Cranky Lesbian

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Tag: Family Drama

In Lady Killer, Judith Light’s Affair with Jack Wagner Imperils Her Family

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On January 13, 2022

In TV Movies

Jack Wagner has dangerous abandonment issues in Lady Killer.

We might as well get this out of the way here: I consider Judith Light the Maria Falconetti of American made-for-TV movies. She is without peer. No matter the limitations (or excesses) of the material or her costars, her performances tend to be tiny marvels of subtlety, sympathy and generosity. Lady Killer (1995) is only the second of her films I’ve reviewed here, after A Strange Affair (1996), and it’s easily one of my least favorite of hers, but no matter how silly it might sound to the uninitiated, she genuinely elevates the medium.

Here she stars as Janice Mitchell, a homemaker who spends more time in the company of her therapist than with her workaholic husband Ross (Ben Masters) and co-ed daughter Sharon (Tracey Gold). Ross is usually overseas and with Sharon away at school, Janice is lonely and directionless. For fun she takes architectural tours, which is how she meets Guy Elliman (Jack Wagner), a self-described sometime architect whose voluminous hair suggests the balance of his time is spent deep conditioning.

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Susan Lucci’s Sultry Schemes Fall Flat in Blood on Her Hands

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On January 10, 2022

In Susan Lucci

Philip Casnoff is one of many pawns in Susan Lucci’s game.

All My Children legend Susan Lucci’s long and not-so-illustrious career in TV movies (dating back to 1984’s Invitation to Hell, which we’ll get to eventually) was running on fumes by the Miracle at Christmas: Ebbie’s Story era of the mid-’90s. Its last gasp (to date — you know how soap actors love to reanimate the dead) came in 1998 with Blood on Her Hands, the perfunctory tale of a seductive schemer who leaves a trail of ruined men in her wake.

Unlike her character in 1991’s The Woman Who Sinned, Lucci’s Isabelle Collins is not a reluctant adulteress. She embraces the role with gusto, expertly fanning her cuckolded husband’s suspicions and taunting him with thinly veiled banter she knows will provoke a reaction. Stewart (John O’Hurley), an ill-tempered venture capitalist whose hobbies include golf and domestic violence, is happy to comply. A typical nasty exchange goes like this:

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Judith Light’s Lover Befriends Her Ailing Husband in A Strange Affair

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On January 7, 2022

In TV Movies

Judith Light and William Russ in A Strange Affair (1996).

Adjust your elegantly styled wigs, for we’re about to delve into a scandalous Judith Light romance that’s one of the better TV movies I’ve reviewed here so far, even though no one sleeps with danger or impregnates a nun played by Kristy McNichol. What we have instead is a good old-fashioned tale of a long-suffering wife, Lisa (Light), whose philandering husband, Eric (Jay Thomas), has a debilitating stroke just hours after she finally leaves him. Oh, and the new lover, Art (William Russ), who patiently helps her provide in-home care for her estranged husband even as they’re shunned by friends and family because of their unconventional arrangement.

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Susan Lucci’s The Woman Who Sinned and the Vapidity of Infidelity

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On January 3, 2022

In Susan Lucci

Susan Lucci and Tim Matheson are on the outside of their marriage looking in.

First thing’s first: The Woman Who Sinned, a 1991 TV movie that bravely asks the question, Is it okay to cheat if you’re married to Tim Matheson?, is no Miracle at Christmas: Ebbie’s Story (1995). Few films are. If you’re here for Taran Noah Smith’s Tiny Tim singing a Christmas carol while Susan Lucci’s a raging asshole to everyone, you’re out of luck. If you’re here for endless scenes of Lucci crying and a few seconds of Matheson fresh from a swim, you’re in the right place.

What we have here, mostly, is adultery. Adultery as far as the eye can see. And, to keep things lively, the occasional murder. Lucci is Victoria Robeson, a gallery owner whose best friend, author Jane (Lenore Kasdorf), is an outspoken proponent of extramarital affairs. When Victoria is uncharacteristically tempted to have one of her own, Jane is full of encouragement. And when that tryst with Evan Ganns (Michael Dudikoff, In Her Defense) ends poorly, Jane winds up dead—and Victoria’s wrongfully accused of the crime.

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Answering the Most Pressing Question of the ’90s: Mother, May I Sleep with Danger?

