McBeal Year Two
Click to viewSomehow, David E. Kelley's writing really improves on Ally McBeal season two, which premiered in September 1998. Maybe it's the contrast with scripts produced under the influence of heavy fatigue at the end of the previous season. I'm still amazed he wrote every single episode while also working on The Practice.
The first three episodes of the second season bring in Portia di Rossi and Lucy Liu as new characters who become regulars. This is the role that made Liu a star. Her performance and character hold up. She seems like a twenty-four hour ball-buster but then she can suddenly be convincingly vulnerable. Hers and de Rossi's characters are pretty similar. I don't remember which of them Jane Krakowski's character suddenly makes a rather graphic joke about; "Maybe her gynaecologist pulled the wrong tooth." I'm not sure if this is the last show I expected a vagina dentata joke from but it's gotta be close.
The second episode features Wayne Newton of all people playing a Howard Stern clone called Harold Wick. Liu's character sues him for something he said on the radio and it all ends up somehow being a pretext for Ally to go on Harold's show so he can ask to see her naked and make comments about her short skirt. You know, her skirt was really short. I wonder if many lawyers actually wore skirts like that in the '90s.
It goes to show just how big Howard Stern used to be. Now, people criticise Kamala Harris for not going on Joe Rogan's show. No-one even mentions the fact that she went on Howard Stern's show. He's become a non-entity in the pop cultural landscape. It's hardly a surprise; he's walked away from everything that made him successful. He didn't ask Harris even one question about sex. Of course, she never would've done his show if he were the old Howard. I guess when he got to a certain age it felt better to be part of the establishment than to be a rabble rouser.
Ally McBeal is available on Hulu in the U.S. and on Disney+ elsewhere.