Chicken Out of Hell
An Andrew Hamlin Joint

Ally McBeal Rules!
I have no TV. (Officially.) I take pride in my squeezing inside that teeniest of demographics for white North Americans of middle-class upbringing: no automobile, no TV, and no copy of Jagged Little Pill--though I'd be likeliest to purchase the latter, and not just from relative pricing. A car presupposes an ability to operate it, and while I'm capable of operating a car under careful supervision, I won't presume to streetworthiness. A TV presupposes very little in a society where even the carless and Pill-less own one, but represents an amalgamation of currency I consciously disperse instead over cheeseburgers, pizza slices, Diet Cokes, 50-cent paperbacks, and 99-cent vinyl wonders like the cherry copy of Working Class Dog I dragged home just yesterday to park alongside Spirit of Eden by Talk Talk, Contents Dislodged During Shipment by Tin Huey, and my current favorite, what may be the only surviving copy of Niagra Falls by Greg Hawkes. Jagged Little Pill represents five to eight of those 99-centers, a price I might be more willing to pay were its songs not still, going on three years after its release, ubiquitous over the airwaves.

I add (Officially), though, since we have got a TV in the living room downstairs from where I sit typing this, and I say "we" because after two and a half years in this house hearing slammed doors and muffled shouts and calling 911 once and watching cops shuffle around downstairs twice, I pleasurably relay that a that for the first time people talk in the hallways, gather in the kitchen, use the living room with the third-hand TV as the communal campfire Spielberg suggested that space constitutes in his credits for Amazing Stories, share toilet paper, find midnight and midday paths into each other's arms and presumably, beds, all the above building to, just last weekend, our first-ever house kegger, keg courtesy the slim quiet fellow at the bottom of the stairs who worked in Antarctica or knew someone who did, and his three brothers, and his huge friend Bubba.

And so after getting back rather late from three hours with intermission of Constance Cogdon's Casanova I find the keg by the front door, speakers transplanted to the living room turned to a volume moderately tortuous, and it was that stage in the drinking where no CD stays in the player long, not even James Brown, who lasted three cuts I think before the interline shouting started at the start of fourth and feet thumped into Scott's room and fingers punched the "open" button and that was okay, since the closer I get to thirty the more I taste the vinegar of shaking my ass in front of people I don't know over the oil of having the audacity to shake my ass in front of with I don't know.

Then I'm relaxing on Scott's bed where lots of people have landed anyway (the room, not the bed), on comes that World Party song where Kurt Wallinger breathes, "Is it like today...ahh...ahh-ah," and how apropos to be tipsy for the first time in weeks surrounded in softness, hearing the music but insulated from it by a wall, watching Scott's complicated multidisc player at the other end of the room by the door quietly signifying Disc 1, track 1, time ticking up calmly. I'm flipping through a Dali book and somebody asks what is scary music, or possibly, what is intense music, I don't recall exactly, and I look up to say "Scary music, listen man, I'll play you Scott Walker's Tilt," what's that, somebody wants to know, is that techno? Electronica? NIN...?

"It's, ah...it's as if the Phantom of the Opera were a real guy," which is the only way I've ever learned to encapsulate that record. "Bring it down here," someone says, but I only have to think one second before I laugh and shake my head. I've tried bringing records to parties my whole life, and let's just say that these days I'm satisfied to bring them to my own parties. "Aw, c'mon," the somebody adds, but I think of the first song on that record, a shudder-inducing, barely audible clink of chimes, then a stately, geometrical procession of string figures, and how I put it in a player for the first time late afternoon of Labor Day 1995 and stood by the picture window of the Queen Anne mansion I found myself in and watched an electrical storm ravage Seattle Center.

Then I just shake my head again. Then somebody jokes about Curtis being afraid of the voodoo-juju, and I've seen the movie that's from and he's read the short story but between us we manage the whole bit about James Brown buying a sex change for Joe Tex so they can be married, and his surprise is great, can't say mine is quite so great, but we both double over.

So I like my housemates, hope to know and like them even more, better, but I haven't yet let them in on my Ally McBeal Mondays. This is part selfishness (we have no cable connection, without which it's extremely difficult getting a decent picture on Channel 13) and part sensitivity; my only experiment in showing Ally to a group of friends (not my housemates) sparked such erudition as "That co-ed bathroom has `Plot Gimmick' written all over it," or "Why am I thinking Seinfeld does this all so much better?"

Personally I don't know if I can watch Seinfeld anymore after Danny Hoch's story in the latest (March 1998) issue of Harper's; I'm ashamed that Michael Richards, the most famous and probably second-richest graduate of my college, was party to the affair. But it wasn't a reception making me more likely to share my Ally fixation with others. And that's a shame, because for the first time I recall (except maybe for The Muppet Show), I've followed and stayed with a show from its very first, starting with that USA Today article the day of the pilot, the article that lead with Billy and Ally indulging prepubescent sexuality by sniffing each other's bottoms. Fully clothed, mind you. They got the idea from direct observation (neighborhood dogs).

Since that night I've braved rain, high winds, late buses, late-running yoga classes, conversations my dyspeptic conscience tells me I should have joined, and peer ridicule ("Fuck Ally! Buffy would kick Ally's ass!", in addition to which see above) to feed my need. Fortunately I need not become a burglar for my crisp picture. Mom has one big-ass Toshiba. And food in the fridge. And a line of commentary on what's being shown the brusque charm of which should earn her the helm of "Sylvia" should Nicole Hollander retire. But of that anon, more.

