Cranky Lesbian

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Tag: Marital Strife Page 1 of 3

Firefighter: Nancy McKeon Turns a Hose on Sexism

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On April 6, 2024

In TV Movies

Nancy McKeon keeps her eye on the ball in Firefighter.

Somewhere in the annals of TV movie history, there’s probably a biopic with less dramatic frisson than Firefighter — maybe an early ’90s TNT original called Not Without My Dry Cleaning, starring Delta Burke as a desperate tourist who enlists the help of the American Embassy to liberate her captive chiffon blouses after misplacing the receipt. But I’m hard-pressed to think of one that takes as compelling a story as Cindy Fralick’s bid to become L.A. County’s first female firefighter and reduces it to yuk-yuk suspense over whether its heroine will ever learn to cook.

Nancy McKeon (Strange Voices), who plays Fralick, appeared in Afterschool Specials grittier than this (Please Don’t Hit Me, Mom and Schoolboy Father), but it’s easy to imagine that in 1986, only three years after its subject made history, a realistic depiction of the harassment faced by women in male-dominated fields was verboten. Instead, Mod Squad director Robert Michael Lewis and screenwriter Kathryn Montgomery (herself the co-author of two CBS Schoolbreak Specials) gave viewers and fire department spokespeople alike exactly they wanted: a kumbaya tale in which even the worst-behaved men aren’t that bad, and are handily outnumbered anyway by those who root for her success.

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When the Vows Break: Patty Duke’s Fight for Justice

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On March 19, 2024

In TV Movies

Patty Duke and Art Hindle in When the Vows Break.

When she wasn’t crash-dieting or beating her son, Patty Duke partook, as so many actors did, in the time-honored TV movie tradition of crusading for justice. She challenged everything from unsafe schools (The Violation of Sarah McDavid) to the FDA (Fight for Life), while also making time to repeatedly solve her children’s murders (A Killer Among Friends and A Matter of Justice). As Barbara Parker in 1995’s When the Vows Break (also known as Courting Justice), her target is not her estranged husband — she already knows he’s a putz — but the morally compromised jurist presiding over their divorce.

Judge Wendell Adams (Robin Gammell, face fixed in a perma-scowl) opposes divorce so zealously in his family courtroom that he denies a petition based “on insufficient grounds,” arguing that marriage does not require love. Though Barbara and Art (The Silence of Adultery’s Art Hindle) started dating as teens and she worked alongside him as they built a multimillion-dollar construction fortune, she is awarded only 2% of their marital assets. She’s also granted alimony that’s unsecured and subject to revision on the whims of both Art — a financial abuser and obfuscator whose money is his only means of control — and Adams, a clear misogynist.

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Lies Before Kisses: Jaclyn Smith’s Tawdry Neo-Noir

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On January 12, 2024

In TV Movies

Jaclyn Smith schemes and seduces in Lies Before Kisses.

When we think of femme fatales, we don’t usually imagine scheming seductresses in mom jeans and cutesy vests. But Jaclyn Smith (In the Arms of a Killer, The Night They Saved Christmas) remains true to her early ’90s Kmart aesthetic in Lies Before Kisses (1991), even as she rushes from one clandestine meeting to the next, leaving a trail of besotted men — and planted evidence — in her wake.

The duality of her Elaine ‘Lainey’ Sanders, wife of publishing magnate Grant (Ben Gazzara), is exposed at their daughter’s birthday party. After a catering snafu leaves them cakeless, she graciously insists “Don’t worry. If we have to, we’ll put some candles on the pâté.” Her mood darkens moments later, once she overhears Grant on the phone with a mystery woman. Rather than confront her husband, she calls the catering company to unleash hell. Lainey is used to getting her way.

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The Seduction of Gina: Valerie Bertinelli Gambles

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On December 19, 2023

In TV Movies

Valerie Bertinelli accessorizes in The Seduction of Gina.

