Pearl (1978)

My friends, it's been a long time since we sifted our way through a World War II miniseries, and there are only about 407 more to get through, so let's just jump right into "Pearl."  As in the harbor.  As in you know exactly what is going to happen before we even start because we know how war miniseries work: toss a jumble of characters together with secrets and lies and them hit 'em with the war when they least expect it, unraveling all of those secrets and lies for the lucky characters who survive.

Oh, if this strikes you as at all familiar, it's because it's the exact same ado as "From Here to Eternity."  "Pearl" predates the remake of the latter as a miniseries, but still steals generous helpings of it from at least the novel and the original film, both of which are classics.  "Pearl," well, is not.

If you need the narration to tell you what happened at Pearl Harbor, stop reading this and pick up a book, any book.  However, the narrator is there as a reminder, but awfully overzealous and flowery.  "More than human life was lost that morning.  A special world died too, the world of American innocents," he gravely intones.  It's not untrue, but it's been said better.  But, let's not think of December 7 yet.  Let's go back before that.

Our narrator almost loses his breath (seriously) while describing Oahu before the attack.  Not only does take great pains to list every nationality present on the island, but he insists all was utterly perfect as if the war in the rest of the world didn't matter.  Well, that's a bit of historical re-invention.  It was the base for a naval fleet, one that was growing and growing in anticipation of someone finally flipping the switch to enter the US into a war it would inevitably have to fight.  What was going on in "this honeyed land" was years in the making; it's no coincidence that we were able to declare war the minute the Japanese bombed.

The story begins on December 4, with the Japanese fleet navigating through stormy waters somewhere in the Pacific Ocean and assembling its air force for readiness.  War councils are conducted in Japanese, but that's way too boring, so we instead start to watch a bunch of flesh rumps doing the hula in extreme close-up.  It's a class for the most bored and boring housewives on the island.

In comes their "social director" (named Midge), Angie Dickinson, with a mane of blonde hair.  She is easily the least appealing person for that role, immediately castigating the women for not bothering to ask  why they are in a hula class at 9am the day after all of them arrived on the island.  One brave but very stupid woman says it's "keen to learn the hula" and she wants to "learn all the island customs."  With that, Angie realizes it's pointless to talk sense and gives them back over to the hula instructor.

Then aren't a whole lot smarter, it seems, but at least they know why they are there (or think they do, at any rate).  It's not to play handball, though that's how we meet Lieutenant Gregg Henry and Captain Robert Wagner, the latter head to toe in white, but somehow not sweating.  Gregg is thinking of leaving the army.  Uh oh, that makes him instantly unlikeable because the American miniseries is insanely patriotic.  Of course, in ten minutes, we have yet to meet a character who is likable, which is strange.    We should be head over heels for SOMEONE by now!

The Japanese fleet is told that though Americans are "shallow...they could prove a formidable foe."  Okay, two issues.  First, yes, Americans are shallow, but we should be taking personality lessons from the Japanese of 1941, trying to bludgeon the world because no one paid them any attention since we opened up their land against their will 100 years before?  Second, "could" be a formidable foe?  Okay, that's giving the Japanese no credit at all.  Neither the Germans nor the Japanese were at all surprised by the sudden might of the war machine once it was decided to get the US involved.  The minute it happened, the talk in Europe switched from how to survive to what to do with the continent after the war was over!  Is there ANYONE this miniseries wants us to like or believe?

It's sure as hell not ass-kissing Sgt. Brian Dennehy, the army's most out-of-shape soldier, or Colonel Dennis Weaver, who talks while brandishing a whip just to discuss how unhappy he is with the driver RJ hired for him.  Dennis is also completely humorless over a dozen jokes about the driver's name and is all pissy that his wife Angie has been making snarky remarks to the other officers' wives.  She's bitter, he assumes she's drunk and they speak like they hate each other.  How about Private Christian Vance, the incompetent driver with the funny last name who Dennis accuses of not liking women, the true crux of his issue with Pvt. Finger (yes, that's his funny name).  "Just look at him!" Dennis snaps, because the boy is too pretty to be straight, but RJ is there to defend him, 30 years pre-Stonewall and three drinks just to get through this bizarre scene, one that has the flow of an Escher painting.  By the end of the scene, well, I have not a clue what has happened.  I think the pretty private still has a job.

The Japanese are given the order to attack Pearl Harbor at 8am on Sunday and be prepared to "die for our Emperor."

Awwwww.  However, when she offers to give away her car for free, I'm wondering if she's not thinking of jumping off the nearest volcano.  Sixth grade health class, the second way of telling a person is about to off herself--giving away possessions.

There's a ridiculous subplot going on about slot machines.  Apparently, Dennis is getting back at Company A for dumping the possibly queer kid on him by impounding Company A's slot machines for his company.  I wish it took just one scene to waste this time, but no, it keeps going.  We have A LOT of time to kill before the Japanese arrive.  The capper is a conversation RJ and Brian have about grasping for drumsticks and always being second best that has no bearing on anything other than to prove that the two men are very different.  Yes, we understood that from their rank and from RJ's perfect Southern manners as compared to meathead Brian is portraying.

You didn't think we would escape more than 30 minutes without a mixed race romance, did you?  Oh, come on!  Our fated Romeo and Juliet here are Gregg, who grew up on the island in all of his blond splendor, and Tiana Alexander, the hospital worker/journalist Lesley Ann so unfairly slashed a few scenes ago.  They went to school together, though she can't imagine how he would remember one native girl from all the others.  He helps her fix a tire and she drives him to the hotel where he's both meeting his family and she's covering a Chamber of Commerce meeting.  Cute, I know.  Can you stand it?  It's a shame they have zip in the chemistry department or it could have been a fun little scene.

Gregg's family, well, they also leave something to be desired.  Papa Richard Anderson is another career soldier and Mama Marion Ross seems a bit grouchy, not to mention the requisite annoying little sister, Mary Crosby.  Richard is already speaking like a haunted ghost because he has a desk job in the war he knows is coming.

