Ally McBeal’s Long Shadow Over the Me Too Movement
“Ally McBeal” set out to prove women weren’t better off in a white-collar world policed by Me Too-style feminism. Given the movement’s current backlash, did the show get it right?
Two years after the New York Times and the New Yorker uncovered decades of sexual assault allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, there has been a wave of criticism of Me Too, the anti-sexual harassment movement launched in the wake of the Weinstein scandal. As other high-profile figures like former Minnesota Sen. Al Franken became targets of activist backlash despite facing less egregious accusations than Weinstein, many now question if the Me Too movement has gone too far.
In a 2018 op-ed New York Times columnist Bari Weiss slammed the movement’s transformation “from female empowerment” to “an emblem for female helplessness” following a story published by Babe.net in which an anonymous woman claims actor Aziz Ansari assaulted her. Weiss was among several commentators who felt the story amounted to nothing more than a bad date.
Conservative columnist Andrew Sullivan also warned against Me Too’s “mob-like” activism in the wake of the Shitty Media Men scandal. In an essay bluntly titled “It’s Time to Resist the Excesses of Me Too,” Sullivan claims that a movement that began with “the righteous exposure of hideous abuse of power” by “meticulous, scrupulous journalists” has now “morphed into a more generalized revolution against the patriarchy.”
As indicated by the Sullivan piece, today’s criticisms of Me Too are rooted in long-standing objections to feminism’s excesses. As women have gained more rights and greater access to levers of power following the second wave feminist movements of the 60s and 70s, critics of Me Too claim today’s activists fail to account for women’s agency in the workplace and in their relationships with men.
In 1997, the legal comedy “Ally McBeal” made its own case against the excesses of feminism at time when feminist activism was increasingly focused on groups the second wave had left behind, namely poor women, LGBT women, and women of color. Rather than grapple with how to make feminism inclusive of more women however, “Ally McBeal” zeroed in on how deeply unfulfilling feminism had become for professional women who still sought love and children. And it often took shots at Me Too-style feminism to make its case.
To be sure, the women of Cage & Fish Law Firm, where Ally McBeal worked, weren’t making the case for more June Cleavers and fewer female lawyers in the world; but the loneliness of their professional lives spoke to women who were no longer certain of the progress made in Cleaver’s demise. In other words, the show explicitly challenged the idea of white collar work as a source of female empowerment. Love, not law, was the real change women wanted in their lives, and feminism had failed them.
In a 2017 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, “Ally McBeal” creator David E. Kelley scoffed at the idea of Ally McBeal as a feminist icon. “It was amusing when we saw Ally being looked to as a posterwoman for feminism because nobody at the show took themselves that seriously,” he said. “We never set out to make the character as one that would be emblematic or symbolic of womankind.”
Kelley may not have intended for “Ally McBeal” to become a political statement, but the television landscape in the 90s could not have been a better fit for the show’s use of self-effacing comedy to make social commentary. Sitcoms like “Roseanne” and “Murphy Brown” used a similar formula to talk about gender at home and in the workplace, and shows likely inspired by “Ally’s” success like “Sex and the City” proved there was a TV market for women’s frank discussions about sex and sexuality. In other words, “Ally McBeal” helped carve out a cultural space for feminism in the mainstream even if it was never intended to be pro- or anti-feminism.
The pilot episode, which debuted in September 1997, introduces Ally McBeal (Calista Flockhart) as an unlucky-in-love lawyer who is suddenly forced out of the firm where she works after being sexually harassed by one of the firm’s partners, Jack Billings (Richard Riehle). The first bit of humor comes from the sexual harassment incident itself — Ally is standing on a stool reading a book in a short skirt and Jack comes by and plants his hands firmly on Ally’s bottom. He then claims to have a medical condition that forces him to touch women’s bottoms, so he goes around the firm touching every woman’s bottom. Watching a clever legal defense against sexual harassment unfold, the firm’s partners decide they are better off being sued by Ally than by firing the man who harassed her and several other women at the firm.
