Thoughts on Ally McBeal

I'm not even sure if that's how you spell her second name since in Japan the series is known as Ali My Love. However, I've been putting myself through the series on videotape recently, and I've just about had my fill of that wretched woman. Ally McBeal is, from a red-blooded man's point of view, physically, if not colloquially, worth one. However, her character is awful and it comes as no surprise that she has trouble finding men in her life. She turns me off most when she pouts her lips in confusion, reminding me of a very irritating habit one of my ex-girlfriends used to indulge in. Do girls honestly think they look cute when they do that?

The crunch is that I like one or two of the other main characters in the series, such as Richard Fish, Georgia and John Cage, but Ali herself offers me nothing but irritation. It's probably because I used to go out with this girl who was so similar to Ali McBeal, in all her irritations. I just think about what our relationship could have been like if she hadn't been such a McBeal slave. And all the while she thought it was an expression of contemporary feminism. Contemporary stereotypes maybe, but feminism no way. The construction of more stereotypes is a questionable path towards liberation, take my word for it.

In it's entirity, Ally McBeal a show where personality is relegated to third place behind physical attraction and short skirts. It tries to tell women, and men, that self-indulgence is the norm, and that for women it is OK to be obsessed with your feelings all the time, disregarding the rest of the world and it's problems. Could you imagine a TV show where the women were downright ugly, but good people? No, of course not. And with that thought in mind, ask yourself about the real cultural capital of such a TV show.

But that's Fox TV for you, I suppose.