Fucking Day: Ally McBeal Sniffed Butts (Patreon)

In 2002, on exactly the 100th episode of the television show Ally McBeal, Ally McBeal snuck up on Bon Jovi and smelled his asshole. I put it to you, humanity: what the fuck. What the goddamn fuck.

Before we begin our investigation, I'm going to make things even stranger. Before she sniffed Bon Jovi's asshole, she and Jenna Krakowski were staring at it, admiring it. And then they morphed into dogs.

Don't get too distracted by the dog thing. Every episode of Ally McBeal had one deranged CGI shot. Usually it was a character having a psychotic break and seeing an N64 character tear into their reality, but sometimes it was things like this– 3D animators from the '90s trying to render cartoon gags from the '40s. To me, the stranger choice was to have Jenna Krakowski turn into a dog, turn back into a human, and then say "that's hot" at this (all due respect to undeniable hunk Jon Bon Jovi) average-to-above average fully pantsed butt. They hadn't even seen Bon Jovi's face yet. Bon Jovi from behind could be anything. He has the back of a hockey goalie or a Colorado Springs mom between haircuts. Every day, at least thirty women tell him, "Wow, you're Jon Bon Jovi! Sorry, I thought you were my wife."

So here's what happens next. The two lawyers, now human again, start walking back to work. The audience thought the gag was the dog nonsense, but that was a trick. The real gag is the butthole ambush. A vision of a little girl smelling a boy's butt flashes on the screen, and what!? No. What! I wouldn't mind background checks on the second unit crew members who agreed to shoot that, but let's not get distracted. Ally McBeal, in a full trance, bends over and takes a four second inhale of this stranger's work pants.

So I ask again, what the fuck. I have been thinking about it for 23 years. I don't care how that sounds. Let the record show I've been thinking about the smell of Jon Bon Jovi's asshole for 23 years. If you know him, go ahead and tell him.

I didn't watch Ally McBeal, so it was only through fate's impish mischief that this is the episode I happened upon. And today is the day I get answers. Was this a single dog gag that got out of hand, or was Ally McBeal a show for perverts this whole time? Let's go back to the very beginning.

Holy fucking shit, butt sniffing is the very first, the very first thing that happens in the pilot episode of this show. The second sentence of this critically-acclaimed courtroom dramedy is "Acch, it's because I smelled his bottom." And there it is for you to see. There are the two child actors they hired to perform that.

So, look, David E. Kelley is a legendary TV writer. If the man behind LA Law, Chicago Hope, and Doogie Howser hands you a script for a pilot, go ahead and read it. But if the first page calls for two kids to smell each other's butts while the voiceover describes two kids smelling each other's butts, stop reading. The madman in your office is not David E. Kelley. You're in quite a bit of danger, but the good news is you can option his script for one jar of farts.

And in case you thought this meant something, it doesn't. Ally explains, while the kid sniffing her ass shrugs, "No. We didn't even smell anything." So sniffing butts is foundational to this character. It's the first thing we learn about her, but she's decided it's meaningless, but it's on her mind all the time, but she's decided it's stupid. I guess it's not that weird. It could only be a cute observation about the unknowable nature of attraction, and not the accidental confession of an ass maniac.

Except later in the same episode a man filed under the Federal Disabilities Act because he had a medical condition where he had to touch butts.

It's my new favorite gif. Every acting choice is a masterpiece.

Anyway, I'm suspicious. There's some strange butt stuff going on. I'm reminded of the time Liddy wrote an article about Ally McBeal right here on this very website where Ally used her ass to give CPR to a fat guy (he was too fat for mouth). And speaking of butts, they bring up the butt sniffing again four episodes later.

In Season 1, Episode 5, Jenna Krakowski mentions the buttocks sniffing on the stand. Everyone in the office knows Ally McBeal smells buttholes, and they talk about it casually. They talk about it under oath. Can you imagine your co-workers speaking openly about a fetish you had when you were in second grade? I can, because firemen had to come to my school and cut me out of a Battlecat, but the point I'm making is whatever butt thing David E. Kelley has, he's having trouble keeping it out of his work. By the rippling loins of Battlecat, how hard is it to keep your sexual urges from seeping into your art? By the inescapable green holes of Battlecat, the butt sniffing gets brought up later the same episode!