Tiana gets to take in Dennis' speech where he announces "the Japanese are using Hawaii as a stepping stone to world conquest," and does so in glasses so we take her more seriously.  He feels this way about Hawaii before Japanese invasion, fearing that "American culture" is being "melted" by Japanese intrusion already, a "conspiracy" as Tiana challenges him and to which he agrees.  This sets him off on a tirade against in-breeding that makes him sound wowingly racist, even by the standards of 1940.  Sorry, but aren't the Americans the ones who took Hawaii from Pacific Islanders?  Okay, maybe the Japanese too, but they are also Pacific Islanders.  The all-white audience doesn't totally buy Dennis' blather, but RJ has to run after Tiana to explain his commander.  "When you print the story, don't be kind," he quips.  There's that Southern charm again.

"So, how you makin' out with the new girls out here?" Mary asks Gregg.  "You know your brother is engaged!" Marion reminds her.  WOAH!  Gregg, who just arranged to meet Tiana at the fruit market at 6am is engaged?  That's news to everyone but the family, apparently.  Gregg answers that by saying he's resigning his commission, moving out on his own and, naturally, not marrying this faceless girl.  The conversation is WASP heaven, ending with "I'm the Scotch" from Marion when the waitress brings the beverages.

Dennis goes poking through Angie's things (spraying her perfume on his hand is either wistful or creepy) and finds a wrapped up photo at the bottom of a drawer of her...no, I'm not going to say lover...daughter.  A cute little blonde kid.

Now, the story needs a nympho and obviously it has to be Angie Dickinson (Pepper Anderson notwithstanding, she did kind of make a career out of this role), who shows up to seduce Robert Wagner, which apparently she's never been able to fully do.  He sidesteps her to do 50 laps in the pool (maybe Brian Dennehy isn't the most out of shape man in this movie), but she merely walks into the pool fully clothed.  That's the kind of ballsy dame she is!  After she kisses him, he tells her, "you don't need a part-time lover...you need a full-time friend."  "What Victorian novel did you get that out of?" she asks, stealing the words from right out of my mouth!  A few more cold pieces of banter and RJ resists her arms, sending her off to a hot bath with the butler.  I think we have our hero!  Doesn't even sleep with the boss' wife...well, not yet at least.  I don't see Robert Wagner taking on any sexless roles, but let's wait and see!

That night, there is, by Pearl Harbor standards, a gala movie affair.  They are showing "Gone With the Wind" and Angie is dressed for a red carpet that isn't there.  "This man is new, isn't he?" she asks Dennis as the poor maybe-gay driver looks right through her upon opening the car.  Wow, this minuscule plot line is already running out of steam, the poor kid.

After Dennis gives one of his usual foot-in-mouth speeches to introduce the film, he takes his seat next to Angie, who is sitting beside dry-as-dust Audra Lindley (yup, Mrs. Roper), who hopefully can't help but provide some extra good entertainment.  They are rivals.  The more-than-half-empty theater is treated to some war footage first, about how well England is coping with the Battle of Britain (yeah, the foreshadowing is pretty obvious).  Lesley Ann bolts the theater and not only does her date run after her, but so does Robert.

The date seems unconcerned, but Robert follows her outside, noting her license plate.  He's practicing for "Hart to Hart" already, I suppose.

It's finally Friday, December 5.  We're getting there, folks.  Slowly and totally unsurely, but getting there.    Dennis is up at the bugle, showing off some rather infantile pajamas, and Angie, in her separate bedroom, snaps "another day in the trenches."  I have no idea what this dame sounds like not sarcastic since that's the only way her lines have been delivered so far.  Dennis wonders aloud if he shouldn't "do what Clark Gable did to Vivien Leigh," in the previous night's movie, but Angie heads him off there, finishing it with, "you wouldn't leave me," rather than letting him get any sexual ideas into his head.  Instead, she goes to her mirror and utters a fantastic line!  "I need four hens.  Two to get by with and two to hold back the lines."  Someone write that down, I love it!  She is then uncharacteristically reduced to tears by the picture of the dead daughter left out by Dennis.

Poor Christian Vance is hassled with gay-themed pictures his fellow grunts have drawn and this starts a big fight.  Perhaps we're inching away from micro-plotting.

We all know the reason we bothered to wake up so early was so Gregg and Tiana could meet at the market.  They have "only six hours" until they each have to be somewhere.  "I'll shop fast," Tania says before haggling with the  merchants, smile ablaze.  She makes the mistake of asking him about his family and he launches into a boring speech about wanting to leave the army and how it didn't sit well with his folks.  Her incessant haggling gets annoying, but luckily both brought bathing suits, so we won't spend six hours in the market.

It didn't take Robert long to find Lesley Ann's place, and he shows up with flowers, which should be even more bizarre since they've never met.  Indeed, good actress that Lesley Ann is (we're lucky to have her here, that's for sure), she is awfully perplexed, but RJ barrels his way in while she's trying to puzzle it out.  Putting the flowers in water, he asks her out on a date, and somehow she agrees!  With a complete stranger who has tracked her down through her license plate.  This comatose woman agrees to a date for that night?

But wait, it gets better!  Better!

Robert leaves and Lesley Ann decides to down a bottle of pills.  She hesitates, looks at the waves, and goes to gulp when in bursts Robert.  Literally!  Kids, I can't make this up, this happens for real in "Pearl."  And freeze, commercial.

"You're thinking, how did I know, huh?" he asks her.  She doesn't answer, but I, for one, would love to know.  He then goes on to actually explain how he figured it out, with a straight face that somehow she shares.   If his Miss Marple routine doesn't have you doubling in half, you are a lost cause, stick with "War and Remembrance."  The corniness endures as he goes back to the Greeks to explain why suicide isn't such a bad thing, which probably isn't helpful, but naturally works in this Velveeta parade.

After a brief check-in with the Japanese, RJ and Lesley Ann have graduated to a beach horseback riding session as they get to know each other.  He rattles on and she's not paying any attention.  He asks if she wants to hear more and she says no, but he continues.  Now the actors are as oblivious as the script?  She tries to escape his clutches, but he insists and orders her to stay at his house.  Smart Dr. Lesley Ann somehow goes along with his program all because he promises things will be better as "you got me."  Not inspiring.

