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'Amy' has a good defense but faces formidable opponents
Seattle Post-Intelligencer - September 18, 1999
By JOHN LEVESQUE, POST-INTELLIGENCER TV CRITIC
All aboard! The next train departing Big City Aspirations for Humble New England Origins is leaving the station. Please have your tickets ready, and feel free to toss personal baggage anywhere.
What, oh what, hath "Providence" wrought?
Well, for one thing, "Judging Amy." The success of "Providence" last season has made it OK, probably imperative, for empowered women to ditch careers and relationships in the
big city for a return to home, hearth and high-minded ideals.
In "Providence," it was a successful plastic surgeon who left her star-studded L.A. practice and moved back to Rhode Island to work in a non-profit health clinic and live with her
widowed father and her adult siblings who haven't managed to leave the nest yet. In "Judging Amy," it's a successful corporate attorney in New York who leaves her flagging marriage
behind to become a family-court judge in Hartford, Conn., and live with her young daughter, judgmental mother and adult sibling who hasn't managed to leave the nest yet.
TV REVIEW
Judging Amy. One-hour drama series about a single mother who goes home to New England to become a family-court judge. Starring Amy Brenneman, Tyne Daly, Dan Futterman and Karle Warren. Season
premiere tomorrow at 8 p.m., KIRO/7; show moves to regular day and time Tuesday at 10 p.m. Parental guideline rating: TV-PG. Grade: B
Of the two, "Judging Amy" is the more appealing because it's a better-written, better-acted, above-average drama. But where "Providence" has found a comfy niche at 8 p.m.
Fridays on NBC, "Judging Amy" will likely find a brick wall at 10 p.m. Tuesdays. (It debuts tomorrow at 8 p.m. to take advantage of CBS's spillover audience from the season premiere of
"60 Minutes," but its regular spot will be Tuesdays at 10, beginning next week.)
In the early going this fall, "Amy" will line up against ABC's "Once & Again," a highly regarded new drama. Then the going gets four-wheel-drive tough in early November
when "Once & Again" gives its borrowed time slot back to "NYPD Blue."
It's an ironic twist for Brenneman, who helped cement "NYPD Blue" as appointment viewing in its first two seasons. She played Janice Licalsi, an antiheroic rookie cop driven to murder by
a warped sense of duty.
With the brashness typical of Licalsi, Brenneman professes to be energized by the stiff competition. "Feels great," she said this summer. "Bring it on!"
Brenneman says "Judging Amy" seemed like a natural when she was in Hartford a few years ago putting together a birthday gift for her mom, a real-life judge in Connecticut.
"I made a videotape for her," Brenneman said, "and part of that was spending three days in the Hartford court and reacquainting myself with a lot of people that I had known growing
up. I hadn't done any TV for a while, but I kept thinking, 'There's a TV show here.'"
The judge that Brenneman plays isn't a mirror image of her mom. Brenneman says her mother didn't take her job home, so the daughter doesn't have that much material to go on. Brenneman's character,
Amy Gray, does take the job home, especially in the early going, because she's brand new at it.
Fact is, after Amy spends the day trying to patch up families, daughter Lauren (Karle Warren) wonders why theirs is broken, and mother Maxine (Tyne Daly) wonders the same thing. Mom also treats
Amy as one would a 9-year-old, and Amy retaliates in kind.
The sparring is the sort that aging moms engage in when they don't realize their kids have grown up, and that adult offspring rise to when they have had it up to here with the
put-on-a-jacket-it's-cold-outside nagging. It will be a tiresome contrivance if it becomes the focal point of the series, largely because it threatens to make Daly's character a one-note harpy.
Dan Futterman plays Amy's brilliant-but-underachieving brother, Vincent, the family referee, the calming voice of reason. A sort of one-man U.N. peacekeeping force, he tries to keep the roof from
blowing off the Gray residence.
The considerable talents of Brenneman, Daly and Futterman make "Judging Amy" good TV, but it still lacks the emotion of "Once & Again" or the intensity of "NYPD
Blue." On another night, it might be the best thing on TV.
But not on Tuesdays.
Copyright © 1999 Seattle Post-Intelligencer. All rights reserved.
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