Kane & Abel (1985)

Credit my mother for "Kane & Abel."  Okay, not the miniseries, not even the book upon which it's based.  But, we can credit her with my love of Jeffrey Archer novels.  The infamous British convict/MP wrote a series of books in the 70s and 80s that may not been as popular as those written by Harold Robbins and Sidney Sheldon, the acmes of male trash novel writers, but he was a saga writer extraordinaire.  My mother has always had discerning reading taste and I'm thrilled that she turned me onto Jeffrey Archer as a child instead of, say, Judith Krantz (Robbins and Sheldon were must-reads).  When the miniseries of "Kane & Abel" was aired in 1985, it was probably the most excited I had ever been for a miniseries because I had actually read the book.  I remember that excitement all these years later.  Unfortunately, Jeffrey Archer's output yielded precious little in the way of miniseries, whereas we couldn't get rid of Judith Krantz for over a decade!  But thanks Mom, for the recommendations.  She was all over "Schindler's List" and "Sophie's Choice" from the moment they hit stores, so this is a lady who knows her stuff.

Usually.

There was that Margaret Truman Daniels phase...

Anyway, rewatching "Kane & Abel" is somewhat disappointing.  It's lacking any claw-like sense of humor, mainly because the two leads are such dour actors, but the miniseries is almost too faithful to the book, which is actually Archer's fault.  Always more concerned with stories that favored financial deals, revenge and such, he lacks sex.  Sheldon and Robbins had sex a-plenty, and though it's the lowest way to grip one's attention, five hours without it can seem like an awfully long time.  There is only so much meat in watching two aging men battle over finances.  An hour chopped out of the proceedings wouldn't hurt the story, but would help the pacing, which has a tendency to turn glacial when it could be a lot merrier and even a little campy.

Since this is a saga, the logical place to start is the beginning of the 20th Century, where many a saga begins.  "Kane & Abel" starts in Poland in 1901.  A young boy is walking through the forest when he hears blood-curdling screams, only to come upon a woman giving birth...right there up against a tree.  I'm not sure where the kid learned to figure out how a person is dead, but he pulls up one of her eyelids to be sure while a live baby wails.

Halfway around the world on the same day in Boston, another woman is giving birth, but she's in a clean hospital, tended to by doctors and nurses. 

The Polish baby is taken home to his finder's family while the Boston baby goes home to a life of luxury, the Kane family, and a guaranteed spot at a top-notch private school.  Unfortunately for the Polish baby, it's discovered that he has only one nipple, which causes Polish Papa to vent that's "the child was given to its mother by a man with bad luck."  Those of you who want to get all Biblical can question why the baby not born to the Kane family is the one with the disfiguring mark, but on your own time. 

Both boys are baptized, the Boston baby in an opulent church in Boston and the Polish baby by the grace of Baron Christopher Cazenove, who looks rather upset to hear the baby, called "as ugly as a cabbage" by his adopted father, when he hears the baby has only one nipples.  Only minutes in, we can start putting pieces together.

Fast forward ten years.  Not you, the movie.  The Boston baby has grown into an educated son of wealthy Harry Groener, but the Polish baby is living in poverty.  However, since he's so smart, Baron Christopher wants to take him home to his castle to help his dimwit son.  The boy refuses to go without his adopted sister, and Baron Christopher is willing to take her on as part of the kitchen staff. 

So, the Polish kid ends up paired with a rather haughty Baron-in-training, walking through the castle looking at deceased relatives and deciding that "one day we will fight for Poland" (that's not a good thing, since the Polish army was way beyond its winning days by then), while the Boston kid chimes in with the equation for figuring out how much a cargo boat weighs during one of his father's banking meetings.  He's so smart that when he comes down with measles, he wants a second opinion.  Dangnabit, those pesky measles mean that the Boston kid cannot sail home with his father, who is going on the most luxurious boat ever to sail the water.  Do you need to take a guess which boat that would be?  Second decade of the Twentieth Century, big, fast, unsinkable boat?  Okay, fine, it's the Titanic.  "I don't expect they'd let you steer the Titanic on its maiden voyage anyway," Harry jokes with his son, who probably would have done a better job than Captain Smith and company.  A rather undue burden is put on the son when the ship goes down, as his mother asks him to be strong for her sake.  He's only 10 years old (11 in a few days)!  He may be obnoxiously precocious, but he's still just 10! 

Baron Christopher spends meals with boys drilling them in history, though only the adopted kid can answer the questions.  The Baron thinks that if the coming war everyone is talking about happens, he knows Poland will be "a battlefield, but this time, God willing, we will emerge from it an independent country once again," by fighting on the Russian side.  Tsar Nicholas II has promised Polish freedom if they help, but the adopted boy wonders aloud if the Tsar will keep his promise and Baron Christopher laughs.  History will prove that neither Baron Christopher nor Tsar Nicholas will have long to laugh.

World War I is on, but in Boston, it's all just talk because the Americans are a long way from entering it.  Harry has been dead for a few years, and it's about time the Kane matron, Lisa Banes, met a new man, David Dukes (who gets a lot further with Lisa than he does in 400 hours of the Wouk miniseries).  "He's the most eligible bachelor to come to Boston in years," a common friend tells them with introductions. 

Poland, of course, is very much in the war.  In fact, Baron Christopher is so worried that he's sending the boys off to safety, but they are taken by German soldiers and smacked by the butts of their guns.  Baron-no-longer-in-training is killed by the blow.  The adoptee has to tell Baron Christopher and his sister what happened, the only voice of reason telling them, with the best Polish accent in the movie, "we will survive.  We will survive!" 

As soon as Lisa falls in love with David, the problems start.  He's off to England to fight the war and her pissy little son resents his mere presence. 

By some very strange magic, it's still World War I, but the Polish adoptee has grown up completely to become Peter Strauss, playing yet another variation of "Rich Man, Poor Man."  It's not his fault that he enters the movie right as Baron Christopher, now in a big beard, is dying and croaking out a will leaving everything to his son, whom we knew was Peter all the way back from the nipple incident.  You can't compete with that sort of ham acting.  "No!  No!" is about all Peter can do, with an accent, no less.  Once Baron Christopher breathes his last, Peter, playing a teenager, but very wrinkled, is now in charge of the cadre of Polish survivors in the basement of the mansion.  The Germans allow him to bury Baron Christopher, with the sound of bombs going off around them.  The end is near for them. 

Just as surprising is the growth spurt in Boston, where our second hero has become Sam Neill, innocently playing ice hockey without a care in the world.  Oh, and even though he's only a "teenager," he gives financial advice to people that makes them rich and lends out his math notes.  "I'm sick, can't you see I'm sick," he tells his friend when asked why he's not at his mother's wedding (we're still at the hockey rink).  Apparently David is now a war hero, but Sam doesn't like him.  The moment his mother put him in charge of the family, her happiness with another man was doomed by her overly smart son.

"We will not die here!  That I promise you," Peter tells his fellow captives, his wig barely fitting his head, as the Germans ride out of the castle, the Russians right behind them in chase.  The Russians are not ideal new captors because their revolution causes them to hate aristocrats and technically Peter is now a Count.  When the Russians try to rape Peter's sister, he rushes them, but gets knocked out.  Since the two of them are unconscious, the Russians leave them and take everyone else as prisoners.  Since Peter has yet to experience any happiness in life, it makes sense that his sister dies right here.  The Russians hustle the Polish prisoners off to Siberia, and one of Peter's fellow prisoners notices the silver bracelet he wears, the only thing Count Christopher had to give up upon death.  On the train, while everyone sleeps, the other prisoner attempts to strangle Peter with what looks like dental floss in order to get the bracelet.  Not only does the Russian guard with a gun do nothing, but none of Peter's compatriots do either.  What is this, professional wrestling?  A fight ensues and Peter is forced to kill the man, stabbing him while everyone gapes.  As the guard finally raises his gun to shoot Peter, the latter comes up with this brilliant line: "Maybe you should ask your superiors how many slaves you are allowed to lose in one night."  It may sound stupid, but hell, it works!  Remember that the next time someone has a gun pointed at you. 

All is well in America.  Sam and his pal Reed Birney have to deal with Reed's father, who owns a large bank in New York City.  Reed is something of a playboy, but Sam has his head on straight.  He has a long-term plan to merge the Birney bank with his father's, to create "the biggest bank on the East Coast."  "That's quite a dream.  I hope you achieve it...I can't think of anything that would please me more," Reed's father says.  Yes, we get it.  Both of our heroes are fatherless, always searching for a father figure. 

It's now 1921 and Peter is trudging across ice in Siberia, real ice, not the kind Sam plays hockey on.  Any prisoner who falls on the ice gets shot.  That's hardly fair, considering they all have their arms tied behind their backs and bad shoes.  Also, there is a mean man in charge of them, spewing such morale-boosters as "anyone else want to die?  Do it now.  You will all die anyway."  He has his eyes on Peter, whom he tells "you'll be next" before knocking him to the ice.  What human misery has Peter NOT suffered? 

Sam is still worried about David.  His lawyer tells him that David has no claim to any of his money, but he does have access to Mom's $500K, which is about to come in handy as David has some scheme going that Sam doesn't like.  Up against Peter's life, this seems petty, but it also seems that David is cheating on his mother, who is pregnant.  When David professes his love to Lisa, she answers back, "do you?" since she's just read an anonymous letter discussing his infidelity.  He's smooth, pretending he doesn't care about "anything but us," including those papers she's signed giving him the cash.  He suggests opening a bottle of wine and relaxing.  Sure, given the pregnant gal some vino!  Before they even get there, his mistress calls, which doesn't thrill Lisa. 

Peter is down to his natural hair now and looking very handsome, if still way too old.  He's planned a big escape, but his partner is too afraid, so Peter has to do it alone (while maintaining an accent).  His friend gives him a coat with money and a map sewn inside that will get him to Turkey.  Peter tries to pay with his bracelet, but his friend notes, "I have no need for emblems of royalty here."  Can I use this moment to pause and ask how the hell Peter still has the trinket?  After all he's been through, living in a concentration camp, he still has a shiny silver bracelet?  If the Russians hadn't taken it from him, wouldn't a fellow prisoner have done it while he slept?  Does this not strike anyone else as odd?  The escape involves a kitchen truck, hiding under trains and generally avoiding all Russians with guns.  He manages to get on a train leaving Siberia, but he doesn't have a ticket.  He's also Polish on a train full of Russians, but this is a miniseries, so naturally everyone speaks Slavic-sounding English.  He meets a woman on the train who helps him out of the scrape.  Why does she help him?  "I had a nephew who was studying in the priesthood.  He died in one of the camps," so she sympathizes with the lonely Polish ragamuffin. 

Before you can say transfer in Moscow to Odessa and then to freedom, Peter is in Constantinople fondling an orange, but finds his Russia money is worthless in Turkey.  So, he simply steals the orange and runs.  About 12 merchants run after him, leaving their stalls open.  Couldn't they now be robbed worse?  Another one of those details apparently only I notice.  The punishment for stealing is getting a hand chopped off by a big fat man in a fez.  Peter's arm (the one with the bracelet) is tied to the chopping block, but a diplomat saves him and takes him to the Polish embassy.  The ambassador wants to send him to America, for reasons he doesn't really explain, though Peter wants to go back to Poland and fight.  For what?  "Funny thing about us Poles.  Over the centuries, the barbarians tried to destroy us, but we know where home is," the ambassador says, out of nowhere.  Peter vows to return to Poland someday, in that earnest way Peter Strauss does so well, and we know he means it.

In the boring plot, Sam, trying his best to maintain a Boston accent, has managed to make sure David can't enter into the business deal that would have milked his mother dry, though he's not yet 21 and has no direct control over any money.  He may look 40, but he's not 21 yet.  His father's business partner Richard Anderson is surprised at how well Sam can maneuver.  Lisa has done some checking up on her husband too, hiring a private detective to prove David is having an affair.  Lisa suffers an "episode" in the detective's office and is rushed to the hospital.  The doctor's face says it all: Lisa is dead.  "They've been trying to reach your stepfather, do you know where he is?" the doctor asks.  When David comes home, Sam is standing in the hallway with the grim news.  Sam is so angry he starts to strangle David, but he's stopped by Reed.  Sam decrees that David leave the house and never come back.  If he does, Sam will investigate his business dealings.  That leaves David no choice but to hit the road.  "I'll get even with you, little rich boy.  You just keep waiting and watching and see if I don't," David spits on the way out.  Sam doesn't react well, threatening to kill him if he even tries.  Something tells me we haven't seen the last of David. 

On the boat to America, Peter can't help but notice the pretty ladies crammed into third class with him.  His mate tells him to go after her, that there are five days left on the voyage and he intends to get himself some babes.  "What can you do with five women?" Peter asks.  Yup, he's a virgin.  Well, to be fair, he hasn't had time for women, what with being born in the forest, adopted by a Baron, hidden by Germans and then Russians.  Apparently, he bores the poor woman with his tales of woe and then won't dance with her, either because he doesn't know how or "because you're a Baron," she taunts.  He claims he made it all up to impress her, but she knows he's royalty.  How?  "Because I'm a little bit afraid of you."  I'm not sure I follow, but let's play along and see where this goes.  Peter  is so innocent he doesn't even understand when she's making a play for him, but a kiss sends them to one of the covered lifeboats.  "Are you ashamed?" she asks him after the deed is done.  What kind of question is that?  The scene gets weirder when she professes her love for him and he for her.  Huh?  They just boffed, that's all.  So far, said hussy doesn't even have a name!  And she's not going to get one either, because Peter's friend Vyto Ruginis has decreed that they all have to take American names.

At Harvard, Sam and his pals approach his car to find a policeman writing a ticket.  Sam tries to flash his name, but the officer is unimpressed.  Then Ron Silver jumps in as a lawyer named Thaddeus Cohen, who spews all sorts of gibberish to confuse the cop while praising his Irish roots.  The officer finds it amusing, and tells Ron, "Cohen, you say?  It should be CoHAN with that line of blarney," and lets Sam off without a ticket.  Ron and Sam don't know each other officially, but it was Ron's father who helped Sam get the dirt on David a few years back.  A lawyer and a friend are found, but still not a hint of an exciting plot.