Ally quits the firm for good, and on her way out runs into an old classmate from college, Richard Fish (Greg Germann), who offers her a job at his own law firm he started with John Cage (Peter MacNicol), the real legal mind behind the firm. Once she arrives, however, Richard introduces her to Billy Thomas (Gil Bellows), forgetting that the two had dated all throughout childhood and college until Billy broke up with her. Although flummoxed by the sight of Billy, Ally is convinced that she can stay at the firm and work alongside him — even when she learns Billy is married to another lawyer, Georgia (Courtney Thorne-Smith).
Ally’s new workplace is just as sexually charged as her old law firm; besides the infamous unisex bathroom, Richard routinely makes crude sexual jokes toward female staff, John develops a reputation for soliciting prostitutes, Billy and Georgia are caught having sex in the conference room, and Ally’s secretary gets a male stripper to perform in Ally’s office on her birthday. But all of the silly, sexual gestures made around the office are continually placated by the deep unspoken love between Ally and Billy.
In fact, love and loneliness are frequently deployed to defend the firm’s cavalier attitudes towards sex and to distract from the broader political significance of the cases the firm takes on that involve sexual assault, harassment, and discrimination.
Take for instance the third episode of the first season, “The Kiss,” in which Ally represents an anchor woman, Barbara (Kate Jackson), who is fired for not being sexy enough to host a TV news show. Barbara wins her lawsuit against the TV station, but the episode ends with Ally feeling more defeated than victorious, as she realizes that Barbara would have rather gotten her job back in a sexist workplace than to have become a hero to older working women fighting the patriarchy. Sitting in the conference room with Richard after the trial, Ally muses aloud about Barbara, “I see this tough woman — smart, unflinching, uncompromising, unhappy.” She pauses abruptly after realizing it sounds as though she is talking about herself — and perhaps her decision to sue her old law firm for sexual harassment.
In a later episode in the first season, “Happy Birthday, Baby” (episode 19), Ally and Georgia defend a man named Mark (Barry Miller) who is accused of assaulting a woman he was dating by breaking into her house and massaging her feet. For most of the episode, Mark is feared to be a sexual predator with a weird foot fetish and his date, Cheryl (Harriet Sansom Harris), is rightly traumatized by his actions. But when Mark testifies in court, it becomes clear that he loves Cheryl and sees the break-in as an act of romantic spontaneity, something Cheryl had claimed she wanted in a relationship. At that point, jurors are compelled to consider Mark’s humanity. Maybe, just maybe, he is a lonely man being victimized by society’s overbearing definitions of sexual consent. Ally’s closing pitch to the jury reiterates this point:
Nobody really applies themselves to their personal lives. We just sit back and assume that will take care of itself. Well sometimes it doesn’t. It wasn’t happening for Mr. Henderson. And instead of letting things take their course, he got assertive, too assertive no doubt… But sometimes the things you regret the most are the things you don’t do.
Mark’s interpretation of the break-in is affirmed when the jury declines to convict him and Cheryl agrees to go out with him again, despite still being shaken up by the incident. For a show whose characters were not meant to be taken seriously according to their creator, David E. Kelley, “Ally McBeal” insisted on rehabilitating the kinds of men the feminist movement had discarded.
Ally McBeal would also side-step the politics around sexual harassment and assault by scrutinizing the individual shortcomings of female accusers in whatever cases that came the firm’s way.
In the eight episode of season one, “Drawing the Lines,” Elaine Vassal (Jane Krakowski), Ally’s flirtatious secretary, threatens to sue the firm for sexual harassment if Richard does not make the attractive mail deliverer dress more appropriately for work. Given Elaine’s own sensual style of dress around the office, at first it seems as though Elaine is jealous of the woman and does not want to compete with anyone for male attention. But Elaine insists that the stares and sexual remarks made by male employees about the woman creates a hostile work environment for all the other women who work at the firm. When Richard ignores Elaine’s threat, Elaine hires her own lawyer and tries to get the other women in the office to go on strike. Ally confronts Elaine and tells her flatly that she feels sorry for her because it’s clear that Elaine is doing all of this for the attention — just as her own hypersexuality is a cry for attention.
