Rich Man, Poor Man (1976) Chapter 5

Chapter 5 starts things fresh in "Rich Man, Poor Man."  Ed Asner has succumbed to his failures, having bailed Nick Nolte out of one last jam, pulling the rug out from Peter Strauss' dream in the process.  However, Ed is the failure of the past and Nick is the failure of the present.  "Rich Man, Poor Man" hinges on the future of the American dream and somehow, plucky Peter Strauss will come to represent that, good and bad.

It's now 1950 and prodigal son Nick is returning to his small hometown, but wife Talia Shire is not allowed to detrain with him.  "This ain't a social call," he tells her, though she's so far into wild overacting (her gum chewing would do a 1930s moll proud), that she isn't really paying attention anyway.  Also on the train with them is Normal Fell, Nick's boxing manager.  Didn't know Nick was a boxer?  Yeah, we kind of skipped that part, so Normal has some dialogue with a fellow train passenger to clear it all up.

When Nick arrives on his street, he finds the long-discussed supermarket has indeed put his family out of business and his house is actually nowhere to be found.  An unkindly neighbor who remembers Nick as "a little gangster" can't help.  "They just left, that's all I know," she says, before deciding to tell him that his pa, Ed Asner, offed himself.

Nick, who has played more scenes in the rain than a duck, is somewhat dumbstruck, but all is literally sunshine and roses for Peter, who is graduating from college and has been offered a "teaching fellowship" at Columbia.  There at graduation is the ever-weird Robert Reed, more fey than ever, asking about Susan.  He informs Peter that he tracks Susan and she's no longer an actress.  He takes delight in torturing these two, even though they have no idea they are being tortured.  "She's in the book, under her maiden name," he advises Peter should he want to go to NYC and see her.

Things are also going very well for Peter at Ray Milland's department store, where old Ray feels paternal to him and even gives him a fancy watch and a job offer, in that order.  "What would the job be?" Peter asks.  "Just what you've been doing, little bit of this little bit of that, only more so," Ray says, with is either the worst description of a retail job in television history or the best offer the CIA could give without having to be specific.  When Ray hears the only other offer Peter has is teaching, he launches into a tirade about progress and money that would make old Adam Smith come back to life.  It is also a speech that contains most of the nuggets adding up to so many of "Rich Man, Poor Man's" themes.

Ray calms down enough to inform Peter that he has "a new gimmick they've come up with to scare you...high cholesterol!"  It's 1950, remember, a time when people wrapped butter sticks in bacon.  So, he needs some help running the store, some help that comes with "zing" and freshness, but NOT a business school "snot."

When Peter tells his mother the news, Dorothy McGuire, who has turned into a sickly old lady in the three years since we last saw her, isn't impressed with the money Ray has offered or the diploma Peter shows her.  However, she may be going around the bend a little because she wishes Ed could see the diploma, and Peter has to remind her he's dead.  She feels since no body was ever discovered, "he's somewhere this minute laughing up his sleeve."  She's also gone all guilt-mother-from-hell on him.  When he says he's going to New York, she says, "don't worry about me, I'll just eat a nice can of beans of something."  She tells her son to remind his friend to "drive carefully...I don't know what'll happen to me if something happens to you."  Well, it seems she wouldn't bother with mourning, that's for sure.  It's a shame that the writing for this character has become downright bad because Mother Jordache has been one of the most consistently complex and interesting characters, with McGuire giving a fantastic performance.

Since he is going to New York City anyway, Peter decides to look up Susan.  She's living in Greenwich Village with now-husband and still-sloshed Bill Bixby and a baby.  Bill and Peter do not exactly hit it off, with Bill tossing nasty quips about "the Great American Dream" Peter's way, though Peter doesn't get too riled.

Susan has taken up photography, but has yet to sell a photo.  She long ago realized acting wasn't her thing, though she can still quote her beloved "As You Like It."  A very uncomfortable dinner follows, complete with a vamp girlfriend of Susan's and Bill's increasingly bad attitude.  Peter sleeps with the vamp, but leaves at 4am to get to his knew job, though she gets awfully crazy about it.  First she plays the lonely card and then hurls an ash tray at his head.

Drunken Bill couldn't be pulled from sleep and had an article due ("this month's rent"), so Susan finished it for him.  Actress, photographer, writer.  An argument ensues because Bill is jealous of Peter.  "You're having your name taken out of the telephone book!" he roars.  "Oh, really?" she replies.  "No, O'Reilly." Crickets.  The argument continues, but Bill manages to joke his way back into Susan's good graces.



Peter has been "working pretty hard" at the store, but still keeps in touch with his economics professor, Lawrence Pressman, a rather bland character until he invites Peter to attend a rally against killing the Rosenbergs.  That instantly makes him a lefty, which was not a good thing to be in 1950.

Peter is frustrated at his stagnating life (which is actually going pretty well) and more fits from his mother, and right before a big fight of Nick's, Talia goes into labor with their first child.  He packs her off to the hospital with Norman while Nick stays and fights.  Nick, still in his gloves, rushes to the hospital to find out he has a son.  "There ain't nothing in the world's gonna stop me now," he says.

Rich Man, Poor Man (1976) Chapter 4

Episode 3 of "Rich Man, Poor Man" was something of a reminder episode, a chance to catch up with the characters without too much happening.  Peter is still trying to work his way through college, Susan is in NYC trying to become an actress and Nick is trying to make a life with family in California, despite a quick affair with the household maid.

Drunken Nick wants to dance with Talia Shire, out with her rich boyfriend, but the rich kids beat him up badly and toss him into the water.  Talia chirps, "I wouldn't go home with him!" as she helps Nick out of the water and to her home since her dad is out of town.

In his little college town, Peter has an appointment with Robert Reed's pal Ray Milland, so important he has pictures of world leaders on his wall.  Department store magnate Ray gives him a job, though he's not happy about it because college kids haven't worked out well in the past.  "I expect an honest day's work.  Do that and you've got a job.  Fail and you're gone with the wind," Ray bellows.  Not only does he work, but he's on the track team and studies economics with vigor while being harassed by Kim Darby, Ray's daughter who has the hots for him.

During a study break to ski, Peter helps Kim, who fakes an injury to get his attention.  "It just kin of throbs all over," she says, trying to be flirtatious when coming off as just annoying.  When he takes her home, Ray doesn't recognize him at first, but soon realizes he's the one responsible for the store's wonderful window displays.  He's supportive of Peter, especially knowing that his daughter likes him.  That does not thrill Peter.  "What's wrong with her her?" his roommate asks.  "She's a nut, that's what's wrong with her," Peter moans.

Peter and his roommate come up with a business idea to start a ski lodge out of an abandoned building, but need $3000 to get it up and running.  Papa Ed Asner is reluctant to give him the seed money, but Mama Dorothy McGuire convinces him by saying, "I feel it.  It's our chance to have something.  I feel it in my bones."

While in NYC arranging or supplies, Peter decides to go see Susan's play, the one where she has one line, which happens to be the curtain line, delivered in just a slip.  "Tell her to bring a friend, a nympho, with money," his roommate tells him before sending him backstage for a long-delayed reunion.  She doesn't even notice him, racing into Bill Bixby's arms and then his apartment.  They are basically living in sin because his wife won't agree to a divorce.

Nick is arrested for statutory rape of Talia Shire, which brings scowling Ed out to California, with the $3000 it will cost to get him out of the scrape.  She's pregnant and claims Nick is the father.  Hmmmm, I wonder if that's the same $3000 Peter needed for his ski lodge idea.  Nick wonders how Talia knows the kid is his.  "Because I know," she says.  The charges are dropped if Nick will leave town, much to the delight of his social-climbing family members.  "I did it so the one member of the family who is worth a damn won't have to go through life with a jailbird brother around his neck," Ed says, saying the slate is now clear with them, "the last time I ever want to see or hear from you."  Nick yells after him that, "I'm gonna pay you back, Pa, every last scent, even if I have to jam it down your throat!"

A letter arrives from dad to Peter without the promised $3000.

Now we're cooking again!  After some very slow times, the plot is lurching back, with the brothers pitted against each other by circumstance, not even intentional hatred or disagreement.

How can Peter get the money?  He places a call to Kim Darby.

Nick leaves his family and his job, though not before the rich kids come after him again (although the rich kids look even older than Nick playing teenagers--this in the pre-Botox age).  When one of them insults Talia, Nick beats the hell out of him.

Not only did Nick and Peter have a need for the money, but so do Ed and Dorothy, as the long-planned supermarket is finally about to open, right next door to the bakery, certainly to finally put them out of business.  He comes home to an eviction notice (with two months warning) and Dorothy leaving their bedroom.  She's hopping mad that he bailed out Nick (referring to him as  "perfect stranger")  and wasted the $3000.  "I've got my price too.  $30 a week, but I want my back pay!  It's a bargain rate.  $30 a week for 20 years, I've figured it all out, it's $30,000.  You put $30,000 on the table and I'll talk to you, not before!" she screams at him.  He leaves, with Dorothy shouting at him.

Peter is explaining his business proposal to Ray and Kim when a call comes to Ray's house from his mother.  "I don't know where he is.  He's been gone all day," she says in a trance.  "This time, he's gone for good."  Indeed, what is the most notable failed American dream (remember, the big overall theme of "Rich Man, Poor Man) so far has reached its conclusion.  On a rainy night, Ed takes his rowboat out one last time.  Another one looks to be snuffed out when Talia shows up, in a drenching rain storm, having been tossed out by her father and having lost the baby, to follow Nick out of their small town.

Rich Man, Poor Man (1976) Chapter 3

At the end of Chapter 2, Peter Strauss was joyous as the news that his hard-bitten father was giving him money for college as his wastrel brother Nick Nolte was shipped off to family in California to avoid the rap for a fire he started after seeing his brother's girlfriend, Susan Blakely, in town robber baron Robert Reed's bed.

The story skips to California, 1947.  Nick is living with his father's brother, sister-in-law and children, all of them thoroughly bland and ridiculously bourgeois, which means they have a maid they don't need, quiet Irish lass Fionnula Flanagan.  Luckily for Nick, the family is going on vacation, leaving him in charge of the house and the gas station they run.  It's during down time at the station that Nick learns to box.