Two years later, Peter is working as a restaurant manager at the Plaza Hotel.  One day he's serving imperious Fred Gwynne and his obnoxious gal pal Sheree Wilson, who is peeved to be sitting near the bathroom on top of having a room without a view.  Fred knows Peter by name, much to his gal pal's surprise, but Fred says, "you'd be surprised what I know."  Peter, laying on the accent thick, calls his broker every time he hears good business tips in the restaurant. 

Having just graduated from Harvard, Sam is celebrating at the Plaza with Reed, Reed's father and sister (Jill Eikenberry) and faithful bank trustee Richard Anderson.  Richard officially invites Sam to be a bank director, on the path to chairman.  As Sam is accepting, Peter spills a bit of coffee and Sam remarks, "I didn't know the Plaza required their waiters to wear manacles."  Jill coos, "wouldn't I like to have something like that!" since she's been after him for ages.  But, it doesn't work.

At the same lunch, Fred has been moved to a better table by Peter, who also has his suite moved.  Each knows about the other.  Fred has studied Peter's history and Peter has learned that Fred owns a bunch of hotels that are losing money because, as Peter sees it, Fred is never there.  The manager of his Chicago hotel "up and left on me without so much as a tootle-ooh!" Fred says, though Peter knows that already.  A shrewd negotiator, Peter rebuffs Fred's offer of a job and "$30 a week" with "$40 and 5% of the increase in profits after I've arrived."  Fred screams that none of his managers get paid like that.  "I won't tell them if you don't," Peter says, learning the American dream awfully fast.  Sheree quips, "I think you better take the Baron before his price goes up."  Peter tells Vyto of his new position and notes that American hotels are "castles."  He promises to send for Vyto when he's a "hotel magnate."  Oh, and the girl Peter did on the boat?  She happens to live in Chicago.

As Peter and Vyto are walking from the hotel, Sam and company are getting in their cars and the two tip their hats to each other.  Peter says he has no idea who Sam is, "but he's just been made director of some bank...I'd say both of us had a very big day."  Our heroes have intersected but once.  Where will they meet again? 

Fred pays a visit to his Chicago hotel to find the staff hates Peter.  The manager wants to fire Peter, but Fred says, "I can clean up my own mess."  Peter tells Fred what has been going on at the hotel, the amount of theft is staggering.  "Just what the blue blazes do you expect me to do about this?" Fred asks Peter, who says the top management should be fired.  Fred refuses to fire the pilfering manager because he's just made Peter Head Manager and he can do it. 

At Sam's bank during the late 20s, Sam is suggesting the bank move its money around because something isn't right.  They argue, but a big client needs to see Sam immediately.  Not the dowager widow he was expecting, it's Veronica Hamel, having bewitched Sam very easily with her intelligence and knowledge, not to mention their obvious attraction. 

Peter is running Fred's hotel better than before, so efficient and "something of a miracle," according to a lawyer, who suggests that Peter buy the stock of a family member who wants to unload it. The price is $100K and Peter is $70K short, which he asks the bank for.  This financial transaction makes Peter a partner.  He chooses to celebrate with Sheree and ends up getting her into bed with candle light and all the trappings.  But, after it's over, she laughs at him, not believing the Baron crap and bemoaning his lack of experience.  Fred is not dismayed.  "Son, we're going places," he tells Peter.

But the places aren't what anyone was expecting.  Panic hits Wall Street.  Sam had the sense to pull out of stocks, seeing what was about to happen and thus saves his fortune, and most of the family bank,  from ruin.  Things are worse for Fred, who has sold his hotels and other holdings for stock, which is now worthless.  "They are only good for hotel toilet paper," Fred quips.  The banks that owns Fred's empire is Sam's bank.  Fred says that if he ever gets back on top, he'll destroy Sam.  Now we're finally starting to get some actual plotting!  Our heroes are on opposite sides of a situation, thinking the other is very much in the wrong.  Peter tries to head off the foreclosure of the hotels by appealing to Sam directly, but Sam refuses, saying he'll only talk to Fred.  That won't be an option since Fred has jumped from a window and killed himself.  Peter now owns 75% of the hotel chain, for what that's worth. 

Peter makes it his life's work to find the bankers who caused Fred to jump. 

Sam and Veronica have fallen in love.  Nothing brings two people together like a banker chasing a mortgagee.  Sam and Peter meet again.  Sam sees the bracelet and thinks they had met somewhere, but doesn't know where.  Peter is there to beg for investments for the hotels rather than foreclosure.  The two are at loggerheads, but Peter needs a chance to prove he can turn around the hotels, but that would take someone wilth a few million dollars to support, but not Sam's bank.  Peter storms out of the room telling him to "think about me because as long as I'm alive, I'm going to see that you and your stinking bank pay for that.  You go to hell!" 

Chicago, 1930.  Peter's hotel is on fire.  Who should be there with the insurance company looking to stick it to the bank that holds the mortgage?  David Dukes, of course!  The assessment reveals "a total loss," and a man has confessed to torching the place because he had been fired.  David reveals who he is to Peter, though of course blaming Sam for "killing my wife and baby," an interesting twist on the truth.  We have a partnership!  Since the bank won't give Peter the money to rebuild, he takes a wacky risk, asking his main competitor (Paul Harding) for the money.  Paul laughs at that one, but Peter has a plan, saying "let your competition make money for you; better than letting me steal business at your expense."  Peter has it all worked out, and though "the sheer audacity of your suggestion" interests Paul, he doesn't actually say whether he's going to help or not.  No matter, because on the way out, Peter bumps into his de-virginizer from the boat to America (Alberta Watson), working into Paul's hotel.  She has a first name now and she's very happy to see the Baron.  "So many times I forgot to call you, even in New York," Paul says, thinking he's being smooth.  "But you didn't," she chides. 

The two discuss their history since seeing each other in their broken English (rather than speaking in perfect Polish).  Alberta has had it rough, having worked up to waitress while Peter is establishing an empire.  Proving the adage that you never forget the first, Peter is re-hooked on her.  Speaking of, Jill is still pining for Sam, who has eyes only for Veronica.

The money problem in Chicago is solved, but anonymously.  The deal is fantastic for Peter, who can't lose no matter what happens, but the one caveat is that anonymity must be maintained, due to a potential "conflict of interest," the very phrase that came up during Peter's meeting with rival hotel owner Paul.  Naturally, Peter assumes it's Paul, but if Peter tries to even search for the donor, the deal is off.  Peter has his Big Speech, and boy does he go for it.  Yelling and screaming in excitement and then almost crying when he thinks of Fred not being there, it's the kind of thing he does very well.  He then calls Sam to rub it in his face, with David sitting in on the conversation.

We hit a pure cheese lowlight when Sam takes Veronica on vacation to England.  Lazing under the trees in the countryside, all Sam can talk about is business, though Veronica tries to focus him on her by literally uttering every sentence in a sarcastic tone or turning the answer to a question into a pun.  The two have zilch in the way of chemistry.  Anyway, the bright warm sun turns to rain in an instant (this is England) and the two are forced to seek refuge under a blanket next to the car.  "We've been in England for two weeks and this is the first time we've been under the same blanket," vixen Veronica says. 

At lunch, Peter shows Alberta his plans for the new hotel, but they are interrupted by the always-cheeky Sheree, who drawls that Peter should come down to Dallas and see the family home, but he declines, saying he doesn't think his soon-to-be wife Alberta would like that (since he hasn't proposed, that comes as a surprise to everyone there).  He also decides to chuck the old company name and call it "Baron Hotels."  I'm sure Barron Hilton wasn't on anyone's mind thinking that up!  Then he has to actually propose marriage to Alberta, "since we traded our virginities on the boat," but he pushes his business acumen over actual love in trying to convince her. 

In England, Sam and Veronica have to get married because their car has broken down and there is only one room left at the local inn.  Even Veronica and her caustic sentence delivery find that one a bit much, and she also reminds unromantic Sam that "the Episcopal Church requires all sorts of documents and a waiting period," but Sam "bets his entire banking career" that donating money for a new church roof will result in a "special dispensation."  Good, now they can sleep in the same room. 

"You will always be at home at a Baron Hotel and when you check in, tell them you were here on the day it all began and that you are a friend of...the Baron himself," Peter says to an adoring crowd upon opening his Chicago hotel, praising David for a possible Congressional run and announcing his wife's pregnancy.  In that order, mind you.  For a romance miniseries, the men are complete duds when it comes to the women in their lives! 

Peter has a daughter, whom he names for his sister and Sam loses the Chairman position at the bank.  The reason he lost is not because of anything he did, but because Reed has become such a drunk and a fool that he's a liability.  There is no treatment because alcoholism is only a cover for Hodgkin's Disease and only three months to live.  He has told no one, not his father or even Sam.  I didn't see that one coming.  I thought he was finally going to come out, since his performance has been getting gayer by the scene, but sadly, the truth is worse.  Sit down for some pathos, people, because Reed has it ready: "You're lucky if you have one friend.  I have two," he says to Sam and Veronica.  Something tells me his death is going to be very painful...for us!

By 1938, Peter is going to build a hotel in honor of his daughter in NYC, taking her, but leaving fur-clad Alberta to worry that, "I have a big rival for his affection."  Vyto assumes it's the daughter, but Alberta says, "it's the hotels" and walks off glumly.  "Oh, hell," Vyto moans.  Yes, I agree.  Here we go again, with a dumb plot about a wife ignored for a job considered more important.  Zzzzzzz

Sam and lawyer Ron Silver see that Peter and David have become friendly.  "The Congressman might be guilty of tax evasion," Ron hints, and Sam is thrilled that he can nail David.  Veronica wants him to let it all go, and then the more immediate problem of dead Reed's dying father.  Through heavy gasping breaths, he tells Sam he wants him to be chairman of the bank.  Sam tries to comfort Jill, who refuses any true tenderness, still angry at him for not marrying her.  Get over it!  Frankly, his life seems boring as hell, so you dodged a bullet. 

Boring Wife Syndrome has certainly hit Alberta, who is forced to say some of the worst dialogue in the movie.  Saying they should separate, she has expected clunkers like, "how long since we have made love?" and "you are married to your hotels."  She feels that she is "always failing" trying to play the glamorous wife of such an important man.  Peter plays the scene annoyed, but then again, he's had to play this scene for a decade, going all the way back to Susan Blakely's drunk-from-boredom scenes in "Rich Man, Poor Man."  Alberta has made her mind up, and off Peter goes.  Neither of them seem that upset.  Peter could easily turn around and go back inside to Alberta, but he doesn't. 

Boring Banking Syndrome is now hitting me.  Sam makes a play to take over Reed's father's bank, just as the dying man wished, but the current Chairman isn't giving up so easily, not to mention other board members who are sneaky New York bankers.  Sam has an emergency meeting called in order to nab the big seat on the board.  The main competitors each give a dull speech about why he should head the bank (not that banking is exciting, but the script makes it seem even less so).  The vote goes to Sam, as expected, since the other guy is so clearly a smarmy twit.  He has to move the family to...oh, right, we haven't known until this very moments that Sam and Veronica have two kids, nice to meet you, kids...to New York City, where both kids are initially unhappy.  Sam trots out that old war horse line of "at least we'll be together," and it seems to work.  This, from a man even more dedicated to his job than Peter? 

Peter's New York hotel is a gigantic success in 1941, where he's holding a benefit for Poland, trounced two years and three weeks previously.  David interrupts the affair to make sure Peter knows the merger of his banks will be approved by the government, and Peter is eager to grab some stock in order to blunt Sam's plans.  David also asks for $30K to make some illegal payments to keep the hotels running smoothly.  Peter isn't thrilled, but David will never change.

Pearl Harbor happens and then World War II ends.  Literally, that quickly.  I swear.  There is not even a small scene tucked between the raid in Hawaii and the Times Square announcement!  This is an interesting twist for a miniseries, isn't it?  We're skipping World War II entirely!  Peter doesn't fly to Poland to become a grunt in the army just to protect his beloved homeland from being squashed by the Nazis.  Sam doesn't make special trips to the White House to fund the governments war machine.  Those are things the miniseries movement has taught us to expect about beloved World War II, one of its favorite topics (to be fair, "Kane & Abel" also lacks a slumming Hollywood legend, so it's not always predictable). 

They pulled a fast one on us!  Both Sam and Peter come home war heroes, but without any fuss or any explanation of what they did in the war.  Apparently it's enough to know they participated (they would have been 40 when America entered the war, so we can assume they weren't belly down in a ditch).

Thank the Gods of Television for Jill Eikenberry.  She can always be counted on to add her special brand of campy finesse to any project.  This time around, she comes to tell Sam that she is selling her stock in the bank.  But, she's a mess.  Pining for Sam has upset her, though she says she’s over it, and the stress of losing Sam to Veronica, her brother to disease and her father to death has her feeling like "I don't give a damn about the bank anymore.  So, I sold my stock."  "To whom?" Sam wants to know.  "What does it matter?  I had suitors lined up to buy it.  You should have called," she replies.  Bravo, Jill, you just helped pull us out of quicksand with your little plot-twisting eye-bugging, hand-wringing scene.  Ron finds out for Sam that Peter has bought it and only 2% more stock will get him a seat on the board.  There is only one outside investor left, and we know it's going to be a battle between Sam and Peter somewhere down the road.  For now, Peter is just trying to sabotage bank dealings whenever he can. 

In the middle of one particularly hair-raising financial game, the bank suggests Sam play nice with Peter, who has his own problems.  David is bleeding him try and skimming lots of money from Peter, and he's losing his patience.  Sam calls Peter to grovel, but Peter holds firm in his desire to "get enough of your bank's stock so I can walk in there and throw you out myself!  Not today, not tomorrow.  I want you to have time to worry about what I'm going to do," he says, accusing him of killing Fred Gwynne and Sam's own mother.  "You want to talk?  Here is my answer," Peter bellows and hangs up the phone.  No wonder we couldn't show the men in World War II.  Their battle is going to be bigger!  Sam sends Ron on a mission to find out any dirt on Peter and David while Peter sends a scared flunky to Chicago to cover any tracks they may have left in their ascent. 

