Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 3, 1994 TAG: 9403030144
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Tom Shales
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
This is one of the new series that CBS flogged mercilessly during the Winter Olympics. But it would look familiar even if one hadn't seen all those beckoning promos: a warm-hearted family drama celebrating fundamental values in a changing world. The trouble is, you can be four-square in favor of fundamental values and warm-hearted families and still find this thing a colossal crock.
In the premiere, airing Saturday, we travel with Alison Matson, her husband, Jack, and two of their three children as they motor down to North Carolina for their annual visit with her crusty but lovable parents: Walter Babineaux, a proud old shrimp fisherman, and his cringingly adorable wife, Charlotte.
Apparently Bruce Paltrow and John Tinker, the executive producers, saw the movie ``Prince of Tides'' and fell in love with it, or at least with the tidewater setting, because we get lots of shrimp boats and seascapes and oozing music. Indeed, music oozes in just at the point where Alison is saying to Jack on ye olde front porch, ``People here have music in their soul.''
They don't have music in their soul. They have it on the soundtrack.
As one would assume, this is not going to be the usual summer vacation for the Matsons. Things are ebbing and flowing and then ebbing again. ``Maybe we're at a crossroads,'' Jack says pointedly. ``Maybe change is in the air.'' Ah yes - it seems Alison's brother, beloved but confused Uncle Dickie, is thinking of signing up with some mean old anti-environmental polluters! And grandma, bless her soul, appears to be developing a case of Alzheimer's, thinking suddenly it's the day before Christmas and getting lost in the woods near her home.
Alzheimer's is precisely the kind of politically correct disease that writers always use in hokey domestic dramas like this. But as often happens on TV, as opposed to real life, this is a genteel form of the illness. We wouldn't want grandma to lose an ounce of her infernal cuteness.
Alison's and Jack's teen-age daughter, Darcy, imagines this will be a horrible boring vacation, but soon after arrival she spots a shirtless teen-age boy pruning the bushes. Later she kisses him. ``Next time, let's use our tongues,'' says the boy, and they do, and guess what: Darcy throws up!
Upstairs later, Wise Mom tells her, ``A little more ginger ale should settle your queasies.'' Friends, believe me when I tell you: there is not enough ginger ale in the world to settle the queasies I got from watching this dreck.
Obviously the two-week visit will be stretched out longer, or else the series would only last two weeks - though what a blessing that would be. Apparently, Alison and Jack and Darcy and grandma and grandpa and the others (even the third kid shows up at the conclusion) will spend the long summer together rediscovering their roots and, yes, learning a little something about themselves, even though there really doesn't appear to be anything about themselves worth knowing.
Karen Allen and Terence Knox play Alison and Jack; Ed Flanders and Frances Sternhagen, two actors who specialize in pious nobility, portray grandpa and grandma. Sternhagen manages to overact while pretending to underplay; she sucks up all the oxygen in whatever room she's in. Or, as a like-minded friend of mine put it: Two minutes of her is like an hour of anybody else.
``The Road Home'' is the kind of show networks assume TV critics will love because it is nonviolent and that viewers will love because of the many little moments that remind them of their own families. But you hardly need to be a cynical Grinch to realize this thing is hopelessly contrived and shamelessly false.
``I think we're heading in the wrong direction,'' says grandma as she totters about the woods. It's the most accurate line in the show.
Washington Post Writers Group
by CNB