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D-I-V-O-R-C-E TV
Salon - September 27, 1999
By Joyce Millman
Three new dramas look on the bright side of life in Splitsville.
There are so many new shows about divorced people this season, prime time is starting to mirror the actual divorce rate. Yes, TV has come a long way since "The Brady Bunch" coyly created
a blended family by way of double-spousal death. Nowadays, divorce dares speak its name -- loudly. Failing at marriage is not (usually) portrayed as a scandal or a moral flaw; on sitcoms from the
old "Designing Women" and "Cybill" to "Frasier," divorced people are, if not thrilled with the single life, then at least happy to be rid of their exes' baggage.
The fall's new drama series about divorce, though, are more somber and reflective. Aimed mainly at divorced working mothers, ABC's "Once and Again" and CBS's "Family Law" and
"Judging Amy" make a decent attempt to depict what divorce does to a family (or at least to a white, upper-middle-class family). These dramas are a banquet of messy emotions -- anger,
resentment, desire for revenge, relief -- topped off with a big fat dollop of guilt, the cherry on the sundae. "Every minute I'm here, I'm worried about what's happening with my kids, and
when I'm with my kids I'm worried about what's happening here, and I can't do all this!" exclaims the newly single mom-attorney of "Family Law." Telling his kids that their parents
were breaking up, confesses the divorced suburban dad of "Once and Again," was like taking a baseball bat and "having a good solid whack at both their heads."
But while all of these new dramas have scenes in early episodes where divorced parents are nearly undone by guilt, they also have scenes where the heroines pull it together and fiercely renew
their vows to have it all -- "all" meaning career, motherhood and freedom. Shows like "Judging Amy," "Family Law" and "Once and Again" may be the perfect
fantasy shows for divorce-torn times; their heroines aren't as glamorous as Alexis and Krystle and Amanda, but their revenge tastes just as sweet.
The most elegantly crafted show in this trio is Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick's "Once and Again," which looks a lot like what Herskovitz and Zwick's "thirtysomething" might
have become if it didn't get canceled before Hope and Michael reached the breakup they were obviously heading for. A decade ago, Herskovitz and Zwick based "thirtysomething" on their own
marriages, which were undergoing the tests of parenthood, career success and stay-at-home-mom restlessness. It's not surprising to learn, having watched "Once and Again," that Herskovitz
is now divorced. Those guys are so plugged in to the boomer zeitgeist, it's scary.
"Once and Again" has the duo's unmistakable imprints: lyrically written dialogue that makes white middle-class angst sing, emotionally voyeuristic shots of characters being pensive,
snuggly folksy background music, gold and gray autumn light. Herskovitz and Zwick haven't lost the touch for eliciting a deep, visceral identification with their characters; whether that makes the
characters, or us, stereotypical is open to debate. The pilot did a fine job of portraying the existential terror of an over-40, SUV-driving soccer mom (Sela Ward) and football dad (Billy
Campbell), whose dreams have fallen apart; it did an even better job of depicting their confusing, exhilarating rush of emotions at facing new romantic possibilities.
Lily Manning (Ward) and Rick Sammler (Campbell) have teens at the same high school. They eye each other while unloading the kids one morning, then awkwardly chat during a chance meeting in the
school office. In the Sept. 21 pilot, after much agonizing, he called her for a date, then another. They had to speak furtively on the phone, because their kids were always around listening; they
necked in his SUV like teenagers, because she was afraid to take him inside her house, lest they get caught (they did, by her ex-husband and two daughters). "Once and Again" has an
enticing parallel going; Lily and Rick are behaving like horny teens again (they've shared some of the sexiest TV kisses in a long time) at the same time his son and her daughter are suffering
their respective growing pains.
"Once and Again" (which occupies the "NYPD Blue" time slot until that show returns Nov. 9) is not without its drawbacks. Herskovitz and Zwick have come up with this gimmick
where Lily and Rick talk directly to the camera in scenes shot in black-and-white; it's supposed to show them revealing the innermost feelings they're unable to reveal to each other. The
limitations of this device became apparent pretty quickly in the pilot; it's pretentious and annoying and it breaks up the flow of the story (I use the term "flow" loosely, because the
show doesn't flow as much as float). Also, Lily's daughter Grace (Julia Whelan) has been compared by some critics to spunky Angela Chase from "My So-Called Life," which is absurd. Grace
is a whiny wet noodle of a girl; she has anxiety attacks when her mother leaves the house, she thinks she's fat and she can't bear that she may actually have to interact with Rick's hunky jock
son, Eli, some day. Grace is an all-too-realistic source of divorce guilt for Lily. In the pilot, when Lily finally went tough-love and told her daughter, "I'm not going to let your fear
dominate this house anymore," you could almost hear shouts of "You go, girl!" welling up from the suburbs of America.