By 1953, Peter is opening a hotel in Warsaw, a longtime dream of his, though he tells a reporter that the happiness of his daughter is always his most important project.  Really?  We've seen her less than five times since she was born (now she's a grown woman, Kate McNeil).  Kate has a very good business sense.  She suggests that Peter take over the retail outlets in the hotels and brand them, which sounds good to Peter.  "Incidentally, what about men?" Peter asks on the trip to Poland.  "I like them," Kate replies.  Papa Peter worries that, "they are a fast crowd, those Harvard men."  A young woman of a new generation, she informs her father without hesitation that she's still a virgin.  No doubt that's only because there are no lifeboats around like her parents had. 

The proceedings are interrupted by a "touring Paris" montage for Peter and Kate, complete with a French chanson.  The sights, the shopping, the food, it's all here.  However, it's more than a lot creepy because they look like lovers rather than father and daughter.  He even gives her jewelry in a bouquet of flowers standing outside Notre Dame.

As for Sam's son (Thomas Byrd), he clearly does not want to follow in his father's footsteps.  "My fondest hope has always been that someday you'll take over here," Sam says to Thomas as a command rather than a wistful dream, especially since Thomas is not at all interested in banking. 

In Poland, Peter keeps promising Kate "the most beautiful castle in the world," but when they get to his childhood home, they find only a ruin.  It typically takes centuries for a place to get this ruined, but I guess two world wars and such have done it faster.  The graves of the Baron and his son are still there, even the ramshackle wooden crosses Peter made.  However, his sister's cross has fallen apart and he searches frantically for the pieces. 

Dejected from what he's seen, Peter himself seems a shell, until a phone call comes that cheers him up amazingly: there's been a plane crash and 17 people are dead!  That gets the old guy going again.  It's the airline that Sam's bank has been propping up and Peter owns a huge amount of stock in it.  So, he tells Vyto to sell the stock, which will make it worthless.  The run will give Sam "his own personal crash!" Peter triumphantly tells Vyto to end the second episode.

The final portion begins in 1953, only days after we last left the movie.  Peter has caused the panic at the bank he hoped, and once the bank has lost millions (and Sam personally) to prop it up, Peter starts to buy it back again, "making a killing."  Thankfully, Ron is on hand to remind everyone that this is fraud, and they can't wait to whack Peter over the head with it at an SEC hearing. 

At the hearing, Peter blames Sam and the bank directly, not exactly admitting that he did it for revenge, but Ron certainly knows he did it.  Peter's excuse to the SEC was to buy back the stock because he felt bad for the other investors.  "So, I used my own money, through Whitewood, that is a very small personal investment company, because I did not want to use Baron Hotels, because I did not want to endanger them any further," he pleads, "and therefore, we were able to save Atlantic International from destruction." 

"He won, case closed," Ron tells Sam after the proceedings.  Ron advises Sam to "call of the vendetta," but Sam can't.  "An eye for an eye," he says to Ron, who finishes the sentence with, "until you both end up blind." 

By 1955, Thomas is still wishy-washy about what he wants to do.  He admits feeling sorry for his father.  "It's almost as though he never had a choice.  Do not stop at jail, go directly to bank," he says, which is an amusing line, but whitewashes his father's backstory, considering the man focused his energies on the bank even as a child!  Mother Veronica's answer is "maybe you need the strong hand of a good woman...I'll start looking."  Just who do you think that will be?

That who is a new graduate of Radcliffe going to work at Bloomingdale's rather than taking a job with Peter immediately.  "I need to know what it's like working on the floor dealing with customers," she says, knowing that she will have that job dealing with the hotel retail chain when she's ready.  Kate does get an apartment, though.  She's not totally without her father's influence.  David calls Peter, begging from a seedy hotel room for $10K, one last time.  "You were an embarrassment...even the party hacks couldn't stomach you any longer," Peter chides him, saying one more time that he's way outlived his usefulness.  However, David isn't quite finished yet, as he threatens Peter with a "three inch" book of all the deals they have made over the year.  "You have a book, donate it to library," Peter snaps, since he knows David is too much of a coward to go down with him. 

Kate is working at the glove counter at Bloomingdale's under a fake name.  Thomas has come every day to the counter, but not for the hussy who runs it, rather for Kate.  He's bought gloves for more women than he knows in the hopes of asking her out.  To get rid of him when the manager needs her, she agrees to meet him at The Blue Angel, an awfully peppy mixed-race club for 1955.  Chatterbox Thomas doesn't stop talking long enough to realize that when he mentions his last name, Kate visibly shudders.  But, since he doesn't want to be part of the family business, giving her the worst lines about how he's a pirate planning a mutiny against going into the family business.  These two are so vapid that the late-in-the-game love plot creaks.  "There's another man?" Thomas asks when Kate doesn't invite him into the fake apartment she's had the cab drop them off at so he doesn't know she's really rich.  "Kind of," she says with irony he doesn't question.  He goes to kiss her, and she allows it, though "no hands" are allowed.  She's into him, of course, but there is that pesky family vendetta. 

Thomas tries to nab Kate at work, but having just left, he follows her in a cab to her real apartment.  He's angry that she's lied to him for weeks about where she lives, so she has to confess her real name.  She gives him the "it just didn't seem important" speech because she's fallen in love with him and that's all that really matters.  Coincidentally, that very night, he was planning on proposing and she was planning on telling him the truth.  Those twin admissions seem to right everything, and a kiss seals the deal. 

Eating ice cream in bed later, they joke about how they will break the news to their fathers.  Thomas naively suggests that perhaps when the fathers see how in love the kiddies are, they won't care.  "What astonishes me most is that you don't see the unsuitability of this," is Sam's response.  Veronica plays witness to their fight because "I don't want to clean up the blood later."  Sam, though awfully calm, tells Thomas that if he marries Kate, he's out of the family, out of the money.  "You don't know what a relief that is to me, Dad," Thomas chirps, determined to do what he wants.  He kisses Veronica goodbye and exits. 

Then we have to do the same thing again, but with Kate and Peter.  Kate says she's getting married first, to lower that boom, without telling Peter who the man actually is.  When she finally does get around to the guy's name, Peter explodes.  This is a much better scene than the previous one because Peter goes for some fun overacting where Sam insisted on underplaying it.  "I want you to use your common sense," Peter says, trying to sweet-talk his daughter, but then it turns violent when she admits to having slept with Thomas.  He slaps her and disowns her.  "I never want to see your face again," he hisses.  "I love you, Papa," Kate says before beating a retreat.  "Without her, what the hell is it all for?" Vyto asks Peter, not really needing an answer. 

With an umbrella, two suitcases and a bit of money, the lovers go off to San Francisco. 

The feud goes on, with Sam convinced that Peter is still trying to get a seat on his board and that the way to thwart it is to prove his connection to David's shady deals. 

In all of television history, I think "Kane & Abel" wins the award for the worst "I'm pregnant" line.  Kate and Thomas are standing in front of a building she wants to buy, but which they can't afford, but she's not worried.  "That's your department," she says.  "It's just you and me, baby," Thomas says delightedly.  "Oh, I forgot to mention..." Kate replies in a sing-song voice.  Are you kidding?  Playing it coy is one thing, but that's just downright stupid. 

The lovers are dire, but there is still the vendetta going, which isn't all that interesting either.  Ron has located David and Sam intends to extort the secrets from David, ironic considering he was Sam's first enemy.  But, as he tells Ron, as if it's a surprise this late in the story, "I'm in a fight for my life!" 
 
Kate's dress shop is a huge success, even drawing her mother-in-law.  They actually get along.  She's there on a peacemaking mission, but it seems neither father is willing to accept the marriage.  "You must never blame yourselves or each other," Veronica says.  Neither kid has the brain power to be that deep!  The scene ends with someone off-camera calling, "Mrs. Kane" and Veronica turns around.  "No, I think she means me," Kate says and Veronica gives one of the most insincere smiles of the decade.  I watched it a few times.  It's priceless.

The years are very slowly ticking by.  We're up to 1958 in some out-of-the-way dive with "Never on Sunday" playing in the background (who picked that of all songs?).  It's here Ron tracks down gray-haired mess David.  David may be far gone, but he's a negotiator still, turning down the initial $10K from Ron. 

Then it's suddenly 1960 and Peter is talking about Senator Kennedy, how the Irish and the Polish are very similar.  He's angling for an Ambassador post.  In the middle of the conversation, Vyto flashes a picture of Peter's grandson.  "Sometimes you are too smart for your own good," he says, to which Vyto responds, "better than being too dumb."  Good point!  He won't see the kids and when Veronica tells Sam their son is in town, he talks only about his books.  He does ask about the baby.  "Can I tell them you'd like to see them?" Veronica asks him.  "I can't," he says. 

Thomas and Kate are arguing in their second store in Beverly Hills, which is just starting.  Kate has a plan to open up stores all over the world, but Thomas is worried she is "trying to compete with" her father.  They are each jealous of each other, but still very much in love and full of annoyingly playful dialogue. 

On a plane, a toothy Senator congratulates Peter on his upcoming Ambassadorship, which is not yet official, and asks an interesting question: when Peter is off in Warsaw, who will run his empire?  "I'm not sure," he says honestly, but there will be no Ambassadorship.  Right off the plane, reporters are there with all of David's information.  Seventeen counts of bribery in seventeen states.  David has made an immunity deal and Vyto finds out that Ron's law firm was behind the deal.  Peter isn't afraid yet, because he has two options.  The first is to get to David and tell him that the information he sold went to Sam, which David doesn't know.  The other is to find a way to get 2% more of the bank stock so "I can throw him the hell out of there," meaning Sam.  Peter also wants to know if Vyto has told Kate, and he says no, that Peter should be the one to do that. 

Speaking of Kate, and I hate to do that, because whenever we go to her and company, they are so sleep-inducing.  While at lunch with her hubby and son, Thomas gives her a present of gloves (the cute way they met) with the key to their new NYC store in it.  A reporter interrupts their lunch to tell her of her father's troubles, and she wants to run to him, but Thomas stops her.  "I don't care what your father's done...but if he needs you, he's got to call and ask you," he insists.  Wow, playing hard to get is so hot, Thomas.  And, like a good 60s wife, she actually listens.

Peter's lawyer is dispatched to David in prison, where David still thinks Ron was acting on behalf of Peter.  He's defiant, but the lawyer tells him the truth, that Ron was acting on Sam's behalf.  It's a great speech the lawyer gets, and David all but has a stroke hearing it, even lurching at the lawyer in horror.  Just as the trial against Peter is beginning, word comes that David has hung himself, so Peter ends up with probation and a fine. 

Sam is listening to the television report when he gets a call...from Peter!  He's calling to gloat that "I know own 8% of the bank's stock!"  This gets him a seat on the board, "unless I hear that you have resigned.  You stole an Ambassadorship from me...I intend to take your bank!"  Peter is delivers this channeling any episode of "Dynasty" where Joan Collins raided any property of John Forsythe's. 

The shareholders have a meeting at the bank, where Sam tells the board of Peter's threat.  Sam thinks he still has control of the room, but everyone's body language says otherwise.  He's then told by one of the younger board members that it's "not your bank, Mr. Chairman" and that they are tired of supporting the ridiculous vendetta (a gold star goes to anyone who can remember what the hell started the vendetta by this late in the movie).  Basically, Sam is out, forced into retirement instead of facing the humiliation of a vote, which he would not win.  He signs the paper and walks from the room very slowly. 

That can probably be attributed to the heart attack he's in the middle of suffering.  He manages, clutching his chest, to walk all the way through the office until his secretary goes hysterical finding his crumpled body.  Her wild ranting get help and the doctor comes with pills.  Looking like death, he Veronica to get his son.  Peter's only reaction is to tell the bank that he will sell them back their stock.  He does inquire about Sam's heart, but without much excitement.

Though Sam looks terrible, he's really only in his early 60s, because it's now only 1962.  Kate is opening a new store in New York City and Vyto is on his way, but stops to invite Peter.  Vyto reels off a bitter speech, about the 14th he's said with the same information.  However, Sam has agreed to see his son and daughter-in-law.  Being an invalid doesn't give him much choice, and it also subjects him to a long scene with Veronica where they discuss their history.  Actually, Veronica is one of the better things about the miniseries, so she manages to make it work.

Veronica dashes off to Kate's store, where "Mack the Knife" is being played at the gala opening.  Without Veronica knowing, Sam has slipped out of bed and taken a cab to the store, watching with pride across the street.  Guess who also had the same idea?  They finally spot each other, only feet away and look at each other.  Peter tips his hat and walks away.  That's it?  For five hours, we've watched the two of them wage war, but when they meet for the last time, it's just a hat tip? 

Kate and Timothy close down the party to go see Sam.  Timothy introduces them without realizing what Kate knew the minute she walked in the room: Sam is dead.  He's in his suit in a chair, so Veronica probably realizes what he did, but she keeps silent and then does that thing that only happens on TV: she closes his eyelids. 

Sam's death comes with a shock for Peter.  After all these years, he's sent a letter telling him that the original $2M he received to start what would become his empire did not come from his competitor, but from Sam himself.  We all knew that, but after all these years, Peter had apparently never figured it out.  "He considered me a good investment," the letter says, which has Peter laughing, "he's a banker to the end!"  Of course then he breaks into sobs.  "We could even have been friends," Peter says, though he's still alive and still with a great head of hair. 

At Sam's huge church funeral, Sam and Vyto are there, sitting in the back, as we would expect by now.  As the family exits the church, Kate sees her father and calls to him, though he turns away...for a second!  Come on you didn't think he was going to get away without a reconciliation scene.  An American miniseries would never allow it.  Remember, Sam WANTED to, but died.  Peter HAS to, if for no other reason than to wrap his grandson in his arms as the music swells.

That leaves only one detail for 1966: the opening of a hotel in Poland.  Peter is now dead, so Kate has to do it, with her son, who sports his grandfather's bracelet.  Now, I give the movie credit for using stock footage of what looks to be a very Communist crowd, but the situation does seem off, no?  A big Western capitalist hotel chain in Warsaw? 

Historial reality is the least of "Kane & Abel's" problems.  What reads in paper as a pulse-racing tear through 50 years of two bitter but lavishly successful men is very two-dimensional on television.  Peter Strauss gives it all he has, but his role is the more exciting of the two anyway.  Sam Neill, usually a highlight of anything he does, falls into the background so much that the central vendetta of the story seems completely forgettable.  Toss in a bunch of supporting characters even more transparent and we are left with very little. 

