I once enjoyed the "Ally McBeal" (AM) tv series so much, that I bought its DVD incarnation. AM was fun and featured a strong musical diversity.

AM is (or was) strongly centered on a fictional single woman, named Ally McBeal, a lawyer on her early 30s. Ally is single and keeps asking herself if she will ever find someone to love, for the rest of her life. The short term is no problem - there was a season where Ally would flirt and eventually have sex, with nearly every moving man that crossed her way and blinked his eyes -, but the long run is a huge problem and, episode after episode, Ally digs excuses to break relationships. The problem is that the frequency of these mate-and-cut acts became so high, and the excuses so lame, that the series main character lost believability.

Slowly, but firmly, the AM tv show evolved from portraying a sexually charged office environment, where Ally had feelings for Georgia Thomas' husband (Billy Thomas, played by Gil Bellows), to a zero believable workplace, where no one seems to have a true job. McBeal's final season is about a lawyers firm, where people do nothing more than dispute very stupid love related cases, and flirt, drink and sing, when the day ends.

But exactly what killed Ally McBeal? After all, the "stupid" court cases may have evolved to an extremely fictional status, but they always were the "Fish & Cage" specialty (Richard Fish and John Cage were the firm's duo of partners). I think the root of the disease goes back to the day Nelle Porter was admitted at the office. Nelle had the most luxurious blonde long hair you can imagine, plus an immaculate gorgeous face, and such a brightness that her first episodes were all about case disputes with the established girls. Spectators loved Nelle - she was rocking that place!

But Nelle was bad, kind of a J. R. Ewing of the opposite sex... and she broke Cage's heart. From that day on, no one seems capable to explain what Portia de Rossi kept doing in the series. I think she was on screen for no more than 5 minutes, during the complete final season! Odd!

In contrast, some characters just vanished with zero explanations: Georgia Thomas (married to Bill, who died with a brain cancer...), Renee Radick (Ally's flatmate, who has the biggest breasts ever seen on a not xxx rated tv show), and even John Cage. To balance such abductions, Ally McBeal promoted Vonda Shepard - the singer that always authored the main musical theme - to the point of getting listed as a regular character, despite Vonda airtime summing up to something below de Rossi's.

Surprisingly, when regular spectators thought that Radick's and Georgia's disappearance was a solution to put Ally back on track, after some episodes where Miss McBeal didn't star at all, a bunch of newcomers landed on screen, but they never got the chance to build believable characters: Julianne Nicholson, James Marsden and Regina Hall. Why did they appear at all?! It was the clearest sign that the series was indeed out of hand.

Yet another once great series collapses. It is absolutely abysmal the difference on quality, from the first to the final season. Try to watch both, and you'll understand what I mean. And please remember that when Ally McBeal debuted, it was one of a kind; no other series had ever attempted to mix comedy, music, and the emotional stress of a young woman, always on her period.