Ally McBeal is one of my favorite shows of all time. Robert Downey Jr. on Ally McBeal is one of my favorite characters on one of my favorite shows, and so a perfect ending to last night was crawling in bed with one of my best friends, pouring ourselves some wine, and firing up her DVDs to watch a few RDJ-centric episodes.
In case you didn't watch the show, Ally is a neurotic 30 year old lawyer. She hears songs in her head and sees things like dancing babies. She's a hopeless romantic and yet completely unlucky in love. But one day she meets Larry (portrayed by the completely wonderful Robert Downey Jr.). Larry has issues of his own (an ex-wife, a son), but the two completely click, and their first kiss is an amazingly romantic scene:
If you were to ask me right now what I want from a man, that's it. I want to tell him my insecurities and my problems and my fears and him say, "OK. We'll work on that." I want him to know all the issues I've got inside my head and all the things I think about way too much, and I want him to just not care about them. I want him to look at me the way Larry is looking at Ally, and I want him to kiss me the way he kisses her.
After this scene aired, my friend said, "That doesn't happen in real life!" And no, it doesn't. Not scripted like that, with perfect lighting and an incredibly gorgeous guy. But if I completely lose faith that it ever will, I will go insane.
This week on one of my other favorite TV shows ever, How I Met Your Mother, Ted gave a little speech about how, little by little, he's losing faith. He used to believe in soul mates and destiny, and he's been beaten down so many times that he doesn't quite believe it anymore. I feel the same way. I don't know how many of my friends - wonderful, strong, beautiful, funny, intelligent women - continuously strike out at relationships. When one in two marriages end in divorce these days, how can you keep faith in any relationship? How do you know that somewhere out there, there might be your own version of Larry - someone who will accept you for who you are and help to make you a better person?
Even on TV, sometimes things don't work out. Unfortunately, Robert Downey Jr. was still in the midst of his drug problems when he was on the show, and he was written off when he was arrested for the upteenth time. At the end of the series, they didn't even end up together. But I like to think, in the TV universe inside my head, that eventually they found each other.
I don't know that I'll find my Larry out there. I don't know that my next relationship won't end in heartache. I find it really hard to keep believing, but I have to. Because if you completely lose faith, what's the point at all?
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