Ally Mcbeal

Creator David E. Kelley has come up with an unconventional crossover linking his two acclaimed shows, "Ally McBeal" (9 p.m.-10 p.m., WBFF, Channel 45) and "The Practice" (10 p.m.-11 p.m., WMAR, Channel 2), which run on different networks. Rationalizing the crossover was easy; after all, both series are set in Boston. Convincing rival networks to cooperate ("Ally" airs on Fox, "The Practice" on ABC) couldn't have been as easy, but when you're one of the hottest writing talents on television, anything is possible.

If there's any question whether Lucy Liu is excited about her life and career, here's how the actress puts it: "I feel like I bought the E ticket!" Liu says with a giggle. "You know, like at Disney World or something, when you go on all the rides and then keep going to the next one, and you're like, `Wow!'" That "Wow!" feeling is how audiences have felt since Liu, 37, first hit their radar in 1998 with a career-making turn on Ally McBeal. As Ally's office nemesis, the mega-tough, mega-sexual Ling Woo, Liu was a shark in a business skirt who played with her prey before eating them.

Vonda Shepard really is a singer/songwriter -- she doesn't just play one on TV.With several albums to her credit, Shepard had established a career for herself long before she and her band began playing the fictional Boston bar seen on the Fox series "Ally McBeal." But thanks to the show's substantial viewership -- and the corresponding success of Shepard's album, "Songs from 'Ally McBeal' " -- things are a bit different now for the singer and her band."It's actually been very interesting," says Shepard, who will be playing a benefit concert at Pier 6 on Saturday.

LOS ANGELES - Let's compare two recording artists who have little in common. R&B singer Kelis has a song that's been all over the radio, "Milkshake." On the Billboard singles chart for months, it reached as high as the No. 3 spot. But meanwhile, Kelis' full-length CD, Tasty (Arista), was not doing nearly as well, slipping down the Billboard chart. Josh Groban, on the other hand, has not had a song on the singles chart. But when his latest CD of operatic pop, Closer (Reprise/Warner Brothers)

Like her fashionable counterparts on shows like Sex and the City and Friends, Ally McBeal was a single woman with a high-powered career whose quest for a man often seemed more important than her quest for a corner office. McBeal unabashedly pined after an ex-boyfriend married to a woman she worked with. She spent way too many episodes girlishly dreaming about finding a man. Her biological clock ticked so loudly it produced a phantom dancing baby. Above all, viewers watched McBeal whine and pout for five long years about finding the ever-elusive permanent love of her life.

Ling Woo, the newest cast member on "Ally McBeal," says, "Objection, your honor, I'm bored." She buys her sister a breast augmentation and sues the doctor for false advertisement. She helps a young cancer patient "sue God," or the Catholic Church, even demands a judge to "hurry up" while announcing the verdict. She is mean and beautiful and altogether intriguing. She is also Chinese.Some say she breaks stereotypes. Anything but the timid, soft-spoken Asian, she is loved for being brassy.Some say she cultivates stereotypes.

David E. Kelley came into last night's 51st annual Emmy Awards with a record number of nominations for his shows and went home with the awards for the best drama and comedy on television.The producer's courtroom drama "The Practice" won as Outstanding Drama Series, while his offbeat legal series, "Ally McBeal," won as Outstanding Comedy."I think you can see from the look on our faces we're a little surprised, but we'll take it," Kelley said in receiving the awards, which came one after another at the very end of the telecast.

I was so ready to resume my Ally-hating ways during the first few minutes of tonight's season premiere of "Ally McBeal." There's this guy with an English accent who wants Ally to live with him, and not only can't she decide, but she also can hardly speak when he asks her. Then she interrupts a staff meeting at the office by announcing that she might be a little distracted the next few days because there's this guy who wants her to live with him and...

It has come to this: I am lying awake nights thinking of Ally McBeal.Not Ally McBeal, the character -- the waif-like Harvard Law graduate played by Calista Flockhart Monday nights on Fox. Privileged and whiny, McBeal gives new meaning to self-absorption.Trying to be fair, I gave her six weeks to make me care and then decided it was all right to file her under television characters I don't like and hope I never have to meet when I die and go to that big TV Land in the sky.But "Ally McBeal," the series, stays on my mind.

"bash: latter day plays" is the kind of cable program that's easy to miss. Don't. There's nothing glossy or big about the trio of one-act plays (by Neil LaBute) that airs tomorrow night at 8 on Showtime, except the names of its stars. Biggest among them is Calista Flockhart, of "Ally McBeal." Newsflash: She is a fine actress. If you've seen her onstage in "The Three Sisters" or "The Glass Menagerie," you already know that. If you've seen her only in Fox TV's "Ally McBeal," you don't. This is not the usual look of television.

