h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ally McBeal keeps getting moved around from time slot to time slot here in Italy, but I've managed to watch quite a bit of it. I have a strange relationship with that show, because I love it for the quirky humour (come on, the Barry White dance sequence in the bathroom... I was in stitches) but I really, really hate Ally's guts.

I mean, come on.

She's a whiny, snotty-nosed, stick-thin, often obnoxious character. She does very little else but whimper and pine for Billy (well, at least until Billy dies). She sleeps with soon-to-be-married men and then decides to spill the beans at their wedding ceremony. She once said "I don't have laugh lines only because I've had the good sense not to smile very much." She's shallow, annoying and self-obsessed, and I really, really wonder how anybody puts up with her... but then, this is TV. In the real world, she'd have no friends.

The reason why Ally put feminism back twenty years is that she has a job and she is successful, but all she cares about are men. The ones she had and the ones she can't have. And we're supposed to be sympathetic? Come on. Being single in your late twenties has been considered acceptable for at least three decades. Even by single people.

On the other hand, all the other characters are great. I love John Cage, he's adorable and a very good mixture of funny personal habits and smart professionalism. Ling is a dragon, hear her roar. And Elaine... I love Elaine. She likes herself. She likes being a secretary. She's not ashamed of acting ditzy. She dances and she sings and she looks healthier than the other characters (bar Renée, of course...) And she's sweet, like in the episode where she wants to adopt a baby she's found in a manger... could you see Ally with a baby? Thought not.

Hey, it's a TV show!