Ally McBeal

Ally McBeal, 28, and a recent graduate of Harvard Law School, is harassed on the job by a senior associate. When she confronts the partners, it backfires and she loses her job. On the street, she literally bumps into an old classmate, Richard Fish, who offers her a position working for his new firm. She accepts, despite her misgivings about his ethical standards. While being introduced to her new fellow associates, she receives the shock of her career.

Fish's partner, John Cage faces fines, jail, and public humiliation. To her dismay, Ally is assigned to be a litigator. Fish invites Ally along to dinner with a very wealthy potential client, Ronald Cheanie. Unbeknownst to Ally, the dinner is really a double date with Fish and his girlfriend, Whipper. Ally is furious, but Cheanie turns out to be handsome and intelligent.

Ally senses Cheanie is withholding something when he neglects to kiss her goodnight after their first official date. Georgia asks Ally to assist her in trying an age discrimination case when the opposing litigator turns out to be Billings, the guy Ally tried to sue for sexual harassment at her old firm. Fish admonishes Ally for putting her emotional life above the firm's financial welfare while telling her to grow up.

Ally is asked to be a pallbearer at the funeral of her ex-law professor. The widow, Katherine Dawson, invites her to give the eulogy, but Ally's initial reluctance betrays the reason. In a moment of complete vulnerability, she confesses to Billy who supports her by agreeing to attend the funeral with her. This unnerves Georgia, and Cheanie, who are both feeling threatened when they realize Billy is helping Ally out during a difficult time in her life. Georgia confronts Billy, and Cheanie confronts Ally, who refuses to tell him why she's been upset lately. He doesn't understand why she chooses to confide in Billy over him.

Ally is arrested for aggravated assault and attempted shoplifting. Renee bails her out, but word spreads quickly, and Ally is brought before the State Bar Review Board. A litany of her recent travails is read aloud, and Ally must contend with her unconventional past catching up with her.

Ally has to defend a friend of Whipper brought up on solicitation charges. She is serving as second chair to Cage, whose idiosyncrasies become increasingly apparent and mystifying to Ally as well as the other attorneys. At the same time, on a different case, a severely rotund attorney passes out from a near heart attack just outside the courtroom and Ally has to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Ally represents a Jewish woman who needs her Rabbi to grant her a spiritual release from her marriage to her comatose husband. Ally goes personally to the Rabbi's office to find out why he is being so rigid. Meanwhile, Georgia is the target of a senior partner's wife's insecurities.

Billy and Georgia are faced with a crisis of confidence in their marriage. Elaine threatens to sue the firm for sexual harassment if Fish and Cage don't meet her demands for improved working conditions. Ally, Georgia, and Cage take on a lucrative divorce case. Fish uses some tactics, which causes a debate between the two parties as to which side is the most amoral.

The attorney, Caroline Poop, who represented Elaine in her short lived suit against Fish and Cage regarding the constant gawking directed at a beautiful delivery woman, returns. This time she is representing the beautiful delivery women, Jennifer, who now serves Fish and Cage with her own lawsuit for same-sex sexual harassment. Meanwhile, Ally makes a bet with Renee that she can tell a dirty joke and get more laughs. The duel is set for the bar downstairs in her office building.

Judge Whipper Cone asks Ally to take on a pro-bono case of a young prostitute up on her third solicitation charge. Fish, meanwhile, wants to sue his uncle's church for discrimination, due to his uncle's overt bigotry towards vertically challenged people (short people). The church's contention is that they cannot support bigotry of any kind and allowing the uncle a service and proper burial is tantamount to endorsing the appalling views. Fish promises he will not propagate the attitudes in his eulogy. Renee talks Ally into double dating with the salad-dressing-on-the-chin guy if the Biscuit is invited.

Three intelligent, successful and motivated adults approach Judge Whipper Cone about the possibility of getting legal representation in their quest to have the courts approve a legal, binding, three-way marriage. Fish assigns Ally and Cage to the case, knowing Ally's incurable romanticism and Cage's legal acumen is a potent combination with Whipper assigned to the case. Ally is opposed, claiming the three-way relationship is morally repugnant, but Georgia, feeling punkish around the holidays, points out that the clients' triangle isn't very different from the one in which Ally, Georgia, and Billy find themselves. Georgia accuses Billy of being more relaxed and open in their marriage ever since Ally re-entered the picture. Whipper, herself experiencing an annual bout of Holiday Blues, causes Fish to propose marriage, even though both know he really doesn't want to.

Ally is shocked to discover that her biological clock is ticking, unleashing strange libidinal impulses in her. During a sculpting class with live nude male models, she and Renee become enamored by one particular model with obviously generous endowments. Meanwhile, Ally has taken on the case of the 19-year-old son of an important client, who has been charged with assault because he slugged a guy in a bar who was verbally harassing his date. The boy tells Ally he felt justified because he warned the guy first, which serves to increase Ally's cradle robbing interest in him.