TV's romance with 'Ally McBeal' ending
By Lynn Elber
Associated Press
Unlucky-in-love Ally McBeal has botched the last and most important relationship of her life: the one with television viewers.
Enough already, the audience seemed to chorus as ratings for Fox's 5-year-old series slipped despite newcomers including Jon Bon Jovi and Christina Ricci.
Enough neuroses, said one former fan, Suzanne Smith: "Ally wasn't just quirky anymore. She was unpleasant."
Once hot, now cold, "Ally McBeal" airs its final episode at 8 p.m. today. But the show — which had the power to provoke a Time magazine cover story asking "Is Feminism Dead?" — remains influential despite its decline.
It's the style, however, and not the substance of "Ally McBeal" that resonates. Witty fantasy sequences, an ear for music and innovative cinematography are part of the legacy of creator David E. Kelley's Emmy-winning series.
When it comes to the depiction of contemporary women — which made "Ally McBeal" the watercooler darling, or villain, of its heyday — the medium already has moved on.
Played by Calista Flockhart, Ally was a 30-ish Boston lawyer obsessed more with mating than her professional accomplishments. In 1998, Time called her a symbol of feminism turned vapid and part of "a popular culture insistent on offering images of grown, single women as frazzled, self-absorbed girls."
Don't look for her TV progeny, said Bonnie J. Dow, author of "Prime-Time Feminism: Television, Media Culture, and the Women's Movement Since 1970" (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996).
"We have more shows built around powerful female lead characters than we've had in years. ... We have competent women who are not as emotionally (flawed) as Ally is," said Dow, a University of Georgia associate professor in speech communication.
