Ally McBeal Series Premiere: The Most '90s Moments
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The opening shot
Back then, TV shows weren't afraid to open with a woman staring wistfully out of a window while a sad song plays.
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Billy's entire look
The boxy suit. The patterned ties. The high-waisted pleated pants. The weird pseudo-Doug Ross haircut. He belongs in a Museum of '90s Men's Fashion.
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A gratuitous bra scene
Hey, we can't have young men flipping over to Monday Night Football, can we?
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The senior partner at Ally's old law firm grabbing her ass
With both hands! (Sexual harassment was a bit more overt back then, you see.)
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Opening credits that were a full minute long!
With an original theme song, no less!
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Ally dancing with this extra from a Nirvana video
His hair is twice as long as hers!
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Ally's frizzy Felicity wig in the college flashbacks
A year before Felicity premiered, mind you.
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Fish's repeated obsession with "lower taxes"
Yes, very Newt Gingrich of him.
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Ally's roommate Renée referring to sex as "the hokey-pokey"
Hey, Standards & Practices was already on their backs about the bra scene, OK?
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An eager, twentysomething Jane Krakowski as assistant Elaine
Yet somehow, she looks the same today? (How do you not age, Jane??)
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Ally objecting to Fish putting her "in a room to smile at lesbians!"
Just the way she says "lesbians," like they're an alien species, feels five hundred years old.
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The over-explanation of "OCD"
The script had to spell out that OCD stands for "obsessive-compulsive disorder." Right. Got it.
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Cage and Fish's "avant-rich," industrial-chic offices
Look at all that exposed brick! It looks like a Real World house from the mid-'90s.
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Elaine warning Ally that a judge is "not big on pantsuits for women"
"Women wearing pants? Not in my courtroom!"
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This scarf of Ally's
Is she a stewardess for Pan Am? What do you even call that? A kerchief? A lady ascot? I don't believe women even wore those back in the '90s, to be honest.
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The firm's unisex bathrooms
No bathroom bills needed here! As Fish puts it, "it helps men and women employees breed familiarity... so long as they don't come in and just breed."
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The gauzy, girl-power songs from Vonda Shepard
They're so Lilith Fair — and I mean that as a compliment.