We don't want to cross Lucy Liu. No sense getting her dander up. Even if she is on the phone, we've seen what she can do with martial arts in Payback and Charlie's Angels, with a gun in Ballistic and with a sword in Quentin Tarantino's new splatter-fest, Kill Bill. Heck, we've seen what she can do with just a growl in Ally McBeal. The wrong word, an impolite question, and she just might reach through that phone line and ... "I don't think of any of my characters as mean," she coos. "They're ... misunderstood.

Talk about nothing new under the sun in network television this season, wait until you see girls club, the David E. Kelley drama premiering tonight on Fox in the time slot formerly held by Ally McBeal. Gone from prime-time television is one young, self-absorbed attorney from a background of privilege - only to be replaced by three young, self-absorbed attorneys from backgrounds of privilege. I didn't think it possible, but I dislike this series even more than I did Ally McBeal. Instead of McBeal's Harvard, the three leading characters here went to Stanford Law School.

It's taken decades, but Hamilton Burger finally has his revenge. The district attorney who lost to Perry Mason week after hopeless week, year after excruciating year -- could, if he were alive today, see prosecutors celebrated by the same medium that once treated them like so many crash dummies, foils for flamboyant defense lawyers with right on their side. As Law & Order producer Dick Wolf is fond of reminding people, TV-watchers are seldom more than a click away from one of his cops-and-prosecutors shows.

Like her fashionable counterparts on shows like Sex and the City and Friends, Ally McBeal was a single woman with a high-powered career whose quest for a man often seemed more important than her quest for a corner office. McBeal unabashedly pined after an ex-boyfriend married to a woman she worked with. She spent way too many episodes girlishly dreaming about finding a man. Her biological clock ticked so loudly it produced a phantom dancing baby. Above all, viewers watched McBeal whine and pout for five long years about finding the ever-elusive permanent love of her life.

Radio won't play him. He hasn't toured in support of his album. Yet neither factor stopped Josh Groban's debut record from pole-vaulting more than 100 places on Billboard magazine's latest Top 200 Album chart, quintupling its sales from the week before. How did he do it? The idiot box. A profile of the singer that aired on the magazine show 20 / 20 levitated enough Groban-enraptured couch potatoes into stores to push his self-titled platter to No. 12, the highest slot of its five-month life.

A funny thing happened to a new Fox drama called Emma Brody on the way to its premiere tonight. It was retitled The American Embassy, and became a red, white and blue series as much about America's place in the world as it was the coming-of-age story of a young embassy worker in London named Emma Brody (Arija Bareikis). The thing that happened was Sept. 11. And so, six months after the terrorist attacks, Fox premieres The American Embassy tonight at 9 in Ally McBeal's old spot. Any and all similarities to the earlier workplace-centered drama featuring a young, single, attractive, professional woman trying to find herself are purely intentional.

A funny thing happened to a new Fox drama called Emma Brody on the way to its premiere tonight. It was retitled The American Embassy, and became a red, white and blue series as much about America's place in the world as it was the coming-of-age story of a young embassy worker in London named Emma Brody (Arija Bareikis). The thing that happened was Sept. 11. And so, six months after the terrorist attacks, Fox premieres The American Embassy tonight at 9 in Ally McBeal's old spot. Any and all similarities to the earlier workplace-centered drama featuring a young, single, attractive, professional woman trying to find herself are purely intentional.

When is a skirt not just a skirt?When Ally McBeal wears it.Then it symbolizes many things: Feminism run amok. Bad fashion. Unbridled sexuality. Anorexia.Her minis -- which have crept up an inch this season -- take center stage on "Ally McBeal" on Monday (Fox, 9 p.m.) when the title character's penchant for thigh-high style lands her in contempt of court.But it's not just Ally's apparel that gets fans, critics and TV judges talking. The very existence of this strange single lawyer -- and her offbeat world of unisex bathrooms, dancing babies and colleagues nicknamed Biscuit -- seems to stimulate, aggravate, entertain and inspire.

Admit it -- if you could get away with it, you'd be wearing pajamas 24 / 7. Pjs are comfortable, familiar and, nowadays, an extension of a person's fashion sense. They don't have to be ratty threads, not with the boom in so-called novelty pajamas that combine whimsical patterns with all the practical aspects of something that's on your body a third of the day (if you're lucky). "Women care about what they put on at home. They want to be in pajamas, which are big now," says Mindi Leikin, co-owner of Bare Necessities, an intimate apparel boutique in Greenspring Station.

VIENNA, Va. -- Can Bridget Jones edge out Ally McBeal? This may not sound like a burning question of our age. But it is. If the final answer is yes (the signs are tentative right now), it could mean that women are emerging from the battlefields of feminism. And learning -- shock, horror -- to relax. It is a truism by now that we live in a world in which pop culture and pop psychology are dominant forces. Oprah and Rosie rule. Anyone who doubts this should watch what happens when either of them recommends a book or endorses a diet.