When Ally McBeal premiered in September 1997, lesbian kisses and lesbian characters were infrequent and controversial on television, as illustrated by the media frenzy over the coming-out of Ellen Degeneres' sitcom character that same year. But by the time Ally McBeal finished its last season in May of 2002, same-sex kissing between women--gay and straight--had become almost commonplace on television.

Despite the many ways in which the show routinely rendered lesbian and bisexual women invisible, Ally McBeal is one of the reasons lesbian visibility has improved on television in the last few years.

David E. Kelley's hour-long series about post-feminist lawyer Ally McBeal (played by Calista Flockhart) was a ratings hit for Fox in its first few years because of its witty, un-"p.c." dialogue, quirky characters, and unusual mix of drama and comedy.

It was also frequently controversial (usually deliberately so), and thrived on exploring contentious topics like homosexuality--especially when it involved homosexual encounters between attractive young women. Through frequent conversations between the (heterosexual) characters about lesbianism or bisexuality, as well as several kisses between the female characters, homoerotic dancing, and the occasional lesbian character, the series contributed to the increasingly popular belief in American culture that most women are secretly attracted to other women, but (almost) always in addition to—and subjugated to--their attraction to men.

This curiosity by heterosexually-identified women isn't new, but the increase in public awareness and public acceptance of it is a recent development. It is best described by the term "heteroflexible," which Salon.com writer Laurie Essig explains as the willingness to explore same-sex encounters while clearly and publicly maintaining a preference for heterosexuality. "Heteroflexible," she elaborates, "is a lighthearted attempt to stick with heterosexual identification while still 'getting in on the fun of homosexual pleasures'" (Nov 15, 2000).

For some women, to paraphrase Ally's roommate Renee (Lisa Nicole Carson), heteroflexibility is what happens when opportunity and curiosity collide (Season 3, Episode 2).

Unlike heterosexual women, heteroflexible women are open to homosexual experiences, as long as these experiences stay firmly in the "experimentation" camp. And unlike the bisexual woman or bisexual straight woman, the heteroflexible woman makes no claim to bisexuality and has no interest in developing a romantic relationship with women outside of sex. Quite the opposite, in fact--her identity is securely rooted in heterosexuality.

In this way, a heteroflexible woman's sexuality functions much like a weeble wobble, the popular egg-shaped plastic child’s toy from the 1970’s with a round, weighted bottom that causes it to spring back into place whenever it is knocked down or pushed over: she might occasionally dabble in Sapphic encounters, but she eventually and inevitably returns to heterosexuality as her normal state of being.

There are numerous scenes and storylines throughout the lifetime of Ally McBeal that propagate the concept of heteroflexibility; in the second season alone (1998-1999), Ally McBeal discussed or portrayed sexual relationships between women in five of the twenty-two episodes.

But it is perhaps most clearly illustrated by the now-famous kiss between Ally and Ling (Lucy Liu) in Episode 2 of Season 3 (November 1999), in which Ling's erotic dream about Ally causes the women to briefly flirt with the idea of having a sexual relationship. After a few days of wondering and talking about it, their desire culminates in a kiss, which both women enjoy. Although after the kiss both women conclude that what they really want out of a relationship is “a penis,” both women were at least willing to consider the possibility that they might be “gay," as Ling verbalized in her statement prior to the kiss that conveyed she was “afraid” she might end up with a woman.

Although homophobic, her statement nonetheless implies that ending up with a woman is in the realm of possibility, which is where Ally McBeal becomes unintentionally subversive: it renders thinkable that which was previously unthinkable, at least on primetime television. Most depictions of women's sexuality on primetime television prior to 1997 (and even today) position women firmly in one camp or the other--either lesbian or heterosexual but never in-between.

Guest star Lara Flynn Boyle’s character in Episode 17 of Season 5 provides another example of heteroflexibility when she states that although both she and Heather Locklear’s character are heterosexual, they had sex with each other occasionally because “no one knows how to touch a woman like another woman.”

In contrast to the high number of female same-sex encounters on the series, actual lesbian characters (women exclusively attracted to women) only appear twice, and both times are portrayed as not-quite-women.

The first is Margaret Camero (Wendy Worthington), a women’s rights advocate whom Ally's colleague Richard Fish (Greg Germann) describes as a “man-hating, vicious lesbian” who “looks like a man” (Season 2, Episode 19). The second is a very feminine woman whose husband is suing for an annulment because she did not disclose her sexual orientation before their marriage.

In both cases, the lesbians are portrayed as refusing to adhere to their assigned roles as women--the first because she eschews conventional images of femininity, the second because she failed her duties as a wife. On Ally McBeal, therefore, "real women" are heterosexual (or heteroflexible), while lesbians are something lesser-than.

But the show also occasionally provides a platform for exploring a lesbian perspective, such as when Camero tells Ally "I guess I just reject the notion that your life is empty if you don't have a man" (Season 2, Episode 23). It is also realistic about the persistence of homophobia, even as it claims not to condone it; in Episode 13 of Season 3, for example, Ally sadly acknowledges the homophobia behind her own decision not to date a bisexual man, but comments "sometimes prejudice wins out."