For the first time, Angie shows a little bit of sadness, moaning to pal Katherine Helmond that "when I look in the mirror, I don't see myself anymore."  That cliche line is from the same script as the Robert and Lesley Ann are in?  War does crazy things to a miniseries.  "You only come over here to complain, you don't listen," Katherine says, noting how Angie actually enjoys her battles with Dennis and will never leave him.  At least this scene explains what the hell is going on with Angie and Dennis, though through LONG exposition from bratty Katherine.

We pause for a bit of history on the radio that tells us...not what you think.  No, just that Washington has sent the Japanese ambassador a "ten point memorandum" about Japanese activities in the Far East and expects a reply.  A forgotten fact of US entry into World War II was that negotiations were going on in the nation's capital that would have gotten us into the war at some point, but on terms far more favorable than a surprise attack that nearly clobbered the navy.

This is all going to make Gregg and Tiana's romance even more awkward because she's Japanese.  The fact that she announces to the born-in-Japan family that she has a date with a white man doesn't go over any better with her family than it will with his.

That day passes very quickly because it's already December 6 (which means this day is going to take FOREVER).  It starts badly, with RJ back in the swimming trunks.  But, Lesley Ann is all smiles in her one-piece, followed down the beach by the butler with drinks.  He offers her the entire weekend (oops), she assumes that means sex, gets pouty, but he explains it's only for "affection and support."  She glumly agrees.  First, though, he has to check in and headquarters and sees suspicious fire signals.  He and a g-man discuss it and decide the Japanese won't make an attack (oops).  The g-man is more worried about "sabotage" from the local Japanese.  RJ decides to note it to Dennis anyway, but it's not taken seriously (oops).  Dennis has a ball to throw that night and nothing is more important!  He's doing Cole Porter proud, but it's bad news for the navy.

Privates "Gayface" Christian and Adam Arkin go over to a brothel run by...surprise...Katherine Helmond!  She knows Adam well, has his usual girl ready and wants to please Christian very much, but he can't find a girl he likes and wants to "look around on my own."  Luckily, he's not on driving duty because Audra and her general hubby are picking Dennis up.  Angie has just bolted the premises when they show up, so Dennis has to fumble for excuses before joining them.  Audra knows something is up, something more than just her eyebrow.  Anyway, the current plots collide when Angie passes by sad-looking Christian on the street and offers him a ride back to the base.  I guess she's gotten over her fear of him from movie night.  She hasn't forgotten him, actually, just her fear, because she cracks, "you drive my husband around, I drive him crazy" as a bonding tool.  Christian is so dim-witted that when Angie parks the car in a secluded spot, he wants to check a map to see where they are.  "I'd forgotten things could be beautiful," she says melodramatically staring at him in the moonlight before kissing him.

"Please ma'am," he says, pushing her off.
"Please do or please don't?"

He worries about breaking the rules, as diddling an officer's wife is "second only to treason."  I've not seen that in the rules anywhere, but then again, I've never attempted to write a kitsch "From Here To Eternity" knock off.  She's not giving up, so he gives in.  Hah!  Who is gay now?  You go, Christian, with a hundred violins, no less.  And, all before the Japanese can interrupt.

You know what Adam likes to do with the hookers?  Paint their portraits.  That's disappointing!  So, the only people on the island getting it on are Angie and Christian?  That's unexpected.  Making it worse, he's a painter-philosopher and we have to listen to the mumbo jumbo that comes with the latter (aka, a time killer).  Good thing the gal he has for the night also likes to chat in that manner.

Lest we forget anything serious, Tiana brings Gregg in to meet her parents.  He brings gifts, is exceedingly polite, but is, as expected, ignored.  Also, as expected, he's a good sport about it.  She delivers a resolute speech to her father that she respects her ancestry, but she is going out with this hunky white guy.  It even turns into a civics lesson, but Pops ain't budging.

What wold a whorehouse be without a brawl?  Adam's paintings come in for some jokes, so he thrashes everyone he can find.  Katherine doesn't seem to mind.

The navy ball?  It's a snooze.  Dennis, dancing with Audra, isn't thrilled to see Gregg dancing with Asian Tiana, but he doesn't recognize her from a few days ago because, "I have trouble telling one from another."  I've been waiting hours for that line.  Though RJ promised he wouldn't try to have sex with Lesley Ann, he does, she panics and bolts.  She finds comfort on a swing outside, going back and forth like a crazed woman as he professes his love for her.  Already?  When did he have time to fall in love?  Was it at the aborted pill swallowing or did the swings clinch it for him?  And the swings, now we're borrowing from "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

Gregg tells Tiana more about his boring life, but she's enough history and asks him point blank why he hasn't made a move on her.  Well, he's kind of used to Asian women being "confirmed virgins or karate experts."  She lets that one pass because she's damn horny and not ashamed of it.  She's further turned on by his lack of experience with girls, and that's when, uh oh, he mentions the discarded fiancee.  Nope, that doesn't scare her either.  "Can we make love?" she asks.  "When?" he replies nervously and follows with another 20 questions before finally kissing her.  When a girl is that ready, what red-white-and-blue straight guy holds out so long?

Angie has no such problems.  She drops Christian off and is found by Brian Dennehy.  He wants money to keep it quiet, which she absolutely expected.  Frankly, she's insulted at the low amount she wants so she grabs his gun and flattens his tire (the car tire, not his spare one), with a threat to kill him if he blabs.  At least this character has some surprises to her.  I was beginning to think the approaching Japanese were the only interesting people in the movie.

Speaking of, dawn has broken and it's December 7.  Tiana greets the day at a Shinto shrine, with Gregg looking on proudly.  "I'm also a Methodist," she informs him.  They hear the planes, but Gregg doesn't think it could be anything important so early.  Saucy Angie has been out all night and returns to a smack in the face from Dennis, which we know is pleasing to her.  Robert is playing polo (polo?) when Lesley Ann comes to ask him to escort her to the boat off the island.  Katherine is taking the painted girl to church, with oodles of been-there advice.  In other words, no one is paying any attention to the skies above.  Tension should be building, but none of these people are fascinating enough to make that happen and we know that history can't be put off forever.

It takes a nameless character to realize the planes dropping bombs are Japanese on the attack, but Lesley Ann is just getting to the reason she's been so darn upset (dead boyfriend).  Take your pick, you can mute the sound because of the attack or the dialogue and you won't miss much.