However, as I said, "Kane & Abel" got my beloved Jeffrey Archer to television, and for that, it will always retain a place in my heart.  A small one.  And if I watch it again, probably an even smaller one.

People vs. Jean Harris (1981)

At the onset of "People vs. Jean Harris," you might think you have wandered into Erica Kane's latest murder trial.  Tape is used instead of film, giving it simultaneously the look of a soap opera and 1970s British miniseries.  Even weirder is a narrator who pops in every now and then. 

Oddest of all is that the entire movie takes place in the courtroom of the trial, with a script that is really no more than actual testimony.  Sounds like a recipe for a dud, right?

Wrong.  Whoever made the brave decision to limit the movie to just the courtroom testimony was a genius.  What was so captivating about Jean Harris' trial was the question of why she killed Hy Tarnower.  Unlike other sensational crimes of the 20th Century, the Jean Harris crime is fairly tame.  This is not Stanford White being killed by Harry Thaw over love for entertainer Evelyn Nesbitt.  This is not Charles Manson having freakish mental powers of commune members.  This is not O.J. Simpson cramming his celebrity into a glove that didn't fit.  No William Kennedy Smith rape accusations.  Just a middle-aged woman who killed her middle-aged lover.  Jean Harris was no Betty Broderick.  Jean Harris was a private school headmistress, a prim and proper woman where Betty Broderick, by all accounts, was a loon trying to hold onto a golden life that was fast being ripped from her insane hands. 

So, instead of making the crime the actual centerpiece of the movie, the trial is the star, showing the cleverness of the lawyers and witness.  It's an absolutely fascinating look at the justice system through the lens of a notorious case.  I warn you that this is not a miniseries for those who love shocking courtroom theatrics.  For that, go back to Betty Broderick.  For an intelligent rendering of a famous trial, as portrayed by first-rate actors, stick with "People vs. Jean Harris."

Judge Russell Leggett (Richard Dysart) gives advice to the jury.  He seems amiable enough and a nicely mixed jury follows along.  Then Assistant District Attorney George Bolen (Peter Coyote), "a formidable and relentless stickler for detail," gives his opening statement.  Then defense attorney Joel Arnou (Martin Balsam), less polished, but more experienced, has also sparred with the judge in the past, we're told.  He's one of those lawyers who talks to the jury like they are friends.  Telling them it's not a tabloid-type case, he notes that if they want that, "I think that at 10 o'clock you can find out who shot J.R." 

The first witness to testify about the events of March 10, 1980 is summoned and Arnou immediately calls for a sidebar because he objects to the large cross the witness is wearing, feeling it's prejudicial, but Judge Leggett says no and Suzanne van der Vreken (Sarah Marshall) can start her testimony.  She and her husband were hired in 1964 as servants at the home of Dr. Herman Tarnower.  She testifies that she was in her room "painted and watching television" when she heard the buzzer go off twice.  She called the doctor and heard arguing followed by a shot.  "Then I never heard Dr. Tarnower again," she says, going to wake up her husband.  "It was so much yelling through the phone, I knew something was wrong" she tells the jury.  Her husband called the police because "they didn't understand my accent."  Her husband saw "Mrs. Harris' car leaving." 

Going into Dr. Tarnower's room, Suzanne says she saw him bleeding, but still alive and then she called the police, but got no answer.  After a few minutes of pinning down exactly where she and her husband were at all times, Suzanne gives testimony that she saw Mrs. Harris coming "up the stairs, up the front stairs," with a police officer behind her.

Next to testify is the police officer who found Mrs. Harris.  She approached him and said "something like, 'hurry up, he's been shot, hurry up!'"  Then it's Dr. Roth's turn (Milton Selzer), district medical examiner, who arrived to find Dr. Tarnower alive, though barely.  His pulse and breathing stopped in the ambulance and "11:58 that evening, he was dead." 

Dr. Roth is the first witness cross-examined by Arnou.  He has Dr. Roth testify that indeed the injuries to and bullet holes in Dr. Tarnower "could have occurred during a struggle." 

It must have been mighty painful to be in that courtroom for over a month by the time the star witness, the one everyone came to see, finally takes the stand: Mrs. Jean Harris (Ellen Burstyn).  "Just relax," the judge tells her before she starts.

Arnou starts her off early, with where she was born, grew up, was schooled, etc.  She married soon after college graduation and had two children.  In 1965, she and her husband divorced, with Jean retaining custody of the boys.  In 1966, she met Dr. Herbert Tarnower at party and "we talked all evening, in fact."  A week after that meeting, he sent her the book "Masada," telling her "it's time you learned something about the Jews."  By chance, they were both going to be in New York City for different meetings and got together.  They went for dinner and dancing, where Jean says, he was a "lovely dancer.  I got to be a better dancer after years with him," to a smile from the judge.  "He wrote and he sent lots of roses," she testifies, though the relationship was completely chaste.  It wasn't until the middle of 1967, with her son present, that Dr. Tarnower asked her to marry him.  Behind giant sunglasses, Jean describes the beautiful ring. 

There came a point where Jean pressed Dr. Tarnower to set a date for the wedding because she needed to make plans, and she testifies that he said, "'Jean, I just don't think I can go through with it.'"  She calmly recounts that she was understanding about his inability to actually get married.  She sent the ring back, but he brought it to her again.  "I think it upset him more than it upset me," Jean testifies.  "I was very much in love with him by that point and it was too late," she says as part of a rambling talk on how she loved him, smartly cut off by Bolen, who reminds the judge no actual question has been asked of her.  The judge agrees, but in the most sympathetic way to Jean, not like the clip judges we're used to seeing on TV.

Though Jean and Hy were not married, they stayed together.  Jean moved to Connecticut to become the headmistress of a small school.  As to her relationship with HiTarnower, "it was a very close one."  They spent weekends together, took trips together and seemed to enjoy a very rewarding few years together.  When she left the school in 1975, she was worried about exhaustion and was taking pills prescribed to her by Dr. Tarnower.  She took a less stressful job and then went on a tour of Iron Curtain countries before finishing off the trip in Paris together.  At the hotel in Paris, "there was a letter from another woman sitting on the floor."  She makes a bit of a joke about the letter, which Bolen doesn't appreciate, but they continue.  She describes how she took off all of her jewelry and left them with his cuff links.  As for the cuff links, she said, "they came from a grateful patient," but then saw an engraving on them from a woman professing her love, dated during the time of her own relationship with Hi Tarnower. 

In 1977, Jean testifies that she was offered a job as the headmistress at the Madeira School.  "My feeling when I went there was that I should spend the first year observing and not try to change anything too fast," she notes, even though she saw a lot wrong.  Her tenure there was difficult.  At one point, in 1979, the school brought in a "consultant," though Jean cannot remember what the word for the document he produced is.  "The word just leaves me right now," she says, becoming a bit flustered.  Essentially, the consultant asked contributors to the school their opinions on how the school was run, which Jean didn't like.  "She was the most controversial" headmistress the school ever had, one survey noted, though Jeans says, "I wasn't controversial at all.  You couldn't say that now," she jokes, with nervous twitters of laughter from the courtroom.  She strongly defends her record, though the recommendation of the report was that she should be fired.  Jean testifies that it caused her a great deal of "emotional stress...it was depressing and upsetting."

Arthur Siciliano (Al Ruscio) takes the stand after Jean.  He is the detective who arrived at the crime scene.  He testifies Jean Harris admitted she killed Hy Tarnower as soon as he entered the house.  He placed her under arrest and read her the usual rights, though she said she didn't need them.  She told them the gun was in the car and Detective Siciliano found it exactly where she said it was.  Turning back to Jean, he asked if she was injured and found her lip bloody and swelling. 

After roughly 30 minutes of rather dry and completely expected testimony, Siciliano suddenly gives us the first clue as to why this case became so notable.  "She told me she had driven up from Virginia to the Tarnower home with the hope of being killed by Dr. Tarnower.  She said, 'he wanted to live and I wanted to die,'" is is testimony.  He continues that Jean told him she was tired of his countless affairs, and the camera shows Jean whispering to her lawyer, but maintaining her cool.  Specific to the crime at hand, Siciliano says that Jean told him she and Tarnower struggled for the gun and he told her to leave, "you're crazy."  "They started to fight again and the gun went off several times," Siciliano relays before Jean asks to see Hi!  He claims to have denied her request, but just then, the body, head exposed, was brought by her and she fainted.  To this, Jean pays rapt attention. 

Siciliano continues his testimony.  He went up to the bedroom to see signs of a struggle blood.  "I noticed a bullet hole in one of the sliding doors about 13" above the floor.  I noticed a television set resting in the stand.  I guess that was it," he says succinctly.  It's interesting to note that in the span of one sentence, he notices a bullet hole and completely undisturbed television set. 

When Arnou cross-examines Siciliano, he first makes sure that the jury hears they have had past associations, but never any unpleasantness.  But, this encounter immediately gets heated when Arnou gets Siciliano to confess that it wasn't until a week after the incident that he photographed the crime scene.  Arnou suggests evidence could have been compromised by then, and Bolen's objection is sustained.  Siciliano did not do any tests to figure out who held the weapon, claiming over and over, "it wasn't necessary, so I didn't do it."  In fact, he did not tests at all on the night of the crime, none at all.  "You were the detective assigned to the case?" Arnou asks.  "I'm not sure," a nervous Siciliano replies.  Arnou jumps all over that one, causing only more confusion from Siciliano and more admissions that there was some mighty sloppy police work.  Most of it focuses on the issue of who actually touched the gun that night. 

Bolen has another shot at Siciliano and wastes not time.  "Did the defendant appear to be acting," he asks?  Without hesitation, Siciliano says yes and Jean starts to look angry.

Medical examiner Dr. Roh (Alvin Ing) takes the stand.  The entire point of his short testimony is to ascertain whether there are defensive wounds on the dead body.  Medical experts continue with Dr. Ryan (Alan Manson).  Brought from Maine to look at the evidence, he is a witness for the defense to claim that "I would prefer to give the probability to a struggle."  A succession of medical testimony so dry that the narrator quickly explains it all rather than have us listen to it is paraded by.

And then Jean takes the stand again.  This time, it's not about her history, but the actual night of the crime.  She's very specific in explaining how she took flowers, where they were positioned and such, and does not hesitate when asked where the gun was.  "It was in the pocket book," she says matter-of-factly.  She testifies about going into a dark house, sitting on the bed and turning on the light just as Hi was waking up, but gets in a little dig among the facts, noting that, "he was not enthralled to see me."  Her testimony is very calculated and subtly paints Dr. Tarnower as rather a cold fish, not interested in talking to her, despite the fact that she traveled from Virginia specifically to talk to him (as per her testimony).  Since he's not there to defend himself, she can get away with a whopper like "I was sure he would say something like, 'you're a nut for driving five hours in the middle of the night just to talk'" when she kept insisting to the slumbering Hi that she wanted a conversation (with flowers). 

A bit of a more aggressive Jean comes out when she next describes going into the bathroom she typically used and finding a "blue-green negligee."  Believing it to belong to a woman who had taken some of her own items...objections from Bolen.  Before the judge can rule, Jean insists that it was because this other woman had taken things of hers that she touched the negligee, but the judge sustains the objection because the possible other woman and her maybe/maybe not taking of Jean's items is not relevant.  "By this time, I felt hurt and frustrated because the script wasn't working out the way I expected it to.  I had looked forward to a few more quiet minutes with Hi.  I guess I wanted to feel safe one more time.  I thought it was a reasonable request, but it wasn't happening," she says. 

After throwing a "box of curlers" at a window and breaking it, Jean says she walked out of the bathroom, only to be slapped by Hi.  Arnou asks if he had ever done that before and Jean replies, "no, indeed he never had, but then I had never come to his house and thrown something before." 

That brings Arnou to one of the main points, namely did Jean go to Dr. Tarnower's to have him kill her.  "I'm glad I finally have the chance to say it," Jean says, telling the court she would never have gone to him for such a reason, especially since he "spent his life saving people."  She claims she "had no intention of ever letting him see I had the gun or anything about how desperate I was that night." 

Angry at being slapped, she throws a box around the bathroom and Hi slapped her again.  "I made him very angry," she testifies.  Arnou returns her to the fact that keep saying she wanted a client last night with Hy.  Why?  "I planned to leave and go down near the pond and shoot myself," she says.  Arnou asks her to continue and she sure does, saying, "I didn't have the desire to throw any more things.  It hadn't turned out the way I hoped it would.  I just wanted to get dying over with."  She's more upset that her fantasy of a quiet talk before suicide isn't happening, and that's when her mood that night apparently really turned.

She testifies that she told Hi to hit her once more, "hard enough to kill," but before even taking a breath, knows enough to say that mentioning that to the policeman "started that who stupid story that I had gone to Westchester to ask Hi to kill me.  That was the farthest thing from my mind."  She's exceedingly restrained during testimony, but that this woman is capable of fury is evident.  Without thinking, she reached for her pocketbook, felt the gun, pulled it out and said, "never mind, I'll do it myself," which causes a wince from Arnou.  That could be interpreted two ways.  One, that, as the policeman testified, she did go to there to have Hi kill her or two, that she was merely following the thread of asking Hy to slap her to death. 

She claims she put the gun to her head and pulled the trigger at the very same instant that Hi pulled the gun from her, causing a shot that went through his hand.  "We both just stood there and looked at it," she says.  Arnou asks if Jean intended to shoot Tarnower and she adamantly says no, that she didn't even realize he was so close.  She claims she's most upset at her own reaction: that she didn't do anything to help him.  After all, she's been so motherly toward him that she claims "I got upset if he had a headache and didn't take a pill."  But, at the same time, she also says she realized she could race to the gun and shoot herself with it.  Unfortunately, she couldn't find the gun for a while, until finding it under a bed, but as she was reaching for it, Hy "reached for my left hand...and it hurt and it made me drop the gun."  Jean is able to recount the details with a minimum of emotion, only bringing it on when she's correcting someone else's testimony.  She's very controlled as she notes Hi went to his bed and buzzed for the staff, with the gun in his right hand "because he buzzed with the left," she says specifically upon Arnou's question of where the gun was. 

