Like Park Overall in The Price of a Broken Heart (1999), I would be stunned if my husband cheated—mostly because I don’t have one. But if you were to traffic in heterosexist stereotypes, as Lifetime movies do, my wife is essentially an old-school husband. Society views her as the more dominant and valuable partner because of her career; I’m the one who does her laundry.
How would I react if she ran off with her secretary? Well, I’d be surprised, mostly because she lacks the requisite immaturity, free time and organizational skills for such pursuits. (“Can you pls wash my lacy black bra and book a hotel room for my affair tomorrow? Thx,” she might text me before an assignation.) One thing I’m confident I wouldn’t do is sue her mistress, the course of action Overall’s Dot Hutelmyer charts in The Price of a Broken Heart, a sort of tawdry primetime domestic spin on The Price is Right.
When insurance executive Joe (Timothy Carhart, a skilled sultan of smarm) skedaddles after 18 years of marriage without an explanation, Dot is blindsided. Feelings of betrayal follow when she discovers he’s spent the last three years conducting an indiscreet office affair with his secretary, Lynne Cox (Laura Innes of ER). The bitterness at the heart of her lawsuit only develops when Joe’s disapproving female employees inform her that Lynne, mousy and married in her first years at the company, sought a divorce and sexy makeover, and became a shameless flirt, after Joe earned a prestigious promotion.
The Price of a Broken Heart is based on a true story out of North Carolina and Patricia Resnick’s teleplay relies on a hokey narrative device—the case is hotly debated at a local diner in the hours leading up to the verdict—to facilitate its many flashbacks. The diner content is mostly skippable (“What is a happy marriage, anyway?” a patron-philosopher asks), but I’ll be damned if the bulk of the action doesn’t hum along in a much smoother fashion than your average Lifetime offering. (Resnick’s credits are an offbeat treasure trove, from Altman films to 9 to 5 and a cult classic Cher TV special.)
Many of us are apt to consider alienation of affection lawsuits inherently absurd. No outsider can bust up someone else’s relationship entirely on their own—that’s an inside job if ever one existed. And, hell, if your partner is vulnerable to being snatched like a cheap wig, wouldn’t you want to know? But Dot’s argument isn’t about that, it’s about whether Lynne acted with deliberation in seducing Joe. Once she reads up on the law, she goes from “Sue her for what? Grand theft husband?” to “I just want someone to agree with me that what Lynne did was wrong” with the zeal of a true believer. Yet you’re never quite convinced that she has the full sympathies of Resnick or director Paul Shapiro.
Overall, a delightful sitcom stalwart of the ’80s and ’90s, is rather more subdued here than, say, Jean Smart, one of my favorite Lifetime actresses of that era, and it complements the material nicely. You may not agree with Dot’s crusade, but you care about the character. Innes doesn’t go full villainess with Lynne, an ambitious, occasionally prickly woman with a certain sense of entitlement; it’s only when she exclaims “She is suing me! That bitch of an ex-wife of yours is suing me!” that she gives up the campy goods. And there is understated humor in Joe and Lynne feeling injured by Dot’s reaction to their duplicity. But that’s the way the cookie crumbles, a lesson they taught Dot before learning it themselves.
Streaming and DVD availability
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Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.
Lisa
Excellent. It is interesting about the screenwriter on this one too. I can’t believe this is based on an actual legal case! However, all I can think of when I read the name Park Overall, is her role in Biloxi Blues with Matthew Broderick and saying her line, “Come to Mama,” while attempting to deflower Broderick’s character. I know. Non-Sequitur.
Cranky
“Would it be OK if we didn’t use the term mama?”
I associate Overall equally with “Empty Nest” and her voiceover work in “The Critic,” but there’s a telefilm of hers that I’m eager to see, if I can ever find a decent print. In “Overkill: The Aileen Wuornos Story,” she played Tyria Moore, Aileen’s girlfriend, to Jean Smart’s Wuornos. It was made in the early ’90s, so their relationship was not realistically depicted.
It’s currently on YouTube, but the quality’s not great:
Lisa
YES, she did! I saw it when it was a first-run TV movie on CBS. Jean was the prettiest Aileen I have ever seen. And Park made Tyria look like a model.