Finally, the alert goes out and everyone knows what those pesky planes are really doing up there.  Some are slower to react, such as Dennis, still howling at Angie as his naval base is bombed to ruins.  There is always time for a pointless argument, Angie still full of quips.  If you are still on mute, consider yourself fortunate.  A constantly ringing phone eventually ends this scene.  "We're at war," Dennis tells her.  "You and I have been at war for the last 18 years," Angie clucks, still not getting it.

Some, like Gregg's father Richard Anderson, are quick to mobilize, while others get the gabs, like Adam, who has an insanely long speech while the whole navy is running around him.  He even has time to answer some sex questions from Christian.  That's just a blatant waste of time when we know we have tearful partings from couples like Gregg and Tiana (big kisses and he has to get to work).  Oh, and Robert says out loud that he's happy for a war because it's keeping Lesley Ann on the island.  That makes as much sense as anything else he's said to her, so she doesn't find it shocking.

Alas, the plot churns and so I must report the windings.  At first, everyone we've met so far survives, though in various states of hysteria (Mary Crosby is particularly ripe, worrying about being raped, but veteran scene-stealer Marion Ross out-does her).  Richard is the calming effect, telling his family, and thus us, that the Japanese can't land on their particular island.  Maybe another, but not this one, so air raids are to be the worst of it.  It sounds convincing, I suppose.  "If I didn't know any better, I'd say my father planned this thing to make sure I didn't get out of the navy," his son Gregg says to mates.  Just for that, the boat he's on is bombed, sending him into the water, but alive.

Dennis is excited to put some plans into action, plans someone was careful enough to draw up in case something like this happened.  He mentions there will be censorship and even the bars will be closed.  "Not that bars, sir!" Robert sneers, as if he has some better plan just waiting to be unfurled.  Dennis warns him, "we must not take advantage of the awesome powers that are to be delegated to us," which also gets a sarcastic rejoinder from his know-it-all inferior knocking Dennis down a few pegs.

The FBI makes a beeline for Tiana's house, questioning her father's need for so many pigeons and tossing around threats.  But, Tiana is understanding, agreeing that "you have to worry about such things now."  Her father shows he's no traitor by killing this pigeons.  One by one.  In real time.

Need we guess who is the first true hero?  It's RJ, of course, the marquee star.  He not only saves a child from a burning house, but a Japanese child and stays around to worry about the other houses on the street while Dennis drives off to do his work.  Oh, don't worry, the first time his hair gets singed, he'll forget all about the kids, even the I'm-so-noble-I-save-the-children-of-potential-enemies part of him.

It's the enlisted men who are smartest, giving their superiors great suggestions and even letting Japanese civilians help out (seems dubious, but okay).  Naturally, there is must use for Lesley Ann's surgical skills, but there is a lack of help at the hospital, soon filled by...the hookers!  "My girls are cleaner" than anything on the island, Katherine demands and they are allowed to help.  War breaks down all barriers.

After weasel Brian Dennehy claims his jeep was hit by enemy fire (it was just Angie, remember?), Dennis is told of the mounting casualties.  "Murder!  Murder!  By God, now we're taking control," he finally decides.  A little late to the game, but still welcome.  He has so many hams around him that he's stayed fairly muted, but it's a miniseries and everyone wants an Emmy.  Not that anyone here stands a chance.

Our first big "uh oh" moment comes when Robert and Tiana see a bloodied and very wounded Gregg wheeled into the hospital.

(FYI, the battle scenes, which are impressive, are unused footage from "Tora! Tora! Tora!")

A very confused Angie pays a lucky cab driver $100 to drive her around, first stopping at Katherine's to hear that "a very special world around us is dying" (I'm assuming she means this is bad for her business) and then insisting on going to the naval base!  "I have to do something and I'm not afraid any longer," Angie announces to Katherine, revealing what is apparently a long-dormant second personality, because we've not seen this Angie previously.

Back to the hospital.  Gregg is awake and asking for Tiana, though RJ insists the soap keep bubbling, demanding to know of Lesley Ann at this particular moment, in the middle of the hospital on this day, why a girl with such smarts would try suicide.  I like her reply.  "Leave me alone!"

There isn't a scratch on Gregg, looking awfully fresh upon waking up and being cleaned off.  "My parents will love you.  I'm gonna tell them all about you," he says to Tiana, who agrees.  We all know what happens to characters who promise the future in a miniseries.  They don't usually live to see it.  Unaware of that law, Gregg proposes and Tiana accepts, then it's off to surgery for Gregg.

Grinning and laughing, Brian is excited about the war and tells Private Christian it's for two reasons.  First, the war guarantees that they need every man, so he, less than a year from retirement with his superiors trying to boot him, is safe.  If that isn't enough, "you and the Colonel's slut," is his ace in the hole.  "I know you're a lot bigger than I am, but I don't care.  I'm not going to let you call the Colonel's wife what you just did and get away with it," Christian says after abruptly stopping the car.  I'm not sure which part he objects to really, but Brian says they will discuss it later, causing Christian to go on a free-wheeling car zoom that scares the hell out of Brian.  They go off the side of the road and Brian escapes before the car blows up, four or five explosions.  At that moment, Adam Arkin drives by and is pulled away from the wreckage like a horrified boyfriend.

And thus, we our first cast casualty, one that owed nothing to the Japanese directly, making it seem more than a trifle trite.

Gal-on-a-mission Angie forces her way onto the naval base, full of bluster and threats in her first serious speech of the piece (the soldier she humiliates in this scene gets to take out his aggression on a Japanese telegram delivery boy who has a coded message for the general, though he lets him through anyway).  Dennis is busy reading Brian the riot act for not getting to the printer on time, though Brian does have a good excuse.  "Has my car been damaged?" is Dennis' first question.  Yup, and so has your driver.  "I told [Robert] that homo can't drive!" Dennis replies, only THEN finding out that Private Christian is dead.  Brian is haunted by the episode, but Dennis has war fever and finds this all just a fiasco.  "I will not permit madness to infect my section!" he demands, oblivious, as always.  "It won't happen again, sir" Brian replies, as stoically as possible with a lunatic for a superior.

