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Tag: Valerie Harper

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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Valerie Harper Says Goodbye, Supermom

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On November 4, 2022

In TV Movies

Valerie Harper and Wayne Rogers in Goodbye, Supermom.

A semi-earnest social commentary obscured by empty sitcom yuks, 1988’s Goodbye, Supermom (also known as Drop-Out Mother) is a television movie that hates television. “Know what the ‘M’ in MTV stands for? Moron,” a teenage character tells her little brother. An elderly woman later declares “I have no skills, I’m not talented. I read People and watch Entertainment Tonight. I take Robin Leach seriously. I live through other people’s lives.”

If that isn’t compelling enough on its surface, you ought to know who wrote it. Supermom’s credited screenwriter was Bob Shanks, a longtime producer of The Merv Griffin Show. As an ABC executive in the 1970s, Shanks helped birth infotainment-peddling programs like Good Morning America and 20/20, which permanently rearranged the American television landscape—and not necessarily for the better. In the ’80s, he wrote a handful of telefilms that were variations on the theme of corporate burnout: Supermom follows Drop-Out Father (1982, starring Dick Van Dyke) and He’s Fired, She’s Hired (1984).

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Death of a Cheerleader: Mother, May I Cheer with Danger?

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On January 6, 2022

In TV Movies

“What could it mean?”

Hold onto your pom-poms because strange worlds are colliding in this one. We’ve got Tori Spelling, who we just watched in Mother, May I Sleep with Danger? We have Valerie Harper, who we’ve seen in Night Terror and Strange Voices. And we’ve got ’em in Death of a Cheerleader, a 1994 TV movie that could best be described as Mean Girls meets The Craft meets Election meets The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom. Excited yet? Alas, I suggest tempering your enthusiasm.

Without further ado, Kellie Martin (who knows her way around a TV movie herself) is Angela Delvecchio, a bright and seemingly normal kid who is a little too captivated by her high school’s pep rally. Its inspirational theme: Be the Best. “I’m going to be,” Angela vows to her BFF Jill (Margaret Langrick, bedecked in the type of unfortunate headwear favored by Mayim Bialik and Jenna von Oÿ’s Blossom characters). “I am going to edit the yearbook, and I’m going to be a cheerleader.” And she’s gonna get all As in murder!

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Valerie Harper Demonstrates the Perils of Allowing Women to Drive in Night Terror

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On January 2, 2022

In TV Movies

“Mare, I think I saw something nasty in the woodshed…”

Fans of Arrested Development will be familiar with J. Walter Weatherman, a character used to scare the crap out of children while teaching them valuable lessons (such as “And that’s why you always leave a note”). In the 1977 TV movie Night Terror (also known as Night Drive), Valerie Harper is our J. Walter Weatherman. The lesson? “And that’s why you always check your fuel gauge.”

Not once but twice does Harper’s Carol Turner, a doting wife and mother of two young children, neglect to keep her tank filled, and for that she nearly pays with her life. However, I would argue that her husband, Walter (Michael Tolan), is the real jinx who brought this curse upon her the second he smugly told her sister Vera (Beatrice Manley), “Your sister survives because I’m organized.”

Valerie Harper (shown here with Michael Tolan) hits the road in Night Terror

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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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