For the non-anointed, a few pointers. Ally (Calista Flockhart) and Billy (Gil Bellows) grow up together in Boston; bottom-sniffing blossoms into love in the time of puka shells and antique skirts on Harvard Yard. They're both law school; he transfers West, finally, and she tearfully stays East. She graduates. She loses her first job over an obsessive-compulsive bun-squeezer, gets gets hired the same day (this is television, and to this extent your wearily assumed norms hold true) through a chance encounter Ally starts tossing stuff into her new desk when in walks Billy, shorter-haired and sleek in a new suit.

"Ohmigod! Billy, you work here too?"

"Yep."

"Are you...seeing anyone?" (Cut to Ally and Billy cavorting naked in an Olympic pool-sized cappuccino.)

"Actually...I'm married."

Beat. "Oh." (A quiver's worth of arrows slice the air and puncture Ally's chest.)

Enter Billy's wife, Georgia, (Courtney Thorne-Smith ), a gorgeous blonde who'll be jibed at as a Barbie doll more than once in the weeks to follow, and my personal favorite of Ally's five main females, which is surely God's revenge (God is a black woman, remember) on me for all those years blithely proclaiming nonmainstream desires in concordance with the dictates of my college. Georgia's a lawyer too. Within a few episodes, she'll work in the same office. Georgia and Ally become friends. They become more than friends, but not in that way, no--Ally joins Billy and Georgia's lives in the emotional aspect, the interpersonal aspect, in every aspect except the one Ally used to enjoy.

Thus our three young professionals become caught in a trap. Ancillary points along the triangle: Richard Fish (Greg Germann), younger firm co-founder, slyly amoral, transfixed by the wattles of older women,; John "The Biscuit" Cage (Peter MacNicol), older firm co-founder, a locomotive in the courtroom, a lonely planet boy outside of it, with his electronic remote toilet flusher, frequently whistling nose, and fondness for meditation through indoor bagpiping. Renee (Lisa Nicole Carson) Ally's roommate, a prosecutor, saucy, likes to butt-kick into action. Elaine (Jane Krakowsi ), firm secretary, least human character of the cast, an also-blonde repository for salty punchlines and succinct catchphrases ("snappish" and "bygones"). Justice Whipper Cone (Dyan Cannon), Richard's great love. The Singer (Vonda Shepard), singer, overseer of the Restaurant/Bar Downstairs Where Everybody Goes To Unwind.

Finally, the Firm's Avant-Garde Co-Ed Bathroom, forcing ground for interpersonal fault lines (okay he was right, it was a plot gimmick) and site of frequent Phantom Flushes, courtesy the Biscuit's gizmo.

Last week's episode showed Ally skating away on the thin ice of a nervous breakdown, exhausted from Renee-approved aerobic kickboxing workouts, defending a squirtilicious young black doctor who saved a woman's life by temporarily giving her transplanting a pig's liver. Sometimes Ally's tongue unspools two feet and almost licks the doctor's ear when his head's turned. Sometimes the office fills with seawater, blue wash, and Ally, puffed like a blowfish, swims for the sanctity of her office. (I know the show isn't the first one to depict the interior feelings of a character literally, but since the only other one I ever watched was Herman's Head, this one can't help but look good by comparison). And of course, the Famous Dancing Baby drops in on her private world as he does so often. This week he's playing RollerBlade Hockey.

One gizmo lies beyond the ken of series creator David E. Kelly: my mother, who arrived a generation early for The Rocky Horror Picture Show but contents herself with planting one nightdressed arm on my stuffed recliner and letting fly with, usually, some variation on "Andy, she is so...dippy," protean pause before and then heavy on the d.

Ally, after flinging her ankle-strap wedgie across the office into the Biscuit's face, Counselor Cage persuades her to see his own therapist. She's played by Tracey Ullman (once a bigger star herself on Fox back when the Simpsons were two-minute franks sizzling in her heliopause).

She makes Cage grin whenever he feels depressed or threatened, which is all the time, which makes gives Cage the existentially nauseating appearance of Conrad Veidt in The Man Who Laughs, and she commands Ally to find a theme song for herself. "Mine's `Tracy'," she says, "y'know, like my name. `Tracy' by the Cufflinks." She pushes a remote control--the spiritual suggestion for Cage's flusher?--and "Tracy" ejects itself through the speakers; Ally puts her hands over her ears.

"I just want to grab her by the ear!" interjects Mom.

"Who?"

"The therapist! Just grab a metronome and shove it up her nose!"

Later Tracy advises Ally to get in the ring with Georgia for a sparring kickboxing match, after Ally mentions that that's become a possibility, and everyone allows that to happen in the passive, half-communicative "uh...okay" patina that usually signals the beginning of tragic craziness in the 20/20 hindsight of the post mortem (I'm peculiarly attuned to this from reading about the Buddy Holly plane crash). The women don headgear, circle each other, and I could have told you what's coming even if I hadn't watched the same thing happen in real life in the parking lot of a company specializing in electronic gadgets for would-be detectives: adrenaline pushes the envelope open and the message you've kept in there slides out. My mother pounds the wingback, squeaking in her register normally reserved for speaking to the neighborhood cats, "GO ALLY GO, GET HER, GET HER!" Georgia suckerpunches Ally, who teeters as the "Blue Danube" fills the air; Ally collapses onto the mat, followed by Georgia. Billy jumps in the ring--a mistake, since he doesn't know who to help. I'm thinking, "Mom sure doesn't think Ally's a dip now..."

I'm also thinking "Hey, simultaneous homages to 2001 and Rocky II."

And that's still something I'm just not sure I can share with someone who isn't family.

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