Beautiful TV: The Art and Argument of Ally McBeal

4. “Is It Possible to Love Somebody only Two days?”: Guest Stars and Eccentricity

The makers of a television show rely on the emotional power of viewers’ connections to a network of familiar characters, thus enacting the thematic tensions of the series in their most dramatically weighted form. Events in a serial have power because they happen to characters in whom we have invested considerable time. But the primetime serial cannot take care of all of its narrative business by staying solely within the bounded world of core characters. It needs guest stars. Ally McBeal provides a case study of the narrative function of guest actors. Here I demonstrate that guest appearances provide conflict in ways that the core ensemble cannot and articulate how Ally in particular balances guest stars with recurring characters to make its larger argument about eccentricity. By making its case about eccentric behavior, instead of about a more obviously politically loaded difference such as race, Ally McBeal frames its argument in ways that seek to bypass resistances to questions of difference. It marshals our allegiances to long-running serial characters and balances them with the more targeted rhetoric of guest stars to create a complex appeal to audience attitudes. This chapter occupies a transitional position in this book. I continue to investigate the workings of the narrational system, but I begin to turn my focus toward the details of Ally’s argument about its key issues. Three Cross-dressers, Three Strategies Most dramatic and comic television narratives eventually rely on guest stars to provide conflict.1 Nonserial dramatic television such as Law and Order Four “is it Possible to love Somebody only Two days?” Guest Stars and eccentricity 1 GreG M. SMiTh builds the guest performance into its basic structure, and shows dealing withpoliceofficers,detectives,orlawyersareespeciallyorientedtotheguest. The outsider creates the conflict; without them there would be no case to solve, prosecute, or defend. Situation comedies do not rely so heavily on the guest appearance. Conflict defines the “situation” in a sitcom, and frequently these conflicts come from within the established sitcom “family.” On The Cosby Show one of the Huxtable children will try to sneak some misbehavior past the parents, causing the crisis that the wise mother and father must resolve. But a long-running sitcom must reenergize itself with fresh characters because eventually the options for conflict among the principal characters are exhausted. Sometimes the answer for a sitcom is to add another recurring character: a new child on The Cosby Show, a wife for Robert on Everybody Loves Raymond. Other sitcoms enliven relationships by having guest characters drop by (a primary character’s sister, an old friend fromhighschool),thusgivingtheFriendssomeonenewtoreactto.Because characters in these series essentially return to their initial states at the beginning of each episode, because very little about the overall dynamic of the characters changes, nonserial primetime shows eventually rely on conflicts outside the ensemble. Daytime serials, with their more relaxed pace, are more likely to rely entirely on their primary network to provide conflict.2 The appeal to the distracted viewer who may be engaged in household tasks and who may not attend to every moment of each day’s episode makes the daytime serial less plot intensive and less likely to call on guest stars for important narrative functions. Economic factors also make a difference; the soap opera is less likely to be able to afford pricey guest stars (except for certain splashy cameos by soap fans who are celebrities, such as Elizabeth Taylor) than the primetime series, which can feature Brad Pitt or Christina Applegate for a very special episode that the network advertises heavily. Primetime serials, usually airing only once a week to an audience that expects rapid narrative progression, demand more plot more often than a small group of core characters can dependably produce. The sheer quantity of conflict required to keep a primetime audience interested often necessitates that a primetime serial be replenished by guest stars. Different primetime serials handle the balance of guest and recurring characters in different ways. Buffy the Vampire Slayer understood that new recurring characters may be more accepted by the audience when they had served as guest performers previously. Anya the vengeance demon (Emma Caulfield) and Jonathan the nerd (Danny Strong) both began with GueST STArS ANd eCCeNTriCiTy 1 appearances as conflict-causing guest stars for a single episode before they returned to join as part of continuing story lines.3 Ally McBeal has its own version of this strategy: it uses Ling...