking guys living in my apartment right now.

III. Help! My Headband Is A Cinnabon

The judge schedules an afternoon custody hearing - in typical Ally McBeal this-is-the-law-on-speed style.

Meanwhile, in the hours before the hearing, Elaine names the child Elliott, and Ling and Nell - in Princess-Leia-goes-to-Cinnabon hair twists - play with the baby. Also, baby Elliott repeatedly pees on Ling, with an arc that would be impressive emanating from a porn star, let alone an infant.

Later in the show, the whole male cast boogies with the baby. And, Ally and Billy hold the baby together, in a weird tableau of the marriage they could have had, and Billy asks, "What did happen to us?" - leaving open the possibility of an Ally-and-Billy reunion. (Would that involve their child-selves having sex too, in a sort of Lord-of-the-Flies-cum-Blue-Lagoon episode?)

In short, baby Makes Everyone's Life More Meaningful. No one in the cast gets to see the sequel -- Baby Deprives Everyone of REM Sleep Until They Go Insane.

During the extended hiatus from the ongoing custody case, Ally retains an "expert" on child bonding - which expert cheerfully admits she'll be giving her opinion "more as a mother than as a sociologist," thereby undermining her qualifications to opine as an expert in the first place. Luckily for the expert, however, Ally bypasses the traditional route of having her expert set out her qualifications to opine at the start of her testimony - and the expert never faces cross-examination as to her qualifications from the opposing DSS attorney.

Instead, the expert, when she testifies, launches right into the substance of the dispute. She opines that the baby should stay with Elaine to "avoid disruption." However, on cross-examination, the expert reasonably concedes that it is more important for the baby to be with the best caretaker, as opposed to the "person he's with now," standard.

Cage and Ally wince and seem inexplicably horrified at this reasonable concession by their expert. In my opinion, however, experts usually look much sillier when they don't make reasonable concessions than when they do. Failing to make a reasonable concession can forfeit an expert's credibility in a moment - and make him or her look like a paid prostitute. (Not that that's bad, of course. But we can discuss Ally in the slutty Santa suit later).

Better for the expert to make a reasonable concession, then recover nicely - and do so on his or her own, not on re-cross examination by the attorney who put the expert on the stand in the first place. Thus, if Ally had prepped her expert better, the expert might have pointed out that, while obviously the baby should be with the best caretaker, someone with whom the baby has deeply bonded (Elaine, of course) would be a very good candidate for that job.

IV. Help! My Penis Is Dilating

In another hiatus, the Child Services agency interviews other members of the firm, as well as Renee, about Elaine's potential fitness as a parent. Fish, of course, only illustrates his own unfitness as a human with his answers to questions - disputing mothers' claim to babies on the arbitrary grounds that babies happen to travel through their cervixes. This argument made me wish the tip of his penis would start dilating so that a baby could travel through it.

On the stand - in yet another of these weird all-in-one-day court appearances, separated by inexplicable, interminable breaks for plot development - Elaine explains that she feels destined to be with this baby, and that she can live off her savings and work part-time. She admits her life hasn't prepared her for being with the baby. But she says she feels ready to raise him - and even the Judge is visibly moved by this.

Elaine's claim suffers, however, when she is cross-examined about her quasi-sexual history with the various men at the firm (for example, her stint as Billy's "fluffer," and the incident in which she licked Cage's nose), and about her position as "office slut," which she defends as a joke. She is also cross-examined about being sued by her family members.

Elaine realizes there's an office mole who ratted her out (just to continue the vermin metaphors). The mole turns out to be Georgia, who feels compelled to pass on both "the positives and the negatives" about Elaine to the Child Services agency. Ally criticizes Georgia for her honesty, complaining that the Department of Social Services will overemphasize any information that seems bad. Of course, legally, Georgia's right - indeed, lying to a state agency, such as the child protection authority, could be a felony (specifically, a false statement to the government). Omissions, too, can be false statements if misleading. The risk of prosecution is slight, but an attorney who takes her responsibilities seriously probably should side more with Georgia's view of things than Ally's.

God. I just offered a legal insight. About Ally McBeal.

During closing arguments, the DSS attorney, drawing on the information Georgia provided, expresses concern that, among other things, Elaine is a single woman who is promiscuous and who didn't notify the authorities immediately upon finding the child.