From California Split to Croupier and Uncut Gems, women are often afterthoughts in movies about gambling. Jeanne Moreau’s compulsive gambler in Bay of Angels (1963) is a notable exception, a deadbeat mom whose desperation is evident in her haunted eyes and peroxide-blonde hair. “The first time I walked into a casino, I felt like I was in church,” she recalls in that film, a romanticization not quite echoed by Valerie Bertinelli’s Gina Breslin* in The Seduction of Gina (1984).

Gina’s gambling is less about spiritual communion than emotional immaturity and marital ennui. “I feel like I’m single except I can’t date,” she moans to best friend Mary (Dinah Manoff) as they loll around the college campus where she studies art. It’s a problem of her own making. Husband David (Fredric Lehne), a young physician, warned against tagging along for his intern year, worried she’d feel lonely and isolated. She insisted on cohabitation anyway but struggles during his overnight shifts, resorting first to restless late-night baking and then baccarat to keep busy.

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Donna Mills Searches for a Missing Plot in The Lady Forgets

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On November 14, 2023

In TV Movies

Donna Mills has more hair than memories in The Lady Forgets.

Amnesia is contagious in The Lady Forgets (1989), afflicting not only its puzzled heroine, an art teacher mixed up in a murder she can’t remember, but screenwriter Durrell Royce Crays (Schoolboy Father), who seems to have misplaced its plot and improvised by scribbling bits of dialogue in spray cheese.

If you don’t feel like a neurologist within its first 10 minutes, when Rebecca Simms (Donna Mills) sustains one of her many head injuries and recovers previously lost memories while simultaneously losing newer ones, give it a little time. Eventually you’ll have wondered “Did he just have a stroke?” about several important characters, before finally questioning your own cognitive abilities as you struggle to make sense of anything you just saw — particularly Greg Evigan’s hair, the vivacious mullet of My Two Dads having been cruelly replaced by an ailing squirrel.

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The Day the Loving Stopped: Rhoda, McCloud and a Very ’70s Divorce

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On October 13, 2023

In TV Movies

Valerie Harper and Dennis Weaver in The Day the Loving Stopped.

As if Rhoda Morgenstern’s divorce from Joe Gerard wasn’t emotionally bruising enough, here Valerie Harper (Goodbye, Supermom) goes again, putting us through the wringer in The Day the Loving Stopped (1981). This telefilm about a 1970s split with ’80s repercussions isn’t as giddily melodramatic as its title suggests, but coed Judy Danner (Dominique Dunne, Valentine Magic on Love Island) sure cries a lot, a trait shared with mother Norma (Harper). Younger sister Debbie (Ally Sheedy) gets so fed up with all the waterworks that she eventually snaps “Just knock it off!” — it was either that or break into “No More Tears (Enough is Enough).”

The family has gathered for Judy’s wedding to Danny Reynolds (James Canning), a persistent classmate who is resolutely untroubled by his betrothed’s ambivalence about marriage and hostility toward her estranged father, Aaron (Dennis Weaver of Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction). Alone together, the sweethearts can’t put groceries in the trunk without pausing to kiss. Alone with her thoughts, or with Debbie, Judy’s a waterlogged mess who isn’t sure she believes in love. “I’ve never seen it last. I don’t know if it does. Don’t you understand?” she asks, increasingly hysterical. We do, but she clarifies: “I don’t want to do to my kids what they did to us.”

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Kate Jackson Fools Around in The Silence of Adultery

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On September 23, 2023

In TV Movies

Kate Jackson and Robert Desiderio in The Silence of Adultery.

The loftiness — and supreme silliness — of The Silence of Adultery’s title drew me in because it was almost Bergmanesque. Doesn’t it conjure mental images of Erland Josephson or Max von Sydow meeting Harriet Andersson or Ingrid Thulin in a barn in rural Sweden for joyless assignations before an indifferent, possibly nonexistent God? And while we’re asking unserious questions, if your adultery is silent does that mean you’re doing it wrong?

