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The fifth season was the last series of Ally McBeal, and probably the least satisfying. While always at least slightly entertaining, it was troubled by two conflicting imperatives: first, to steer its neurotic characters and multiplicity of sub-plots towards a coherent and credible resolution; second, to sustain another series of a programme which had, by now, exhausted all the plot possibilities that were remotely believable. The result is a bemusing onslaught of new characters (Ally's Mini-Me Jenny and a barely distinguishable phalanx of lantern-jawed male leads), celebrity cameos (Edna Everage, Christina Ricci, Barry White, Matthew Perry, Jon Bon Jovi), several storylines that would test the credulity of any of the curiously indulgent judges before whom Ally's firm practises (notably the arrival of a 10-year-old daughter that Ally didn't know she had) and one misbegotten attempt to anchor the programme to the real world (the "Nine One One" episode, an unwatchably mawkish allegory about the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States). Granted that Ally McBeal was never intended to be realistic dr |
1. Top Gun