Angie and her cab driver somehow get to the landing strip where the second wave of Japanese aircraft is devastating the planes by not only shooting them but crashing into them to create huge fires.  Angie is horrified at what she sees, but the cab driver seems more than happy to let her sit and watch.

Upset at losing his special friend, Adam tells his superior about the whole debacle and when asked if he's okay, Adam loads on the heavy New York accent and avows, "nothin's gonna kill me, not you, not this stinkin' army!"  Perhaps not, but the storyline and bad acting might.

Thrilled now, Dennis loves barking orders and issuing commands.  RJ is there when he says any Japanese sympathizers can get the death penalty.  So, very slowly, Robert lays into him, defending the actions of all the brave Japanese people living on the island.  Dennis decides to counter this with "an old Hawaiian proverb," and wait until you hear it: "the canoe is not swamped by the outside wave, but by the inside wave."  WHAT?  What is an inside wave in a canoe?  That does not end the scene, alas.  Robert continues to argue, even asking for "an apology on our part, a sense of regret, not a sense of joy at the prospect, not elation."  An apology to whom?  No one has been arrested yet.  Sure, the FBI looked at Tiana's dad and his birds, but no one rounded him up.  "Are you accusing me of enjoying this tragic day?"  "I'm your exec, sir, not your accuser."  "I'll expect you to remember that at all times," Dennis says, having gone far more bonkers with power than perhaps even Captain Kurtis.  The scene only concludes when Dennis orders Robert to inform all the bordellos that there is a curfew and anyone in violation could be shot.  Sure, kill off the last vestiges of pleasure left on the island, blame the hookers!  They've been busy wrapping bandages all day, if anyone cares to remember.  They will be too tired at night anyway.

So, off Robert dashes to Katherine Helmond's establishment, apparently deciding she's keenly interested in his rhetoric about "personal freedom" and some other rot that is obviously some writer's personal passion yet doesn't particularly belong here.  It works.  "Captain, after a speech like that, whatever brought you, the house is yours!" Katherine says, fluttering her eyelids at his Southern charm but no doubt hoping her next film role is better.  His new rules are that she operate in the daytime and install blackout curtains.  "The whole town will become a red light district," Katherine portends.  You see, she's not at all scared by the military, because she feels that making a ghetto of the neighborhood will cause more girls to come and soon she will have to "expand" to streets with "decent families."  Never try to best a Madam, they will ALWAYS win.  "I suspect you're right," he tells her.  "I'm always right.  I wish to hell I weren't."  Why?  You've done pretty damn well for yourself, thriving business, big house on the beach.  It doesn't seem so bad.

In case you're wondering, Driving Miss Angie is still happening.  She finds her way to a meeting of the all the war wives, where Audra is yowling in a fury of patriotism, firing off false information.  "Why don't you stop blowing it out!  For once in your life, why don't you start dealing with the truth?" Angie demands to know of a character who has never been accused of lying.  He'll she hasn't had five lines total so far!  Audra thinks she's protecting the women from the truth, but Angie, all bug eyed with reports from the naval base, tells them what she's seen, the fires, the planes and ships gone.  "The days of hula lessons and bridge socials are over!  The Japanese just blew them away!" Angie shouts.  "If I were a man, I would knock your head off!  You are nothing but a disgusting tramp," blares Mrs. Roper.  "We all know that you are a drunk and that I sleep around," Angie agrees, still insisting that the wives deserve the truth.

Once the Americans take to the air things don't instantly improve.  The Japanese are still on the offensive, trained and ready.  Planes from both sides are destroyed with guns blazing, but eventually, the Japanese disappear back to the Pacific and we're left to pick up the pieces of the plot.

First, Lesley Ann has to deliver the news to Tiana that Gregg died on the operating table.  Tiana wants to see the body and Lesley Ann hugs her, slowly walking her to the body as a nurse with a pile of dog tags leads them to the body.  He looks just as hunky as ever, his face completely unharmed.  "Talk to me!" Tiana cries to the body, while Lesley Ann is feet away breaking down (again).  Once again, only because Lesley Ann Warren is such a capable actress does she come off as believable here, rather than just a victim of horribly bad characterization.

Gregg's family doesn't know yet.  Marion and Mary have barricaded themselves in their hotel room (much to the consternation of the maids, since they have left the "please make up room" sign on the door but deadbolted it from the inside).  Mary keeps howling in hysterics as Marion spins fanciful stories of what the Japanese might be doing to everyone (with the backdrop of palm trees and the beach behind her).  Robert does his best to comfort his wife, though it's not particularly good news that he has gotten himself commissioned to Pearl Harbor.  He's sending his family back to the mainland, but Marion refuses to go.  She won't leave the island where Japanese servants are apparently poisoning hot chocolate?

And then the phone rings.  Mary and Marion guess the news before Robert even puts the headset down.

The hooker Adam has been painting (Char Fontaine) somehow is able to drive out to the beach where the grunts are waiting for Japanese ships, so she can talk to Adam.  The sarge in charge is baffled that the hookers are following them.  "We've always been camp followers, back to the Greeks and the Persians," she schools him.  "Yeah, and look what happened to the Greeks and the Persians," he replies, as if ladies of the night did in those empires.  Rome?  Maybe, but not the Greeks and the Persians.  He relents and Adam gets five minutes with Char, as the rest of the men hoot encouragingly.  She wants him to paint her again...at home, where she has to be, alone, at night.  She even gives him the key to her home.  He clearly does not get that she has a crush on the lug, but he agrees to go.  "Make it soon, okay?" she says, like a demure girlfriend (in her demure yellow dress buttoned up demurely to the neck).  I hope this is leading somewhere, because the crawling pace has returned to "Pearl" just when it's time to wrap things up.

When Tiana shows up at Robert and Marion's room, Marion is suddenly very welcoming and sweet to her.  Tiana explains the act of bravery Gregg committed that caused his death that brought down a Japanese bomber.  She explains how good the medical staff was to him and how hard they tried to save him.  Marion clings to her with a most motherly embrace.

True to the order, the Japanese are rounded up from monasteries and graveyards.  "Every dog on the island," Dennis barks over the phone to someone questioning the orders.  Robert is not pleased to see Buddhist priests and "simple fisherman" treated in this manner.  He asks to be relieved of his duty to Dennis and wants combat duty because he can't countenance what Dennis is doing.  Dennis turns it into a rambling discussion about Robert's family money, dreaming up a notion that Robert's family has a plantation with servants, like the Civil War just started, not World War II.  He clearly has an inferiority complex going.  Robert listens with all the zest of a stand-in as Dennis blows out the bile, demanding that Robert remain, refusing to ever let him go, promising, "I am going to break you."

Pause for a sec.  Okay, this sort of plot revelation is actually interesting, because it gives Dennis' character some depth, but unfortunately, it comes out of nowhere.  There has been absolutely no indication anywhere else in the saga so far that Dennis grew up poor resenting rich people, most particularly his aide.  They certainly have never liked each other, but the writers here should have made it clear, at least to us, a lot earlier what the stick up Dennis' ass was all about.  At this point, he's coming off as a raving racist nutcase when this could be a moment to show how a character's whole life of pent-up jealousy and hatred is being taken out on innocent civilians just because of their race.  How can we be expected to have anything but utter competent for this character now?  He's played the buffoon for the entire movie up to this point, and now suddenly he does everything but twirl his mustache to become the ultimate villain, the embodiment of every apologizing nobility this movie has wanted to display when it comes to race relations (remember, it's 1978 when it was made, so this is not really about Asians and Caucasians, this is much larger in the context of the racial tensions of the 60s and 70s).

Unpause.  Robert reacts to this by rescinding his offer to resign his position, "because nothing is more important than this, this war between us.  I promise you, sir, if I just once find you stepping beyond the powers you now enjoy, just once, violating any law, any regulation, I shall use that against you on behalf of a country and an army I believe in, despite men like you," Robert says slowly and methodically, mistaking pretend earnestness for good acting, but helped by the patriotic music played under the scene.

At the sink after surgery, a very impressed doctor tells Lesley Ann he wants her to stay on because she has been such a great help.  She's, as usual, in a world of her own, turning to him with a big smile and saying, "I cried today!" with triumph before rushing out.  Very good, doctor!  How about tomorrow we learn our colors?  She then puts on her civvies, trying not to let the grief of everyone else at the hospital ruin her insta-happiness and hops in her car.

The Japanese aren't exactly overwhelmed with glee themselves, feeling that though they sent out two very important runs that virtually decimated Battleship Row, it wasn't honorably done (they hit first at 7:55 AM, five minutes before the declaration of war--maybe their watches were just fast, calm down already!).  The commander feels "we have succeeded only in awaking a sleeping giant."  You didn't think of that before?  Come on, let's not be dishonest to history here, people.  As I said earlier, everyone on earth knew the US was mobilizing, it just needed an actual reason to get into the war and the Japanese were the part of the Axis who gave it to them.

"Last stop," Angie finally tells her long-suffering driver.  "You've been a brave and cheerful companion, aloha," Angie adds, as if the day has been all about getting to know a stranger.  She passes Brian on the way into see Dennis, baiting him a bit and then offering apologies to Robert.  "What's happened to you?" Robert understandably asks after she delivers her speech.  "Pearl Harbor, I don't know."  Lady, we don't know either.  Her second apology to him is in advance of what she's going to say to Dennis, telling him everything.  She orders him to follow her and to bring Brian as well.  "What is this?" Robert asks.  "Pearl Harbor, my version."  Angie's two personalities are colliding and I'm afraid.  So is Robert, clearly.

Understandably, Dennis finds her visit a bother, but when Robert and Brian enter, he has no choice but to put the war on hold and deal with her.  And then comes the BIG speech.  She starts with the dead daughter and explains how she died, a story none of the other men knows (why should they know?).  She turns from zealous prosecuting attorney into crying lump.  Regaining her composure, she forges ahead.  The ramble makes very little sense at this point.  Sure, we need to finish Angie's plot, but as with Dennis earlier, there have been very few clues, not enough to warrant this grandiose episode and the sheer amount of time it takes.  "I'm leaving you...just three little words," she announces, continuing with another of her infamous animal metaphors, "we're like two old horses, joined at the hip, side by side pulling at a junk wagon, just going along, day after day, year after year, picking up more junk and pretty soon, it's not each other we feel, it's the weight we're pulling.  I'm unhitching us..."  She confesses to trying to seduce Robert and insists Brian tell what he saw.  Brian now gets his big acting chance, but Robert whips out his gun and offers to shoot Brian.  How about the director instead?  Leaving a grade A mess in her wake, Angie grabs her purse and says, "well, I'm going.  God forgive me how good I feel!" She brings back the "Gone With the Wind" parallel, exiting with Rhett's final line and slamming the door.  This is the most insane scene yet, I suppose inevitable, but so badly handled.  I can't even find anything else to say.  "Pearl" is its own worst enemy.

Dennis is left alone in his office with a stack of paperwork as he dissolves into a quaking crying mess himself.

That would leave just Lesley Ann, who managed to onto the base as the curfew is about to take effect.  Some grunt tries to get her to go, but it seems Angie's grand exit wasn't enough to end her character's participation.  Leaving the building, she's recognized by Lesley Ann and insists the soldier take her to see Robert.  Never mind, he's coming out of the building at that moment anyway.  She gets to tell him the FULL story of her misery.  It's rather anti-climactic, and more than a touch bonkers, but at least it's acted well...or, in context, better.  "They asked me to stay at the hospital, but that depends on you.  Do you want me to stay?"  "Oh my God, yes!" Robert replies and his dirty body gets a hug and giant kiss.

Roosevelt's declaration of war to Congress is played as all of the characters listen.  The narrator returns (I was hoping he wouldn't, but whatcha gonna do?) to tell us "nothing was ever the same again."

It's just stupid!  Second-hand stupid.  "Pearl" has no reason to exist other than to copy "From Here to Eternity" and doesn't even do it well.  The characters are a jumble of non-existent plots and horrendous acting and the script might have been better suited to more than five hours because there is so much going on, yet none of it at all important.  How one can actually manage to trivialize the events of December 7, 1941 is beyond me, but that is the only thing at which "Pearl" succeeds.

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.  

Hollywood Wives (1985)

Do not miss a chance to watch "Hollywood Wives."  I'm warning you now.  A riot from beginning to end, this is pure 1980s Americana, Reagan years excess, schlock to end all schlock. 