A bunch of rich teenagers come to get gas one day and Nick meets flirty Talia Shire.  The rest of the kids are obnoxious, so Nick lets the air out of a tire just to spite them.  Not only has he made a date with Talia, but Fionnula is hot after him, showing it first by making him a world-class meal, then showing up naked to share a bath with him.  One hell of a leap, no?  When the appointed hour to meet Talia arrives, Nick is hooked in Fionnula's arms, she being the one who talks about St. Sebastian, sending Nick to the encyclopedia to figure out that reference.

The ever-egalitarian Nick doesn't understand why Fionnula would want to be a maid, and "wait on my fat uncle," but she likes her life.  Things get more than a bit gooey with these two, who go riding on horseback to shoot bunnies and pick flowers, not to mention rehash the stories of their lives (well, mostly his).  She stops him from the former, saying, "you're bigger than he is and he can't fight back."  Another miniseries rule can be seen a mile away: when things are too good to be true, watch out!

Back in upstate New York, things are pretty much the same.  Peter is still playing delivery boy for his father while being worshipped by his mother.  Dorothy is full of complaints about her life and Ed growls with the same arguments.

Peter goes fishing on Robert Reed's land and is invited to lunch.  As always, Robert likes playing savior, getting Peter a job to help pay for college, and mentioning his new boss has some "nubile young daughters."  That brings the conversation around to Susan, though Robert doesn't reveal too much

Speaking of Susan, she's moved to New York City to become an actress.  Waiting in agent Steve Allen's office, she is introduced to colossal blowhard Bill Bixby.  But, before she can get to know him, she's called into Steve's office to read for a one-line part.  She is told to return later "with a bathing suit."  Bill is waiting to take her out to lunch, where he delights her with pompous stories.  A day of binge drinking by both is interrupted by Susan's line reading in the suit, which apparently gets her the part.  Champagne loosens her lips about her past, and Bill, claiming to be falling in love with her but acting as gay as all get out, delights in the details.  "I think I'm falling in love with you," he keeps saying.

Nick and Fionnula have continued their affair even with the return of Nick's family, though they are very quiet and careful about it.  However, his uncle is suspicious, grilling Nick with the threatening calm of an SS Agent, finally revealing that he heard the sounds coming from Fionnula's room.  "I want you to say you are sorry for the filthy thing that has taken place under my roof," his uncle rages.  The uncle threatens to have her deported, so "she will promise me anything I want," he says triumphantly.  The next morning, not only does Fionnula tell Nick "we are over," but also that she's going to finally give in and let her boss have his way with her.  Nick runs from the house in horror.

Rich Man, Poor Man (1976) Chapter 2

When we last left "Rich Man, Poor Man," Susan Blakely was getting on a bus for a ride that could ruin her relationship with Peter Strauss, such a good boy that he can't even fathom having sex with her.  His brother Nick Nolte easily could, and watching all of them is town buzzard Robert Reed, whose motives have yet to become apparent.  

Mama Dorothy McGuire has told Peter that he can have a suit for his birthday, but didn't run it by her husband, Ed Asner.  "People are very generous with my money," he scowls and hurls a book at her (it's only a paperback, but still!).  Dorothy chides him that she works just as hard as he does, behind the counter of their bakery, "eight hours a day, six days a week, 52 weeks a year."  But, her complaints are stopped dead in their tracks by his oafish brutality, which alternates between pure anger and nasty sarcasm.  By the end of an exceedingly well-acted scene, we find out at least one reason for Ed's ire.  Not that he admits it, but he's scared of what will happen when the plans for a large town supermarket come to fruition and puts all of the locals out of business.  

Susan has taken the bus to meet a man from the hospital, but he's not there when she arrives on the bus.  She's unsure of what to do, so when unctuous Robert Reed, the town big shot, drives up an offers to take her to a place where "they serve daiquiris," she accepts.  Cue the alcoholism?  This is the second time we've seen her loving the sauce, but no, not yet.  She gets hammered on them as Robert, decimating his Mike Brady image, asks her age.  She's eighteen and he feigns disappointment, saying, "I had always hoped to contribute to the delinquency of a minor before I go."  He may not know it, but Robert Reed is setting miniseries villains on their path.  Cut out the slave overseers and Hitler, I mean the smooth guys who charm everyone and then reveal themselves to be rats.  They will become far more over-the-top and obvious, but remember, "Rich Man, Poor Man" is only the beginning.  Think of Philip Casnoff in "North and South."  He is handsome, rich, endearing...at least on the surface and then turns into one hell of a reprobate.  

Since Susan is completely wasted, Robert takes her to his palatial home.  He may seem gayer than Liberace in a store full of sequins, but he's plays all man when he slips off a robe and gets into bed with Susan.  This is only 1976, so that's all we see, but I don't believe that to be entirely the fault of censors, because it leaves open the question of whether or not she wanted it too.  The cad then deposits cash in her purse while she slumbers.  That's a villainous trick if ever there was one.  Only after she gets home and basks in the glow of sex that she sees the cash, but doesn't object.  

When Nick leaves the bakery with a dirty cup, morose Dorothy tells Peter, "I don't know how two boys can be so different...when I found out I was pregnant with [Nick] I cried.  I just sat down and cried."  In her own way, she's as responsible for his inability to lead a good life as his oafish father.  

A friend of Nick's spots Susan getting in Robert's car, and he can't wait to tell Nick the news.  They hop the fence at the manse and sneak through the greenhouse to get to the main building, where they eventually see Robert naked making drinks.  "I wish that stupid brother of mine could..." Nick says, stopping that cruel sentence when an even uglier notion comes to mind.  He lights fires in the greenhouse because Peter is on "civil defense" that night and would have to respond to a fire alert.  The fire blazes out of control very quickly, interrupting an inane conversation between Robert and Susan.  Nick's friend catches fire and is badly burned.  Because Nick helps him, he's around long enough for Susan to see him from the window.  Robert wants to get Susan out quickly, via the back road.  "If you're worried about my reputation, it's already shot."  "Mine isn't," he retorts.  Yes, what will the boys at the bar think of him seducing a teenage female?  Nick drops his friend off callously, with big threats not to tell anyone they were there.  

As for Susan, she decides to brush off Robert, freaked by knowing Nick has seen her.  At home, Gloria has found her stash of cash and the note that went with it.  She knows Susan has to leave their small town.  

We know the miniseries maxim on bad luck: when things are at their worst, put on a smile, because they are about to get worse.  Peter is rejected by the local college (where Robert has a lot of pull, FYI).  Peter finally tracks down Susan, whom he hasn't seen since the night they didn't have sex for the first time, but she's emotionless because her mind is already in NYC.  She's put their shared dreams aside since taking up with a rich man for money.  "Maybe I just grew up," she says, though Peter only confesses his eternal love.  

Peter gets a teeny birthday party from his immediate family, though Ed is already drunk.  There wasn't enough money for the suit Dorothy wanted to buy him, so they settled for a shirt.  This too starts an argument, with Ed berating her for wishing they had more money.  "Can't we even pretend for one day that we're a family?  Why do we have to keep tearing at each other?" she asks through tears.  "Just one big happy family," Nick quips as Peter comforts his mother.  

Peter makes the arrangements for Nick to leave town and when he tells Ed, his father says something curious about his wife.  "Promise me you'll always take care of her, no matter what happens to me."  Peter is confused, so drunken Ed tells him the story of how he came to America: he killed an Englishman for his money.  Undaunted, Peter actually feels sorry for Ed and volunteers to take over bakery duty for him, but Ed calls it his "penance" for the two men he's killed, for dashing the hopes of his wife, all of Nicks problems and everything else, "the sins of the father" as he calls them.  "I'm sorry, I tried to do my best," he tells Peter to end the conversation.  

Remember, innocent Peter knows nothing of the true circumstances swirling around Nick's hasty escape from town.  Nick doesn't reveal anything either, muttering that he hit his father for all the time he got hit, non-specific and not believable either.  "Is it because of me?  The fight?  Is that why you're leaving?" he asks.  Now here comes one of those great moments of truth where a character has the power of the future in his hands, to make it or kill it.  Nick admits to setting the fire, but when Peter asks him why, he pauses.  Should he tell him about Susan?  He pauses, the tarnished side of him wanting to tell the truth, but the true good side of him saying merely, "beats me."  He's preserved Peter's future with that one little lie.  "Happy birthday, buddy boy," he chirps as his bus pulls away.  Dorothy shows up a moment too late to bid her son goodbye, but she's not really there for him.  She's there to tell Peter that Ed has decided to give him all of his savings for college.  

On the bus, tears fill Nick's eyes. 

Rich Man, Poor Man (1976) Chapter 1

NOTE: I will be posting notes about "this miniseries per episode rather than as a whole.  Hey, if TV can do it, so can I.

It's said that "Rich Man, Poor Man" is the first American miniseries.  Chronologically, that's not true, but in terms of what it did for the genre, it's hard to disagree.  "Rich Man, Poor Man" took Irwin Shaw's novel and put most of it on television, for over nine hours (it dropped one of the main characters and re-assigned her plots elsewhere).  It was a gigantic success, and one that definitely drew the lines for a whole new sub-genre of television.

As often happens in Hollywood, there was an immediate race to capitalize on its success, but that turned out to be good news!  Instead of cheap imitations, everyone worked hard with their projects, looking to be the next "Rich Man, Poor Man."  The books chosen for miniseries adaptation in the late 70s were almost always excellent choices.  We need look no further than "Roots" or "Centennial" as proof, but there are plenty of fantastic examples. 

"Rich Man, Poor Man" did not just decree that major novels were no longer too big for the small screen in the United States or that its audiences had larger attention spans than expected.  It actually set a whole lot of rules that would hold for the span of the network miniseries glory days.  Take, for example, the slumming movie star.  "Rich Man, Poor Man" has plenty of them (though they all turn in stellar work).  But, at the same time, it also took a chance on newer talent to fill the leads: Nick Nolte, Peter Strauss and Susan Blakely.  The latter two would remain fixtures of the genre and go on to great television careers, while the former went big-time Hollywood.  For the next decade, the miniseries wasn't always afraid to try unknowns, because you might just hit the next Nick or Peter on the way up.

"Rich Man, Poor Man" is also a long saga.  It's not a historical piece per se, not yet giving us the grandeur of the Civil War or World War II epics, but it does set down the patterns for multi-generational pieces.  It is also a grand romance piece.  It's a very serious romance story, but the great epic love-based miniseries, serious and laughable, would take cues from "Rich Man, Poor Man."

Just as a point of fact, "Rich Man, Poor Man" did not win the Emmy for...well, that's the problem.  There was a category for "Best Limited Series," but the nominations for "Rich Man, Poor Man" were not all in that category, spread over a variety of categories.  Just about every actor in the piece was nominated (only Ed Asner won), but across many categories.  Hollywood wasn't quite sure what to do with these pieces yet.  But, in the category of "Best Limited Series," "Rich Man, Poor Man" was up against one forgotten network piece and the rest were from PBS, including the winner, "Upstairs Downstairs."  It's hard to disagree with that outcome, but can you imagine a year in the 90s, 00s or 10s where so much greatness would even happen in one year?

Most striking to me is that almost 40 years later, "Rich Man, Poor Man" still holds up as towering entertainment.  That's hard to say for most network miniseries.  The genre had become so corrupted just 20 years later that it barely resembled even the palest copy of something as brave as "Rich Man, Poor Man."  Yes, the performances are a bit odd, but there's a reason for that: is this a TV series or a movie?  Which type of acting is required?  No one quite knew yet.  If you look to the British miniseries for advice, you go for the wildness that Ed Asner provides (though he's marvelous), but if you look at series TV for advice, you get the gentler performances of Strauss and Blakely (Nolte is in a world of his own, as usual).  So, that is forgiven.  The story, really very simple, still has great emotional pull and everything is so precise that it still feels important.  A miniseries this well done not need to drip history and costumes.  It just needs to grip with story and characters, which "Rich Man, Poor Man" does from the onset.

Just as an FYI, we're not discussing "Rich Man, Poor Man" Book 2 right now.  There's no reason to ruin the beauty of this piece with that ghastly garbage.

We begin with the celebrations of VE Day in Port Phillip, New York.  Note two things here already.  The war is already over, so this is not a story of military heroics, and we're in a tiny American town, not the big city.  Things may grow larger, but at heart, this is a small story.

While everyone celebrates outside with fireworks, yelling, singing and merriment, baker Ed Asner is singing the German national anthem as he prepares the bread.  "They can hear you clear out in the street," his disapproving wife Dorothy McGuire, clutching an American flag, chides him.  "Where do ya think ya are?" she asks, "Germany?"  "No, madame, hell," he replies and takes another swig from a bottle.

Nolte is watching the celebrations atop a football goal post, unimpressed and detached.

As for Peter's girlfriend Susan Blakely, she's almost as unbelievably sweet as he is.  We encounter her reading "Gone With the Wind" to maimed veterans, complete with different voices for the characters.  Of course, she is, it's the great American novel, or at least one of them.  Peter plays his bugle outside the window and begs her to come down, but duty first, she has to stay with the patients.  Don't worry, he'll play some patriotic music for the wounded.

At the town bonfire, Peter is asked by the whole population to play something, so he toots "America the Beautiful."  Nick sneers, "how corny can you get" and leaves with his friend, only to sneak into a movie theater to see a World War II picture, "Wake Island."  Nick gets in trouble there with some snarky comments, causing one man to tell him to shut up "until you earn a fighting man's right to talk."  This goads bad boy Nick to go even further, so the GI takes him into the alley to beat the hell out of him, but it's Nick who does the punishing.

In case you missed that Peter is good and Nick is bad, check out Peter's reaction to a rich kid who makes light of the fact that Peter has to be up at 5am to delivery baked goods.  "Get thee to a bunery," the kid jokes.  Peter looks serious as he walks over to him...and passes him, to thank the soda jerk on duty at the diner for letting them have an impromptu dance there.  Nick would have trashed the place.  Peter is darn pissed, but he only complains to Susan.  Wanna-be actress Susan wants them to move to NYC and get married.  Unfortunately, reality isn't quite the same.  All Susan can really hope for, as her nagging single mother Gloria Grahame (as usual, giving the least subtle of performances) reminds her, is a job at the town factory that employs nearly everyone.

The wee hours of the morning are hopping at the main household.  Ed leers at Dorothy on the bed, drunk, and when she gets religious, he cracks, "Jesus, Mary, Joseph and you.  Four saints, too crowded" and sleeps on the chair.  Nick and Peter still share a bed and when Nick gets in, he taunts Peter every way he can, but his suggestions that he should have long taken Susan is what annoys Peter most.  This leads to a physical fight where Nick overpowers Peter, but Ed walks in and decks Nick hard across the face, refusing to acknowledge Peter may have had anything to do with it (he just gets a sweet touch to the cheek).  And in just these few scenes, we have the entire family dynamic.

Well, not quite.  Ed is far more complex than just being a drunken bully.  When he hears Peter has applied to college, he tells him he can't go because they have no money, but Peter says he's applied for scholarships, so Ed turns it around to make Peter seem ungrateful for having what he does.  "What about the sins of the fathers?  You believe that kids have to pay for what their fathers did?" he asks in a very ugly way.  Peter says he doesn't believe it.  "You better hope it's not true," Ed says with a guffaw.  This incredibly rich character has only had a few lines in a few scenes, and yet we're unable to figure him out so far.  Does he love his family?  Part of it?  His job?  His adopted country?  We have only conflicting evidence so far.  Dorothy even says as much, that something has actually happened to turn him "mean," because when she met him, he was quite the opposite.

The miniseries has its first absolutely classic scene when Ed is called to school because Nick has gotten in trouble with his French teacher.  Nick has made a cartoon of her where she says, "je suis tres chaud."  Ed, playing a humble immigrant, meekly says he doesn't understand forcing her to translate, adding, "in very bad French."  "I don't understand, I thought my son was here to learn to write good French," Ed replies.  The teacher misses the sarcasm and insults Ed, basically calling him stupid.  Ed plays every line for laughs, turning each point against the teacher with a deadpan humor she doesn't get at all, making her angrier and angrier.  By the end of the scene, Ed has turned it all against her and even slapped her as well.  He issues a threat to her not to take out this episode on his son.  Here's yet another layer to him: for a man who has nothing but contempt for his family, he's certainly leaped to Nick's defense in a bountiful way, yet when Nick thanks him, Ed turns dark again and snaps, "you don't owe me a damn thing."  This only brings more questions about this man's motives.  Given scenes like this, is it any wonder Ed Asner won an Emmy?

As if the black wounded soldier who offers Susan $800 to get started as an actress, but underlines it with an invitation to a meal with him that is too much of a quid pro quo for her to understand isn't enough, Susan has to contend with Nick.  Peter has a gig playing trumpet in a club and she goes to watch and adore.  Nick shows up and flirts with her, but it's Peter she necks with in the car.  She only wants him.  Nick's temper is a topic of conversation for them, because the whole town has seen his bad behavior.  "He's really weird.  I don't know what's wrong with him," Peter notes.  Susan does, because it's the same reason she's antsy: she hates small-town life and it's driving her (and Nick) batty.  She has a scheme to move to Greenwich Village with Peter and start a life, but he's old-fashioned.  He wants college and marriage first, even though she says, "we can skip the marriage part," awfully progressive for 1945.

The car in which they are making out belongs to supremely creepy Robert Reed, who basically owns and runs everything in town.  "What are you doing in my car?" he asks.  "We're discussing post-war priorities," Peter sasses, to which Robert laughs and adds, "ask a stupid question, get a foolish answer" while leering at Susan.  He doesn't mind the kids fooling around in his car, he's just come out for the booze in the glove compartment and even shares it with them, also offering them a ride home when they are through.

The car ride home is a doozy, with Robert turning every line into a double entendre, but there's also something sad and pathetic about him.  He offers Peter help getting into college and offers Susan a host of wickedness.  Susan is already in a snit because Peter has forgotten tonight was supposed to be their first time (Gloria is away and Susan has dinner all planned).  "This isn't something you do lightly," Peter says.  "This isn't something you do at all," Susan growls.

Time passes with Susan and Peter not speaking, though of course he calls once she's stopped holding the phone waiting, so she gets on the bus to the rendezvous with the black soldier.

The first episode has done what it set out to do: introduce us to the main characters, but not in a perfunctory way.  We learn so much about them, but it's what we don't learn (Ed's secrets, what makes Nick so rebellious, why Dorothy settled for Ed, Susan's yearnings) that will make us excited for the second episode.  No gasping cliffhangers, not yet.  Only sensational writing and actors who make it matter.

The Story of David (1976)

Back to the Bible, this time way back long before the New Testament, to "The Story of David."  All I'll say up front is that the story of David initially seems to be ripe for miniseries treatment, but without a budget, it's bound to fail and that second act of David's life is a total snooze.

Though the movie starts with shepherd David (Timothy Bottoms) playing a lyre and singing, "The Story of David" is not a musical.  His head covered in golden ringlets, a pre-historic Shirley Temple, David is interrupted from a quiet day of tending sheep to kill a wildcat.

King Saul (Anthony Quayle, who would pretty much devote the rest of his career to sword and sandal miniseries) goes to visit Samuel (Mark Dignam).  The heavily-bearded prophet makes Saul work for his attention, having the king sit on a common stone until he's good and ready to talk to him from his throne-like rock as yet another way to knock down the king's ego.  It seems that Samuel told him 20 years ago he was king, but now he's started speaking against Saul.  Samuel takes the stance that, "it was the voice of the Lord," but Saul reminds Samuel he's the one who anointed him with kingly oils.  "Let there be peace between us or Israel will be destroyed," Saul says in exasperation.  When a piece of clothing rips, Samuel sees that as proof that the kingdom is about to be torn from Saul.

David returns to his brothers, who mock him because David wants to fight the Philistines in open combat.  They have iron swords that the Israelis do not have, so it's not an easy fight.  To quiet his brothers down, David belts out another tune.

