(Side note: My old favorite Zeljko Ivanek is in the episode! He seems to play a lot of magistrate types.)įinally, the show does an excellent job creating three-dimensional female characters. I really love that the show is willing to embrace all aspects of femininity – even if you’re a feminist lawyer, it’s still okay to be emotional and impulsive. Billy joins in, saying that Ally isn’t afraid to be emotional and human, and there’s nothing wrong with that. She sees that they’re going after Ally because for a woman to be emotional means that she’s fragile, that a “pretty little thing” like her can’t handle the pressures of being a lawyer. No one understands why the bar is making a big deal out of it until Whipper (hot, older-lady judge) calls them out on the double standard.
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The episode that really made me like the show is Episode 5, “One Hundred Tears Away.” Ally has been reported to the bar for being “too emotional” and “possibly unstable” after losing her temper a couple of times. When he delivers it in a thought-out, convincing manner, another show would have let it go and allowed him to be vindicated, but Ally takes him on and doesn’t let him get away with his BS. She even confronts one of the firm’s partners for his “prostitution is more fair to women than hitting on them in bars” speech. In an early episode, Billy says it’s okay for men to cheat but not for women, since, for women, sex is “more mental.” I was immediately outraged by this statement and, luckily, Ally was right there with me! She is not afraid to call out the (often unintentional) chauvinism of the men around her. What’s most exciting to me about the show is its willingness to address gender issues and double standards head-on, and it’s not afraid to have Ally get overtly feminist. Most of their cases involve prostitution, marriage, sexual harassment, etc. The show spends most of its time dealing with gender issues in a legal manner. When she joins the new firm, she discovers that her high school sweetheart works there and wackiness ensues. Ally McBeal follows a young female lawyer, played by Calista Flockhart (aka the woman who would marry Harrison Ford!), who goes to work at a new firm after leaving her last firm due to sexual harassment. At this point, however, 7 episodes into Season 1, I am very pleased to see that show is genuinely trying to explore ideas of feminism and female empowerment within a workplace context.īecause the show began in 1997, the first season at least is firmly situated in 90’s Third Wave Feminism, the phase of the movement that embraced femininity and was all about female empowerment and the career woman. I had heard it was a kind of “feminist romantic comedy,” so I expected it to pay lip service to feminism while essentially undermining its ideals in the course of the show’s romantic endeavors.
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So far, I’ve been very pleasantly surprised by this show. Brief little think piece as I make my way through the first season of Ally McBeal: