The part everyone remembers about Ally McBeal is the Dancing Baby. When lawyer Ally (Calista Flockhart) senses the ticking of her biological clock, a computer-generated baby materializes in her apartment and boogies. Creator David E. Kelley saw the Dancing Baby on the Internet and figured it would be just right for his hour-long show: a drama at heart, but populated with eccentric characters who say serious things in a funny way while their inner thoughts are conveyed in surreal form. Ally, a live wire wrapped in a miniskirt and sensitive to a fault, may flee a room at Road Runner speed with a telltale "beep beep," or literally bite someone's head off.
The series starts as she storms out of a Boston law firm and is hired as a partner at Cage/Fish & Associates by her old friend Richard Fish (Greg Germann). She discovers that another partner is Billy Thomas (Gil Bellows), the childhood sweetheart whom she still madly loves, but who is marrying another lawyer (Courtney Thorne-Smith). Cue images of Ally and Billy making love in a large mug of cappuccino, and of a volley of arrows thudding into her heart. When characters are struck by beauty, their tongues tumble to the floor like the wolf's in those old Tex Avery cartoons. By the way, here's a trivia question: What is the link between Flockhart and Kelley and the 2000 movie What Lies Beneath? (Answer at the end.) Kelley had created other legal shows ( L.A. Law, The Practice ) and would go on to create Boston Legal , but he treated Ally McBeal (which ran for five seasons, from 1997 to 2002) as a special playground for his imagination. Richard Fish has an obsession with people's wattles. The firm's washroom is unisex. Characters engage in what they imagine to be secret discussions while those sitting in the cubicles pull their knees up so as not to be found eavesdropping. Everyone sleeps with everyone else, not least the secretary, Elaine (Jane Krakowski), who knows more about the social topography than anyone else on the floor. At the end of each show, the characters retire to a bar where they can abandon whatever inhibitions they haven't already shed. Singer Vonda Shepard is the regular entertainment, but Elton John might be playing the piano and Barry White might be crooning.
When the lawyers make it to court, they gravitate to cases involving sexual harassment, although the irrepressibly litigious Ling Woo (Lucy Liu) can pluck a lawsuit from thin air. A typical McBeal closing address: "For this man to say that he's addicted to love, addicted to sex, addicted to infidelity, lying and cheating - for this man to come in here, parading his penis like he should qualify for handicapped parking - how dare you …!"
Six episodes of Ally McBeal appeared on DVD a few years ago, but the show's prolific use of hit songs made it hard to obtain the necessary music clearances. Somebody must have shaken the right hands, because the complete series will be released as a 32-disc DVD set next Tuesday with music intact; the first season will also be separately available. And the answer to the trivia question is that What Lies Beneath starred Harrison Ford, who is engaged to Flockhart, and Michelle Pfeiffer, who is married to Kelley.