Meanwhile, Saul is despondent, wearing a simple cloth and showing a lot of leg.  His cousin Abner (Brian Blessed) tries to cheer him up and remind him of all he's done, and these two veteran hams do their best to out-bad-act each other.  Abner brings David to Saul to lighten his mood with more of his chipper singing, except this time, David can only muster a ballad, which seems most unhelpful.  I suppose the back-up instruments and endlessly unrhymed lyrics are heaven-sent, because David goes on and on and on.  After what seems an eternity of lute-playing, David even falling asleep doing it, Saul notices him and asks his name, before joining the sing-a-long himself, with a harvesting song that David picks up pretty quickly.  "Never let an old man pour oil on your head," Saul recommends, lamenting the fact that he was once a happy farmer and now an unhappy king.

David is given a job with Saul, which he describes to his brothers as such scintillating tasks as counting spears and tying on armor.  He's also on call when Saul feels bad, his playing chasing away "the evil spirit."  If this weren't innocent old 1976, one might raise an eyebrow here.  The miniseries, a religious piece, no less, was just a child, no hidden meanings.

Every day, blustering Goliath (Tony Tarruella) comes to the foot of the army camp and taunts Saul.  He certainly doesn't seem like a giant, merely a man with a incredibly large hat.  Saul's son Jonathan (Oded Teomi) wants to fight him, but Saul will not allow it.  Frankly, he's afraid to send anyone to a certain death, but David begs for a chance.  "He's a giant, a warrior...what would you do, David, wrap your lyre strings around him?" Saul asks?  David brings up that big cat he killed in the first scene, but Saul just jokes, "you will sing him to death."  Abner is all for a fight, since if David is killed, "it's just a boy...what do we risk?"  The Old Testament folk just never learn!  Dare Yahweh to step in and help his people and he won't hesitate.  Timothy Bottoms looks as harmless as a day-old puppy, but this isn't called "The Story of Goliath," now is it?

David sums it up for Saul: "I can kill Goliath and the army will believe that Yahweh is strong."  See!  It's not about the puny boy, it's a lesson in faith.  "If he kills me, I'm on a shepherd," David says (aping Abner), in our first example of thick Jewish guilt (hey, it made me the man I am today, I'm not knocking it).  "Who will play for me?" Saul whines, but David and Abner (and of course, the unseen hand of God), finally wear him down.

So, Goliath makes his daily rounds, laughing when he sees David scamp down the hillside.  "You come with a spear, Philistine, but I come with the name of the Lord of the hosts, Yahweh," David whispers as he readies his slingshot.  Goliath throws his spear, which David avoids and then spins his slingshot with the same sound effects that readied Wonder Woman, smacking Goliath between the eyes with a rock.  It looks more likely to knock off his fake beard than anything, but it immobilizes Goliath and David can cut his head off, yelling proudly to Saul in a rather bloodthirsty manner.

It must be a few years later, because David has acquired a (really bad fake) beard.  He's now the main war planner, but no one can argue with success, especially when there are cheering extras and montage footage (cheaply, in both cases).  There is even a song about him that all of the peasants (and their children) know.  "All he lacks now is the kingdom," Abner clucks, though naturally David lacks any notion of a coup.  After all, he's still just a simple musician, writing an impromptu ditty faster than Irving Berlin, though Saul is jealous of the song of the people praising David.

Then there's the matter of Michal (Irit Ben Zur), Saul's daughter who has a crush on David.  She and Jonathan double team Saul into letting them marry (even though David is incredibly asexual), but Saul insists that David bring him Philistine foreskin "as a dowry."  Another cheap montage, another few extras, and it's wedding time!  This time, we get all-out production number, with dancers doing something between the hora and the Electric Slide.  Getting down to wedding night business, Michal asks David "to play the lyre for me," but he claims, "I have forgotten how," though in the next scene, he's once again playing for his father-in-law, who can't get the peasant song out of his head, throws a spear at David (which misses by a mile) and goes kind of mad.

David has to scale the walls and leave down so jealous Saul doesn't kill him.  He forgets to take any food or water, and can't seem to find anywhere to stop (let's pause here to wonder how a man so brilliant in a land as small as New Jersey can't find a friendly drink of water, but that's a question for Biblical scholars, not miniseries viewers), so the buzzards circle above him as he trips his way around the craggy rocks and weeds of the land.  Where does he stagger to?  Samuel's outdoor palace, where he's treated very well by Samuel's gang.  "I have waited for you, David," Samuel says, which even David finds odd.  Samuel is anoints him with oil (David was passed out, thus not having a chance to stop the anointing, as Saul warned him).  David doesn't want the job, claiming loyalty to Saul.  "His son is my brother, his daughter is my wife, Saul is a king, Saul, Saul, Saul is king," David yells, afraid.

Let's not beat around a non-burning bush: David is pretty good at manipulation, despite all those curls and the great PR.  When Jonathan comes to see him, to bring him back to Saul, David isn't stupid, he tells Jonathan to find out first if Saul "still wants my blood."  Jonathan turns this into a needlessly complex plan, which David worries is a trap.  Lousy liar Jonathan tells Saul David is in Bethlehem visiting his own father, causing Saul to go on a grand rant, insisting on David's death.  What actor doesn't love a mad scene, so Tony Quayle goes full Lear on us.

Jonathan's needlessly complex plan has David so sad he cries fake glycerin tears to hear that Saul wants him dead, so Jonathan cheers him up slitting each of their wrists and mingling their blood (it had to be the wrist?), making them "one," so that David is also heir to the throne.  Mighty generous of Jonathan, isn't it?  Michal hasn't lifted a finger for her own husband.

After scamming bread from an all-too-trusting temple priest, David starts to build a force to overcome Saul.  This is a new side of David and even his brothers don't know what to make of it.  However, just at that moment, a man in mourning comes along, saying Saul has razed the temple and the whole city around it for the priest's generosity to David (who, remember, wasn't completely honest, and does feel a bit of guilt over it).  Thus, war against Saul is now okay.

David develops quite an edge, though always making sure to take the moral high ground.  When a local refuses to give him and his now 600 men food, David loses it.  Okay, first of all, who can feed 600 men?  Anyway, David breaks a jug and scowls that he's rid the area of Philistines, yet this man is not grateful, so he's allowed to kill the man's family, "man, child, ram and goat."  No mention of women, but by all means, slaughter the goats.  It's a good thing I mentioned women, because Abigail (Ahuva Yuval) shows up in the next scene, telling David she had been away when David's men were denied food, and she's here with hundreds of loaves of bread to make up for it.  She begs for her husband's life and to be David's "handmaiden," always an undefined Biblical term.

When word comes that Samuel has died, David is urged to go after Saul, but he refuses.  "How long are you going to let him hunt you like a partridge?" he's asked.  Apparently, things aren't that bad, because Saul has never found the completely obvious lair where David and his men are holed up avoiding battle. Saul uses tactics like starving locals to ferret out the location, but none of it seems to work.  So, why not strike at Saul?  "Should I start a war among the tribes?  Should I have the blood of Israel on my hands?  Saul was my father!" David roars.  "I am not a rebel against Saul," he says over and over, though Joab (Norman Rodway) keeps urging him to battle with flowery taunts.  What David does agree to is slipping into the enemy camp (where everyone is luckily sleeping at the same time) to participate in an elaborate pantomime with Joab, who manages to overact even in silence.

The reason for this odd raid is so David can stand on a mountain the next day and yell to Abner that he slept as they stole a water jug from beside Saul.  Abner orders the men to rush up and kill David, but Saul stops them, leaving David to ask why he's pursued.  Wait, Saul just stopped you from instant death!  David cries (without tears) as he bemoans the loss of Israel for no reason.  He turns his rage from Yahweh to Saul, throwing a spear near him and then darting off into the mountains again.  The endless cat-and-mouse (discussed, but not shown) between Saul and David is getting mighty old.

Sometime later, as David languishes in the pleasures of Philistia, he is offered the chance to participate in the "destruction of Saul," by one of the local kings, as they are all gathering to conquer Saul and want David and his men to be their "bodyguards."  "If you know me, Lord," David says, "you know what I'll do," which apparently doesn't necessary mean he'll join (it takes Joab to play the dunce and bring that out).  David's poker face notwithstanding, the other Philistine kings don't trust that a Hebrew will be loyal to them against Saul (getting one mad scene after another), so David's liege caves and tells David to take his men and not participate in the fight (which he wasn't going to do anyway).

Jonathan sneaks a visit to David, asking if he really would have fought against his own people and David doesn't answer.  He also tells David that even Saul thinks he should be king, though now David gets all modest.  Of course, knowing this new fact makes it hard for David to sit by and watch a war that is certain to decimate Saul and company.

We don't see the battle, but we see the Philistines picking through the dead Hebrew bodies afterward, including Jonathan's.  Alas, even Saul is killed, causing David to bathe in dust once again as he wails in sadness.  Timothy Bottoms is a downright awful crier.  Luckily for the story, David is not responsible for killing Saul and has a clear pathway to becoming king, though he gives a lofty speech about the fallen mighty before Joab proclaims him such.  He stands atop a mountain, arms spread wide, obviously ready for that job, thus bringing the first portion of the movie to a sweeping close.

David may feel himself secure in his kingship, but not everyone sees that.  Saul has another son in the north and Abner follows him.  Abner and Joab meet to discuss the situation and Joab reminds Abner that Samuel anointed David just like he did Saul.  However, that history lesson is lost on Abner, who clucks, "you anoint an onion with oil before you eat it, that doesn't make it king."  They do a lot of chattering about the past six years as their massive armies of six or seven each start getting antsy.  There's a bit of a tussle and Abner kills Joab's brother, which isn't going to sit well with Joab in the long run.

In six years, David has matured into Keith Michell, but the change of actors doesn't mean we lose the ringlets or the inability to construct a hummable tune.  In fact, Keith's David starts with a song and though he's a better singer than he predecessor, the songs are no less annoying.  Fawned over by women with children they are trying to remind him should be his heir, he is brought news that Abner has switched sides and wants to be part of David's retinue.  David and his chief advisor Jehosephat (who does, I assure you, no jumping, and is played by veteran Barry Morse).  David is willing to talk to Abner, but only if he brings him Michal (now Susan Hampshire) his one-time wife whom Saul had taken from him during their years of quarrel.  Michal has been married for years to another man and gained something of a spine.  Abner tempts her with being the wife of a king, but she says, "I'm already the daughter of a king," so Abner has to physically take her from her poor sad husband.

Abner is treated to a hearty meal and a particularly gloomy ballad from David before getting down to business.  There is some bargaining to be done, namely that for Abner's switching of sides, he wants to be the official War Chief, a position help by Joab.  Joab is furious that Abner is even at the palace, yet again launching into a spitting bit of overacting as David strums his lyre and tells his aide that here needs Abner's help.  So, Joab sets a trap for Abner.  The latter is killed and David is furious because Joab didn't think through the murder, knowing everyone will blame David.  "David's name will stink in the land of Israel," he tells idiotic Joab.  Joab offers up his own life, but only half meaning it since he claims he put David on the throne.  The two yell and howl for a while, but David ends with an ultimatum: "follow Abner's body or follow Abner" and Joab goes along with the funeral procession.  Then David gets downright ugly, denouncing Joab in public as the murderer and washing his hands of the whole affair.  Not heroic actions, I would say.

That's not the last of Joab, of course.  He remembers that David said whoever could get Jerusalem for him would be War Chief, so he does just that, with no more than a handful of men and another of those fake war montages.  Singing and dancing, looking like the understudies at the Bath Touring Light Opera Company, David and his followers enter Jerusalem.  He's vain, but not a snappy enough dresser to realize his underwear can be seen through his white cloth and no one needs to see that.  Lest you think me overly harsh, here's what Michal has to say of the whole day's events: "I saw you there jumping before the people like a slave girl.  Is that honor?  Uncovering yourself before the women, robes flapping and showing your root and you looked like a priest of Sodom.  My father was not a king like that.  Saul was a man!"  David pins her down and tells her that Yahweh has made him king, even over Saul, and he intends to have what he feels he is owed.  It's only his pride that wants Michal, who tells David he has "no heart."  She finally wins her freedom from Jerusalem by reminding him that a royal child of theirs could take over just like he did with Saul.  "Go," he tells her, "as the wife of a king, but you will have no sons."  Uh oh.

So, David goes to sit before the Ark of the Covenant and sing.  What else would you expect him to do?  Well, he does stop long enough to beg Yahweh for some dialogue, but, let's face it, David enjoys doing all the talking.  Keith Michell sure doesn't mind having a solo scene for his rapidly declining acting choices (usually a terrific actor, he's miscast and decides just to get through it).  By the end of the scene, he's prostrate on the floor begging for his house to go on forever (just like the scene).

This is followed by a downright bizarre scene where David goes to the scribes writing his history (aka The Bible) and begs them to liven it up so that it's not just all that boring begetting.  Wait, so David is now a book editor?  "Write down their sin, their stubbornness, their weakness, for that makes them men."  In other words, sex sells.

Into the boredom of kingly days slips (finally) Bathsheba, played by our redoubtable Jane Seymour, here present at the dawn of the miniseries.  In her first scene, she gets naked and goes for a dip as David watches from above.  She is so young and so beautiful, how can he not be captivated?  Bathsheba is the wife of Uriah (Terrence Hardiman), a recent convert to Judaism.  That's a problem, because David REALLY wants her, to the point of sleepless nights.

Bathsheba is finally brought to the palace in the middle of the night to find David (you guessed it) playing with his lyre.  "I am your servant, Lord, your handmaiden," is her first line in the whole movie!  That's not much of a conquest, now is it?  Obviously, it's too late for even Jane Seymour to save this elongated dreariness, but she brings a much-need spark.  Bathsheba is bit difficult, asking David bluntly if he knows it's her when he's "buried" in her hair or does he think of his other women?  She fastens him with a solid lock when she announces she's pregnant.  "I am a mighty ram, a bull," says the aging king, running around the deck.  "Rejoice, you carry the child of David," he commands, but she's worried that it's "adultery, proven" and she will be stoned to death for it.  David won't come under any heat, only a mere woman.  Even David can't save her from the law, especially since he's in a precarious position with the priests and taxmen and such.  David can't change when Bathsheba got pregnant, but he can alter documents to say Uriah was present when Bathsheba became pregnant.

There is perhaps only one moment in the entire second half of "Story of David" that is utterly hysterical. Bathsheba slips into David's bedroom in the middle of the night to tell him "that fool" husband of hers is sleeping in outside with his soldiers while "I lie naked on my bed covered in oil of myrrh."  The camera switches to David's face, and the look there is like a teenage boy discovering Playboy.  We don't see his erection only because the camera doesn't travel down that far.  You see, Uriah invokes a law that says no man at war can touch a woman, but David says that law isn't for real anymore.  But Uriah, a convert, is more strict with the laws than David, so this is going to take more work than David anticipated.  So, he gets Uriah drunk and sends him to Bathsheba.  That seems to work, but at the last minute, he invokes the name of Yahweh and stays outside.  Rats, foiled again!

Davis has to go even lower to get himself out of the world's first sitcom plot.  He has Abner post Uriah to a certain-death mission, where of course he's killed.  It's taken way more than 26 minutes, but eventually we will wrap this up and then add the laugh track.

Cue the shiva scene.  Every old lady in a 20 mile radius of the shooting location is dragged in, given a black outfit and asked to shriek loudly while Jane slips out of the room to meet David.  Then she has to bite the bullet, or the whip, or whatever, as she goes into labor.

Prophet Nathan (David Collings) arrives as Jane is delivering.  He's there to blow the whole goony plot, but in typical prophet dialogue, he goes on and on in a way no one can understand (except, of course, the guilty).  Nathan finally speaks for real and accuses David and warns him, "a sword will never depart from your house...I will raise up evil against you from your own house!"  Swell party guest, where is he playing next, an Egyptian funeral?  Actually, David fesses up, but it's too late, Yahweh is already way too angry.  "You will not die, but the child that is born to you will surely die," Nathan warns.  Well, at least he's got Bathsheba, who notes, "we can have another son," as he dissolves into tears.

And indeed they do, to add to his coterie of sons by dozens of yelping women who want their son to get the kingdom.  We even meet the ones named with the letter A.  There aren't enough extras for the rest.  Only one of his wives, the only one without a son, isn't angling and she tells him once he's gone, there will be nothing but bloodshed until one son emerges triumphant.  Such pessimism!  Three thousand years later, my great aunts sounded just like all these gloomy prophets and harrying wives.

There is only one way for King David to solve any problem and it's to grab the lyre and sing again.  His beard is gray, and poor Joab has to listen to yet another ballad before bringing up the evil doings of one son.  David forgives him the dirty deeds because "he has my blood" and "am I without sin?"  There's incest and rape and fratricide and all of the other giant sins tucked into the end of the miniseries.  Frankly, they should have their own movie because it's way too late to care about new characters.  The only interesting part is when the mothers go all Alexis-and-Crystal on each other in a big gang fight (minus the pools and ponds).  David breaks it up, but I think he's a little happy to delay doing so as the first man in history who might just enjoy ladies mud wrestling had someone thought of it.  We go through the story of Absalom in roughly ten minutes (killing, coming back, reconciling, yearning to become king in his father's place, one of the Bible's baddest apples).  Ancient David forms a plan and leaves the even more ancient Jehosephat to lead Absalom into a trap, all the time complaining, "why cannot my son love me" since he's blood and David loved Saul without the blood connection.  Yeah, let's not bring Saul up because that's a very murky episode and David still isn't completely in the clear on that one!

However, has an answer, basically, "I told you so."  Helpful, Joab, thanks.  David is forced to flee into the mountains where he sits and watches a shepherd play music.  Joab shows up with the good news that Absalom has taken all of David's concubines, but Absalom is playing right into David's plan.  It's only now that David chooses to remember Nathan's warning.  No one else thought of it until all these years later?  It seems pretty damn obvious.  The same poor extras do one last battle and Absalom has one awfully unlucky death scene (thanks to a downed tree limb and then Joab's rage).  David goes into one of The Bibles best mad scenes, now giving Keith Michell the chance to play Lear (there's a lot of this version) and he plays it to the back of the balcony.

David gets so old that even Bathsheba turns matronly (gray coloring and some padding can't dim our Jane's beauty).  "Do you remember, Lord, when I was young?" she asks David, flirting so she can beg favors for her son, just like all the other wives, though David is still in the midst of madness and has a barely tentative grasp on reality.  Ultimately, he decrees that his son Solomon will be king and then tells the actor playing Solomon (who has no lines) to kill Joab before one last flowery speech.  No, alas, there is not a deathbed song.  I know, we are all disappointed.  But, we don't need a finale.  We understand the whole fable of "sins of the fathers," as it's laid on awfully thick.  The miniseries is not a format for preaching.  It's way too heavy-handed.

I'm not quite sure why it took two actors to play David, since Parts 1 and 2 are only off by six years.  Timothy Bottoms is awful and Keith Michell much better, so couldn't they have just given Keith a few more wigs and some Vaseline lenses for the first half?  Other than Michal, no other character is played by two people.  Hell, Abner doesn't even age!  Anyway, the robust story of the young David works well enough here (even if those songs should have been cut in Boston), but the story of the older David isn't remotely as interesting.  However, this is a 1976 miniseries, a serious take on a religious text.  In a decade, The Bible would be forgotten as a basis for the miniseries in favor of tawdry Southern tales and hero-worshipping World War II stories.  As low-rent as "The Story of David" may be, it's inherent sweetness gives on a feeling of nostalgia when one sees what happened in the next 20 years.

Wild Palms (1993)

I won't say much about "Wild Palms" up front because it's a sci-fi tale that needs to unravel before your eyes for you to believe it.  Not sci-fi like "The Martian Chronicles," which was old-time B-movie science fiction or even "V," which was big-budget Hollywood condensed for the small screen and perfectly sensible.  "Wild Palms" seems to take a page from "Twin Peaks" and even anticipate "Lost," with Oliver Stone as one of its producers.

Even at the time, people didn't know what to make of "Wild Palms," with some critics going gaga for it and others finding it ridiculous (look it up on Wikipedia and you'll find that the British acknowledged it to be one of the worst TV imports from America ever, right up there with "Baywatch" and Anna Nicole Smith's reality TV show).

"Wild Palms" is downright strange, no doubt about it.  But, is it crazy genius or crazy trash?