Next, she claims that she begged Hi to either kill her or give her the gun so she could do it herself.  He called her crazy and told her to leave.  She was able to reach for the gun and fell backwards, with Hy lunging after her and "felt the muzzle of the gun in my stomach...well, I thought it was the muzzle and I...pulled the trigger."  The woman with the stupendous memory claims, she remembers thinking, "that didn't hurt, I should have done it a long time ago."  She claims she then ran away from him to shoot herself, which seems a bit odd considering she thought she had already shot herself in the stomach.  With Hi on his knees between the beds, Jean claims, "I put the gun to my head, I pulled the trigger and the gun clicked."  It did not fire.  So, sure she filled the chamber with six bullets, she fired again, but the shot went into a piece of furniture.  She then tried again at her head, "and I shot and I shot and I shot and I shot and it just clicked."  Bolen isn't buying a word of it as she continues that she wanted to be dead before the servants arrived, so she went for the extra bullets in her coat.  She has so much time that she "banged the gun on the tub" over and over to dislodge the casings in order to reload, but the banging caused the gun to break.  She even tried to fix the gun and "finally I walked back into the room and say Hi dropping the phone," but she took the phone from him, not hearing an outside line, hung it up and said, "Hi it's broken.  I think it's gone dead and he said, 'you're probably right.'  That was the only civil thing he said to me all night and that was the last thing I heard him say."  She helped him up onto the bed.  "He looked exhausted, but he didn't look...fine," she says, tears welling up and having to stop to control herself.  "I looked at his face and he looked at me and, uh, I guess we were both in a state of shock," wondering how something like this could happen "between to people who never argued, except over the use of the subjunctive," a detail that sounds more than a bit rehearsed.  Quietly, she finishes up by describing how she left the house and went to find a phone.

Switching gears, Arnou shows Jean a will she had written, had it executed and wrote some letters.  Now she's crying fully.  She arranges her papers for her sons, sounding like someone planning a suicide.  "I couldn't cope anymore," she testifies.  Arnou asks her to explain a line from the will where she wrote, "I was a person that no one ever knew."  "I felt that for many years," Jean says, with Arnou asking her to explain.  Slowly and through the tears, she chalks it up to "being a woman."  She liked being a woman when she was on Hy's arm at social functions, but not when she was at school as a woman with responsibilities.  "I intended...to...kill...myself," she says, barely able to get out the words, "because I couldn't function as a useful person anymore." 

Still carefully demonizing Dr. Tarnower, Jean testifies that she called him the night of the killing, begging to talk to him and he told her no, to come the next day.  She insisted on seeing him that night and he merely said, "suit yourself."  It's then she claims "I stopped thinking of dying as a decision.  It became a physical necessity."  Arnou asks why she hadn't tried to kill herself before, and Bolen objects furiously.  Even Jean is surprised, saying, "I didn't think you would be the one to ask that." 

Then Bolen has four days to cross-examine Jean.  He starts with the engagement, the proposal and the breaking of it.  Sympathetic Jean is replaced by a more caustic one.  She blithely admits that she didn't mind Hy breaking the engagement, or his reasons for it.  "I was always happy to be with him.  I didn't sit around for 14 years waiting for him to marry me me, Mr. Bolen.  I was looking for the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval," she spits out to laughs from the gallery.  Openly hostile to Bolen she he tries to paint her as bitter at not being invited to a dinner honoring Dr. Tarnower or being able to sit at the head table, she snaps that she would have liked to have been there to honor him, but "I have no strong feelings about sitting at head tables, Mr. Bolen.  I've sat at a lot of them, and it doesn't cut any ice with me at all." 

Bolen skips her ahead to the weekend before the killing, asking about a letter she wrote to Dr. Tarnower that took over two days to write, asking her every possible detail one can ask about writing a letter, including mailing the certified letter.  There is a biting back-and-forth between the two that ends up with the judge having to mediate.  On the day of the killing, she did call him, mainly to tell him to throw away the letter if he had received it because "complaining was not my style."  The conversation then went to normal discourse, making plans for an upcoming weekend.  "What tone of voice did you use during the call?" Bolen asks.  "It was probably a very trouble one, Mr. Bolen, because I was a very troubled woman that day, and long before that," she retorts. 

Up to now, Bolen has been baiting Jean, but then he goes for the kill, to make her seem completely unhinged.  He brings up the subject of the "other woman," and Jean claims that she was not upset at the woman herself, only "being touched by the other woman" emotionally.  They start to yell at each other when it is suggested that the very long letter to Hi be read.  Jean claims she doesn't want it read, but isn't afraid of having it read.  "It is a very private letter, Mr. Bolen, as you know, but if you are going to play cat-and-mouse with it, I would rather have the whole thing on the table," Jean rails.  Knowing that opened the door for him, Bolen asks Arnou for the letter.

After a break, Jean is questioned by Arnou again.  He intends to swing things back to sympathy for Jean by asking questions about job stress.  Apparently there was a marijuana epidemic at the Madeira School and Jean says she had found "a basket of bongs."  "Bongs?  How do you spell that?" Bolen interrupts.  "Bong.  B...O...N...G.  If you ever ran a school, you would know that," Jean acidly answers, getting another laugh from the gallery.  Also, she had been on medication prescribed by Dr. Tarnower, but ran out on March 6 and never took any again.  Asked how she felt without the medication, Jean responds, "just the same as I always had, very tired."  On top of being a creep, it sounds like Hi wasn't a great doctor either!  This is backed up by a physician who says that what Jean was on was an amphetamine and that sudden withdrawal from it would cause "fatigue, anxiety and depression, although such reactions vary from person to person."

Back to Jean.  During a Christmas 1979, Jean and Hi went to Florida with friends, and Jean knew that he was seeing other women, but wasn't too upset about it.  She even wrote a poem, giving to Hi and the friends where she makes light of his women.  Bolen asks for a voire dire and with Jean in a mood to smack him around a bit, gets off another joke that has everyone laughing, much to Bolen's dismay.  Arnou reads the poem, a spoof on "'twas the Night Before Christmas" where Jean lacerates Hi for his other women, though very amusingly.  One can question her state of mind: is it playful, as Jean suggests, or mean-spirited, as Bolen wants the jury to believe? 

Jean testifies that she saw an ad in The New York Times from one of Hi's other lovers to him, and claims she told Hy, "why don't you tell her to use the Goodyear blimp next year.  I think it's available," again, in a spirit of fun she wants to convey, rather than bitterness. 

Bolen gets his turn to ask questions about the night of the killing.  Jean has to defend her intention to kill herself.  Bolen asks if Jean was angry over the fact that Hi has so many women, but in getting her to answer a particular question, phrases it so she can only answer "yes" or "no."  The judge and Arnou even get in on the act, but the end result is that Jean has to answer as Bolen dictates, though not without getting frustrated and angry.  Bolen hammers Jean about where she wanted her death to take place, the pond or the bedroom.  Over and over he asks the question in different ways, trying to get Jean to change her testimony, but Arnou keeps popping up with "asked and answered!"  However, Judge Leggett sides with Bolen, chastising Arnou for "making a speech" while objecting.  Bolen tries to get Jean to admit that she was thinking about killing Hi, but she remains resolute.  "I was thinking about dying, Mr. Bolen, and I was thinking frantically about it," she hisses. 

Bolen gets to the business about the phone, whether she tried to call for help, which she insists she did, and goads Bolen with, "I wish you had taken some fingerprints of the phone that night" because it would be proof of her claim.  We know already that the police had been rather inept in their forensic work, and she knows it too.  However, Bolen challenges her that she had used the phone many times, so of course her fingerprints would be on there.  But, she counters that even Hi's fingerprints were not found on the phone and he touched it "with bloody hands."  This turns out to be something of a mistake on her part.  Jean wanders through a harangue at the police and everyone else by testifying that all she was trying to do with the phone was get help because she was "no longer consumed with myself."  She admits she used the phone to call the servants, but Bolen has a counterattack for that, asking her why she didn't take Hi to the hospital herself.  "I didn't know he needed a hospital, really," she says angrily. 

Further looking to bait Jean, Bolen asks her if Dr. Tarnower had told her he proposed to one of his other girlfriends.  She says no, going further to ask of Bolen, "did he tell you that Mr. Bolen, because I don't think that ever happened" while Arnou begs for an objection to shut her up.  Unfortunately, Judge Leggett again sides with Bolen.  There is much discussion of the March 10 daytime phone call, which ends up with Bolen asking Jean if she knew she was "going to inherit $240,000?"  Arnou rises to demand a mistrial and an angry Judge Leggett refuses, but demands that Dr. Bolen has a "good faith" reason for asking the question.  Bolen pushes further, asking if Dr. Tarnower told Jean to go away, and as Arnou objects again, Jean begs of the judge, "how long are we going to go on like this, forever?"  Bolen hits Jean hard in asking, "is it not a fact that on March 10, 1980, you intended to kill Dr. Tarnower and then kill yourself because if you couldn't have Dr. Tarnower, no one would, yes or no?"  Jean's eyebrows go up, she places her head on her hand and pauses, only to caustically reply, "no, Mr. Bolen," looking awfully angry.  "I have no further questions," Bolen says.  "Well that's good," Jean notes, getting the last word.

There's a surprise witness in the form of Juanita Edwards (Priscilla Morrill).  She was the 10:00 patient in Dr. Tarnower's office.  Her testimony is that the doctor had taken her pulse when the phone interrupted the appointment.  "Dr. Tarnower left the room...and I remained seated on the examining table and I did not leave it," she says, though apparently Dr. Tarnower had not hung up the phone in that room completely.  "Very loud and very angry," is the way Mrs. Edwards describes Dr. Tarnower's voice on the phone, though Arnou objects and the judge has "angry" stricken.  She says she heard clearly that Dr. Tarnower told Jean to leave him and also that she was going to inherit that mysterious $240,000 before coming back in and finishing her examination.  When Arnou gets his chance, he's forced to push at Mrs. Edwards, noting that she didn't bother to hang up the phone and wondering how she heard everything so clearly. Arnou doesn't score much off of Mrs. Edwards, other than that Dr. Tarnower's other lover, who worked for him, was in the building at the time of the phone conversation.

Then it's back to the business of the letter Jean wrote and mailed to Dr. Tarnower.  The narrator skips us through a minefield of potential boring legal wrangling by simply stating the facts: Dr. Tarnower never picked up the letter and after he died, the Post Office ruled the letter be returned to Jean.  The prosecution asked the letter to be put into evidence, but the defense objected, so there was a separate case about the letter, where Judge Leggett allowed it.  Arnou appealed and lost, so the letter was entered into evidence.

That's not good for Jean, because in the letter, she refers to Dr. Tarnower's other woman Lynn as "dishonest," "adulteress," and even "whore."  Or, rather, "your whore," as Bolen corrects.  In fact, she wrote "psychotic" because, according to Jean, "that's how Suzanne always referred to her."  "What did Suzanne say about you?" Bolen asks.  "I hate to think," Jean says bitterly.  As Bolen goes through the letter word by word, Jean gets furious, insisting the judge stop it, but Judge Leggett cautions her, saying that only Arnou can object, which she bitterly remarks, "he's not doing anything!"  Jean claims she was angry about Lynn, though not because of anything Lynn was or did, just her existence. 

Arnou doesn't object to Bolen reading the letter in its entirety.  The entire letter is quotable, and it's a corker.  It refers to Lynn in unsavory terms over and over, accusing her of even smearing feces on a dress of hers.  She says she has become poor chasing after him, while Lynn has made money.  Worst of all, he has scratched out her name on his will and put hers in.  She lacerates him, but also begs for any minute of time with him she can get.  It's alternately mean and pained, but it shows a woman desperate and very much clinging to sanity, obsessed with a man who, according to her, was tossing her out for a younger model.

All that's left are closing arguments.  Arnou is up first, calling it "a tragic accident" that can "never bring back Dr. Tarnower."  That's expected.  His take on the letter is that it was not a threat, especially the end of the letter, that tells him to give Lynn the money, but her the time.  He debunks the letter and debunks Mrs. Edwards.  "This is a story of love.  Love gone wrong, love from a woman to a man who could not accept or did not know how to handle."  The tragedy, according to Arnou, is that this is a "tragedy" because Dr. Tarnower couldn't handle "the great gift a woman has to give," her love. 

When Bolen gets his turn, he keeps the jury thinking only of Jean's "state of mind."  He crawls over every bit of evidence, showing how it added up to Jean intending to kill Dr. Tarnower.  Arnou objects a few times at Bolen stuffing a bit of theatricality and license into the closing argument, but Judge Leggett always sides with Bolen.  He concentrates mainly on the night of the killing, analyzing every one of Jean's movements and decisions, making them all look suspect.  Bolen's is by far the more believable of the two conclusions. 

The jury returned a verdict after only a week, a unanimous one no less, and it's that Jean Harris is guilty.  As Jean is being led out of the courtroom, she is asked for her home address by the court reporter.  "I don't have any.  I live in jail, I guess," she snaps. 

At sentencing, the defense chooses not to speak, but the prosecution does, painting Dr. Tarnower as something of a saint, which was apparently not true in reality, not, of course, that he deserved to die.  His plea is a but much.  Jean also askes to be heard.  She claims she did not "intend to murder Dr. Tarnower" and that she loved him.  She says it's a "travesty of justice," that she will be in prison for the rest of her life.  She also defiantly says that there is no proof of her intent to murder, that the jurors who have spoken out publicly have noted that she did nothing to convince them of her innocence, which is not the same sd guilt being proven.  Her speech is greeted by applause from the courtroom. 

When Judge Leggett passes sentence, he does it in a very curious way.  First, he regrets that he has to pass sentence on a woman, but he does it as "mandated by law."  However, it's what he says after that is truly telling.  He asks the prison system to use Jean Harris for the good of other prisoners because he finds her so intelligent and worthy.  "Anything that can be done with respect to giving her the opportunity to help her fellow women that are in that prison, I would like it to be done.  I think she has so much to offer the women that are there would be to deprive society and the other inmates in there of a very great advantage," he says.  That's a rather remarkable action from a judge who has just sentenced a woman to prison for murder!  But, it's a summation of the trial.  Jean Harris did kill Dr. Tarnower in one way or another, whether intentionally or accidentally, but that doesn't take away her personal achievements or better qualities.  That's why someone like Ellen Burstyn has to be cast in this role, for she is capable of being that Jean Harris. 

