Living in Asia affords you with certain luxuries not found elsewhere in the world. One of these is the random stuff that shows up on television during the day or late at night. But even knowing this, I was still shocked to find an Ally McBeal rerun being broadcast one morning while working from home.
And let me tell you something. It was awful to watch. If you’re not familiar with Ally McBeal, it is a TV show about this flighty lawyer who seems wildly unqualified to practice law and can’t find love because she is super annoying. Lucy Liu is the show’s most notable cast member.
Ally McBeal made waves for having a dancing CGI baby which was a huge thing at the time. I was in junior high school when this happened and even we were talking about it. It was really a simpler time if we thought this was mind blowing.
Speaking of blowing, that word aptly describes Ally McBeal. After I watched the first episode, I decided I needed to view a few more just to see if the show really was that bad. Oh man, what a mistake that was. But before we get into all that, there is something that needs to be addressed.
Why was America so obsessed with the comedy/drama hybrid in the late 1990s and early 2000s? It did nothing but produce a bunch of shows like Sports Night that weren’t funny enough to be entertaining and weren’t serious enough to capture your attention. Also, if you are one of those people who still talk about how Sports Night shouldn’t have been cancelled, please stop. It’s been 20 years, let it go already.
Who is Ally McBeal for?
There are some things in life that I do not understand because I’m a man. I will not get tampon commercials or The Notebook because they are not supposed to appeal to men. But I get Ally McBeal because it’s not written for women. It’s been made for a very specific group of people.
- People who’ve never worked in an actual office and fetishize about it
- Anyone who wants a job where they can focus on personal drama and not work
- Women who think the reason they don’t have a boyfriend is because men don’t “get them”
- Men with a Captain Save-a-Hoe complex
- Law show fanboys
- People who insist that not funny things are actually funny because they are smarter than you
If you aren’t one of these six types of people, you will not enjoy Ally McBeal.
Ally McBeal vs. Sex and the City
One year after Ally McBeal debuted on Fox, HBO countered with Sex and the City. It’s crazy to think of these two shows as contemporaries because Sex and the City still seems relevant and Ally McBeal is woefully dated. And it has nothing to do with the former having two movies released since going off air.
The thing about Sex and the City is that it was entertaining. I’m no Sex and the City fan, but I’ve been forced to watch episodes and it’s tolerable. I can still admit it’s an okay show objectively even if the content isn’t for me.
Ally McBeal is objectively bad. However, it took me watching a few episodes to understand what made the show so terrible. The characters take easily solvable problems and turn them into unnecessarily massive ordeals. This is fine in comedies, but Ally McBeal isn’t a comedy.
There are no funny moments. Nothing entertaining happens. It’s all very annoying. You just want these alleged adults to grow up and stop acting so stupid. Hell, Carson Daly ran TRL more professionally than Cage & Fish operated the law firm in Ally McBeal.
At the end of the day, no one should ever watch Ally McBeal. Leave it back in the late 1990s with your Old Navy tech vest.