This 1995 Lifetime movie isn’t prurient enough to provide an unequivocal answer, but there isn’t much heat between the married Rachel Lindsey (Kate Jackson) and Michael Harvott (Robert Desiderio), a recently separated father. They’re introduced when Michael brings his nonverbal son to the barn where Rachel offers equine therapy to autistic kids. Her qualifications are unclear — the script says she isn’t a doctor, despite IMDb calling her one — and don’t matter, anyway. Autism is merely a plot device to introduce the lovers.

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Connie Sellecca Cries and Commits Bigamy in She Led Two Lives

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On September 14, 2023

In TV Movies

Connie Sellecca and Perry King in She Led Two Lives.

We meet Rebecca Cross (Connie Sellecca), a 35-year-old flannel enthusiast with a flawless complexion and unfortunate bangs, when she’s hauled off to jail in handcuffs. Suspenseful music plays as she’s booked — what crime did the mild-mannered cancer researcher commit? For the answer, let us turn to one of Barbra Streisand’s greatest hits: Rebecca is “A Woman in Love.” And she’ll do anything to get Mike (A Martinez) into her world and hold him within, even if it means committing bigamy. It’s a right she defends over and over again.

Rebecca is already married to Jeffrey (Perry King of Inmates: A Love Story), a dashing surgeon. Weeks earlier, he slid a bracelet onto her wrist for their seventh wedding anniversary and proposed a toast: “To Rebecca. I didn’t think it was possible but I love you more today than the day we were married.” And then he is paged to the operating room, a familiar conclusion to their nights together. Her loneliness is accentuated by her father’s deathbed regret at not spending more time with loved ones, a fate he implores her to avoid.

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Vows of Deception: Cheryl Ladd’s Trashy Femme Fatale

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On July 27, 2023

In TV Movies

Cheryl Ladd and Nick Mancuso in Vows of Deception.

Disappointingly, given its title and “inspired by actual events” origins, Vows of Deception isn’t a Lifetime dramatization of Renée Zellweger and Kenny Chesney’s marriage. But Vows, which aired on CBS in 1996, makes up for that shortcoming by giving Cheryl Ladd an enjoyably trashy role to sink her teeth into as Lucinda ‘Lucy Ann’ Michaels, a prodigiously pregnant recent parolee who moves cross-country to live with Terry (Nancy Cartwright), her more responsible sister.

“My past doesn’t determine my future,” she unconvincingly tells Matt Harding (Nick Mancuso), the detective who meets her at a bus stop with papers to sign. Apparently lacking any crimes to investigate, he offers her a ride and later enlists her help in pranking his best friend Clay (Mike Farrell), a prosperous lawyer, in a blind date setup. Instantly smitten, Clay surprises them both by continuing the date despite her baby bump. Earnest to a fault, he couldn’t be an easier mark for a dazzling criminal with a questionable tale of woe (she claims an abusive ex falsely accused her of child abuse).

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Second Serve: Vanessa Redgrave Plays Doubles in Richards Biopic

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On July 20, 2023

In TV Movies

Vanessa Redgrave in Second Serve.

There is initially something jarring about Vanessa Redgrave’s performance as Renée Richards, the pioneering transgender athlete, in Second Serve. Her unconvincing male appearance pre-transition conjures memories of Jean Arless as gawky Warren in William Castle’s Homicidal, a classic Psycho knockoff with a memorable gender gimmick, and you worry this 1986 CBS adaptation of Richards’s autobiography might cheapen a complex story. But it doesn’t take long for the magnetic Redgrave to draw you in, particularly when filmed in medium-closeups that remove her hips (which, like Shakira’s, don’t lie) from the equation.

We’re introduced to Renée first as Dr. Richard Raskind (changed to Radley for the film), and Redgrave exudes an Anthony Perkins quality—lanky, haunted, alternately reserved and impetuous—that suits the character well. You suspect she understands Richard, whose private struggles with gender dysphoria aren’t immediately revealed, more intuitively than director Anthony Page (I Never Promised You a Rose Garden) and screenwriters Gavin Lambert and Stephanie Liss. Yet there are limits to her powers of empathy. You’d never guess from Redgrave’s vaguely WASPy characterization (and sometimes thinly-suppressed British accent) that she’s playing a Queens-bred Jew.*

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