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On December 30, 2021

In TV Movies

“God, Mom, you’re so lame. You never let me sleep with danger!”

It always happens like this, doesn’t it? You try to spread holiday cheer by writing about Ebbie, an old Susan Lucci Lifetime adaptation of A Christmas Carol, and through a convoluted series of events find yourself weeks later watching Mother, May I Sleep with Danger? because of it. Who among us hasn’t done it? It’s the tale as old as time that Angela Lansbury so touchingly warbled about in Beauty and the Beast.

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Rue McClanahan Plans a Wedding and a Funeral in Mother of the Bride

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On December 29, 2021

In TV Movies

The ever-expanding Becker-Hix family in Mother of the Bride.

What a whirlwind of a week it has been. It was only Monday that I first met the Becker-Hix family, who had gathered to quarrel, self-destruct, and reveal the occasional secret in Children of the Bride (1990), all while celebrating their mother’s marriage to a significantly younger man. And it seems like just yesterday (because, in fact, it was) that Baby of the Bride (1991), its first sequel, incensed me by turning that amiable husband into a floppy-haired jerk who threw a 90-minute fit when his wife wouldn’t have an abortion.

To say my hopes weren’t high for the final entry in this made-for-TV trilogy, 1993’s Mother of the Bride, would be an understatement. How surprised I was, then, to find this the most enjoyable installment of all. In the words of Vanessa Williams, “Just when I thought our chance had passed, you go and save the best for last.” That’s right, stars and executive producers Rue McClanahan and Kristy McNichol, that song is dedicated to you.

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Rue McClanahan Explores Geriatric Pregnancy in Baby of the Bride

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On December 28, 2021

In TV Movies

McNichol gave birth to a baby girl; McClanahan a bouncing baby wig.

When last we met, dear reader, we were enjoying the emotional highs and lows of Children of the Bride (1990), in which Rue McClanahan’s offspring squabble against the backdrop of her wedding to a younger man. Baby of the Bride (1991) picks up shortly thereafter, as Margret (McClanahan) and John Hix (Ted Shackelford) return from their honeymoon, but instantly we see things have changed.

The camera lingers on a recreation of the wedding photo from Children. Patrick Duffy has been replaced by his Dallas castmate Shackelford. Dennis, the son who can’t keep his pants zipped, is now played by John Wesley Shipp in place of the more lighthearted Jack Coleman. Their faces are curiously free from bruises, reminding us that the centerpiece of the first film was a kooky brawl the night before the wedding that left a mark on several characters.

Everything old is new again in Baby of the Bride.

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Rue McClanahan’s Matriarch Trilogy Begins with Children of the Bride

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On December 27, 2021

In TV Movies

Children of the Bride‘s one big happy family

While I’m stuck on the couch for the next couple weeks, having been told to avoid the Omicron surge while immunosuppressed, the timing seems right to dedicate myself to the study of one of the holiest trilogies in cinematic history: Rue McClanahan’s made-for-TV Bride series.

This is where it all began, folks, in 1990, with Children of the Bride. The credits, including “Special Guest Star Patrick Duffy” and “Music by Yanni,” hint at something memorable. Things begin promisingly, with Kristy McNichol dressed as a nun, and of course I’m here with a screen cap for those of you who are into that sort of thing. And who’s that over there, once again not acting too homosexual? Why, it’s Dynasty’s second Steven Carrington! They are but two of McClanahan’s many kids, one more troubled than the next.

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The Time Nancy McKeon Got Schizophrenia

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On August 24, 2014

In TV Movies

Recently I was minding my own business, looking for something to watch on Netflix, when I did what everyone who has been in a similar situation has done at one time or another and entered “Valerie Harper” in the search bar. Recommended was not Rhoda, sadly (or, less sadly, Night Terror), but an unfamiliar title called Strange Voices.

The plot description of this 1987 telefilm didn’t sound too promising: When their college-age daughter suddenly begins acting erratically and is diagnosed with schizophrenia, a desperate couple seeks treatment for her. But the casting was enough to catapult any TV movie into the category of “viewing as essential as Children of Paradise and Battleship Potemkin,” for this very special story starred Valerie Harper as one-half of that desperate couple and Nancy McKeon as her daughter.

Misty watercolor memories of the way they were.

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