Reception
The show's ratings began to decline in the third season, but stabilized in the fourth season after Robert Downey, Jr. joined the regular cast as Ally's boyfriend Larry Paul. However, Downey's character was written out after the end of the season due to the actor's troubles with drug addiction.
Along with Dharma & Greg, Ally McBeal was one of the last two surviving shows to debut during the 1997-98 season, one of the weakest in television history for new shows. (Only seven shows to debut would be picked up for a second season, and only Dharma & Greg and Ally McBeal would last longer than three seasons, each providing enough episodes for syndication.) Both shows ended at the end of the 2001-02 season, five years after their debut.
Read more about this topic: Ally McBeal
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)