Ally McBeal follows in the television tradition of workplace series, such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, in which the workplace ensemble forms a tight-knit family relationship encompassing both work and the personal, social aspects of characters’ lives. Set in the Boston law firm of Cage/Fish and Associates, the series explores relationships among the various lawyers, often as they relate to specific gender issues raised in court cases. Individual episodes focus mainly on professional activities, often beginning with conference meetings, then following with the cases in which the firm members serve as counsel. As well, however, almost every episode offers intricate plots based on personal romantic relationships. At the conclusion of many episodes, the ensemble retires for drinks and dancing in the bar located in the same building as the office. The bar is the venue for the series’ signature incorporation of music. Regular cast member/musician Vonda Shepard often performs, sometimes with one of the cast members or a guest star (Elton John, Sting), offering a number that frequently provides a thematic commentary on events in the episode. The series began when Ally’s law school acquaintance, Richard Fish, invited her to join Cage/Fish following her sexual harassment by a partner at her current firm. An intelligent, competent lawyer, Ally is given to fits of whimsy and struggles throughout the series to establish boundaries between the “real world” and the fantasy worlds she constructs. Accepting the offer, she finds herself in the midst of a somewhat odd assortment of colleagues.

Richard is defined by his pursuit of financial success without adherence to a politically correct moral code. Frequently characterized as boyish and immature, his superficiality is at times over the top, given to explicitly politically incorrect, sexist, and homophobic comments. But his perspective is presented in an unthreatening manner, neutralized by the overall tone of the series. John Cage (the name itself is telling) is the most eccentric character, often described by others as a “funny little man.” Despite the fact that he stutters and that his nose whistles at inopportune moments, he is the master of a range of gadgets and often appears the most competent of the lawyers. In many ways he functions as the moral center of the show.

The series fluctuates considerably season to season, as the narrative emphases shift and the cast changes. The initial cast (present in most of the first three seasons) includes Ally’s childhood sweetheart Billy Thomas, whom she dated from adolescence through her first year of law school, Billy’s wife and fellow lawyer, Georgia, and secretary Elaine Vassal. Billy begins the series as a “sensitive” male, a proponent of gender equity. He undergoes a transformation in the third season and becomes a rather virulent male chauvinist. The character then dies suddenly at the end of the season due to complications from a brain tumor that may have contributed to his erratic behavior. Georgia has joined Fish/Cage after experiencing sex-based discrimination at another firm and exhibits none of the eccentricity defining many of the other characters. Rather, she is characterized primarily by her struggle to keep her marriage together while recognizing Billy’s continuing infatuation with Ally. Elaine, the ever-present office busybody, is perhaps the most comical of characters, given to public presentation of her outrageous inventions, such as the face bra. Her hyper-sexualized demeanor is an effort to be included among the lawyers, but over the course of the series she reveals elements of her past explaining some of her eccentricities and more overt sexual behaviors.

The first season cast also included Ally’s roommate, Renee, a deputy district attorney, and Judge Jennifer “Whipper” Cone, Richard Fish’s girlfriend in the first two seasons. In the second season, the series added attorney Nelle Porter, whose stunningly attractive appearance masked a cutthroat legal style. When she developed a relationship with the shy and retiring John Cage, their interaction revealed unexpected complexities in both characters. Nelle also introduced her excessively litigious client, Ling Woo, who eventually joined the firm and dated Richard. Ling’s character was frequently used to examine fundamental ambiguities in matters related to gender definitions and topics.

Billy, Georgia, Whipper, and Renee exited by the series’ fourth year, and a budding romance between Ally and new character Larry Paul (Robert Downey Jr.) dominated the season. The series broke from a number of its conventions, going so far as to present many episodes that completely excluded any courtroom scenes. Attention focused instead on the complicated romantic relationships between Ally and Larry, John Cage and an autistic woman, Melanie West, and a romantic triangle among Ling, Richard, and another new character, Jackson Duper. The fifth season again offered more radical variation with the departure of Larry Paul (an arrest on drug charges threatened Downey’s availability), Jackson, and Ling. John Cage became a part-time cast member. Several young lawyers were introduced into the firm. The series again emphasized episodic court cases. Ally displayed considerable new maturity as a mentor to youthful doppelganger Jenny. She was promoted to firm partner in John’s absence, purchased a house, and became the mother of a 10-year-old girl conceived from an egg Ally had donated during law school.

As this description indicates, Ally McBeal is primarily a character-driven series, incorporating some serial features along with the “case-driven” episodic style of most courtroom dramas. Clearly, however, the eccentric nature of many of the characters and their constant, substantive redevelopment contributes to the series’ hazy interplay of the serious and the absurd. This, in turn, fueled much of the show’s debate and consideration of cultural issues. Narratives often slip unpredictably from realistic melodrama to comedy and fantasy sequences, making varied interpretations freely possible. Indeed, the slippage included the possibility that the dramatic and comedic depictions of characters are parodic, critical of the very topics they explore. These topics ranged over charged social and cultural matters such as sexual behavior, sexual harassment, gender definition, professional ethics, and racialized social structures. Public discussion of these topics was sometimes stimulated by episodes of the television series, and general commentary often made reference to Ally McBeal. But the series also dealt with love, truth, honesty, commitment, and honor, common elements of television produced and written by Kelley. Yet despite the titular focus on Ally, the series, particularly in early seasons, lacked a dependable central character through which the audience could gauge message and ideology. Ally McBeal did maintain what creator Kelley termed a “fundamental idealism” personified in Ally and John throughout its variations, as well as a “belief in love and human spirit,” and concluded with Ally leaving the firm to move to New York in response to the needs of her daughter.