Really, this should be so dry!  A one-set miniseries with only a handful of actors reciting court testimony?  That sounds like something that should be done on stage, not on television!  But, a chance was taken and it paid off!  The courtroom testimony turns out to be thrilling because there are very clearly two Jean Harrises.  One is the defense Jean Harris: polite, efficient, crisp, though sad.  The other is the prosecution Jean Harris: angry, bitter, desperate and lying.  That's to be expected in any case, but unlike most courtroom dramas, this one is not based on high-flying theatrics.  It's very subdued.  Even when Jean and Bolen spar, it's reserved, hardly as flashy as the great climax courtroom scenes of other miniseries (we could go back to Betty Broderick, but she was just plain nuts, whereas Jean is not only more complex, but also a lady at all times). 

Above all, there is the acting.  Cutting the testimony down from months to only a few hours is a chore in itself, but the highlights obviously stood out to writer George Lefferts.  But, how does one act this?  Most of the time, everyone gets giddy with acting fever, knowing this is the stuff of awards.  Richard Dysart chooses to maintain the folksy, almost humorous demeanor of Judge Leggett, a man who knows what he's doing, but never pretends he's God.  Peter Coyote, with the difficult part of a young prosecutor who has to make Jean Harris seem like a fanatic, stands his ground among the vets.  When the character realizes he's about to trap Jean, Peter registers it in his whole body, almost unable to control himself.  Just the opposite is Martin Balsam, who maintains a lack of emotion the whole time, knowing that the more arguments and outbursts that arise, the less the jury will sympathize.

But, of course, the piece belongs to Ellen Burstyn, as does pretty much every movie with her in it.  In an HBO movie version of the same story, one which showed everything rather than staying in the courtroom, Annette Bening gave a spectacular performance as Jean Harris, but she has so much more to work with (Burstyn is also in that movie, playing one of Hi Turnower's other women).  Ellen has only the trial testimony, and that delicate line of balancing defense Jean and prosecuted Jean.  She remains dignified even in moments of anger, and her Jean never lets on a hint of craziness.  When she says she intended to kill herself, I believed her, because Ellen Burstyn is so damn convincing.  Perhaps if Jean Harris had taken some acting lessons from Ellen Burstyn before testifying, she wouldn't have spent over a decade in prison (until pardoned in 1992).  The question of Jean's guilt or innocence is not really the subject of the movie since it presents both sides very fairly and the verdict was already known when it aired.  Watching it unfold is the fun.  Many a more shocking court case has been dramatized, but the decision to do the Jean Harris story within the confines of the court testimony, allowing for little in the way of theatrics forced the best from the writers and actors, and they all rise to the challenge. 

Also, note that this aired in May 1981, only a few weeks after the trial ended, so this whole movie was put together very quickly, yet another stunning coup for the writers and actors. 

The Martian Chronicles (1980)

Based on the works of Ray Bradbury, "The Martian Chronicles" may well be the most idiotic miniseries ever aired on American television.  It's not the tackiest (that would be "Lace," which is great fun), it's not the most boring (that would be...oh, hell, there's way too much competition to pick just one), but maybe, just maybe, the dumbest.  Bradbury was a master of science fiction, but this is just hokey as hell, bearing little resemblance to what he envisioned as our world and that of Mars in the future.  Don't let me hang us up on introductions, let's just dive in.

Things are laughable from the onset.  We start in July 1976, when the first spacecraft lands on Mars.  The thing is so obviously a toy parked on dirt that I'm surprised one can't see the wires attached.  "Mankind waited.  Intense expectation for the answer to the question that had puzzled him [sic] for centuries.  Is there life on Mars?" the narrator asks.  He describes how most people on Earth are "non-believers," saying that it's possible that we have looked at Mars and just not seen anything, also noting that Martians would have thought the same thing of us if they landed a spacecraft "in the Sahara desert."  Well, although I suppose that's true, it's not the most scientific argument. 

"However, if the spacecraft had landed only a few miles on, things might have been different," we're told as the camera pans out to show more toys doubling as models, this time as Martian habitation.  Wait, so we can send a spacecraft to Mars, but we can't get it to see anything more than a foot in front of its face?  That doesn't say much for NASA, does it?

Part One: The Expeditions

Now it's 1999 and it's time for the "first manned expedition to Mars."  Stock footage and more models show the launch of a rocket, unmanned, sent in preparation.  The dozen people who seem to make up mission control seem fairly happy.  Reporters are assembled so Colonel Rock Hudson can answer questions about the impending manned mission.  Actually, he manages to avoid any real answers, tossing someone else to them and going into mission control to look at pictures and invite one the main men to brunch (don't laugh, his wife plans to be there).  Actually going on the mission are Richard Oldfield and Richard Heffer.  They hop into the module without their helmets or much gear, so I suppose by the fictional 1999 of this story, astronauts no longer need all that junk.  There is no scientific explanation as to why not.  Let's just chalk it up to a small budget. 

The manned module is launched with no problem.  It meets the rocket in space, a rocket which is completely immobile as the module attaches to it, looking way more sexual than it should. 
Let's meet the Martians.  James Faulkner is "Mr. K," "sitting in his room listening to his book."  Wow, Martians are so advanced they have Books on Tape, which actually seems to be a gold-plated fan manipulated by James in gold nail polish.  A few feet away, Maggie Wright is tossing and turning during sleep, seeing visions of the approaching astronauts, her fingers twitching.  James notices this and hikes up his muumuu to go over and find out what is happening.  She relays the dream to James, who does not believe there can be men on Earth "because there is too much oxygen for life to be sustained."  Their science program is apparently no better than ours. 

The module disconnects from the rocket (why did it need the rocket if it's perfectly mobile on its own?).  The astronauts, still without helmets, announce their last transmission to headquarters.  Oh, that's not good.  You mean, there was no way NASA could use better communication devices.  Maggie's visions of the astronauts also looks sexual, and when she relays it to James, she notes that the astronaut finds her "beautiful."  The quality of vanity is equal on Mars!  James thinks the dream is real, that they are about to have Earthlings invade the planet.

The astronauts joke with Rock that they won't start any wars, "which are more likely on Earth," but let's note that they don't have any weapons and there are only two of them, not to mention the fact that still no one believes there is life on Mars. 

A pissy James, who is doing something with a stick over a vat of dry ice that looks like he's toasting a marshmallow, is not happy that Maggie wants to go out that night.  He forbids it, the argument sounding like a man who knows his wife is having an affair.  He is the one going out, with the intention to kill the men who are coming from Earth because he fears the men.  He puts on a "mask of conflict," basically a metallic gas mask, and commands Maggie to "stay here!" and out he goes into the barren landscape while Maggie stays home, bubbling over with desire to know what's going on.  We hear the module door open, shots fired and Maggie's fingers twitch all over.  So much for a peaceful Mars-Earth first contact.  She's definitely not happy that James has killed the men.

Let's pause to note that when we next see the model module and toy men dead in it, they are still not wearing any protective gear.  The air quality really is so similar on both planets that the astronauts did not even need masks?  Who knew?

Rock can't get in touch with the astronauts, so no one has any idea if they are dead or alive.  He argues with General Robert Beatty, who isn't sold on second expedition to Mars to find out what happened.  He refuses to let Rock go because he's "too valuable."  Rock promises Bernie Casey he can go on the next expedition, should there be one.  Bernie wants to go in one sentence, but in the next, he says there shouldn't even be a second, yet still wants to go.   Yes, it's as confusing to hear it as it is to read that last sentence.  "You know there's always a risk of losing lives on such an expedition," Rock says without any trace of emotion.  "Sure, I know that," Bernie says, afraid of colonizing Mars if there are Martians living there.  Rock doubts there is any life on Mars

Of course there is a second expedition, this one in 2000, landing with wildly overwritten dialogue for the narrator.  The three astronauts aboard (neither Rock nor Bernie among them) wear nothing but polyester army suits (nope, no masks).  "God in hell," the first one says.  "I'll be damned," the second one says as they look at what appears to be a typical small American town.  They see a house, a church and trees and grass.  There is discussion that it can't be real because the first astronauts did not say anything about seeing what these guys are seeing.  Well, they probably landed in a different space.  After all, didn't the narrator tell us in the beginning that the Martians would have thought there was no life if they landed in the Sahara?  If they had landed in small-town America, it would all be different.  Thus, why isn't it possible that the astronauts have landed in small-town Mars?  One astronaut thinks it looks just like his home town, causing another to ruminate that maybe every planet in the solar system has evolved in parallel.  Well, if that were true, wouldn't we know about it?  They would have the same ability to communicate that we do, so someone would have noticed the others! 

They decide to walk into town and investigate.  "It looks as though an entire town was transported from Earth.  There's only one way this could have happened.  It has to be that space travel began before the first world war," chirps one of them.  Run that by me again?  Why is that the only way this could have happened?  What does World War I have to do with anything.  "No, that's just not possible," one of the others says dismissively.  "What other explanation is there?" the one who came up with the idea asks.  I could think of about 15 without working at it too hard, but not so here.  A pre-WWI scientific experiment it must be. 

The three are Nicholas Hammond, Vadim Glowna and Michael Anderson.  Nicholas decides to head to one of the houses, where a typical-enough housewife asks what they are selling, since they have randomly come to her door.  "Where is this?" Nicholas asks.  "Green Bluff, Illinois, 1979," she says.  "Are you census takers, is that why you are in uniform?" she asks of them.  Census takers?  Anyway, Nicholas decides it's best since she speaks clear English to talk to her very loudly and slowly, saying they are from Earth, but she just notes this is Illinois and closes the door on them. 

Going on the theory that this is still a very old scientific experiment, the thought is that people who colonized Mars simply make a replica of what they knew.  But, Nicholas is suspicious, because Green Bluff, IL is where he grew up.  That changes things a little bit, so they decide everyone must be under some sort of hypnosis.  "That has to be it!"  It does?  Nicholas then spots a man he knows, his brother who died many years ago!  How can he be alive?  "Don't fight it...we're alive again, no questions asked," his brother says.  That's a convenient way of ducking the question of what the hell is going on.  Michael's grandmother shows up (he never lived in Green Bluff, so why is she there?).  Even Vadim's Aunt Thelma pops around, and he's British! 

The men go off with their dead relatives, overjoyed to be seeing these people again (and not particularly worried about separating).  Nicholas finds his beloved mother playing the piano.  "You're home now," she says.

"At mission control, the fate of the second mission is in doubt.  There's been no communication from Mars from over 12 hours," we are told.  At least someone is worried about them! 

Back on Mars, Nicholas has a typical home-cooked meal and then dances to records with his mother.  When he says he has to go back to the ship for a minute (oh, yeah, right, the ship), his family tells him not to leave or he'll miss the surprise due to arrive .  Smart enough to be a NASA astronaut, but too dumb to figure out that something is seriously wrong with what he's experiencing, he listens to them.  The surprise is his old girlfriend, who had been sent away to school by her parents because he was "from the wrong side of the tracks," despite living in what seems to be a very comfortable middle class home.  They talk as if they were still teenagers, about standing up to her father and being together and all that crap.  They even make out under the old tree in the front yard before he goes back inside to his old bedroom, which he shares with his brother.  Still not wondering what's going on, Nicholas? 

"I was just thinking," Nicolas says in his pajamas to his brother, who cuts him off there and laughs, "thinking is bad for you."  'tis true.  The writers certainly can't be accused of it.  He continues the thought that may be this really isn't Illinois, these people are not his friends and family.  "Suppose there were Martians and they saw a rocket ship landing and had no defense against its weapons," the brother wonders, "supposed they used the only real defense they had...telepathy!"  He goes on to explain that perhaps the Martians have locked into memories.  "Would there be any other way to divide and overcome invaders?" he asks.  That's as dim an explanation as the pre-World War I science experiment.  Even if the Martians didn't have a single gun on their planet, by sheer force of number, wouldn't they be able to overcome three polyester-wearing astronauts who haven't shown the smallest evidence of their own weaponry?  No, apparently not.  "The Martian Chronicles" can only think of one explanation at any given point, so this must be it!  "You couldn't disguise the air!" Nicholas says, suddenly having an attack of some sort.  "The chocolate pudding was drugged.  Of course you only thought it was chocolate pudding," his brother tells him.  Now there you go!  The Martians do have weapons!  "Your death will be painless, Captain."  There is some claptrap about how the Martians have seen the destruction on Earth and cannot allow that to happen, so they must "murder out of fear...forgive us," he says, now in Martian muumuu clothing as Nicholas dies. 

The entire Nicholas episode hasn't made a lick of sense, but what comes next is even more far-fetched!  The narrator tells us that the Martians are actually burying the three dead astronauts, "still under the influence" of the memories.  Ah, so the Martians can't control these memories?  Some of them can?  Nicholas' fake brother and family could, but not Granny and not Aunt Thelma and the people digging the holes in the ground?  Not even the pastor who presides over the funeral of the flag-draped coffins.  Thankfully, we're told, the Martians lose those pesky memories as "nightmares fade into a new dawn." 

Back on Earth in 2001, it's the night before the third expedition to Mars, this one being led by Rock himself.  Hey, if the Martians don't swoon for his old-style Hollywood glamour, they must be a completely helpless race.  He's will be joined by Darren McGavin (who, along with Rock, is at least 15 years too old for a fast car, let alone a rocket ship), who tells a worried wife that he doesn't mind going to Mars because "soon you'll all be making the same trip."  Bernie is going along this time, defending the trip to Rock's wife Gayle Hunnicut, and so are John Cassady and Peter Marinker. 

Staring up at a full moon, Gayle sits outside on her extremely well-appointed deck, afraid for Rock's safety.  He's not the least bit nervous and he's the one blasting off.  This sort of sad wife scene is a regular in the adventure miniseries as the brave husband goes off to an uncertain future.  "We're not going to fail this time.  I promise you.  This time we're gonna make it," Rock assures her. 

