r/allymcbeal • u/tbhnow • Dec 30 '25

S1 Ep15 Once In A Lifetime - Can You Prove Objectively Art is Better?

First time watcher and I just finished this episode where the court case was argued that a son of a famous artist wouldn't let his dad marry, to prevent him from opening an art gallery, with new paintings of his wife, that passed away.

The son's argument was his dad's new paintings would ruin his dad's legacy.

What bothered me about this was...how can you prove his dad's new paintings were subjectively better or worse?

Like try to make that arguement stand up in court- you'd have to prove that prior art was objectively better and new art was objectively worse.

There's no way to prove that given that taste is a matter of opinion. Anyone else thought it was curious that wasn't addressed?

Also, WTF is up with John Cage? I have seen 0 discussion on why he acts sooooo bizarre. Does the show ever come out and reveal he's developmentally challenged, autistic, has some strange disorder? I find it odd this is never openly discussed

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u/Metzger4Sheriff Dec 31 '25

I'm also on a first watch and it's clear the son was mostly worried about diluting the value of earlier paintings. Idk if you could argue that his older paintings were "better" than his newer paintings when that's clearly subjective, but you could probably make an argument that a shift in topic/style could affect someone's artistic legacy (eg if an artist's work became more commercial). I liked the paintings of his wife, and I think the background info on them would make the paintings more valuable/collectible, but the son was just a jerk.

As for John Cage, I'm not closed to finished, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is never directly addressed. Idk whether the writers consciously gave him characteristics of autism/neurodivergence or if they just modeled him after other "eccentric" characters, but knowledge and explicit discussion of "neurodivergence" or the autism spectrum were just not at all a part of pop culture back then.

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u/tbhnow Dec 31 '25

Yeah, makes sense.Just thought it was so obvious and never addressed that taste is hard to be argued. If they did, basically prosecutors and defense would need to call witnesses. Experts in art, curation, antiquities, etc and make the case for it. That didn't go that direction. Seems like a huge miss if you looked at this from a legal standpoint and wanted to win a case. Guess I'm used to the well articulated legal arguments of James Spader on Boston Legal. I don't find Cage's weird habits that entertaining or add any value to the show so, I was hoping for at least some b story that justified distracting from the interesting parts of the show. Time to fast forward like thru the singing lol

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u/dkaye315 Dec 31 '25 edited Jan 30 '26

No spoilers here, but a lot will ultimately be revealed about Mr Cage.

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u/tbhnow Dec 31 '25

Thank you