This lawyer's opening statement, his opening statement to the panel of judges is, "In the spirit of no surprises, it was my bottom she smelled twenty years ago." There's no need to volunteer that information unless butt sniffing is going to come up at least a few more times. Or unless you're up late writing a script and every part of your subconscious is howling for yummy butt smells.

Maybe I'm being crazy. Let me check something.

Okay, Google AI seems to think David E. Kelley, creator of Ally McBeal and Boston Legal, is not associated with any "butt stuff." Case closed! However, the genius robot did find some butt stuff in a show "unrelated" to David E. Kelley called Boston Legal. Let's see if there's any suspiciously strange butt stuff going on there.

I think this counts.

Back to Ally McBeal. In Season 2, Episode 11, Ally goes to the hospital to watch one of her old high school teachers die. She spends her death rattle talking about another student, and describes him to a priest by saying, "Ally and he smelled each other's buttocks when they were eight." Not in those exact words, but wait, sorry. Yes, in those exact fucking words.

Come on, man. I'm not saying this is bad writing, because it's not writing. This is like turning to camera and saying, "Hi, I'm Calista Flockhart, and a close friend with very special sexual needs is too shy to ask you to please send your filthy underpants to David E. Kelley at the PO Box on your screen."

The dying lady's not done, by the way. Ally McBeal's high school teacher knows details about the time she smelled a butt nine years before they met. "It was love at first whiff," she tells the priest. Well, not in those exact words. Sorry, wait. I did it again. In those exact words.

Who told her all this? Love at first whiff!? Did this psychopath hear a dark sexual rumor about one of her students and write her own lore? Her own theme song lyrics? Because fucking Ally McBeal and the child actors in the ass sniffing flashback made it explicit: it didn't smell like anything! They didn't get the appeal! Does Ally McBeal tell every person, every single person she meets a different version of this story? Why? You filthy pervert, why?

Anyway, in Season 3, Episode 11, another of Ally McBeal's coworkers references the butt sniffing in court. Flippantly. It happens so fast it's like he's tired of how often he needs to bring it up.

Peter MacNicol labels Ally McBeal "Exhibit A" and references her childhood butt fetish in a cross examination. I don't know what the hell you call that. That's like a finals question for someone getting their Masters in Intersectionality. So I might be wrong about this, but if he had honked her tits and said, "I bet you wish these were butts, fartslut" it would be more respectful.

But back to what I was saying, he goes "love at first sniff," like you'd pronounce "yadayada" or "whatever" or "fuckableBattlecatyougetit." Both the character and the actor are sick of mentioning the one time this woman smelled a butt when she was eight. Luckily the show never brings up the butt sniffing again.

… until three episodes later when Ally McBeal is so excited she might be meeting Tina Turner that she screams at her ex-boyfriend, "I will meet Tina Turner! Which you know I've wanted since the day I sniffed your butt and decided you were the man for me!" I'm not doing the bit where I pretend those weren't her exact words. You already know they were.

The show has long since forgotten this is supposed to be strange. When people talk to David E. Kelley about Ally McBeal they probably say things like, "Such an amazing cast, and I loved the dancing baby!" And he definitely replies, "What a normal thing it is to smell buttholes, right?"

What I mean is, you can see when Ally screams about sniffing ass in the office, it's not the subject matter she regrets bringing up. The butt stuff is how everyone has described her since childhood, even to judges, teachers, and priests. No, she's more embarrassed about revealing she still has feelings for Billy, so she covers for it the way any ordinary non-pervert would. She says, and I quote, "Of course your ass doesn't smell so good to me anymore." It reminds me of the time I ran into Jerry O'Connell at a hotel bar and blurted out, "I'm going to my room to fuck Battlecat" then tried to fix it by whispering, "The sexy green cat from He-Man." And then we partied all night.

Enough incomprehensible butt stuff. Here's a "Did you know" fact from the IMDB page for Ally McBeal Season 5, Episode 19:

Classic. But let's really change things up from butt stuff. In Season 4, Episode 10, Ally McBeal gets caught being jealous of Famke Janssen, which is unusual because Ally's not normally a jealous person. It's a feeling she's having trouble expressing until she remembers her defining, most relatable personality trait, and you already know it, I don't know why I'm bothering to type "the first time she smelled a child's ass."

