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"Ally McBeal" is Kelley at his most undisciplined -- but then, the only way the show makes sense is in its lack of discipline. I don't know how anyone could mistake "Ally McBeal" for a "women's show" -- it's purely a freewheeling, male workplace fantasy. I mean, the show is all about women physically fighting each other: mud wrestling, boxing, cat fights, Ally tackling another woman in a supermarket over the last bag of potato chips on the shelf. And, of course, there was that episode last season where Ally, Georgia (Courtney Thorne-Smith), Nelle (Portia de Rossi) and Ling (Lucy Liu) piled on one another in a bitch-slapping, hair-pulling, mini-skirts-hiked-up-to-the-waist bathroom brawl, while Cage and Fish watched open-mouthed, looking like doofuses who thought they'd died and gone to heaven.

It's a little frightening how sadistic Kelley can be toward his characters, especially his women. During his tenure as executive producer and writer of "L.A. Law," a character named Rosalind Shays (played by Diana Muldaur) was introduced as the show's first real female authority figure. Rosalind was a coolly composed older woman who was brought into the McKenzie, Brackman firm as a rainmaker. She was quickly established to be as ambitious and ruthless as her male colleagues. The women at the firm hated her and called her a bitch behind her back. Viewer interest in the show, which had been flagging, picked up again; it seemed that America wanted another Joan Collins-type villain to love/hate, and Kelley and his writers complied. What started out as a provocative look at double standards in the workplace degenerated into a humiliate-the-bitch derby, until Rosalind was dispatched in a fatal elevator-shaft accident that, a year later, was still being squeezed for "splat" jokes.

And while Camryn Manheim may have saved Kelley's ass on "The Practice" by fighting for the dignity of her character, fat women in other Kelley scripts have not fared so well. There was an episode of "Picket Fences" where a fat woman killed her husband by sitting on him. On "Ally McBeal" last season, a sad, self-conscious fat woman brought (and lost) a lawsuit against her boss for instituting a "beach Friday" policy where everyone was encouraged to come to work in a bathing suit.

Watching "The Practice," though, you could almost believe that Kelley is getting over it. The female lawyers are a contentious bunch, but, remarkably, there's been a minimum of bitch-slapping. Bobby has slept with both law partner Lindsay Dole (Kelli Williams) and prosecutor Helen Gamble (Lara Flynn Boyle), but Lindsay and Helen remain best friends and roomies. The Rosalind Shays figure on the show, Judge Roberta Kittelson (Emmy winner Holland Taylor), however, is a problem. She's an older woman with a healthy sexual appetite -- so why does she also have to be so hot for Bobby that she jeopardizes her career by coming on to him and psychotically scratches Lindsay's face out of photographs?

And then there's "Snoops." Drooling voyeurism, gorgeous female co-workers in sexy outfits circling each other in a constant state of impending cat fight, the cruel ridicule of a fat woman -- yes, Kelley has gone over to the dark side again. Set in a gleaming, high-tech private investigation firm staffed by one tough babe (Gina Gershon), one high-strung girly-girl (Paula Marshall) and one obligatory nosy receptionist with attitude (Paula Jai Parker), "Snoops" is a vacuous piece of fluff, tricked out with sleek surveillance hardware, bright neon, a high-octane soundtrack and pointlessly fancy camerawork. Danny Nucci as Manny, a car-crazy investigator, seems to have wandered in from an audition for "Grease." Not even scenery-chewing guest bad guy John Glover in high dudgeon can save this dog from the pound. "Snoops" feels like a contractual obligation; it's eerily reminiscent of the Jim Belushi private eye show "Total Security," which Kelley mentor Steven Bochco had the nerve (or desperation) to foist on viewers a few seasons ago, and it should last about as long. Kelley has proven that he can write like a lawyer, a showman and an honest-to-God literary genius. On "Snoops," he writes like a hockey player.
salon.com | Sept. 20, 1999

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