It's cold when the men reach Mars, lighting an electric fire (where does that plug into?) and looking at a cityscape they assume is deserted (oh, and no helmets, FYI).  There are arguments about whether the Martians are alive or not and what fate might await them.  "If Mars is ever colonized, a man could make a fortune here," Darren notes as the guys chuckle over cups of coffee.  Bernie returns to the ship, having scoped out the planet, to tell everyone that some of the cities are deserted for centuries, but in one city, everyone died at most ten days ago.  In one out of every five cities he went to, the bodies were new.  "As far as I can figure, they died of chicken pox," he says.  He has come to this conclusion without so much as a vial of blood drawn, without touching a corpse, nothing.  They all have no trouble believing their fellow astronauts must have brought the chicken pox with them and decimated the Martian population.  "As far as the Martians are concerned, this planet is finished," Bernie surmises.  That should be enough of this illogical conversation, but Bernie continues, wondering aloud that this is akin to the "Greeks dying of mumps...the Roman empire dying of athlete's foot."  There's a new take on history! 

John Cassady, the feisty one of the bunch, decides the only solution is to get drunk and regale the boys with ribald stories and even a harmonica recital.  This kind of uncouth behavior for sure means he's a goner.  Anyone who drinks and talks of sex is destined to die by the rules of the American miniseries (at least in its early years).  Even worse, John starts dropping wine bottles into a nearby river, so Bernie clocks him and knocks him into the river.  Bernie's explanation for doing this?  "I was ashamed."  "Do you begrudge them some release?" Rock asks him, but Bernie, even the moralist, feels guilty about having killed Martians by bringing a disease to a planet without realizing it.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist (who in this movie are pretty stupid, so that's a bad comparison) to see this as a parallel to how the Europeans destroyed the Americas with new diseases.  If this were later in the decade, we might throw in the AIDS epidemic too as another parallel.  "If there are any Martians left, they are going to grow to hate us," Bernie says after a looooooong winding argument with Rock that reads like an apologetic history lesson.  "No, you're wrong.  No hatred here.  They were a graceful, philosophical people.  They wouldn't mind us here any more than they would mind children playing on their lawn, knowing, understanding children for what they are.  Looking at all this, we all know we're not so marvelous and we are children.  We're LEARN from Mars," Rock says, summoning up all of his command of acting to make that drivel sound almost believable (if you come from the camp that said Rock could not act, then just laugh along with it). 

The team decides to explore one of the abandoned cities, with his really just a series of papier mache three dimensional geometric pieces.  "Who were they, I wonder.  Who were their kings?" Rock asks, for some reason not wondering about their queens.  Bernie runs off on his own, but no one knows why.

When we next see Bernie, his killing John (thankfully, the guy was damn annoying) and saying, "I'm the last Martian."  He tells the rest he's been living in a Martian city for the time he's been away, reading their literature and studying their culture.  "Then one day a Martian appeared to me and said, 'give me your boots' and then he said 'give my your uniform' and I did.  I offered him my weapon, but he said he had his own," Bernie relates in a monotone fashion that is a sign of some sort of possession.  Bernie kills the two remaining non-stars in the mission and then walks back to the city.  Of course it wasn't Bernie, but a clever Martian-brainwashed version of him.  Only Rock and Darren are left to wonder what happened (they were conveniently absent when Bernie came to kill everyone--whatcha doin' in the spaceship, boys?). 

Rock and Darren go off in search of Bernie, who shoots at them with his Martian weapon (didn't we hear previously that the Martians didn't have weapons?).  It's going to be a fight between our polyester pals to see who can survive.  Bernie offers a truce, putting down his weapon, but Darren cautions against it, especially when Bernie insists only Rock meet him.  "Don't do it!" he clucks like a schoolteacher who has just caught a student trying to flush a frog down a toilet.  Bernie explains to Rock that he fears for what people will do to the Martian planet, considering how they have screwed up their own.  Yes, Bernie, we get it: Earth dwellers suck and have been killing each other senselessly for thousands of years.  He feels he has to kill Rock and Darren to avoid another expedition, but if they do come, he will meet every single one as long as he's alive to kill every single astronaut who approaches to spare the planet.  There are two problems I see what that plan.  First, Bernie can't live forever and second, if he kills men for just walking off a rocket ship, is he any better than the Earth dwellers who kill so easily?  He's the man with the message, but unfortunately hasn't thought it through particularly well.  Another preachy argument ensues, but Bernie asks Rock to follow him for a half an hour to see how the Martians live, and Rock actually does it!

"The secret to Mars is that they discovered the secret of cooperating with nature.  That the reason for living is simply life itself, nothing more than that: the enjoyment of pure being," Bernie explains, no doubt getting props from environmentalists.  Rock cuts through the discourse of life, art, science by asking how they can also kill.  Oh, well, that would be because they have to defend themselves.  Whose side are we on?  I've lost track.  This scene is a complete smack in the face to the lack of humanity back on Earth.  In 1980, this would have resonated.  It still resonates, but the writing is too damn awful to draw much sympathy.

Completely undermining his own argument, Bernie asks Rock to go back to Earth with his message, but if no one believes him, Rock can just tell everyone Bernie went crazy.  I think that will be perfectly obvious.

Rock and Darren have a gun battle with a Martian and kill him, only to tear off his mask to find it's Bernie.  "Only then did [Rock's character] fully realize what was going to happen.  Men would come to the new frontier.  They would come because they were afraid or unafraid, because they were happy or unhappy, they would come with small dream or large dreams or no dreams at all, but they would come.  And then what would happen to Mars?" the narrator informs us.  Couldn't that incredibly complex few sentences, which are merely a bunch of contradictions, have been best summed as "we will be coming." 

That's the end of the first episode.  Frankly, my voice is hoarse from laughing.  I can't wait for what comes next.

Part Two: The Settlers

Now it's 2004.  It's time to colonize Mars.  General Robert Beatty is interviewed by a reporter as a way to catch us up on the last three years (not the most clever way of doing it, but what would you expect by now?).  The General is convinced no life is left on Mars, the Martians done in by that nasty chicken pox epidemic.  A gigantic swarm of dildos...I mean rockets,  goes to Mars to start building.  In charge of the whole planet is our old pal Colonel Rock Hudson.  The narrator tells us that those who went to Mars have turned it into a replica of Earth (and this time, not a secret, like that pesky theory about pre-WWI hush-hush stuff).  The places where the first two expeditions landed are named after dead astronauts.  Rock has a mountain named after him, another astronaut a creek, another, well, you get the picture. 

By 2006, Wolfgang Reichmann is one of the people who has come in search "of the unattainable."  With wife Maria Schell in tow, he has built a beautiful home, but there is "only one thing missing."  He misses fallen relative Michael Anderson.  In bed one night, Wolfgang hears whistling and, despite a giant storm, goes to find out what it is.  There's a man outside and both Wolfgang and Maria recognize the figure as Michael!  Maria runs away in terror, but Wolfgang tells him that if he's cold, he'll leave the door unlocked and Michael can come in.  Stupidity runs in this family. 

The next morning, Wolfgang hopes Michael is there, and he is, making breakfast as if he never disappeared.  Wolfgang is shocked to find his son alive, but through Martian mind tricks, he had done something to Maria as she slept so that she's not at all surprised by his presence.  So the mind tricks don't work on Dad, just Mom?  "There's something about you.  You are [Michael's character's name], but yet you are not," Wolfgang notes.  Very good!  Wolfgang may just earn a D in Miniseries Stupidity, where everyone else here is flunking en masse. 

There are two types of people who can always be found whenever new colonies are formed: missionaries and hookers.  The missionaries apparently get there first.  Father Roddy McDowell and Father Fritz Weaver are there on a "quest for God himself."  Just off the spaceship, both kneel and Father Fritz prays.  "How did you like space travel?" Rock asks them, the most natural question one can ask in this situation. 

Father Fritz asks about a rumor he heard, that a man up in the hills broke his legs, but was healed by a blue light.  "There is no scientific evidence of the light," Rock tells them, as if science has ever stopped anyone here from theorizing.  The priests are anxious to find out about this Martian phenomenon, but when Rock tells them there is no native life left on Mars, they will have to settle for the transported people who need religion.  However, Rock confides his last conversation with Bernie to the priests, the one where Bernie said there were "a few" Martians still left.  "I've been wondering about it ever since," he says, not that he's done anything to actually pursue it.  He's too busy swapping one polyester pant suit for another.  He does indeed believe there are some Martians left somewhere. 

Rock takes the Padres to an archaeological site, but Father Fritz is upset that the abandoned monuments are being taken apart, because the warning Bernie issued to Rock is rattling around in his head.  Father Fritz decides they will walk back to town, over the objections of prissy Father Roddy.  They leave the main road and Father Roddy issues nothing but complaints as they traipse around rocks in their sandals.  "We'll be all right.  God is everywhere," is Father Fritz's answer to Father Roddy's protestations that they are lost.  Are we sure God is interested in Mars?  His attentions certainly seemed to wander when he was in charge of just Earth!  Father Fritz is obsessed with meeting Martians, while Father Roddy just wants to convert humans.  Just in time to cut their senseless chatter short, three orbs of light appear. 

"We come with God!" Father Fritz says to them, but apparently they are not interested, because they disappear as quickly as they appeared.  He yells after them, but all this does is cause an avalanche.  The orbs return to save the priests from falling rocks and then go away again.  "It's proof that they have souls," Father Fritz says, because he believes the orbs made a conscious decision to protect them, but Father Roddy thinks this is bunk.  He would rather save the miners and laborers Rock had mentioned.  Yeah, of course he would. 

Not only does Rock have to send out a search party for the priests, but his more pressing problem is immigration.  Rabble has been coming to Mars and that's not party of his idyllic plan for the planet.  But, too many people want to leave Earth because of its problems.

Back in the mountains, Father Fritz is visited again by the three blue lights.  One light picks him up and deposits him at the base of the mountain.  "You save me.  You wouldn't let me die...You know!  You understand!" he tells them, before ruining the moment by vowing to build a mission right there, "but instead of a cross, a blue sphere, the Martian Christ.  We will live with you and we will help you discover God."  Spoken like a true one-track-mind missionary.  The orb speaks.  "We are the old ones," he is told.  "Once we had bodies...then we learned to free ourselves.  We have lived in the winds and skies since then...How we came to be has been forgotten...we have put away the weaknesses of the body and live in the grace of that whom you call God," it continues, before listing a few of the seven deadly sins that they claim never to have committed.  The orb thanks him for the offer of a church, but they aren't in need of one since their very selves are churches, but they do tell him to build one for people.  As if science fiction lunacy weren't enough, now we're adding religion to the mess of "The Martian Chronicles."  Anyway, when Father Fritz wakes up Father Roddy, the latter is awfully confused by what he's told.  He has the perplexed look of...of...well, anyone watching "The Martian Chronicles." 

Here's another question I have to pose: why are their clouds on Mars just like there are on Earth?  Could no one cut them out of the film?

Michael shows up again at Wolfgang's.  "Are you going to ask me who I am?" he asks Wolfgang, who says no.  Why not?  I want to know!  At dinner, Maria suggests they all go into town, but Michael says he's afraid of the city, and their plastic-utensil dinner turns into an argument.  Maria will hear no refusal, they are going!  "Stay close father, I don't want to get caught," Michael tells Wolfgang.  They go into a town that looks like 1976, not 2006.  There is absolutely no attempt made by the creators here to even guess at what 2006 might look like.  Bell bottoms, satin shirts, the whole deal.  Michael is freaked out by the crowds and disappears.  Luckily, Wolfgang encounters Rock and asks him for help, until Rock figures out he's asking about a dead astronaut.  By that time, Wolfgang has scampered off. 

In what looks like an old bookmobile turned into a church-on-wheels, Father Fritz has no parishioners.  Perhaps if he used seats with backs instead cubes, people would want to show up and pray.  Suddenly, he seems blood dripping into the holy water and the hands of a man who has been crucified.  The man is...yes, the man is Jesus (a very handsome Jon Finch).  The crown of thorns, the flowing locks, all of it.  Okay, you guessed it.  He's not really Jesus, just a Martian manifestation, a new bodily form of that being that had been Wolfgang's son a few minutes ago.  "Release me!" he begs of Father Fritz, who believed the orbs, but doesn't believe this isn't Jesus.  "Beneath all of this, I'm another being!" he insists.  "If you force me into this guise much longer, I will do.  It's more than I can hold," Martian Jesus yells, explaining to Father Fritz that he's forced into this bodily being because Father Fritz is such a believer in Christ.  Father Fritz simply turns around, tells the being to go and he's gone.  So why all the yelling and screaming?  All it took was a denial from Father Fritz and it's done.  Hell, the apostles denied him three times in the same amount of time. 

Just at the right moment, Rock shows up to get the full explanation from Father Fritz.  "He can look like anyone they have in mind.  Anyone," he dramatically says, telling him that it's the people in town who unconsciously demand that this Martian take a human form.  Wolfgang is looking for Michael and a friend tells him a dead woman has been spotted, so this poor Martian is being made to take form after form after form.  He finds the Martian, now a woman, and she can't change back into Michael, even though Wolfgang pleads that Maria will die if her son disappears again.  He promises the Martian, "we'll never come into town again," and the Martian morphs back into Michael.  Everyone starts chasing the Martian, because they all want to believe the various forms he has taken and a weird montage ensues where the Martian keeps alternating forms as everyone grabs for him.  Just as it's getting good (this is the best scene in the movie so far), the Martian gasps for air and dies.  Oh, swell.  They have killed another one!  But, it does mean Rock has proof there are still Martian alive. 

When Rock arrives home, wife Gayle asks, "have you heard the news from home?  There's going to be a war."  Since Rock can't possible act well enough to show what's going on in his mind, the narrator needs to explain it to us.  He decides to return to Earth to bring his family to safety.  Gayle says the family should just come on the next shuttle.  "Don't you understand?  There won't be any more shuttles!" Rock snaps, without explaining why.  "Then we'll be cut off isolated," Gayle winds, her sweater so tight you can see through her bra.  Well, yes, Gayle, but you do have an entire planet and lots of people there.  It's not the worst place to be with the Earth dwellers do each other in.  Rock gets in touch with his brother to find out the President has siphoned all money for space into the defense budget and the colony is cut off, which prompts Rock to pick that very moment to admit they don't know very much about Mars and may not be able to sustain their lives.  Wait, no one knew that before?  Rock and company have been lying to everyone? 

In a desperate state, Rock hightails it to the local burger joint, which is run by Darren McGavin in a rhinestone cowboy outfit, complete with fringe.  Rock also gets to meet Darren's wife, Joyce Van Patten, wearing even more fringe.  Rock lowers the boom that the colony may be doomed because no one else will be coming, that travel from Earth has been cut off.  "You stay here at your own risk, but if you change your mind, be in town tomorrow," Rock tells them and rides off.  I would say this was the most useless scene in the movie so far, but there have been so many worthy candidates for that honor, that it's merely one of the more amusing diversions. 