She says, "I was able to work in the office with Georgia, who was married to the first ass I ever sniffed!" There's no prayer of this still being a joke, so they must think this helps us understand the emotional stakes. "How do I explain what it's like to be less hot than Famke Janssen? Oh, most people know what that's like? Great, but for everyone else, it's… it's like knowing what your ex-boyfriend's butt smells like. Or doesn't smell like. It depends who's telling the story and which season of the show we're in. The important thing is, I sniffed his butt. Sorry, part of the fetish is never shutting up about it."

By the way, you're insane if you think I didn't notice Ally saying Georgia was married to the "first" ass she ever sniffed. That's confirmation there were other butt sniffs between her grade school sweetheart and Jon Bon Jovi. Speaking of butt sniffing, David E. Kelley eventually got better at elegantly weaving it into the dialog.

I'm, of course, speaking about Season 5, Episode 16 when Ally McBeal told Matthew Perry, "I sniffed this guy's ass once."

Which brings us back to the start. I feel like we've learned so much since then, about so many things, but the event that put us on this journey was Ally McBeal floating toward Bon Jovi's butthole like it was a cooling pie. Here it is, if you don't remember:

Still madness. Nothing I've learned makes me think it's any less fucking nuts. And, in fact, after you see how everyone in this scene reacts, things will make even less sense.

Three things. First, Ally is shocked by her own behavior. Nonsense. Get the fuck out of here with that, Ally. You do this all the time. As the man who hit CTRL-F for the word "sniff" in 112 Ally McBeal scripts, I can assure you every character who has ever met Ally McBeal knows her to be a serial butt sniffer.

Second, when she is told to keep the butt sniffing quiet, Jenna Krakowski says "Who would believe it!?" Fucking everyone! Idiot! It's all people talk about! If she said she was at the Celtics game, everyone's first question would be about Pervis Ellison's taint aroma. Her butt sniffing is on the transcript of at least two court cases! Jenna. Ninety-five episodes ago, her butt sniffing was a part of your very own sworn testimony! Jesus Christ, did you and she both somehow forget? I feel like I'm watching Memento, only it's 90 minutes of people farting on Memento's head.

Oh, I almost forgot my third and most important point: Jon Bon Jovi knew! Jon Bon Jovi can sense intruders with his anal glands!

It gets weirder still. Despite her show spending 99 episodes normalizing butt sniffing, and despite Jon Bon Jovi being totally into it, Ally McBeal knows she needs to explain herself and apologize. And whatever you think of the show, I think we can all agree this is excellent writing:

In front of Bon Jovi's work crew, Ally McBeal explains, "See, when I was seven, I smelled… the butt. Of a boy." Let's see, what else, what else… oh! This episode was the final television appearance of Tony-winning Gimme a Break! star, Nell Carter, who played a character named Harriet Pumple. And suck my entire dick, that's not a name. That's a sound J.K. Rowling makes when she meets Nell Carter and says, "Don't tell me your name, let me try to guess!"

It's also worth mentioning that while Ally McBeal was emotionally processing her 832nd butt sniffing, she was dealing with a client who kept breaking into his childhood home to jump off the roof in homemade wings. No, but listen: it was played as heroic. Ally put him on the stand and his dream was inspirational. The jury believed a man could fly.

And maybe they were right.

Take to the skies, man hawk!

This isn't a cartoon gag or another Ally McBeal mental health crisis. In the fiction of the show, this is really happening. This man is fulfilling his lifelong dream of soaring across the river in a suit of bird.

His wife is there with Ally, looking on as he pilots an untested child's idea toward almost certain death. And they're all okay with it because he has terminal cancer. I should have mentioned the cancer earlier. He's doing this because he's running out of time, but his is not a tragic story. It is a triumph. As he takes to the sky on hope, you will know wings are forever. Your heart will be the brightest star of oh shit. Oh fuck.

Fuck! Fuck!

I don't remember where I was going with any of this, but the good news is I can do whatever the fuck I want. Bye!

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Sarcophski, who never sniffed an asshole they didn't like, and never liked an asshole they didn't sniff.

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