ALLY MCBEAL: THE COMPLETE SERIES (David E. Kelley/2oth Century Television, 1997-2002) Fox Home Video

 At the time of its cancellation in 2002, David E. Kelley's Ally McBeal (1997-2002) was one of the most widely revered and heavily criticized television dramedies in television history. Influenced by the musical styling of Vonda Shepard (then, a virtual unknown), the series was an eclectic and humorous blend of politics, social commentary, screwball sit-com brilliance, and deft drama of the heart-tugging garden variety, elevated by Kelley’s authorship and, to sheer perfection by star, Calista Flockhart’s joyously off-center performance, willed by the neuroses of Kelley’s over-thinking heroine. Kelley’s mobile of socially retarded misfits, thrust into the mélange of a Boston legal firm served as the focal point of this runaway television franchise, its eclectically flawed legal beagles taking on decidedly unique and bizarre cases in which they rose to the occasion of polygamists, pornographers, randy politicians and, in one of the most heartrending episodes, a terminally ill child, determined to sue God via the Catholic Church for his cancer diagnosis. There was also a memorable Christmas episode in which Ally’s attempts to assimilate a brilliant and outgoing transgender prostitute resulted in her shocking murder.  As for the law firm’s co-founder, Richard Fish (Greg Germann), it ought to be noted his was a rather shallow life’s pursuit to offset the more serious underpinnings of the show, teetering between the accumulation of vast amounts of money and, a fairly bizarre sexual obsession with women's wattles. I know – just run with it! 

Feminists decried the series for its flighty protagonist, an absurd throwback to the indecisive female of sitcoms of yore, claiming Ally – in her oft desperate pursuit of love over career – was an anathema to the women’s movement and working women everywhere. This snap analysis however, did not stop audiences from taking to heart Ally’s idiosyncratic search for Mr. Right, her devout ambition chronically derailed in the first 3 seasons by Ally’s inability to get over an ex, fellow attorney at law, Billy Allen Thomas (Gil Bellows). Each week, fans tuned in to see the waifish and short-skirt-wearing Ms. McBeal balance her unsteady emotional psyche, complete with a computer-generated apparition of a dancing baby (ooga-chucka, ooga-chucka), symbolic of Ally’s ticking biological clock, against her ever-increasing load of curious and controversial cases. Ally tackled her life and the law with equal failings to see the proverbial forest for its trees - thereby giving the series its humorous emotional center. Kelley’s initial premise for this franchise stemmed from Ally's struggle to rid herself of a painful break-up with college sweetheart, Billy, who unfortunately works at Cage, Fish and Associates, and, thereby was in constant proximity to her - creating sexually-charged friction. Clearly, these two still had feelings for one another. All the worse as Billy's wife, Georgia (Courtney Thorne-Smith), who came to this party too late, had also joined the firm after losing her place as a litigator at a rival office. Georgia’s angst at reconciling her husband’s lingering affections for Ally served as the show’s most fascinating, farcical and failed ménage à trois. Recognizing her friend’s faults, Ally's roommate, assistant DA, Renee Raddick (Lisa Nicole Carson) was constantly pricking the festering boils of Ally's insecurities to illustrate their insignificance, occasionally to incur Ally's wrath and frustrations along the way. As a counterbalance, the law office’s partner, John Cage (Peter McNichol) came with his own emotional hang-ups, baggage and crippling diffidence. At times, his flaws seemed to overshadow Ally's, making her appear quite normal by direct comparison. Also, in the cast - ex-Broadway star, Jane Krakowski as the firm's obsessively meddling and, oversexed secretary, Elaine Vassal, and, Dianne Cannon as Richard's much older love interest and voice of reason: the judge - 'Whipper'.