As Joyce and Darren are worrying if Rock is right, a Martian shows up, wearing regulation muumuu, but also a big V mask to cover his face.  He has something for Darren, who panics and shoots the Martian instead of taking the offered item.  It turns out it was only a message.  "We better go get the shovel," Darren says.  Darren spends the next scene justifying his actions to Joyce until she sees a bunch of "sand ships" making their way to the restaurant.  Darren can't believe what they are, because "I bought the last one...at an auction!"

The sand ships are just what they sound like, ships that use wind to guide them, masts and all.  Darren's car is broken, so their only hope of escape is in the sand ship he bought.  The three Martian sand ships chase them, as a pace only slightly faster than an injured elephant could manage.  The wide shots show them to be toys pulled by string, really bad models.  Darren pulls out a gun and shoots the Martians in one ship, killing them, but there are still two others with plastic figurines in them.  The Martians board Darren's sand ship, but not to kill him, but rather to give him the deed to over half the planet.  "We need you now.  Prepare.  Tonight is the night," the Martian tells Darren and Joyce before going off in his sand ship. 

Joyce finds Earth on her telescope, which looks like an x-ray machine and while Darren is looking at it, it suddenly goes red and a mushroom cloud bursts open.  The Cold War fascination with nuclear war has come to pass.  "It looks like it's gonna be an off season," Joyce giggles to Darren, having gone completely bonkers.  The second parts ends on this note, an odd one of comic relief given that the Earth has just launched a nuclear war.

Part Three: The Martians

It's now November 2006.  "The Earth is dead, but are there people still alive?" the narrator asks.  Rock is about to find out, since he's piloted a rocket ship back to his home planet in search of his brother.  At mission control, it's deserted.  Not even a dead body to be found.  Rock is able to press a button labeled "Memory" to watch his brother and everyone else disappear when the war happened.  Since when does nuclear war make bodies disappear?  Maimed and twisted, limbs lost, all of that, but full-on disappearance?  They never taught us that as we all hid under our desks in those endless school drills. 

"The town is dead," our increasingly kill-joy-like narrator tells us of the colony on Mars.  Everyone seems to have disappeared, except Christopher Connelly, who plays kick the can and pitches pennies to amuse his lonely self.  Where did everyone go?  Why is Mars abandoned too?  Christopher hears a phone and runs to answer it, but no one is there.  His guess is that "a pole blew down somewhere, activated the circuit and you rang all by yourself, didn't you?"  That's up there with the pre-World War I secret space travel theory.  After he walks away, the phone rings again in a different place.  He breaks into a house to answer it, but he's too late.  Christopher decides to call every number in the phone book, in order, to find out who might still be there.  Rattling off the names one-by-one, he gets a "no reply" screen from every number until Gladys Livingston, who seems to be the only person on Mars with an answering machine.  "I would be glad to leave a message," Christopher yells into the phone, "GO TO HELL!" 

Christopher assumes the only person left on Mars must be a woman, though he has no concrete proof of why he thinks that, and guesses that the woman must be at a beauty salon, so he calls them.  Wait!  How sexist is that?  If she's the only woman left on Mars, what would she be doing at a beauty salon?  Why be beautiful?  But, it works!  He dials all of the beauty salons and Bernadette Peters picks up at one of them.  Excited, Christopher gets in his travel thingamajig, a weird little airborne motorcycle, to fetch Bernadette. 

The narrator tells us that there are actually a few people left on Mars, who didn't go leave with "the exodus," although he neglects to tell us why there was an exodus or where the people went.  Lousy friggin' narrator!  Barry Morse is also alive, using his telescope to find any sign of life and therefore potential rescue.  His wife and daughter have remained with him and one night, he spots a ship in space, assuming it's coming for him and they will be saved.  His not-very-helpful wife sits near his telescope and knits as he frantically tries to make contact with the ship.  Alas, despite the colorful light show of lasers he beams up at the ship, no one responds. 

Christopher shows up at the beauty salon to find va-va-va-voom Bernadette decked out in jewels, make-up and a fresh hairdo.  She won't shake his hand because "my nails are wet."  What does he do first?  Asks her out on a date.  No discussion of survival, no mutual worry that they are the last people on Mars, just a date.  She agrees.  He dons a sequined red coat with ruffled shirt and she wears a form-fitting satin dress with a fur stole.  They go to a restaurant, but of course it's deserted.  I thought the Darren-Joyce scenes were grating in their comic flippancy, but this scene tops them all.  Bernadette asks for a drink and Christopher puts some extra alcohol in it.  Um, she's kind of a sure thing no matter what, because you are the last man around! 

Bernadette is hysterically self-absorbed, insisting on sitting near mirrors.  "Does my hair look all right?  I had such a time trying to give myself a permanent and then trying to style it.  Ugh!," she says, focused only on the mirror and ignoring Christopher.  She then criticizes the drink he's made and she wants food.  Lucky Christopher.  He's met the only single woman still on the planet and she's a self-entered nitwit.  The entire tone of the miniseries has gone from non-sensical science fiction to completely inane comedy, which is not the least bit helpful or interesting.  While Christopher cooks in the kitchen, Bernadette reapplies her make-up a few times and stays focused on herself.  She's still doing it when dinner is served.  "I just can't eat that much.  I have to watch my figure," she chirps, talking of how her beauty regime has been interrupted.  "That's the trouble with living on Mars.  The latest fashions don't get here soon enough," she bleats, hating the cut of her dress.  Christopher reminds here there was a war on Earth, but she can't be bothered with that as she plucks her eyebrows.  Why didn't she leave Mars with everyone else?  "They wouldn't let me take all my clothes," she replies, much to Christopher's stupefaction.  He has a better excuse, being in the mountains alone when the evacuation occurred.  Finally, Christopher has enough of her ridiculous self-absorption and ends the dinner, saying he's tired and wants "to go to bed now." 

On the way to her house, Bernadette rattles on about her wardrobe, make-up, shoes and everything she's been able to get for free, but Christopher just wants to get her into bed.  At the door, she sends him off, telling him they should have brunch the next day so he can start fixing all of the broken appliances.  She won't allow him in, but gives him a list of things to buy in order to complete those repairs.  The narrator informs us that Christopher was "fairly disenchanted" and "vows never to return."  Fairly disenchanted?  There's one woman left on earth and he can't have her!  I would say he's more than "fairly disenchanted."  Furthermore, he flies in his little machine over 10,000 miles to put Bernadette out of his mind, "but still he can find no peace."  Where did he get the fuel to fly 10,000 miles?  Just asking.

Barry has had no more luck saving his family.  "Don't worry...haven't you go everything you want right here?" his wife asks.  His wife and special needs daughter (I kid you not, they have actually given him a special needs daughter) are as oblivious to their lonely state as Bernadette, playing endless hands of gin rummy as Barry paces.  He spots another rocket and does that laser show thing again, and this time the ship lands. 

Who is on the ship?  Rock Hudson, of course, and, for some reason, Father Roddy McDowell.  Rock recognizes Barry, but has to deliver the bad news that they can't go back to Earth, but he invites his whole family to stay with him.  For the second time in five minutes, Barry almost collapses, which is miniseries lingo for "he's a goner." 

Rock is puzzled when he meets Barry's family.  When Barry goes into the kitchen for drinks, Rock confides in Roddy that the wife and daughter seem to be frozen in time.  He was at their wedding and no one has aged.  He says the daughter should be much older and comments on how young Barry's wife looks.  Rock sneaks out to poke around the buildings on Barry's property, finding two graves...for Barry's wife and daughter!  Getting Roddy alone again, Rock tells Roddy of his discovery, that the wife and daughter have been dead for seven years. 

Barry gives a teary toast to his family and visitors, only to suffer a massive heart attack.  He begs Rock not to tell the fake wife and daughter they are not real and then promptly dies.  The wife and daughter don't react at all emotionally.  "How do you feel?" Rock asks, and the wife says, "he didn't want us to cry.  He didn't teach us how."  The fake wife and daughter actually know they are fake, but since they don't have any sad emotions programmed in, they go on with their chores.  As Rock and Roddy leave, Roddy gets all philosophical, saying they should leave the fake wife and daughter because they don't know anything but the life they are leading and should be left alone to lead it.  Hey, whatever helps you sleep at night, buddy.

After Rock and Roddy leave, Christopher shows up at Barry's home, where the wife is knitting and the daughter is playing a game.  He is welcomed by mother and daughter warmly.  They are programmed to make people happy, so now they have a purpose again.  "You have come to the right place...precisely!" the fake wife says with a large smile.  That neatly wraps up Christopher's story, albeit in a nonsensical hokey manner.

Also left on Mars is Darren McGavin, still sporting his cowboy outfit, though minus the rhinestones and the toupee.  He tells Rock that Joyce had taken to her bed the night of the nuclear war and hasn't been up since.  But, he has supplies enough to make coffee.  Darren shows Rock the deed the Martians gave him.  Rock is flabbergasted that there might still be Martians alive and he wants to talk to them.  Darren doesn't advice chasing them.  "They look weird," he says, like a four-year old boy.  Since Darren shot at one of the Martians, Rock is upset because "all I've ever wanted is to see a Martian, to talk to one," and Darren's behavior has probably chased them away. 

Rock has a brilliant thought (without taking the time to think of it): what is the Martians knew that Earth was going to destroy itself and they gave Darren the land grant so survivors could start over.  "What's the point of destroying two civilizations?" he wonders aloud.  So, the Martians, apparently not upset at the chicken pox decimation or anything else, are actually nice aliens who wanted to help the humans, but just couldn't express it correctly?  Hmm, okay.  If you say so. 

Our hero goes to one of the city ruins and there encounters a muumuu-clad Martian who speaks a language Rock doesn't understand.  So, the Martian puts his hand over Rock's head and suddenly he can speak English.  "My God, you're a ghost!" Rock says, shocked, when he goes to put his hand on the Martian's shoulder and his hand goes right through him.  The same happens when the Martian does it to Rock.  I guess sex is completely out of the question.  The Martian knows nothing of Earth, the plague of chicken pox or anything else that's happened in the movie.  Rock sees only an empty city, but the Martian can see lights and beings and even an ocean.  We have our final swooping explanation now.  "This can mean only one thing.  It has to do with time.  You're a figment of the past!" the Martian says.  "You are from the past," Rock argues.  Each has proof he's alive, but it's not convincing enough to the other. 

Rock is finally getting his chance to talk to a Martian and the conversation makes absolutely no sense.  The Martian wonders if perhaps what Rock is seeing isn't the ruins of his own civilization.  "Who can tell what is past and what is future?" the Martian wonders.  I can!  The past is my faith in television before seeing "The Martian Chronicles" and my future is more cynicism after having seen it.  "All that matters is that you see your world and I see mine.  Isn't that enough, no matter what we each believe?" the increasingly-maddening Martian asks Rock, trying his hardest to give this miniseries a moral, where for over four hours it's lacked one.  More of the same follows, though the rhetoric gets more absurd, sounding like random words strung together.  "Life is its own answer.  Live it day by day and expect no more," the Martian says, as if that means ANYTHING. 

After giving Rock a whole lot to think about (and the rest of us a royal headache), the Martian announces he has to go to his people and Rock has to do the same.  They part as if they are going to dinner parties on opposite sides of town. 

"His dream of sharing this world with a few survivors of a race that has existed here for eons" is forever gone, the narrator says of Rock.  What we didn't know is that Rock's wife and kids are still living, though bored with their existence.  Gayle suggests the kids watch a movie, but they have seen them all "a million times."  Rock returns to his family and suddenly has an idea.  First, however, he gets his big speech moment, the one we knew was coming, where he rephrases the Martian's words for his wife's benefit.  "We're leaving this place," he tells her.  "Where are we going?"  "Where it all started."  Where what started?  Time immemorial?  The movie?  The scene?  He packs the family into a boat and puts some dynamite in a suitcase.  He promises the kids they will see Martians!  "How far are we doing, Dad?" one asks.  "Four million years," Rock responds.  I have no idea what that means.  Sorry, I wish I could help.  He takes his family to the ancient Martian outpost, where he just had the conversation with the maybe-past-maybe-present-maybe-future Martian.  The last few moments are padded by reminders of past moments.  Rock decides they will live there, but the wife and kids aren't sold on it, so he pretends it's temporary.  He uses a campfire to burn the last vestiges of humankind, starting, by the way, with "Das Kapital."  "I'm burning what's behind us, burning a way of life, the same way of life that burned on Earth," he says before launching into a full assault castigation of humans, who are greedy and war-loving.  But, the four of them will start fresh on Mars, as if it's some sort of Garden of Eden.  How exactly are they going to procreate?  Rock's not so good with the ladies, but there's only one lady around anyway! 

He promises his kids they will see Martians, but what he shows them is their reflection in a pool of water.  Get it, they are no longer Eartlings.  They are Martians because they live on Mars and have no more connection to Earth.  To guarantee they can't go back, he blows up the last remaining rocket. 

I'm torn as to what actually is the biggest problem with "The Martian Chronicles."  It's too easy to pick the acting, because no one has a chance given the script.  Is it the special effects?  They are awfully cheap, and this was made after "Star Wars," so it would have been nice to spend a bit more money.  It's not actually anything physical.  It could be the wildly shifting tones.  The deadly serious beginning section turns boring for the second and almost comical for the third.  But no, the biggest problem is the lack of any actual sense.  Not only does the script constantly force us to believe its conclusions, it doesn't bother to explain them.  Science fiction is not supposed to make sense on its own, but the fun of science fiction is watching the creators come up with plausible reasons to explain what is happening.  How many times did "Star Trek" explain its goofy plots with machines or races of people who didn't exist?  Every episode, but it was believable!  In "The Martian Chronicles," characters run around two planets making sweeping assumptions and no one questions them.  When one's mouth hangs open in surprise for nearly five hours, the miniseries has a problem.

That said, there is so much deliciously awful fun to be had here, it's worth looking at.  Where else will you see Rock Hudson as the head of a space program or Roddy McDowell as a priest?  Only in "The Martian Chronicles."