Ally McBeal and Billy Thomas were going steady throughout their childhoods. Ally even followed Billy to Harvard law school despite having no interest in law. But when Billy chose to pursue a career in law away from Ally, their relationship came to an end. In the present, an old classmate of Ally's named Richard Fish gives Ally a job at his law firm, where Billy and his new wife are also working. This puts Ally in a predicament since she still has feelings for Billy which she's laboring to get over. At the office, Ally puts up with a nosy, gossiping secretary named Elaine, and an oddball lawyer named John Cage never seems to lose a case. At home, Ally's friend and house-mate Renée regularly advises her on her love life. The series follows Ally's trials and tribulations in life through her eyes, and caricaturizes her personal thoughts and fantasies. Written by Ondre Lombard <olombard@lombard.cyberverse.com>
For David Kelly the creation of this law firm must have come to him as he envisioned what L.A.Law would've been in it's most bizarre form. If you told viewers beforehand some of the quirks and cases the main character, and the firm, would entertain I'm sure the "test" audience would have responded with a collective thumbs down. This is why the success and following of the show is all the more astounding.
I have watched from the first episode and look forward to it every week. From the first time we saw Ally get sexually harassed in her old firm, to her first sighting of the baby cupid on roller skates with a bow and arrow we have embraced her quirks and her flaws. We have hung on every "theme song", everytime she saw Al Green and most recently Barry Manilow, and we have learned to clutch onto all the zaniness of the other characters as well.
Be it John Cage stuttering(pa..pa..pa..poughkeepsie), to the great "Fishisms" of his partner Richard Fish, to Billy's Robert Palmer girls, to Elaine's face bra, etc. etc. These characters are now part of our tuesday conversation at the water cooler. And in America that is when a show has made it!
Season three had it's mindnumbing sameness to it, but the introduction of Robert Downey Jr. has brought new life to a stagnant show. At the time of this writing it was announced Downey Jr. had signed a new 8 episode deal so it should be interesting to see where the show goes.