Bisexual women do not come off looking any better than lesbians do on the show. When Heather Locklear guest-stars in the fifth season as a bigamist on trial for being married to two men, the prosecution attempts to discredit Locklear's character as "aberrant" by introducing Lara Flynn Boyle's character as a woman with whom she formerly had a sexual relationship. Even though both women identify as heterosexual, in the absence of any actual bisexual characters on the show and given the persistence of American cultural stereotypes about bisexual women as promiscuous and confused, viewers are likely to believe these characters actually do represent bisexual women.

In this way, Ally McBeal’s depiction of sexual relationships between women is simultaneously conservative and liberal, homophobic and gay-friendly; it both reinforces cultural stereotypes of lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual women and subverts them.

Ally McBeal's contradictory perspective on this topic is representative of contemporary American culture's conflicted attitude towards sexual relationships between women; as Suzanna Danuta Walters writes in “All The Rage,” “no series has so delved into the strange heart of the heterosexual at once disgusted by and desirous of gay sexuality as Ally Mcbeal” (p. 119).

This contradiction is revealed through multiple statements by many characters over the course of the show, but in particular by Ally herself, who in the same episode, says both that enjoyed kissing another woman, but that she's "not even ashamed to admit that I don't want to be gay” (Season 3, Episode 2). In another episode, she denies that she doesn’t like lesbians and states as proof that she “wrote ABC when they canceled Ellen” (Season 2, Episode 23), while in yet another episode admits “I’m far more homophobic than I ever imagined” (Season 3, Episode 13).

The way the Ally-Ling kiss was portrayed is another manifestation of this conflict, according to Danuta Walters:

That lesbianism or the suggestion of it on Ally McBeal is designed to attract the male audience is unabashedly asserted by the series, as the writers explicitly state when Ling and Ally decide to dance together suggestively in order to excite a group of men. "You know what arouses men and frustrates them at the same time?" Ling asks Ally. "Two beautiful women--into each other" (Season 3, Episode 7).

In fact, most of the lesbian kisses on Ally McBeal were engaged in by the heterosexual female characters in order to elicit a specific response from a man--such as when Ally kisses Elaine (Jane Krokowski) in an attempt to convince an unwelcome male suitor that she’s really a lesbian (Season 2, Episode 7), then kisses Georgia (Courtney Thorne-Smith) in another episode for the same purpose (Season 2, Episode 9).

In the world according to Ally McBeal, lesbianism is just another weapon in the war between the sexes, a tool for heterosexual (heteroflexible) women to use to manipulate or supplement the affections of men.

But at the same time, the show also deliberately implies that the women themselves enjoy the experience. After Ally kisses Georgia, she accuses Georgia of "[using] tongue"--i.e. enjoying it--and when Ally and Ling kiss, both women cautiously agree "that didn't suck" and want to do it again.

Even Nelle (Portia de Rossi), one of the only women at the law firm whom Ally doesn't kiss at some point on the show, confirms the idea of heteroflexibility when she reassures Ling "You think you're the first heterosexual woman to fantasize about kissing another woman?" (Episode 2, Season 3).

Of course, believing that (heterosexual) women really do enjoy lesbian encounters is a necessary element of heterosexual male fantasy, so on one level there is nothing subversive about suggesting this on Ally McBeal. But it opens the door to the possibility, however slight, that the women might actually like it too much, which is where is gets really interesting.

If, as Adrienne Rich writes in "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," what men really fear is "that women could be indifferent to them altogether, that men could be allowed sexual and emotional…access to women only on women’s terms" (p.236), then the increasing frequency of lesbian lip locks on Ally McBeal should make male viewers increasingly uncomfortable, because some of these heteroflexible women might actually discover they're bisexual (or even lesbian), instead of heteroflexible.

Fortunately for most straight male viewers, there is never any real danger of that happening on Ally McBeal: the sexuality of recurring female characters are always heteroflexible (or heterosexual), never bisexual or lesbian.

The series clearly exploited lesbian sexuality for ratings--it prominently featured most of the lesbian encounters in promos for those episodes and it almost always scheduled those episodes for 'sweeps' periods--and the storylines and characters on Ally McBeal reinforced negative stereotypes about lesbians and bisexual women for a laugh just as often as it challenged them.

But taken cumulatively and in the context of a lack of sexual encounters between women on other primetime television shows during the same time period, it is arguable that the sheer number of scenes on Ally McBeal showing or discussing same-sex encounters between women contributed to desensitizing the American public to the topic (and images) of lesbian sexuality.

It also laid the groundwork for characters like Jessie on Once and Again, Lena on All My Children, and Jenny in the upcoming series The L Word--television characters who had previously only had relationships with boys/men, but for whom the collision of curiosity and opportunity causes them to realize not that they're heteroflexible, but that they're lesbian or bisexual.

In normalizing heteroflexibility, Ally McBeal inadvertently helped to normalize lesbianism and bisexuality, as well, and in this way the show is at least partially responsible for the sharp increase in lesbian characters on television in the last few years.

Despite its efforts to paint heterosexuality as the norm, Ally McBeal has actually achieved the opposite--which may turn out to be one of the show's greatest, if most ironic, legacies.