The Qualifiers of McBeal Appeal
Oct. 22nd, 2024 06:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
setsuledSince I got Disney+ again, I've picked up watching Ally McBeal again. I find myself slightly more irritated by flaws in the show I recognised even when I first watched it back in the '90s. I grew tired of it back then because it got stuck in a pattern of introducing new characters with wacky personality traits to make up for the previous ones growing stale and repetitive. In the episode I watched last night, "Being There", from near the end of season one (May 4, 1998), Peter MacNicol's character, John Cage, goes through a litany of his gags that were mostly just faintly funny when they were first introduced--his mental bells he hears to build confidence, his comfort words he repeats when stressed, and his nose that occasionally whistles in awkward moments. That last one was at least funny the first time. I'm also finding the cuteness around the character of Ally herself a lot more cloying than I did the first time. The previous episode, in which she adorably faints for having to deal with a homicide case, was excruciating.
However, once you weed through all this baloney, David E. Kelley does give you something thought provoking. In the case of this episode, Ally's roommate, Renee (Lisa Nicole Carson), goes on trial for assault when she breaks the neck of a man whom she invited back to her apartment for sex. Suddenly, this character that had seemed little more than a token black character, there to make wise pronouncements about love and life in the service of Ally's main plotline, becomes interesting. I like how Kelley takes something that had been mined for cheap gags in previous episodes, Renee's aggressive flirtatiousness, and turns it into an interesting problem.
With the suspense of a jury response hanging over the dialogue, the mind compulsively finds the ambiguities in the situation. There's great value in being able to watch something like this, from outside our current era of political thinking and neuroses. Is it fair to say Renee has any culpability here?
However, once you weed through all this baloney, David E. Kelley does give you something thought provoking. In the case of this episode, Ally's roommate, Renee (Lisa Nicole Carson), goes on trial for assault when she breaks the neck of a man whom she invited back to her apartment for sex. Suddenly, this character that had seemed little more than a token black character, there to make wise pronouncements about love and life in the service of Ally's main plotline, becomes interesting. I like how Kelley takes something that had been mined for cheap gags in previous episodes, Renee's aggressive flirtatiousness, and turns it into an interesting problem.
With the suspense of a jury response hanging over the dialogue, the mind compulsively finds the ambiguities in the situation. There's great value in being able to watch something like this, from outside our current era of political thinking and neuroses. Is it fair to say Renee has any culpability here?