Season One of Ally McBeal ultimately pivots more on Ally's social life than her caseload. However, as the series progressed, Ally McBeal very much evolved into a much more integrated ensemble piece, with Kelley and his small army of writers, of which Roberto Benabib and Constance M. Burge deserve special mention, effectively growing the series beyond Ms. McBeal’s quirks and quagmires in Season Two, ably abetted by the addition of Lucy Liu as the caustic and outspoken, Ling Woo - a client who becomes a partner at the firm and develops a genuine distaste for the inner office badinage of this inbred, if dynamically weird gathering. Also new in Season Two, Portia di Rossi’s Nell Porter - the sometime object of John Cage's conflicted affections. Reflecting on Ally McBeal today, one can see its perceptive blend of sex-charged comedy and drama as a precursor to HBO's Sex and the City; producer/writer, David E. Kelley’s light touch and memorable score (made up mostly of updated standards sung by Vonda Shepard in a bar located at the base of Richard's law firm) providing the perfect bookends to Kelley’s veritable potpourri of engaging back stories, with each character’s modus operandi fleshed out to the nth degree. Ally's peculiar projections, of her own state of mind and perceptions of others private thoughts, proved charmingly obtuse. As example, when Billy confesses to Ally, he has married Georgia since their breakup, a sudden flourish of imaginary projectile arrows pierce Ally through the heart. Likewise, when Elaine begins to natter on about her self-importance, Ally perceives Elaine's head inflating like a balloon, primed on her own ego until it pops.

But perhaps the most memorable of Ally’s surreal and imaginary gags was 'the dancing baby' - a disco-churning and diaper-clad cherub stepping out to 'Hooked on A Feeling'. Symbolic of Ally's sexual frustrations, the dancing baby made frequent appearances during the first two years, thereby flustering Ally into several languid and lethal love affairs along the way. When Kelley - who also produced and wrote all of the episodes in Seasons 1, 2 and 3 - creatively moved on to develop The Practice (1997-2004), a crossover of plots and characters was inevitable. Alas, so too, a drop in the series overall writing brilliance. In Season 4, Kelley and Gil Bellows mutually elected to kill off Billy, thereby leaving Ally McBeal without its sexually-charged, if forever platonic ménage-a-trois. Shortly thereafter Robert Downey Jr. joined the cast as Ally's new love interest, Larry Paul. Regrettably, Downey's private demons prevented his continuation on the show and unfortunately, various attempts thereafter to resurrect its unique balance of oddballs, spontaneously driven by their booby-hatched romantic chemistry, botched the tenuously light balance of comedy and drama. Audiences departed. The ratings dipped and Ally McBeal was canceled.

As I continue to recover from a rather devasting illness, I have been revisiting movies and TV series in my vast collection, currently totaling over 9000 titles. Some of these have sat on my shelves collecting dust for far too long, in some cases – years. So, I am very pleased to write that Ally McBeal – a seminal dramedy from the 1990’s, has weathered changing times and tastes quite well during this interim. We all have our favorite memories from TV-land. Alas, far too many do not live up to our golden reflection caught in the mind’s eye. Ally McBeal, mostly, does. While the early episodes in Season 1 represent a far more innocent outlook on a single woman’s quest for love, by mid-season, Ally and her cohorts have hit an impressive stride to engage us in all sorts of unexpected ways. David Kelley’s deft handling of character development and his inveigling of Cage, Fish and Associates into a series of seemingly ridiculous, though nevertheless, memorable and affecting cases that challenge our moral decency and common sense, yields a rich and impressively concise storytelling. Good writing will always be good writing. And Kelley here, has penned one of the irrefutable television masterpieces of the latter half of the 20^th century. That it all began to unravel after Season 3, as Kelley moved on to concentrate his efforts on The Practice, is a genuine pity. The writers who filled his void thereafter, although coached by the master, never quite rose to his level of rare and raucous quality. And the show and its eponymous heroine were never quite the same after the tragic exit of Billy Thomas.  

