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'Judging Amy' brings Hartford close to 'Providence'
Boston Globe - September 18, 1999
By Matthew Gilbert
Globe Staff
This 30-something everywoman carries a few kilos of beautifully curly hair on her head. She has returned to her childhood home in a New England city that is not Boston, a self-reflective
refugee from a failed relationship and a lucrative but morally vacant career. And she takes blows in the name of tough love from her tart, cigarette-smoking mother.
If you guessed Dr. Syd Hansen on "Providence," the NBC hit starring Melina Kanakeredes as the recovering plastic surgeon whose boyfriend found a boyfriend of his own, you were only half
right. Tomorrow at 8 on WBZ-Ch. 4, CBS introduces its very own attempt at "Providence" with "Judging Amy," a wholesome drama set in the also-punnishly-named city of Hartford.
(What's next, Needham?) In "Judging Amy," which will move to its regular time slot this Tuesday at 10, Amy Brenneman plays the heroine-in-flux of the hour, this time with the added
accouterment of a cloyingly cute and confident 6-year-old daughter. Plus, her mother, a retired judge, is still very much alive and just can't stop picking on her accomplished daughter. As played
by Tyne Daly, she is formidable.
One of the biggest problems with "Judging Amy," aside from the fact that its is an obvious "Providence" clone, is the central mother-daughter dynamic. It's just hard to believe
that Amy Gray would choose to move back in with her meddling, passive-aggressive, arrogant mother, who actually has her arrested for speeding (for her own good, of course). As a fledgling judge,
Amy is allowed to stumble her way through her first few days on the bench; but as a daughter, she should know better than to travel from a lousy marriage in New York to one with her mother in
Hartford.
Based on the life of Brenneman's real mother, a Connecticut Superior Court judge, "Judging Amy" also suffers from a string of predictable bonding moments. Yes, an hourlong drama needs to
have emotional peaks, but none of the Big Scenes in this one feel particularly authentic or fresh. Amy, for instance, indulges in some treacle as she tearfully assures her daughter, "This
judge thing is pretty cool, but the best job I'm ever going to have is being your mom." The only soul-baring scenes that aren't stock are those between Amy and her sympathetic brother, played
with a bittersweet touch by Dan Futterman. He's a frustrated intellectual who grooms dogs for a living at "Scrub 'n' Scram." When he and Amy share their sorrows on the stairs or in the
basement late at night, they appear to have a natural chemistry. (That some of that chemistry seems sexual is, we hope, unintentional.)
"Judging Amy" also commits one of the least tolerable of TV offenses: moral self-satisfation. Like "Providence," it subjects us to easily solved cases of the week, in between
all the family dysfunction. Amy's cases are those she encounters in juvenile court, where her strength as a mother is counterpointed with all the bad parents who are deserting and abusing their
children out there in the world. One of the turnoffs of shows like this is that they pat themselves on the back for raising hard social issues, particularly those about children, but then they
pretend these problems can be fixed with the simple wave of a judge's or a doctor's wand. "Homicide" was great because it managed to show the ambiguities and insufficiencies of our
social institutions within the conventions of an hourlong TV drama.
It's too bad "Judging Amy" is such a thoroughly second-rate vehicle. All the performers are strong, particularly Brenneman, who can convey both insecurity and strength almost
simultaneously. Futterman wisely underplays the pathos of his lost soul, and Richard T. Jones (a black actor who appears to have been added after the NAACP criticized the networks for their
color-free casting) is promising as Amy's resistant assistant. Maybe we transfer these actors to a more original show set in, say, New Haven, New London, or New Bedford.
Copyright © 1999 Globe Newspaper Company. All rights reserved.
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