Looking and Looks

I'd forgotten how much Ally McBeal was about looks, at least in it's first season. It's like David E. Kelley felt he had to present a lawyer's argument about why he was making a show about a pretty lady. In episode six, "The Promise", Ally is forced to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to an obese lawyer, saving his life. A side effect is that he falls in love with her.

Ally's roommate, Rene, like many token black characters before and after her, is so far there just to be the show's moral centre. She chastises Ally for turning the guy down, insisting it was a decision based on looks (Ally never asks Rene if she'd date someone overweight). Ally has a good defense--she'd met the guy's fiancee, who thanked Ally for saving his life, just a few days before their wedding. Of course Ally doesn't want to date him. But under Rene's questioning, Ally clearly seems to realise this is only a convenient excuse.

This kind of topic was somewhat taboo in the early '90s, it's really taboo to-day, in which the current PC creed holds that everyone is equally beautiful, one of those party lines that feels like a willful denial of the reality in which Sydney Sweeney recently became a sensation.

The episode ends somewhat ambiguously. Of course Ally doesn't date him but we're left to wonder if, by choosing his obese fiancee, he's settling for the best he can get, giving up on his dreams of true romance. While I dislike the PC dread of acknowledging beauty, I think presenting the failure to attain romantic fulfillment as intrinsically tied to looks is not satisfying. There are plenty of unhappy couples of two attractive people. Maybe the real anachronism of the episode is that it betrays a belief in being able to find and pursue true love. The guy's attraction to Ally is based on the fact that she "kissed" him to save his life. That's sweet and poetic, but actually tells him very little about her personality, her hopes and aspirations. I think it's fair enough grounds to want to go out with someone, but not to conclude that this person is the love of one's life.

Ally McBeal presents an American culture with a much greater prevalence of economic stability than is experienced by the vast majority of Americans to-day. Many people are newly discovering the very old consideration for marriage, the economic one. A show like Ally McBeal is quite darling now.

I remember there was a lot of controversy outside the show, too. Calista Flockhart got a lot of flack for being too skinny so I guess it cuts both ways.