Ally is supposed to be 27 in Season 1?

Calista Flockhart was extremely young looking. I've seen plenty of people in their mid-20's who look much older than Calista in season 1.

She was already 33 in season 1.

I think what's really laughable was all these young lawyers under 30 in charge of their own firm. Why is TV obsessed with giving big success to people under 30? This very rarely happens unless these kids inherit it from their families. And what about their outrageous student loans from harvard? Where the hell did they get the money to open that firm, rent the space, and hire all those people? We're just supposed to believe these 20 somethings are genius and rich enough to get so much business in an urban area like that?

I let the obvious inaccurate portrayal of the court system slide, but this I can't.

Ally and Billy as 27 year olds was a little bit of a stretch, but possible.

In 1 of the first few episodes, Richard Fish said, "I'm not even 30 yet." That surprised me. I know they said he went to school with Ally at Harvard, but he looked much older. In season 1 he looked at least 35. John Cage looked like he was in his early 40s.

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i'm sorry but i dont see the problem here.

Ally looks 27. she could also be 30, and also 26. but 27 seems about right. some people look 22 when they are 27, and some people look 40 when they are 30.

Billy, well he looks older, but as i was saying, possible since some people just look older.

as for the storline - i agree it is BS that people at that age are reasonably to have their own firm and be successful lawyers already, making tons of money.
like someone said about sex& the city - Carey living in NY writing a column for a paper and affording nice appartment and dinners out and whatever...

but as for the age and how they look - take a look at your friends and tell me if they look so much more different.

I know this is late. At the time when the show aired it was completely believable and it wasn't much of a stretch. Bear in mind this was filmed in 1996 and aired in 1997. So Gil Bellows(Billy) and Courtney Thourne Smith(Georgia) were both 29. They were both born in 1967. I don't think it was much of a stretch to get them to play characters 2 years younger.People don't age much in two years. Really, Ally is 27 going on 28 in season 1 so technically she's 28 which would make Billy and Georgia 28 also. Calista herself was 32 when she filmed season 1 so again I don't think 4 years is much of a stretch and I agree with some of the comments, Calista was very young and fresh faced looking for her age.

"Why didn't they just have the characters be closer to the actors' age? How does that impact the story? It's not like it's set in high school."

I agree. I just started watching this show out of curiosity while browsing Hulu (because I began reflecting on its wild but brief/fleeting popularity back in the 90s including the 'dancing baby' weirdness). When Ally said she was 27 in one episode I did find that rather jarring. Calista Flockhart may have not been much older than that, but as an actress over 30 there was no reason she couldn't be portraying her own age in a show whose premise did NOT necessitate making her younger. The show's premise in fact, concerns a woman who while successful in her law career, is rather 'worn down' by life and haunted by her biological clock and failure to fulfill her dreams of a big family. Uh, doesn't that sound like someone closer to 37? What would make an evidently intelligent woman think it realistic to have finished building her career AND her big nuclear family less than a decade out of high school? No one ever told her there are only so many hours in the day?

Fact is, career-hyperfocused women throughout their 20s tend to be so consumed in a life of grinding and 'climbing the ladder' that babies (let alone DANCING ones) are rarely at the front of their minds. It would be rather illogical to be fretting about 27 being 'too late' when you CHOSE to put your career first. Still, this understandably starts to change after these women reach their 30s and 1) they are feeling in a more secure place to settle down 2) the countdown on their unused eggs becomes hard to continue ignoring. While Ally's just a TV character, she seems to be one who pursued the classic feminist career path while thinking that classic traditional motherhood was just as easily within reach. This would indicate that she is unbelievably naive, and doesn't comprehend the importance of time, sacrifice and patience in building a life...not to mention the hard work that 'having it all' will ALSO take to continue maintaining.

Was Ally written to be simply THAT clueless in her understanding of life? Or was she maybe written as say, an illustration of how second wave feminism's promises to women could be horribly misleading enough to turn them into confused messes?
Hmm.