Ellen Gray: 'Eli' may remind you of 'Ally'

ELI STONE. 10 tonight, Channel 6.

IT'S BEEN a bit more than 10 years since David E. Kelley introduced us to an attractive young lawyer experiencing visual and auditory hallucinations.

And though "Ally McBeal" did seek professional help from time to time - remember Tracey Ullman as the therapist who thought Ally (Calista Flockhart) just needed a theme song? - the hallucinations continued: Dancing babies, hockey players, you name it, Ally saw them, all apparently meant to convey some deep truth about women that Kelley was supposedly privy to (and that I, an actual woman, often was not).

But while it was apparently acceptable for a woman lawyer's ticking biological clock to express itself in terms of viral video, sex really does change everything.

At least that's the message I'm taking away from ABC's newest drama, "Eli Stone," which tonight introduces an attractive young lawyer (Jonny Lee Miller) who's seeing and hearing things that aren't there.

Eli - look, the guy just begs to be nicknamed "Eli McStone" - has to be at least as disturbed as Ally was. I mean, he's not only hearing organ music during settlement conferences, he's getting up during sex with his girlfriend (Natasha Henstridge) to find George Michael performing atop his coffee table.

A cable car appears in the lobby of his San Francisco law firm, and his long-dead father (played by "Ed's" Tom Cavanagh) urges him to climb aboard.

This is the kind of thing Ally would have understood.

But Eli's a guy, and as a guy, he knows enough to seek professional help, both from his doctor brother (Matt Letscher) and from an acupuncturist (James Saito) recommended by his secretary (Loretta Devine).

Before the premiere's over, Eli has both a physical and a metaphysical explanation for his pop-singer sightings, both serious enough that I should feel bad for making fun of him for them.

And yet I don't.

Because while there was a brief, crazy season in which the fictional Ally McBeal was one of the most talked-about women in this country, I don't ever remember Kelley or anyone else attempting to argue that her existence meant anything to mankind in general, much less that she was some sort of prophet.

That, though, is the possibility that Greg Berlanti would like us to consider about Eli.

Berlanti, who co-created "Eli Stone" with Marc Guggenheim (like Kelley, a Boston lawyer-turned-writer), has lately been on a Kelley-like streak, having moved on from the WB's critically acclaimed but little-watched "Everwood" and "Jack & Bobby" to become executive producer on three ABC series at once, "Brothers & Sisters" (which he's generally credited with having saved), "Dirty Sexy Money" and now, "Eli Stone."

Kelley, whose "Boston Legal" has become the gleeful distillation of some of his best and worst past series, at one point seemed to be spread too thin among multiple shows, and began to repeat himself.

Berlanti, smart enough not to try to write every episode of his shows himself, isn't necessarily in that boat. But then why does he seem to be repeating not one of his own greatest hits, but Kelley's?

Eli/Ally not only isn't the most original character of the season, he's not the most sharply defined, either.

Miller, yet another of this season's undercover Brits - not to mention Angelina Jolie's ex-husband - does what he can with Eli, an eighth-year associate at a law firm who's apparently forgotten his earlier ideals.

But there's only so much he can do, between looking disturbed and trying not to look disturbed.

And don't look for him, or his show, to be saved by the law.

In the premiere, Eli becomes entangled in a case involving autism and vaccinations, a hot-button topic if ever there was one. But it seems his higher power, or gift, or brain abnormality - it's anyone's guess - is urging him to ignore not only the law, but the current science, in favor of a feel-good ending.

That feel-good ending didn't feel so good to the American Academy of Pediatrics, which, according to the New York Times, had asked ABC not to air the episode, concerned that it could lead parents to avoid vaccinating their children. Instead,

there'll be a disclaimer and a referral to a government Web site.

Not that that's likely to clear up any confusion.

As one character says tonight, "Even if the jury doesn't believe me, maybe everybody reading about the trial will. And maybe they'll make sure not to use your client's product to vaccinate their kids."

Yep, that's how television works, too.

I don't pretend to know the truth about vaccines and autism, and I certainly sympathize with parents for whom the connection appears clearer than the science so far suggests.

But if anyone thinks that a plotline like this is going to do anything but add to the confusion, then they might just be ready to embrace the prophetic stylings of George Michael. *

Send e-mail to graye@phillynews.com.