In response, Ally vouches for Elaine, proclaiming that she is loving, giving, unselfish and moral, and "lives to take care of others even when they don't want it." (What a wonderful quality! Gosh, if only all mothers could be that way!) Ally also argues that Elaine is "a mother now," and if the judge doesn't believe it, she should "look at little Elliott." Finally, Ally contends that if the DSS knew Elaine like Ally knows Elaine, then "there'd be no argument before this Court."

Of course, it's utterly inappropriate for Ally to, in effect, testify as a witness for her own client - and even worse to do so in a closing argument, in which no new evidence is supposed to be introduced. Inexplicably, however, the DSS attorney doesn't object. Latitude is allowed in closings - but there is latitude, and then there is ludicrous.

When she renders her ruling, the judge applies the "best interests of the child" standard to rule in favor of Elaine, more or less relying only upon the testimony Ally improperly provided in her closing. (This would probably be grounds for reversible error, except that the DSS attorney failed to object and hence waived the point.) The judge grants Elaine's petition for temporary guardianship of the child.

My annoyance at all this is only amplified by my feeling that everyone (Ally, Elaine, the female judge) appears to be speaking in A Different Voice here. An Annoying, Grating, Whiny, Different Voice. The implication is that if women attorney and judges ran the world, silly things like the rule that you can't testify or introduce new evidence in closing would just fall by the wayside. Perhaps it goes without saying that this has hardly been my experience.

Unfortunately, just as Elaine is delighted to have received custody, baby Elliott's mother suddenly shows up on the scene. She's a single mother too, who, suffering from postpartum depression, left the child in the manger. (No crib for a bed!) Clearly, she saw the movie The Child Deprives Everyone Of REM Sleep Until They Go Insane.

Nevertheless, the mother wants him back, and she is willing to move in with her parents, and have them assume co-guardianship, to get him. Ling, having done some legal research, counters that when the parent voluntarily abandons the child, the de facto parent - here, Elaine - still has rights. But then Cage explains that the postpartum depression could be used to counter a finding of voluntary abandonment. This sounds plausible, except that I'm not certain it's the most persuasive defense to say that you didn't abandon your baby because you wanted to - you did so only because you were temporarily insane.

Cage also explains that any custody battle will be long and hard fought. Ally counters: "Biological doesn't make her [the real mother] a better parent."

Weirdly, everyone ignores the fact that Elaine has not been given custody; she's only the beneficiary of a temporary guardianship order, so she's not really in a strong position to defend custody against the natural mother in the first place.

Billy then volunteers to "get on Westlaw," presumably to shepardize the decision Ling has found. This was the most humorous moment of the show. The thought of Billy doing computerized research hurts my brain. One expects that, in his new persona, he would type with his nipples. Or with his nipple-rings. This is so out of character, it can only be explained as a Westlaw product placement of some sort.

Elaine meets with baby Elliott's mother. The mother says that although her child seemed to her to have been better off in Elaine's arms, she nevertheless cannot "go on living without my son." So Elaine sadly gives up the child, and the whole cast tears up. Sob. Choke. But what about the projectile pee? What about the twenty-four hour albatross? What about a life that is meaningless, but you still get to sleep in?

These people are sentimental as all hell. And they're supposed to be lawyers? Stop giving our profession a good name.

V. She Can Turn the World On With Her  ...Lapdance

Meanwhile, a subplot: Ally wants to sing at the Christmas party. But Fish opines that she cannot be sexy: "It would be like Mary Tyler Moore doing porn." Ally thus becomes fixated on proving she's sexy - weird, since she's always been totally sexy. Ask Carwash Guy.

Ally actually does sing - in a "babe Santa" costume that includes a fur-ruff miniskirt and thigh-high leather boots - and as she sings, she sexually teases Fish and Cage, as well as Ling and, finally, Billy, in whose mouth she publicly twists her finger. It's not enough that these partners sleep with their associates, they have to get lapdances from them too. (Will this affect Ally's bonus?)

Clearly, based on last week's Hunky Santa episode and this week's Ally Santa sex-dance, one of the Ally writers has a serious Santa fetish, and must be stopped before he begins to ejaculate fruitcake.

I skipped my firm's Christmas party this year but I'm pretty confident, based on years past, that the firm stuck with weird ice sculptures of snowmen and stayed away from associate lapdancing.

Next week: No previews (maybe it's a repeat?) but if it goes on like this, I expect Judas v. Jesus. I always wanted to be a plaintiffs' lawyer someday…..

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