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A Lifetime of Schmaltz
TV Guide - October 30 - November 5, 1999
BY MATT ROUSH
Already this season, deranged mothers have pulled guns on the lead characters of CBS’s Judging Amy and NBC’s Providence, two shows so interchangeable, so predictable and so ordinary in
their pandering melodrama that you can’t believe you’re not watching them — or, for that matter, CBS’s stridently annoying Family Law — in their umpteenth reruns on cable’s Lifetime.
(In a weird irony, the best of this season’s new romantic dramas, ABC’s Once and Again, airs repeats on Lifetime within a week of the first showing.)
The success of Providence and the new CBS dramas reinforces the image of TV as a comfort zone, where a certain sort of glossily produced mediocrity feeds an appetite for relaxation over
stimulation, familiarity over shows that dramatically rock the boat. To be fair to Judging Amy, it has improved since its premiere, which presented its title star (Amy Brenneman) as an insecure
ditz who had to be prodded out of bed by her gruff mom (the tremendous Tyne Daly) on her first day of work. In recent weeks, judge Amy has taken charge, standing up to showboating lawyers and even
to a politically compromised boss.
Making tough and unpopular decisions, she waits until she’s in chambers to gripe, "Everybody loves Judge Judy!" She’s contrary enough to get thrown out of her first PTA meeting. And
yet the show works overtime to be lovable and precious, especially concerning Amy’s gratingly precocious daughter (Karle Warren), who conveniently chirps questions about religion just as her mom
takes on a case about a comatose child who might be a saint. Even when the situations are provocative, the resolutions tend toward the forgettably pat.
Still, it’s pricklier escapism than the cloying Providence, also about a career woman who moves back to her bucolic homestead under the roof of a widowed parent. While veterinarian dad Mike
Farrell dispenses folksy wisdom on Providence as he cuddles pets, Amy’s acerbic social worker, Daly, gets to bark such lines as "I’m old. I’ve lived long enough to see everything."
And if we live long enough, we’ll probably see this sort of thing again.
Copyright © 1999 TV Guide. All rights reserved.
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