James Belushi, whom no one asked to see wearing only boxer shorts, awakens in the middle of the night  and rushes to his pool which he finds drained except for a rhinoceros.  "So this is how it begins," he mutters before hearing his son's voice pleading for help and then waking from his dream.

In actuality, James lives a fairly normal family wife, with wife Dana Delaney able to make cappuccino with just the right amount of foam, lovely kids (Dana: "He's got a bug, so I'm keeping him home today."  James:  "Why does that kid get so many damn bugs?" Dana: "Because he's so sweet."  Donna Reed couldn't have been schmaltzier.).  All seems just right in the Los Angeles of the future, 2007 (except James' son has creepy eyes and James is not at all weirded out to see men in suits beating up a man as he drives his sports car past them.  

Things are even gleefully goofy at the office, where James cracks to his secretary that she's fired for shopping at his wife's store because "things are getting too incestuous around here" and where his co-worker announces his wife's latest pregnancy by saying she's "retaining daughter."  This at a white shoe law firm, no less.

Enter mysterious Kim Catrall.  In a brunet wig and bright lipstick, not to mention gloves, she looks like trouble, 1950s film noir style.  She and James haven't seen each other in 15 years, and she even talks like the past.  "I have a son out of wedlock" she says as they are getting reacquainted.  He asks if she works and she says, "I'm a consultant for the Wild Palms Group" as quickly as possible, sliding right into, "two kids, huh?  I always knew you were daddy material."  She's come to see James, a patent lawyer, to find her son, who has been missing five years.

Dana, as noted, runs a clothing store and is at the constant beck and call of her mother, reminded by an assistant to pick her up a the hospital, where Dana jokes, "she's just had her 57th face lift."  Things get exciting for her when actress Bebe Neuwirth ("I loved her in 'Magnificent Obsession'," Dana coos--luckily there hasn't been another remake of that sudser, so the future of "Wild Palms" hasn't come completely true) to use the store's bathroom.  "I've seen all your movies," Dana bleats.  "I've used all your bathrooms," Bebe replies, and everyone chuckles, except me for the obvious reason that is makes no sense

Who else would be playing Dana Delaney's mother with the face lifts but Angie Dickinson?  "Never again, it hurt this time," she clucks getting into the car. "Never again, see you in six months," she tells the nurse as they drive off.  

At a restaurant with amazing monkfish and souffle, James has lunch with Ernie Hudson and recounts his conversation with Kim.  James is the only person in the restaurant to intervene when a patron is beaten up and dragged off into a waiting car.  "Hey, that was stupid," Ernie tells James, for trying to help.  

We know for sure something isn't right in this world when Angie Dickinson picks up her granddaughter, swings her around and asks, "am I the ultimate grandma?"  This after telling her grandson not to hug her too tightly or "I might unravel."  Angie Dickinson, world's greatest grandma?  

James sees a psychiatrist, Bob Gunton in one of the worst toupees in all of miniseries history, because he and his wife don't have sex and he has crazy dreams (the rhino-in-the-pool thing).  He recounts his problems, including seeing old flame Kim Catrall and the episode at the restaurant.  "I was rooting for the attackers," he says, which is why he feels it was so odd.  Bob us unmoved.

But it gets worse.  Back at home, Angie is tending to the boy, who tells her he had the dream again.  He also has the rhino dream.  "Tell anyone?" she asks, "Not even your dad?  You're not afraid are you, darling monkey?  If you're afraid of the rhino, the dream goes away and then you'll be like everyone else and that's the most terrifying thing in the world."  Um, okay.  Reminder to self: never fear a rhino in an empty pool.

What the hell is going on?

Dana complains that her son, a young Ben Savage, is "closer to mother than he is to me," but James tells her "that's normal, boys pull away."  From their mothers to their weird grandmothers?  Oh, and then Dana remembers to tell James that their so-far mute daughter has finally spoken.  "She said, 'everything must go.'"  Perhaps she's gearing up to be a furniture or used car salesman.  Dana uses this as a segue into trying to have sex with her.  I wonder if the Kellers got horny after Helen spoke her first word?

The first 20 minutes of "Wild Palms" have flown by, but I ask again, what the hell is going on here?

Once again, James tries to use pal Ernie Hudson as a sounding board, but Ernie makes a joke out of it before inviting James to a party with the always-mysterious line, "there's some people you should meet." Meanwhile, Dana is called to school where Ben has been in a fight after making family trees in class.  "What's wrong with this picture?" she's asked of Ben's family tree.  "He's left me off," Dana realizes.

So far, "Wild Palms" hasn't been great at anticipating what 2007 will look like (double-breasts suits are back).  The clerk in the LA County courthouse is smoking!  James is there to help Kim find her kid, but is told by the clerk that "the computers are down" and he has to look through boxes.  However, there are thousands and thousands of boxes, more than all of the people who have ever lived in LA total, it seems.  On his drive home (with more people being randomly beaten up), he spots his mother-in-law in a car with Kim Catrall and follows her to a hotel, where she invites him into a seminar she's attending.  "This is not to be missed," she insists.  The speaker at the seminar, which flings a whole lot of fake scientific language at us, is Senator Robert Loggia.  Yes, Robert Loggia of the pig noises in James' dream.

As he's talking, a samurai warrior rushes the stage and cuts him in half only the sword goes through air.  Want me to repeat that?  It won't sound any different the second time.

"I'm not here, children, I'm a synthetic hologram," Robert caws, to cheers from the room, a literal standing ovation.  "I have seen the future, and it is Channel 3," he says before disappearing.  James and I seem to be the only people confused.  But, then James remembers this is the guy who invented a religion a few decades back and it sounds an awful lot like Scientology (called Synthiotics here).

A note to Scientologists: I'm only reviewing the miniseries, not your religion, so please don't get angry and burn my house down.

The real Robert appears, swaps niceties with Kim and then talks to James.  "My father was a tailor.  Oh yes, not only Jews were tailors," he says before recounting his father's horrible demise to a man he's just met for the first time.  He didn't die from goons attacking his store, but rather "at a fire sale in an inferno."  I think we're supposed to be utterly confused here.  Anyway, this is not the kind of story one tells a complete stranger, but Robert does it anyway, ending it by saying he'll never forget the sight, especially with a sign that says (let's say it together, because we saw it coming as soon as he said fire sale) "everything must go."

"All he's saying is that there is more than one reality.  Does that make Synthiotics any different than, say, Buddhism," Kim explains to a still-clueless James, as if she's an expert on comparative religions.  No, of course, they are exactly the same.  Holograms fit right in with the concept of reincarnation.  Oh, wait, as I type that, I realize maybe...

By the way, this conversation takes place at a zoo, where Kim leads James to the rhinoceros.  "It takes 16 months to make one of those, can you imagine?" she asks, seemingly upset that it takes humans only nine months to do the same.  She then plants a gigantic kiss on her, an advance he has to rebuff.  "It's okay.  You know what the Buddhists say, there's more than one reality," she repeats again and walks off.  Wait, I thought the Synthiotics said that?

When James and Dana show up at Ernie's party, Bebe is there to greet Dana.  "What are you doing here?" Dana asks her.  "Using the bathroom, what else?  You were hilarious, I was going to call you," she says, as if they are now best friends.  She introduces them to comic Nick Mancuso.  Bebe is doing work for Channel 3, but can't say what because Dana grabs her to dance.

The next day brings bad news.  James cannot be made a full partner because of his association with Kim, who works for Wild Palms and the firm is involved in litigation against a subsidiary.  He quits in a huff.  Kim, in all black, shows up at the house to talk to James (where Dana is wearing all virginal cream to make sure we note the symbolism, as if that's going to help matters).  She tells James that "a friend of mine had a dream about you and want you to visit him in Rancho Mirage" and hands him a drawing of, of course, a rhino, that she was told to deliver.

So, James goes to Rancho Mirage to meet Robert again, spewing Yeats quotes that James recognizes.  "You're gonna make me fall in love with you," Robert growls with a laugh.  So far, that may be the strangest line of all, and there haven't been many truly normal ones.  "Do you know what the rhino is?" Robert asks.  "It's all that's left of the unicorn, a magnificent atavism, a remnant of ecstatic myth" and other strung-together nonsensical adjectives and nouns.  Wait, the rhino and the unicorn are related?  If Barnum and Bailey knew that, they wouldn't have sewn that horn on a goat and caused all the animal rights activists to protest back in the 80s.  As expected the minute James quit, he's offered a job with Robert.  "How about Head of Business Affairs at Channel 3 at five times your original salary?"  Dana is not thrilled about the offer, still brooding over ex-flame Kim coming to her house.

Of all people, one might not expect Ernie to fill in some information, finally.  He tells James that all of those kids that went missing in the 90s were part of a "recruitment for the Fathers," apparently "Satanists," according to James.  The Fathers and the Friends were rival political groups, but that's as much as we learn before Ernie takes him to the beach house of eccentric Brad Dourif, who wears glasses that shine with lights.  James puts on a pair and flashes into a world where Brad and Ernie are dressed like servants at the Continental Congress.

WHAT?????

It gets more insane.  Brad, who was in a wheelchair before everyone put on the glasses, tells a story about how people came to kill him, but he played possum under his dead mother while the murderers had dinner.  Oy, my head is spinning, but I'm hooked, I must admit.  After introducing them to a woman who is in Japan but can enter the reality of "the web," Brad dismisses them.  Ernie helps connect some dots.  He refers to Brad as the "Einstein" of this new world and Robert as "the P.T. Barnum."

Our hammy slummers are up next, with Angie giving Robert a massage.  He demands that Nick be brought to him, though Angie detests him.  "What's with you two, you are like a Punch and Judy show?" he asks.  "At least we know who Judy is," Angie says and they continue as if that exchange made perfect sense even to them!  Throw inane scientific terms around, fine, that's part of the mystery, but leave Punch and Judy in the 19th Century.  Anyway, Robert says he owes his life to Nick, who saved him from drowning, though Angie believes Nick pushed Robert in just to save him.

Speaking of Nick, he is at a Jack Nicholson film festival (surmising Jack must be in his 80s in 2007--a sloppy bit of writing considering it's an easily-research fact that he would still have been shy of 80 in 2007) with his sister, but once he packs her off, she's followed by a goon squad and Kim Catrall steps menacingly out of the chasing car.