In a thoroughly misguided attempt to rebrand the franchise as a sitcom, in 1999, while it was still at the height of its popularity, Fox began to truncate original episodes into a half-hour sitcom format, re-christened Ally – shoring each episode of its courtroom antics and concentrating exclusively on the life and times of Ally McBeal. It was a disaster, pulled from syndication after a mere 10 episodes.  Infinitely better marketing afforded Vonda Shepard the opportunity to become a major contributor on the music scene. Apart from her iconic main title for the show, ‘Searchin’ My Soul’, Shepard put a contemporary spin on classic pop tunes, serving as musical bridges in each character’s story-telling arc. Some of these were gathered together for the 1998 CD release, Songs from Ally McBeal, followed by Heart and Soul: New Songs from Ally McBeal in 1999, then two more compilation albums released in 2000 and 2001 respectively. There was also, A Very Ally Christmas, with Shepard’s version of The Man with the Bag popularized during the holiday season. As well, the series was also instrumental at reinvigorating pop songs sung by Barry White, Al Green, Gladys Knight, Tina Turner, Macy Gray, Gloria Gaynor, Chayanne, Barry Manilow, Anastacia, Elton John, Sting and Mariah Carey. Josh Groban, appearing as Malcolm Wyatt for the 2001 season finale, performed ‘You're Still You’.

Due to music licensing issues, Ally McBeal remained absent from DVD until 2009 when Fox Home Video performed a minor miracle, clearing virtually all of the rights to produce a comprehensive Ally McBeal: The Complete Series - a handsomely bound 32-disc collection to includes all five seasons of this multi-Emmy Award-winning television drama/comedy, and, with virtually every last note of its pop-infused soundtrack intact.  ASCAP, the custodians of singer/songwriter ‘rights’ have also become the bane of home video, their exorbitant fees resulting in many companies choosing instead to release their movies and television programming to home video shorn of virtually any and all of the musical references that once made them the hottest programming on the tube. So, shows like Baywatch and The Odd Couple – to name but two from diverging vintages, have had their soundtracks altered or, in some cases, episodes drastically cut to excise any musical performances and/or montages. Worse, some home video releases have actually tried to replace original content with Musak that does not fit in with the visuals, thereby destroying the emotional arc that once was so carefully aligned with the original songs. Mercifully, Ally McBeal has escaped this artistic bludgeoning.

Image quality here is generally consistent. That said, it’s not altogether solid. There is a lot of aliasing in these DVD transfers, and, more than a hint of edge enhancement. The image toggles between relative sharpness and slightly out of focus, with contrast that is quite anemic and occasional color smearing. A word about the color; Ally McBeal always favored a warm palette thanks to cinematographers, Billy Dickson (who shot a whopping 104 episodes, Tim Suhrstedt (a mere 5 episodes), David A. Harp (3 episodes) and Thomas F. Denove (2 episodes). Alas, on DVD – ‘warm’ translates to flesh tone appearing overly orange and backgrounds mostly comprised of browns, reds, soft burnt oranges and yellows. It’s the subtly here that’s been lost. This would highly benefit from a new-to-Blu 1080p upgrade. As Fox Home Video is now pretty much defunct and under the thumb of Disney Inc., the likelihood Ally McBeal will ever arrive in hi-def is abysmally dim. But seriously, there is no excuse for a show from this more recent vintage to look this lackluster on home video.  Season 1 is presented ‘full frame’ as originally aired with subsequent seasons arriving in 1.85:1 widescreen. I suppose we should give Fox kudos for resisting the more popularized urge to re-format these early episodes to conform to the widescreen TV framing as was done with the Warner Home Video Blu-ray release of Friends. The audio on Ally McBeal is 5.1 Dolby Digital and remarkably aggressive, especially during Vonda Shepard's vocal arrangements. Extras include 'Bygone Days'; a retrospective reuniting most of the principal cast to talk about their involvement on the show. There is also the Fox produced TV special, The Life and Times of Ally McBeal narrated by Bill Maher, as well as featurettes for seasons 2, 3 and 5 - plus a tribute entitled 'Goodbye, Ally'. Fox has also graciously included the crossover 'Axe Murderer' episode from season 2 of The Practice in which Ally's character appeared. If anything, this episode looks even worse than the rest of Ally McBeal – with heavy edge effects and a generally gritty image. Last but not least: Vonda Shepard's music video 'I Know Better'. Bottom line: for fans of Ally McBeal this box set, while comprehensive, is generally lacking in high-quality mastering. Personally, I continue to adore this show. I am not altogether passionate about how it has found its way to DVD! A Blu-ray – pretty please.

FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)

Season One: 4.5

Season Two: 5

Season Three: 4.5

Season Four: 3.5

Season Five: 2.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

Overall – 3

EXTRAS

4