Ally mcbeal fascinating womanhood
"One student thought Ally McBeal was a neat character - a strong woman - who she could really identify with," Peroutka says. She says she started thinking about "Ally McBeal" when five of her students in a television criticism course last semester wrote final papers about the series. Shirley Peroutka, director of the Media Studies program at Goucher College, teaches courses in gender and television and does think about that kind of gender thing. what a woman would think?' I just don't think about that kind of gender thing that way." Some of the issues are probably more organic to story lines that women may find more appealing, but I don't actually sit in my office and say, 'OK, now, what would a man think vs. "But I cringe when people ask me how I write women characters, because I tend to say, 'I don't know.' The dirty secret is that I don't write them differently than men. When I went back to my office and started hatching ideas, the word 'woman' was in there from the beginning. "The pragmatic answer is that Fox knew most men would be watching 'Monday Night Football', so we wanted a show that was more oriented toward women - that was the initial seed. I didn't make a conclusion that their inner lives were more interesting or something - never having been there. "It was always a woman from the very beginning. For example, in one episode, McBeal looks in the bathroom mirror at her breasts and wishes they were "less small." As we hear her thoughts in voice-over, the breasts expand until the strap on her bra snaps.Īgain, Kelley says making the lead female instead of male was more commerce than sociology.
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His most interesting choice was in putting a woman at the center of the series and taking viewers inside her mind through fantasy sequences and voice-overs.
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Law," the 41-year-old Kelley knows how to make an hourlong series that has the look and feel of quality, adult drama. Creator of "The Practice" and "Picket Fences," as well as executive producer during part of the run of "L.A. Kelley, who so far has written all the scripts himself, made a lot of smart choices in the series. The triangle and the sexual energy of Billy and McBeal in the office is central to the series.
She still aches for him a bit, but she really likes Georgia. Now he's the star lawyer in the Boston firm where McBeal works. Billy had been the love of McBeal's life since age 7 until they broke up in law school. She plays Georgia Thomas, wife of Billy Alan Thomas (Gil Bellows). He says he and Fox entertainment president Peter Roth started the project with an understanding that it would be on Monday nights following "Melrose Place" and had "to be compatible with that kind of a lead-in."įor one thing, that's how Courtney Thorne-Smith, who left "Melrose Place" at the end of the last television season, wound up in a supporting role. Kelley admits that commerce played a major role in the making of Ally McBeal. "So, I sort of tend to stay out of the analysis of why I write what I write and just hope that whatever comes out, some people will want to watch."