"girls club" no triumph for women

[TMC]

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0...36~122~,00.html

Sunday, July 28, 2002 - PASADENA, Calif. - Successful by any standard, David E. Kelley is one of television's most prolific writer-producers. For years he's won the top film and TV awards in addition to solid ratings. He's reworking the legal ensemble drama again for fall '02, with more searching, coping, emotionally vulnerable women.

The man who gave us an anorexic legal role model in "Ally McBeal" and lady-lawyer cat fights on "The Practice," turns his lens on a different group of flailing female attorneys this year. The title of the series speaks volumes: "girls club" will air Monday nights on Fox this fall.

Best friends and roomies since law school, these twentysomething leggy litigators are girls, all right. The idea is to portray their club as opposed to the usual good old boys' club.

If only they had a speck of Ruth Bader Ginsburg-like gravitas among them.

Strangely, at a press session to promote the new series, a critic asked Kelley how he manages to be so empathetic in his TV portrayals of women. (No surprise, it was a male critic's question.)

Kelley handled the softball neatly: "I deep down believe women are the superior sex," he said. Remarking on the current state of war and terrorism, he added, "if women had to run countries I don't think any of this would be going on."

In 2002, we're supposed to take heart from the fact that Kelley wants to capture the continuing gender politics of the legal world. Consider his contributions to the analysis of gender politics in his previous frothy legal dramas and that's cause for concern.

Contrary to popular, mostly male opinion, David E. Kelley may be bad for women's health. As omnipresent as hormone-replacement therapy, Kelley may have the power to hurt generations of women's self-image.

Kelley is most empathetic to the neediness, insecurities and, mainly, the ditziness of his women characters. Ally was initially a cute idea: nutty young Michele Pfeiffer lookalike, alone in the world. Over the long haul, however, Kelley proved writing women is hardly his strength.

As long ago as "Chicago Hope" and as recently as "Boston Public," Kelley has effectively used the small screen to probe matters of faith and philosophy, race and culture. He is high-minded, funny and egalitarian, too. Except when it comes to writing babes. As long as females are fragile, he's for them. How has he fooled people into thinking he has special insight into modern working women?

In "girls club" three camera-ready women (blond, brunet and red-haired; Chyler Leigh, Gretchen Mol, Kathleen Robertson) portray a fanciful version of modern female professionals in San Francisco. They report, "Charlie's Angels"-style, to a tough male senior partner (Giancarlo Esposito).

Kelley maintains the tone will land somewhere between "The Practice" and "Ally." He promises the courtroom and the firm he's postulating will be more realistic than any he's done before.

Judging from clips, "girls club" does deal in less overt forms of sexual harassment. Rather than the almost slapstick forms used in "Ally," this series will stick to the more credible gray areas. But will the girl lawyers be any more realistic?

We've already witnessed "Ally's" impact on the culture, so it now seems natural to have a micro-miniskirted waif daydream in court to the tune of her ticking maternal clock. The logical extension is this year's normalizing of the supermodel as attorney. It's the David E. Kelley view of the world, where, by the way, there are no Asians or African-Americans among the San Francisco-set law babes.

Joanne Ostrow's column runs Sundays in Arts & Entertainment.

http://forums.comicbookresources.com...threadid=22287

[TJL]

Interesting article...

I've enjoyed some of Kelly's work, and I've always found him to be a good writer. I have to give him credit for creating shows with women in the lead roles.
Perhaps if he let women writers pen some scripts instead of writing everything himself, his characters wold gain more credibility.