But for "You go, girl!" sentiments of the man-dissing kind, it's hard to top the Sept. 20 pilot of "Family Law." In the first scene, Los Angeles family law attorney Lynn Holt
(Kathleen Quinlan) was dumped by her husband/law partner; not only did he run off with another woman, he took most of the firm's lawyers and clients with him, leaving Lynn with their two kids and
no income. Lynn was floored, but soon the survival instinct kicks in and she's stealing back clients, hiring a flamboyant divorce lawyer played by Dixie Carter ("I hate men. And I play very
dirty"), scraping "men" off the door of the bigger bathroom and turning the urinals into decorative planters. "Family Law" is the most male-unfriendly show since
"Designing Women"; it has a symbolically perfect time slot opposite "Monday Night Football."
Lynn's personal crises notwithstanding, "Family Law" is mostly a workplace drama; the cases Lynn and her loyal associate Danni (perky Julie Warner) took on in the pilot represented the
various ways marriages and families can go wrong -- ex-spouses squabbling over the ashes of a pet, a recovering junkie who wants to get her sons back from foster parents. Written by co-creators
Paul Haggis and Anne Kenney, the pilot episode was unabashedly female-centric (the central theme, echoing through Lynn's situation and the junkie-mom story line, was "What makes a
mother?"). But Haggis, who worked on "thirtysomething" and was the guiding hand for the very dark, twisted CBS crime drama "EZ Streets," has juiced "Family Law"
with surprising edginess, stinging humor (used sparingly -- this is a traditional drama, not a comedy-drama thing) and the brisk pacing of a cop show. "Family Law" is still a women's
show, don't get me wrong, but there are no angels, no ghosts, no fantasy sequences. It's one of the few shows in recent years where women's emotions and lives are deemed dramatically interesting
and important enough to stand alone.
It's one of the mysteries of network programming why CBS decided to launch two female-aimed dramas about divorced mothers who work with issues of family law. Like "Family Law,"
"Judging Amy" is set against the backdrop of broken homes, custody battles and child abuse. And like "Family Law," "Amy" looks at the bright side of its heroines'
marital break-ups -- divorce isn't swell, but a family can go through a lot worse.
Many similarities have been pointed out in the press (mea culpa) between "Judging Amy" and NBC's hit "Providence," about a single Los Angeles plastic surgeon who chucks her
practice, moves back home to Rhode Island, becomes a family doctor and communes with the advice-dispensing spirit of her dead mother. In "Judging Amy," Los Angeles corporate lawyer Amy
Gray (Amy Brenneman) gets divorced, accepts a judgeship back in her hometown of Hartford, Conn., and moves there with her 6-year-old daughter. They live with Amy's widowed mother, Maxine (a
gray-haired, crotchety Tyne Daly), once a pioneering social worker and working mom, now a dogmatic busybody puttering unhappily through retirement. Maxine dispenses advice, but Amy has to hack
through layers of crusty mom-speak to glean it.
In tone, "Judging Amy" isn't much like the soft-focus, sentimental "Providence" at all. Writer-producers John Tinker, Barbara Hall, Bill D'Elia and their intelligence-radiating
star (who also gets a producer credit) have turned out a crisply entertaining drama that's as crammed-full as Amy's docket. The show's concerns include divorce and combining career and single
parenthood, of course, but also aging, growing up, the search for personal fulfillment, parents who can't let go and the volatile relationship between mothers and daughters (Brenneman and Daly are
well-matched sparring partners).
Brenneman's Amy is believably overextended trying to smooth daughter Lauren's transition to their new life while simultaneously learning the ropes as a family court judge. Amy is cranky, she's
tired, she has doubts and guilt about what leaving her marriage is doing to her kid. And she's got to do it all under the long shadow of Maxine, a living legend. But Amy is a true working-mom
heroine. She takes too much on, then miraculously finds a way to deliver; to fall apart would be giving ammunition to those she feels are sitting in judgment of her -- her mother, her daughter,
her ex, her boss, the stay-at-home mothers at Lauren's school. The show's central irony is that Amy feels like she's in over her head as a judge who has to decide cases based on the best interest
of the child when she's not even sure what's best for her own child. Amy has yet to figure out what Maxine has learned about decision-making: Look authoritative and fake it.
Copyright © 1999 Salon.com. All rights reserved.
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