Ally Gets Jiggy.

To mangle a line from Willie Nelson: Mommas, don't let your kids grow up to be Ally McBeal. Fox's Ally McBeal (Monday night slot)--winner of the 1999 Emmy Award for Best Comedy-has been analyzed to death in terms of its anti-feminist or neo-feminist approach to the 1990s woman. I think I'm posing a better question: Does the show suck?

After trying to watch a one-hour episode prior to the season premiere, I found myself doing a Marvin Gaye "What's Going On?"

Ally McBeal, for those not in the know, stars Calista Flockhart as the title character, a Boston lawyer who struggles through the trials and tribulations of being a professional woman in the 1990s. Ally is single (a fact that is played out too much in her daily life), and she's an associate in a law firm run by a smarmy college rival, Richard Fish (Greg Germann). To make things more interesting, Ally's longtime boyfriend, Billy Alan Thomas (Gil Bellows), is also a member of the firm. The two, we are told, played doctor together as kids. It only gets better because Billy is married to Georgia (Courtney Thorne-Smith), whom Ally initially dislikes. But soon the two become friends.

So what makes Ally McBeal different from all the other mundane shows about yuppie lawyers in the 1990s? Well, whenever Ally seems confused or upset, the visual and sound effects kick in. For example, in the first season, when Ally sees Billy again, arrows shoot into her heart as she is told of his marriage.

I just wouldn't have gotten the heartbreak without those arrows and the maudlin music that went with them. Gee, thanks, guys.

Oh, there's more. There's the time Ally fantasizes about making love in a giant latte bowl.

Then there's the recent episode where Ally is defending a woman who was accused of fraud because she married a man and then left him when he didn't live up to her ideal. While her client is being grilled on the stand by the counsel for the plaintiff, Ally, who has also been troubled by the thought of not finding Mr. Perfect, jumps up and screams, "Objection! Objection! Objection!"

At that point, the show's award-winning creator-writer-producer, David E. Kelley, flips the insipid switch. Ally looks to the jury box, where she finds a robed choir clapping hands. Then she turns to the judge, who is looking like Al Green (pre-religious Al) and singing his standard "We gotta keep on pushing love."

Ally gets jiggy wit it. She's freed her mind of the negative aspects of the case. Yes, Ally, the perfect man will come along to fulfill you, too, so you just keep pushing the love.

But she is quickly awakened by the voice of the judge saying, "Ms. McBeal. Ms. McBeal." Embarrassed, she realizes she is fantasizing and sits down.

There's another problem: The show lacks content. And it's about to lack more because it's going from a one hour to a half hour format this season. Kelley says the focus is moving away from the courtroom and toward a blown-out look at office romance.

Eek! Well, maybe America needs another show that is full of office romance, juvenile sexual innuendo, and musical montages. And since, the target demographic grew up on MTV, which features bad acting masked as true emotion and deep thinking, the show should be more popular than ever.

To his credit, Kelley has hit a long homerun with The Practice (ABC, Sunday nights), which also won a 1999 Emmy Award, this time for Best Drama. I still think Law & Order (Wednesdays, NBC) is the best overall drama on television, since it creates the television equivalent of a great story once a week. But Kelley has managed to dig deep inside of the characters on The Practice, freely setting up the morality, values, and situational ethics involved in being a criminal defense attorney in a world that demands an easy way out. Where Ally McBeal and her friends seem weak, flighty, and the personification of 1990s vapidity, Momma would be proud to let her babies grow up to be the women and men of The Practice.

NOTES:

* Surveys indicate that parents want good, wholesome television shows and movies for their kids, so please tell me why Pokemon is such a big hit. The show, based on the Nintendo card game, is set around the loving and beautiful relationship between ten-year-old Ash and his pocket monster, Pikachu, a loathsomely cute Pokemon.

Ash's great dream is to be the world's best Pokemon trainer. So Ash, with the help of Pikachu, sets out to collect and train as many Pokemon as he can.

Now, what does training the other Pokemon consist of? Running? Playing? No, fighting.

Yes, Pokemon--who are intelligent creatures and have special powers--are trained to fight each other much in the way chickens, dogs, and poverty-stricken minorities are trained to beat each other for sport and commerce.

Pikachu, possibly the Uncle Tom of his species, sells out his brothers and sisters in order to facilitate Ash's goal of world-class status. No, they don't die after fighting. Indeed, it's one big happy planet of lemming-like Pokemon fighting for their masters.

Now this is something you should have kids playing, a game that teaches the utility of a caste system at an early age.

And, according to The Wall Street Journal, we've got parents worrying about their children cheating each other over the price of Pokemon cards.

* The animated movie The Iron Giant, one of the best films of the year, came and went in the blink of an eye. Adapted from the children's book written by Ted Hughes, the film meets the criteria parents have been demanding: smart, intelligent, thought-provoking, and family-oriented. Of all the recent children's releases, this one was worth your $8.

Set during the Cold War period in the late 1950s, nine-year-old Hogarth Hughes finds a 100-foot-tall robot in the backwoods of Maine. Lo and behold, instead of finding a way to subjugate the Iron Giant, young Hogarth befriends and protects it. The movie speaks to the sadly timeless emotions and pathologies of fear and prejudice.

It's probably too late to see it in theaters (except maybe the dollar show), but it's a "must-see" when it reaches video store shelves.

Fred McKissack is a writer based in Milwaukee.