Cranky Lesbian

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Tag: Custody Battle

The Price She Paid: Loni Anderson’s Bitter Custody Fight

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On June 15, 2023

In TV Movies

Loni Anderson prepares to perform “Batdance” while dressed as Prince.

If there’s anything more enjoyable than a terrible wig in a TV movie, it’s a terrible wig atop the head of beloved superstar Loni Anderson, who brought us both my favorite mother-daughter prostitution film, My Mother’s Secret Life, and my favorite unnecessary remake of a Barbara Stanwyck classic in Sorry, Wrong Number. In The Price She Paid, a 1992 CBS telefilm that found a second home on Lifetime, she wears a shaggier, peroxided version of Patrick Duffy’s Daddy ‘do that blinds you as it draws you in, as if to ensure your attention doesn’t wander.

Anderson fans can be forgiven for wondering whether The Price She Paid is a biopic about her many financial disputes with Burt Reynolds, whom she was soon to bitterly divorce. The answer, sadly, is no. It’s about the emotionally bruising and politically charged custody fight her Lacey Stewart, single mother to 12-year-old R.T. (Coleby Lombardo), is plunged into when the boy’s father, her rapist, is paroled. And I’m serious when I say that Anderson, typically faulted here for her vacant stares and robotic delivery, acquits herself nicely when the screenplay serves up something meaty.

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Because Mommy Works: The Nightmare of Having a Self-Sufficient Mother

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On January 27, 2023

In TV Movies

Anne Archer is a persecuted parent in Because Mommy Works.

From Stella Dallas to Kramer vs. Kramer, there’s no tearjerker quite like the separation of parent and child, and Because Mommy Works (1994) is no exception. An NBC production that found a second home on Lifetime, it could more accurately be called Because Daddy’s a Dipsh*t. And while its plot and resolution are likely to astonish or even amuse younger or more sheltered viewers who don’t take it seriously, the ’90s were indeed still a time when mothers, unlike fathers, were legally penalized for working or attaining higher education.

Anne Archer plays Abby Forman, a cardiac care nurse and mother to six-year-old Willie (Casey Wurzbach of Gramps). Her ex-husband, Ted (John Heard, a specialist of sorts in detestable characters), has spent nearly half of Willie’s life largely absent from it, doing whatever he pleases, but believes he has fulfilled his fatherly obligations by never missing a child support payment. Now remarried to homemaker Claire (Ashley Crow, who makes the most of a small but complex role), he reappears to again hassle Abby for having the temerity to think that she, like him or any other working father, can effectively parent while also holding a job.

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