April 18, 2002

6:36 AM

Ally McBeal cancelled.There was a time when we cared, I think. If you feel otherwise then go ahead and scream in the comments but personally, I'll never forgive the show (I used to love it) for subjecting me to Sting and Vonda Shepherd adult-contemporizing "Every Breath You Take"...
posted by logovisual (24 comments total)

There was a time when we cared,

No, I never cared for it. RIP
posted by MaddCutty at 6:54 AM on April 18, 2002

Got cancelled off my tivo sometime last season. It had sort of just slipped too far down the path that it had walked the previous few seasons. The characters, rather than seem pleasantly quirky, gradually had become annoyingly trite in their efforts to odd. And, every episode, it seemed, had become a musical. Less plot, more fluff.

However, I must admit, I do love Fluffernutters.
posted by warhol at 7:02 AM on April 18, 2002

Thank the gods. At long last. WAAAAAY overdue, say right after the first episode maybe ?
My girlfriend watched it and it absolutely drove me nuts.

A day of rejoicing is upon us !!
posted by a3matrix at 7:44 AM on April 18, 2002

How could Sting and Vonda Shepherd "adult-contemporize" a song that was adult contemporary when it was first released? I mean, songs about stalkers invading their victiims' privacy aren't your usual kiddy fare, are they?
posted by mischief at 8:51 AM on April 18, 2002

And Vonda Shepard sinks back into obscurity...
posted by laz-e-boy at 9:28 AM on April 18, 2002

This is a great day for humanity. Now, if we could only ban David E. Kelly from tv altogether...
posted by RakDaddy at 10:15 AM on April 18, 2002

Uh, that was Sting with Robert Downy Jr. doing "Every Breath You Take", not Vonda, you wrong person you!

By the way, long after everybody forgets all about duck-lipped stick-lady Ally, Sting will still be cool...
posted by Ben Grimm at 10:18 AM on April 18, 2002

"Sting will still be cool..." Amen
posted by clavdivs at 10:36 AM on April 18, 2002

Ah, but Vonda Shepherd sings on the soundtrack album that my sister made me listen to. And re: "adult-contemporary," I simply mean that they completely defanged it and sang/performed it like a straight love song, completely removing all the musical atmospherics that made it creepy in the first place. Of course it's Sting's song and he can do as he wants with it but y'know, it just didn't sit right with me...
posted by logovisual at 11:20 AM on April 18, 2002

I thought the show was fun for a little while, in it's completely self-consciously kooky way. Somewhere in the second season it hit me that Ally was just a dithering idiot for whom I could no longer have any sympathy.

However, for inflicting Vonda Shepherd on us, David Kelley deserves to undergo a series of tortures devised by a whole team of experts. The Wheel of Pain is too good for him, and for her. God, but she could suck the soul out of any tune. What the hell was going through his head at that audition?

But not even the wack honky nightmare that is Vonda could tarnish Sting's cool.
posted by Ty Webb at 11:46 AM on April 18, 2002

What Ty said.

I liked the first season OK, but it became obvious that the Ally character was really just pathetic.

I hate Vonda Shepherd.No one in recent memory has made me hit the mute button faster on my remote.When I saw Ally dancing to that, it just made her more pathetic.
posted by BarneyFifesBullet at 11:55 AM on April 18, 2002

Bygones.
posted by acridrabbit at 11:55 AM on April 18, 2002

Channel 4 in the UK are going to be annoyed ... it means they've got to go and find another of those pesky imports...
posted by feelinglistless at 1:30 PM on April 18, 2002

Bygones.

Heh. Acridrabbit wins.

I used to find the show amusing, and I still watch it, hoping that it'll show some flashes of its former funniness. Guess not. Clearly, it's time for it to go.

Still, it deserves some props for this -- Billy found out he had a brain tumor, told everybody and died all in the same episode. They didn't drag it out, as so many other shows have done. All the maudlinness (is that a word?) was over in an hour.
posted by diddlegnome at 1:32 PM on April 18, 2002

I only watched it about once every six months, to see if had gotten any more interesting. There were really only two highlights, IMHO: the cappucino foam scene between Courtney Thorne-Smith and Calista Flockhart, and most of Robert Downey Jr.'s run. Everything else was unredeemable fluff.
posted by dhartung at 2:48 PM on April 18, 2002

Well that figures. When the rest of the world was going gaga over the show, I couldn't get into it. I thought it was stupid. Then when the whole Robert Downey Jr. debacle happened, I decided to give the show another chance, out of curiosity for how they were gonna write the guy out of the show. I thought they pulled it off surprisingly well, and for the past season I've started enjoying it. Bon Jovi can almost act! Amazing!

Just as I start believing the show's becoming entertaining, they cancel it. The same thing happened to me with shows like VR-5, Strange Luck, The Lone Gunmen, Early Edition, and Freakylinks. Oh well. There's always X-Files... oops.
posted by ZachsMind at 4:50 PM on April 18, 2002

I know someone who knows Calista Flockheart.
posted by delmoi at 8:08 PM on April 18, 2002

who is Ally McBeal?
posted by ssdecontrol at 8:17 PM on April 18, 2002

Bon Jovi can almost act! Amazing!

His acting is certainly better than his music, which isn't saying much, but yeah, he's pretty good as Victor the Only Person on the Show Who Doesn't Work at a Law Firm.
posted by diddlegnome at 8:27 PM on April 18, 2002

[petty bitching]
I'm just glad it's finally over. I can't tell you how many times some stupid twat has asked me about my name saying, "Oh, like Calista Flockheart?"

*puke*

[/petty bitching]

CaLYsta Rose :)
posted by calyirose at 11:17 PM on April 18, 2002

duck-lipped stick-lady Ally

Glad I'm not the only one who couldn't get past the Donald Duck likeness.
posted by HTuttle at 12:19 AM on April 19, 2002

Another program too unbearably bad to fathom.
posted by ParisParamus at 4:29 AM on April 19, 2002

Hopefully five years from now when Entertainment Tonight does the piece "Whatever happened to Calista Flockhart?" they'll show her with more weight on her bones. She'll come clean and admit that she was suffering from bulemia and drug abuse during the filming of Ally McBeal and after the show got cancelled she hit a deep dark depression and ended up in the Betty Ford clinic for eight months. Then she re-evaluated her life, realized that the end of the show meant the beginning of her life or some mushy Hollywood revelation, and she'll attempt a comeback as a lounge singer in Vegas but no one will care because she never could sing.
posted by ZachsMind at 2:49 PM on April 19, 2002

Gee, Zach, that's a flight of fancy worthy of Ms. McBeal herself.
posted by diddlegnome at 2:59 PM on April 19, 2002