As James leaves for his first day at his new job, Dana is once again bed-bound, as she has been for the past five days.  "The problem is you drink all day long and stare at the damn palms all night long," James complains to a wife who sports perfect make up without having been out of bed yet.  He passes a kid selling maps of the stars' homes and asks him where he got his body tattoo.  "Church of the Fathers," the kid says blandly.  James is greeted outside the building by jovial Charles Hallahan and James spits out  few lines borrowed from bad stand-up about his this mammoth building and company were "hard to find."  Charles shows him around, gossiping about employees ("his wife just left him...for his father") and manages to evade every real question James has about the company.  Charles has been in prison, but he found Synthiotics there and turned himself around.  Ah, the first day at work, always a hoot.  Dana doesn't even ask how James' first day at work was, instead informing him she's going out of town to meet "an old friend of the family from Kyoto, he's founded a group...part of the underground, they call themselves the Friends."

Totally inexplicable is a dinner, in formal-wear for Robert, Angie and Kim where they talk about things and people we don't understand.  Angie tends to a man who is apparently her son, doing the Kaddish (the son, not Angie) and Robert belts out old pop his wearing a smoking jacket with palms on it.  Got all that?

Dana and James go to some sort of institution where Dana visits miniseries veteran David Warner, her father, living in hiding from Angie.  Institution or resort, everyone seems terribly happy there.  James bumps into his shrink Bob Gunton, whom he has stopped seeing.  Dana is there to find out if the Fathers have "taken my baby and given me the son of another...could they have done that?"  If he has an answer, we're not privy to it, for the scene switches to David at the wrought-iron gate mutter, "I will come for you.  I will come for you all" as Dana and James leave the place.

The big show on Channel 3 is "Church Windows," starring Bebe and James and Dana's son Ben.  It's some sort of sitcom with no set, but a studio audience surrounding it on all sides.  It's both painfully unfunny and full of not-subtle messages.

Robert summons James to settle some legal affairs for him, going into a hysterical monologue that manages to chew whatever scenery he's left from previous scenes.  Nick, who is fixated on his broken glasses, confronts Angie, demanding his sister back.  "You make me vomit.  How dare you come into my home and dictate to me," she snarls at him.  He grabs her that and while he's choking her, referring to her as a "dried-up monster," he makes a lot of threats.  Next we see of Nick, he's hosting his talk show, with Oliver Stone as his guest, in the background as James returns home to a slumbering Dana.

Making his entrance singing "Let's Face the Music and Dance," in a really bad wig is Robert Morse, a friend of Robert Loggia and Angie's, who has been summoned to help their cause.  Super-bizarre Robert  Morse is perfect for this hilarious roller coaster, because he'd been doing bug-eyed weird for decades by then.  He's singing at the club where James goes to meet Kim, now flirting wildly with him.  Robert joins their table, toasting, "here's to old love songs and New Realism."  Salut!

Anyway, so as not to feel guilty about meeting Kim, James gives her some potential information about her missing son and then realizes he can't follow his impulses with her.  "Dream carefully," she tells him and drives away in her limo.  After watching Robert Morse's act, that won't be easy.  That dinner doesn't compare to the one he goes to at Charles' house where Dana and Charles' wife Rondi Reed dance and tell jokes we can't possible comprehend.  To the same soundtrack, Angie and a bunch of goons show up at Nick's art studio.  Making puns out of his sister's death, she then pokes his eyes out.  "My eyes, the bitch took my eyes," Nick cries, as if he's in a Greek tragedy.

The reason "Church Windows" doesn't need sets is because it's aired with a special television attachment that actually plays it in the viewer's living room, more holograms.  That's the first time "Wild Palms" has seemed actually futuristic cool.

Next to attack Angie is her own daughter, as Dana demands to know about "the Friends" and if her son is a plant.  Angie just gets all creepy-looking and all but laughs at her.

The problem with the hologram technology is that everyone wants it, so James makes a deal with the networks so they have to pay for it instead of someday just aping it and "doing it better," as he informs a raging (what else is new?) Robert Loggia, who didn't authorize any deal.  However, the deal makes sure Channel 3 will always be in control and Robert is mollified.  James the meets Kim, finally giving into his lust on the beach with her (a locale she sniffs shouldn't be "public domain") and between the kisses, she tells him they have found the man who abducted her son and she wants him to go see the guy with her.  During a make-out session, James obviously can't say no.

The first episode ends with a montage of sorts.  There's Dana obsessively going through pictures again.  Brad Dourif has his glasses on, Nick is blind and Robert Loggia celebrates his birthday with Angie, Bebe and Robert Morse (who, FYI, have four Tony Awards between them), cutting a giant cake bearing stained glass windows.  Meanwhile, Kim, James and the goons track down her son's abductor on the beach, but Kim trips trying to kill him.  She begs James to catch up to him and do it for her.  He overtakes the man, his pal Ernie Hudson (from behind, we knew it had to be him because there have been no other black cast members).  "This is how it begins," he says to James.

No, actually, that's how it ends, at least the first part of "Wild Palms," so far a hodgepodge of fancy words and howlingly inept acting.  Everyone here knows this is still network-sponsored claptrap and they have a whale of a time putting it over.  Chances like that are few!

Before we find out if James went through with killing Ernie or not, James is on his way to work and asks Kim why his best friend would have done with a thing.  "He was in love with me once," she says dramatically, playing femme fatale in a movie no one else is in.  Apparently, during a time way back when she and James were together, those two had a fight, sending her into Ernie's arms and he became "obsessed" with her.  He even went to work for Robert Loggia, but was caught stealing software and joined the Friends.  According to Kim, Ernie took the kid for "revenge, because he couldn't have me!"

As another stall tactic, Charles gives James Mimeszine, a drug that allows for physical interaction with holograms, in this case, a barely-legal girl with a Miss Alabama sash.  He tries to explain it to Dana, drunk in the tub and not making much sense (or even full sentences).  It's also a suicide attempt, though James doesn't realize that until she slips under the water (anyone else would realize that a barely-coherent woman in a tub always means a suicide attempt).

James is kidnapped by Nick, Charles and Charles Rocket and taken to a tunnel underneath his pool, where they tie him up and urge him to join their cause.  They tell him his marriage was arrange and that his son is the equivalent of a genetic test tube baby.  There's a lot more about the Friends and Fathers, veiled references that we're not supposed to get.  Unfortunately, by this point, things are so clouded in mystery, and there are so many clouds, that I'm frankly losing interest.  Either reveal something big soon or it could be gone permanently.  James goes back to Bob Gunton to talk about it, ending with "I wish I would have seen the rhino.  That way, I would have known it was a dream."

Hold tight, no explanations are forthcoming.  Instead, Ben pretends to be the kid selling maps to movie stars' homes to get Charles to pick him up, an elaborate ruse that ends in a hotel where Ben zaps Charlie into paralysis.  Ben straddles Charles' chest and tells him to back off James, with goons outside the door. He then opens up a kit of tools and tells Charles, "I'm going to do some cutting now."

That other kid, Aaron Michael Metchick, shows up at the loony bin as Dana is packing to leave.  He disappears when Dana is distracted by a nurse.

James and Kim go to Robert Loggia's, where he has an enormous Zen rock garden.  James thinks it looks like "dogs in the water," which gets Robert to laugh, "that's kick-ass haiku!"  It's certainly not haiku and definitely not kick-ass.  Hell, it's not even funny!  This rock garden exists only because Robert tells Kim and James they are going to Kyoto after "Church Windows" airs for the first time.  Dana begs to go on the trip and James finally has to quash that dream by telling her Kim is will be there.  That shuts her up.

It's time for "Church Windows!"  Ben is jumping on the furniture in excitement.  Cue the holograms, so that the characters are walking around the family living room, with the laugh track behind them.  "Now we have begun!" Robert says, yet the umpteenth time that annoying line has been muttered.

We've spent so much time working up to "Church Windows," to see only a handful of lines.  Instead, we jump to James and Kim, now fully as Natasha, but lacking a Boris, in Kyoto.  Kim, FYI, speaks perfect Japanese.  Oh, and wouldn't you know, Robert Morse is performing in the sake joint in Kyoto.  Kim doesn't need to speak much Japanese, because the man they are meeting speaks the Hollywood version of Asian English and also has a translator present.  And a sleazy gal pal.  Plus, the man knows everything, about Dana's insanity and even about loony Brad Dourif.  The transaction doesn't happen and the three Japanese go off giggling, setting Asian stereotypes in Hollywood back to the 1930s, but at least James gets the most honest line of the movie after they leave: "what the hell is going on?"  Unfortunately, in a snit about being used, he undoes that good by proclaiming, "this geisha is going for a walk!"  He tries his best to act this scene of anger, but Belushi ain't much of an actor and there ain't much to play anyway.

James is lured into a room full of candles where he is strapped to a table and the menacing Asian trio and others tell him bits of pieces of nonsense that, as expected, makes no sense.  Back in the US, drunken Rondi Reed, missing her dead hubby Charles, is escorted to Dana's house to spew some slurred dialogue and make Dana wonder once again who the boy she's raising is.  She confronts Ben, who admits to killing Charles.  Angry Dana goes to confront her mother, but before they can chat, Angie Dickinson starts punching her in the stomach.  Can this be the weirdest moment yet?  Angie issues a warning that Dana should keep her mouth shut and then clocks her big across the face and goes back to her luncheon pals.

For whatever reason you want to imagine, since the scenes are so incoherent by now it hardly matters, James goes to visit David Warner.  There is some Friends and Fathers crap, a bit of history and, after nearly the entire episode, we hear that Ernie is still alive, merely arrested.  I know, you forgot about him. We all did.  David's speech is ultra-lofty, acting with his own brand of British aplomb, comparing the Senator Robert to Alexander the Great and giving James a shred of information about his father.

It's discovered that Ernie has escaped from prison, using that old stand-by of a hologram in his place, Robert Morse terrorizes Brad with questions, a particularly bad rendition of bad cop goo...oh, wait, he's playing only one cop.  The episode ends with James discovering a palm tattoo on his hand and Dana going berserk over it.