Perhaps because it was her first book turned into a miniseries, but I can't think of any reason this one is not called "Jackie Collins' Hollywood Wives."  It really should be, because it would alert us immediately that we are about to jump into Ms. Collins' unique world of camp trash.  I'll take Jackie's books over those of Danielle Steel or Judith Krantz any day (I'll take a book in Swahili about waiting for a rock to move over Judith Krantz) because Jackie Collins knows exactly what she's writing, never pretending it's anything but exactly what it is.

Jackie had the exquisite bad taste (I mean that in the best way, Jackie), to turn to Aaron Spelling to produce "Hollywood Wives."  Having given her sister's career a lift in the 1980s, Spelling was as smart as Jackie Collins, always aware of just what he was giving his vast audiences.  Not subtle or artistic, he wanted ratings the old-fashioned way: sex and sin.  With two intelligent smut experts at the wheel, it's no wonder "Hollywood Wives" was such a success, but not for the same reasons as, oh, say, "Roots" or "North and South."

The combination of these two makes "Hollywood Wives" easily one of the most outrageously hysterical hootfests in the miniseries cannon.  Try making it though any scene without exploding in laughter.  "Lace" will forever be the campiest miniseries, but "Hollywood Wives" is more expansive and more ridiculous, it's just that the plot of "Lace" is unmatched in sheer lunacy while "Hollywood Wives" derives its hokey brilliance from every beloved cliche expected.

The fun starts with just the credits, a montage of Hollywood excess (shopping, spas, jewels, furs, perfume, and lots of Rodeo Drive) and an actual theme song, croaked out in grand 80s pop fashion with such delicious lyrics like "it's not like the movies out there on the street."  It's a long song because this is a once-in-a-lifetime cast of vets, wanna-bes, never-quite-got-theres and actual stars, enough for about 13 verses of the song.

Where else should the movie start but on a red carpet?  Mary Hart, playing herself, of course, is handling interviewing duties.  First to arrive is that glamorous platinum plaything Suzanne Somers, as the "most beautiful sensuous sexy symbol in United States today," who has a role in the new movie "Tigress" where, and I hope you are ready for this laugh, she plays "an anthropologist who gets captured by a gang of pygmies."  Only a minute into the movie!  I am in heaven. 

Starting the laughs at the banquet is emcee studio head Rod Steiger, who cracks bad jokes and announces a new film, must to the chagrin of Stefanie Powers and her director hubby Anthony Hopkins (did you ever think you would see those three names in the same sentence?) who were promised the film would not be announced.  Getting the honorary award for money raised is Robert Stack, wearing the third of the horrible toupees of the male cast members (and we've only met three).  Wooden as ever, he accepts the award while seeming bored at the same time.

When it's time for dinner and dancing, tough-as-nails agent Angie Dickinson makes a bee-line to Robert, who thanks her for actually giving money to the wing at the old actors home charity being supported that night, but that's a secret, because it wouldn't do for her image if people knew. 

Two of the titular wives are seated together.  Joanna Cassidy, in a stunning off-the-shoulder Nolan Miller creation, whines that when Anthony Hopkins was married to her, they never danced like he's dancing with current wife Stefanie.  Her pal Candice Bergen, in her biggest hair ever, sarcastically tells her, "don't think of it as dancing.  Think of it as a script conference."  In another part of the room, Robert and wife Frances Bergen (yup, Candy's mom) are trying to wrangle his slutty daughter Mary Crosby from telling lewd jokes and making nasty comments about them. 

Not at the party is a Charles Manson look-a-like trashing his house as his parents try to calm him down.  As they discuss locking him away again or giving him meds, we find out that he's upset because he's found a document saying they are not his real parents.  Nearly strangling his mother, he asks who his real mother is.  "We only know she's someone in Hollywood," she says.  Well, if it's a woman we're looking for, of the cast members we've met so far, only one  or two stand any chance of being biologically old enough.  He kills his adopted father with a letter opener (not even 15 minutes into the movie--I'm beyond heaven!). 

Back at the party, 80s soap heartthrob Andrews Stevens is a waiter and former gigolo because he's still trying to break into the biz.  A smarmy dowager tells him he shouldn't be doing part time work, hinting that returning to the life would be a much better cash cow for him, like one of his old friends who is there scoping out Joanna.  As for Joanna, she is still pining for Anthony, who is being hit up for a part in his new movie by Suzanne, much to Stefanie's dry amusement.  Candy takes a moment to call her hubby, Steve Forrest, who is in Italy making a cheap picture in a Roman costume.  He's tired of these types of parts.  Oh, but Steve, your legs look to sexy!  He's got a young make-up girl he can flirt with while on the other side of the ocean, Candice has to pretend to Joanna that all is well with their marriage.  Stefanie wants to leave the party for a "chili cheeseburger," and Anthony agrees, but they don't get out cleanly.  First, Mary caustically congratulates Stefanie for being a woman screenwriter, saying about a new script, "it doesn't matter if you wrote it or not, as long as they think you wrote it," and then lecherous Rod wants a word before dragging a columnist off to get an introduction to Linda Evans (who, thankfully, does not make an appearance). 

Also not at the party is Andrew's curvy new wife, Catherine Mary Stewart, who is accosted in a supermarket parking lot by a creep who actually says, "you ought to be in movies" before grabbing at her.  Luckily, a supermarket employee saw the guy follow Catherine out and has called a security guard to help.  "Don't let appearances fool you," the bag boy says, "day or night, Hollywood can be a dangerous place."  Okay, that line is downright hysterical because it's in the wrong place, a supermarket parking lot where a woman has just been assaulted.  Shouldn't an ironic zinger like that be saved for one of the wits at the party?  Honestly, who needs drugs to get high when writing like this exists?  I'm over the moon!

The guy who killed his parents decides to hitch his way to Hollywood, meeting a talkative truck driver who says that he's ferried a lot of people that way, and nothing ever became of any of them.  "I'm different.  They are never going to forget me in Hollywood.  Never," the scary man says.