Regardless of the real harm caused by the men’s objectification of the mail deliverer, Elaine’s insecurities are deemed more in need of a change than the men’s behavior around the office. Ally in this instance becomes the archetypal “cool girl” to Elaine, scolding a woman who chooses not to ‘go along to get along’ as she does at Cage & Fish.
Perhaps the show’s most explicit rejection of Me Too-style activism occurred in episode 20, “The Inmates.” Ally’s room mate and district attorney, Renee Raddick (Lisa Nicole Carson), is arrested for breaking the neck of a man who tried to have sex with her in the apartment she shares with Ally. Like Elaine, Renee is very comfortable with her sexuality and encourages Ally to embrace her own. While showing Ally how easy it is to pick up men, she baits a fellow attorney Michael Rivers (Isaiah Washington) into asking her out on a date. Renee invites Michael back to the apartment and teases him with the idea of having sex. Michael then begins to undress her, and she pushes him away, telling him to “slow down” and “keep things practical.”
Believing Renee is playing hard to get, Michael grabs her and tries to undress her again. This time Renee asks him to leave. Perturbed by Renee’s sudden seriousness, he tries to undress her again. This time Renee slaps him, and he slaps her back. Renee then punches him twice and kicks him, knocking him out. Renee later tells the police that Michael tried to pressure her into having sex with him, but leaves out her suggestive behavior just prior to him becoming aggressive with her. Michael is hospitalized with a broken neck and eventually Renee is arrested and charged with assault.
Ally and John agree to represent Renee, who at first denies she did anything to lead the man on. Ally is not convinced — the first thing she asks Renee on the night of the assault is why did she bring a stranger to their apartment. Eventually, Renee admits that she did bait Michael with sex and got angry when he actually expected her to follow through with it. She reveals to Ally that she was bullied as a child for her budding breasts and that her mother responded by telling her that boys tease girls when they like them. “Gone to law school, Harvard even, and I can’t bear it if a guy doesn’t want to grab me a little,” she tells Ally. “This thing that happened in here with Rivers, I’ve been waiting my whole life for it. I just thank God at least I’m ashamed of it.”
Much like Cheryl in “Happy Birthday, Baby” Renee is made to bear some of the responsibility for the actions of the man who hurt her. Centering her guilt and shame over the incident, and her eventual redemption once she is found not guilty of assault, the show signals to viewers that consent can be just as messy and complicated as humans are. Rather than take sides, society is better off leaving the sorting out of the truth to a court of law.
Given the current Me Too backlash, Ally McBeal seemed to predict the kinds of anxieties people would have about the movement. Whether it is questioning the fairness of “believe all women,” ever-constricting definitions of consent, “cancel culture” and extrajudicial methods of punishing the accused, “Ally McBeal” challenged those claiming to empower women through the law. But the show’s refusal to be forthright in what it was doing and why (choosing instead to couch much of its social commentary in playing devil’s advocate to women accusers), makes it difficult to see the show as vindicating Me Too’s critics.
“Ally McBeal” mostly abandoned its political formula after the second season, but the show continued to promote sex-as-liberation, albeit for the male gaze. And it made sure to remind viewers that Ally and the other women at the firm were complicit in their exploitation because ultimately they wanted to find love, not overthrow the patriarchy.
If feminism’s preoccupation with individual empowerment has overshadowed women’s basic desires for love and family, “Ally McBeal” lacked the creative focus and political will to make this case convincingly. The show never quite detached itself from reactionary contentment with the gender status quo, and will likely be remembered as such.