It's not only Robert Morse who can perform here.  When James visits Robert Loggia, the latter is watching three Asian girls lip sync to The Supremes.  James asks Robert about his father, to be told he was "legendary for two things: the purity of his LSD and the fact that he was never seen in public without a tie."  Both extremely helpful pieces of information, no?  Hey, in this world, that's a lot!  Actually, there is more, because it was James' father who came up a way to "free the mind from the body," but he killed himself, in a gruesome way, because the first shot didn't kill him and he had to wait ten minutes to shoot again.  WHAT?  At this point, I can only report what is said.  I'm as lost as you, but I'm REALLY beginning not to care, so someone needs to start talking sense soon!

Ernie returns to the Friends, telling Nick with the utmost insincerity, "I'm sorry about your eyes!"

James is converted to Robert Loggia's ways once he's given a beach house.  Dana tries to tell him he's being bought and that they are being controlled, but James snaps that there is always a conspiracy and "you can either head for the hills or stick it out at the beach house."  That should actually be a good line, but it's not the climax of the whiny scene where the two continue to argue.

Dana's old pal Francois Chau, who seemed like he might have been a friend to James back in Kyoto, arrives in Los Angeles.  He begs her to talk to James again, because James is the key, and should James not listen, "then you run!"  "Where are we going to run?  Where are we all going to run?  To paradise?" she asks, confused and forlorn.

Brad has created a special pair of glasses just for Robert Morse, whose philosophy, and I can't make this up, is "where does a song go when it's not being sung?"  The glasses send Robert into a world where he watches himself perform "All of Me" as he shoves his fist down the other Robert's throat (yeah, it's weirder than weird), killing Robert, at least one of them.

Francois brings Dana the news that David has escaped from the institution, so she rushes off to a gathering of the Friends.  She has to sit through a stage parody of Robert and Angie.  Even as some sort of war looms, at least they are laughing.  Brad, gagged, has to suffer through more threats from Angie, who forces him to wear a pair of glasses showing his beloved being killed.  But, it's Robert who wakes up screaming, with Kim to comfort him.  Do you really care what he's been dreaming?  I didn't think so. He has a rambling monologue and then puts on a hologram trying to have sex with Kim, who is repulsed by him.  He accuses Kim of being in love with James.

Both feeling sorry for themselves, James and Kim have drinks.  Actually, this is one of the only real scenes in the movie so far, as they kind of remind us of the story a bit, the heart of it, but it's all ruined when James takes Kim to a very bizarre bar, manned by a cross-dressing doorman.  Charles Rocket is the stand-up comic there that night and he launches into an act that bashes Robert Loggia and his ideas.  The crowd departs in droves listening to his truth.  The police raid the joint, but the let James go because he has the all-important palm tattoo.  He gets home to find Ben crying.  "Mommy left with a Japanese man!" he bleats.  "She what?" says James, so obviously fed up with this crap that it's said in a slight mocking tone that isn't that hard to figure.  Hey, he's been fed worse over the course of the miniseries, so why should his wife disappearing with an Asian man rile him?  Naturally, Ben has totally played James.

Unsure of everything, James has a video conferenced session with Dr. Bob Gunton, who listens to a rehash of recent episodes without cracking up, telling James he must go to the police.  "There's no police.  Maybe it's the other way around, maybe there's nothing but police!" James wails.

There's a meeting of the bad guys and no one looks happy, despite being dressed in formal-wear out by the pool.  "I have got to stop eating.  I look like Cass Elliot," Bebe complains.  Ben gets Kim all riled up, so she slaps him.  Even more upsetting is Robert's announcement that he will be running for President and therefore marrying Kim for propriety's sake.  Everyone chants.

Outside the Church of Synthiotics, where James has been chanting, Ernie comes up to him, pretending to be a homeless man (that's the only disguise available?) to arrange a meeting where James can see his wife and daughter.  When he arrives home, Kim is there smoking nervously, to tell him her personal history (no one has bothered to ask this long, so why bother?).  If you insist on knowing, her father was a journalist who cost Robert Loggia an election, so he had her kidnapped and raised in the New Realism fold, everything else being a lie.  James seems most upset that she was "with him" while they were together.  That pissed Robert off, so he had Kim taken away and delivered Grace.  "Your marriage was arranged," she informs him, adding the whopper that Angie is Robert's sister!  "How could you do this to me?" James very selfishly asks.  "They did it," Kim reminds him (good for you!).  Kim refuses to answer the question of whether Ben is his, so he grabs her and slaps her (that keeps working in this movie).  In mounting hysteria, Kim admits that Ben is her son, with Robert and yes, the babies were switched at birth, so no, Ben is not his.

This sends James off to confront Angie, who clucks, "the women in your life are going to hell," to which he responds, "and you're driving the bus!"  Oh, that angers her but good and she reminds him that he clawed his way into this life.  He sees Ben and realizes finally that they are not blood relatives.

James is supposed to Ernie at a specific locale (Forest Lawn, where his father is buried), but it's Aaron who comes to fetch him.  "We're hittin' the yellow brick road.  What do you need?  A heart?  A brain?  Courage?" the kid asks?  At the same time, David invites Angie to dine in James' pool.  Angie pretends still cares for him, but he wipes it away with "sounds like a Channel 3 soap."  He admits, he's still bitter. Ten years in the funny farm will do that to a man, even in the future.  The conversation is so demented, I can't even quote the damn thing.  At one point, Angie admits, "I'm parched.  My brother loves the desert, not I...I want to taste you. To smell you.  To start the holy war all over again."  Eh?  Run that by us again.  It's all David needs to sweep her up in an embrace, but only so he can bite her during some negotiating.  Bleeding, she leaves spouting curses in Japanese.  This is by far the most ludicrous bit so far, not that any of Angie's scenes make sense, but this one is the ice cream on to the top of the sundae.

James joins his friends in the tunnels underneath his pool, reunited with his wife and daughter (who speaks now and then), Ernie and even Nick though when Kim is captured and brought in, blind Nick chirps, "I smell...sea breeze and death!"  She's there to tell James of Robert's plans.  The key is still Brad, and David aims to go and free him, and if it doesn't work he will "gut you in the street," he tells Kim, lest it's a trap.

David stages a raid so they can rescue Brad from the Senator's clutches, losing one man as they save Brad and take him to the sea where he's always been happiest and can then die.  Dana and her daughter go missing, unfortunately.  And Brad is killed.  So much for his grandly over-the-top acting.  We shall miss it.

Only one more episode to go!

At an enormous party, the wedding of Robert Loggia and Kim Catrall, Robert Morse croons "Let's Face the Music and Dance."  James is there, trailed by a detective, whom he finally tells to "climb out of my life and climb back into whatever wet hole you call home."  Angrily, James confronts Kim, as he wants answers to where his yet-again-missing friends and family are.  He decides maybe killing Robert would work.  Kim warns him against that, so he snaps, "have a hot wedding night."

Aaron summons James to the movies ("Rebel Without a Cause," though Aaron says "no one watches movies anymore, only TV").  James only wants to know where his wife and daughter are.  James is led to a strange bar where he finds Nick.  Nick tells him David has Dana safe, but they can't let James in on where.  Ernie is there too, but he's so far gone from Mimezine poisoning, "he'll be ringing the bells at Notre Dame," soon, according to Nick.  Since this is delivered in a hovel that is all burn-out hippie and 70s rock, we're supposed to link this to anti-war post-Vietnam suffering soldiers.  It's not an obvious jump and completely out of place in the context (if there is any context left).

Next up, Aaron confronts Ben, trying to pull out some filial feeling in him, but then resorting to threats he knows will work.  "Once the ratings drop, they'll sell your holographic imagine like a video game.  You'll be a relic" he says.  The two have a ridiculous physical fight.

James and Robert Loggia have a wacky conversation where Robert tells James his mother was Japanese (explains Angie's ability to speak it), well, "just a drop" and spent World War II in an internment camp.  Robert then attacks James, whose doctor removed the chip inside his palm tattoo without him knowing.  The camera starts to do nauseating 360 swoops around the two arguing and then James finally runs off shouting that Robert is "crazy!"  No way, really?

It's now James' turn to be beaten up and taken away by goons while the rest of the world watches without caring.  He is told Dana is dead and then given Mimezine because he doesn't know where the all-important "chip" that he was supposed to have gotten from the Japanese is (he really doesn't know).  This sends him into a googly trance that proves he doesn't know where the chip is.  Oops, that's going to be a problem.

Increasingly desperate Ben demands to know what his future holds, if he really will be a has-been after "Church Windows."  Angie tries to placate him, but he accuses her of killing Dana and slaps her around with her sun reflector (just the kind of thing that would have been modernized by 2007, no?) and threatens her.

Expecting a big ending?  I don't think there was much budget left.  Francois kills himself in prison, Ernie dies in Nick's arms (like a religious painting) and the world finds out the truth, at least one part of it, when James forces a tech to cut into "Church Windows," airing just before a big announcement from Robert Loggia to air the footage Aaron shot of Angie strangling Dana to death.  After that, James flees the TV station in his car, enormous glycerin tears running down his clearly-not-into-it face as he shouts for his dead wife's forgiveness.

The biggest problem with "Wild Palms" is that it thinks it's futuristic, but it's trapped way in the past.  It does very little to pretend it's 2007, while always doing its best to act as film noir, circa 1947.  The costumes, the dialogue, the way it's shot, even most of the plots, are lifted right from 40s.  A homage to film noir isn't a bad idea, unless you want your movie to be futuristic.  No one has given any thought as to what 2007 might be like, except that holograms can walk and people will be wearing formal clothing at all time.  The cars, minds and actions of everyone in 2007 are barely a consideration.  Science fiction is supposed to be legitimate fun, where the mind is allowed to run wild with "what if" ideas.  That's all missing here.

What we have instead is gut-busting hilarity of the camp kind, if you skip over all of the pseudo-religious malarkey they toss at us (and it's easy to do so, because it comes and goes and always seems to be spoken by the mad people, who render it immediately nonsensical).  The performances are all over the place, from James Belushi's grounded one to Kim Catrall's shout-out to Lana Turner or Robert Loggia's shout-out to, hell, maybe Peter Finch in "Network."  Don't ask me what Angie Dickinson is doing, she's in a world of her own.

As much as I needed break from Southern belles and World War II, it turns out "Wild Palms" is just too darn stupid to be historic.