Oh, it gets better and better!  A hunky pool guy straight out of a gay porn script sizes up Candice and says, "the manager told me you need service twice a week."  "The POOL needs service twice a week," she replies icily.  Undaunted, he offers her swimming lessons, something he does for lots of rich women.  Who?  He can't say, "professional confidentiality."  He claims swimming is easy, "you just have to hold your breath."  "Well, don't hold yours," Candice retorts.  ZING!  Having made it through crap like "The Adventurers" over the years has given her the ability to nail the lines with her wonderful deadpan. 

One of Andrew's old hooker buddies has given him his house while he's away, but Catherine pouts because she doesn't get to spend any time with him.  He reminds her that he's doing this for her too.  "One of these days, you are going to see me up there on the screen, or doing Shakespeare..." Wait, Shakespeare?  What did he do to deserve being mentioned here?  Couldn't they have gone with Neil Simon or Sid Kroft or someone far more believable?  Well, they are our tender young lovers, so they get the twinkly music while all of the hot shots are out for blood.  But, that doesn't mean the babes can't still lust after him.  A bimbo at the pool in a bikini says, "you're married?  What a waste!"

Angie and Suzanne are having a spa day and Suzanne wants better parts.  Angie claims there's nothing wrong with being a sexy symbol, but Suzanne wants to be Jane Fonda.  She wants into the big "Final Reunion," Anthony big new picture.  "Isn't being a star enough for you?" Angie asks.  "Not anymore!" Suzanne insists. 

Our three leads go out shopping at Neiman-Marcus, where Candice tries on an insane leather outfit with a father coat and fur hat.  Mary and Joanna are worried that she's been without her husband too long.  Mary doesn't believe that Steve is pining for Candice the way she thinks.  "He's not a liar!" Candy insists.  "No, but he is an actor," Joanna adds, "and they are used to be catered to all their lives...meaning that actors are children and it doesn't matter who provides the toys.  They are certainly going to play with them and I just imagine he's having a fabulous time on location."  In my wildest dreams, I couldn't write a line like that.  From now on, I will refer to her as The Great Unbeatable Jackie Collins for doing so.  "I'm a happily married woman.  We don't play around," Candice insists as we cut to Steve in bed with his make-up girl.  He rather harshly pushes her out the door so he can learn his lines, but in reality it's so he can study himself in a mirror and worry about his age. 

Everyone wants a part of "Final Reunion."  Mary suggests to Candice that Steve would be perfect for a part "if he plays he age" and Joanna thinks he should get Angie as an agent because she can get him the part.  Even more, don't wait for Steve to do it, go do it yourself.  "After all, what are Hollywood wives for?" Joanna reminds Candice. 

Just to catch you up on the murderous stranger on his way to Los Angeles, he's now in Indiana in the car of a reverend who is excited that he's going to be part of a family reunion.  "Yeah, I'm gonna take care of my whoooooole family," the stranger tells the preacher.  A few scenes later, he kills the reverend, steals his money and car.

Candice tarts herself up in sexy lingerie and furry heels to welcome Steve home from Italy.  Romantic that he is, he chirps "hi, babe" when she opens the door.  Question: why do they have no servants to open the door?  Question: why does Steve ring the doorbell?  Instead of the much-expected sex, Candice has to unpack Steve's bag as he sets up meetings on the phone. 

After pounding the pavement trying to get a job, Andrew runs into Roddy McDowell, his former pimp.  "You were the best stud in my stable.  Any time you want..." Roddy tells him, looking him over like a piece of, well, this is Roddy McDowell, so he's gone right to mentally undressing him.  Andrew refuses to get back into that line of work.  But, he does take Roddy's card, just in case.  Roddy McDowell as a Hollywood high-end pimp?  C'mon, people, this is too much.  I can't stop laughing!

The story moves to Palm Beach.  You see, without Robert Stack, apparently the biggest movie star in the world (the biggest movie star in the world is 110 years old?), "Family Reunion" may not get made, so Rod sends Anthony to Palm Beach to woo him, but Stefanie has to stay in Hollywood and finish rewriting the script.  When he checks into his hotel room, Suzanne is draped across his bed in a towel.  Anthony isn't the least bit interested, but Suzanne asks, "how do I go about seducing [you]?"  "I'm happy married and don't drink anymore," Anthony says.  "What else don't you do anymore?" Suzanne asks before getting up real close to him.  "Do you enjoy being a mattress?" he asks.  WHAT A GREAT LINE!!!!!  Ultimately, he succumbs and her towel is dropped as she goes in for a big kiss. 

Candice can't catch a break with her husband.  After puffing up his ego about his dwindling star status, they fall into bed, where Candy coos his name way too loudly, and I guess that's what distracts him, because he rolls off of her to call is agent again. 

Speaking of agents, Angie is dying to see the "Family Reunion" script, which no one has seen.  She tells her lackey that even bribery is allowed in getting it.  He tells her that Steve wants to leave his agent and they should sign him, and Angie barks, "not if he walked in here on his hands and knees and offered me his first-born son!"  Those following the plot and not just the great lines can guess why, though Steve tells Candice that it's because she was his agent once, but when he became a big star, he dropped her and she's never forgiven him.

In Florida, not only has Anthony slept with Suzanne, but he's drinking, though he says "it's only a bracer" he needs to meet with Robert.  Suzanne still wants in the movie.  "Family Reunion" is not a movie.  It's a film.  There is a difference," he says before telling her a) she should think of doing comedy (slam #1) and b) she needs to be "out before the maids come in and splash us all over the tabloids" (slam #2).  As soon as he leaves, Suzanne digs through his luggage and finds the script.  Those following the cliches can guess where she's going plot-wise.  She calls Angie to brag about her conquest and lies, saying Anthony has promised her a role.  Don't see where she's going yet?  Do I have to spell it out?  B-L-A-C-K-M-A-I-L.

Suzanne makes sure she's on the same flight as Anthony and mentions having read the script.  She wants the lead.  "You're not, um, exactly, unspoiled," as the script calls for, he notes.  "You don't have to be a virgin to play a virgin," Suzanne oozes before suggesting they join the "mile high club," which he's never heard of.  But, they don't need the bathroom.  They go for it right there in the seats! 

Shameless Mary makes a play for her best friend's husband, meeting Steve on the street and ordering him in the car so she can show him "my house in the hills."  Candice won't know.  She's off playing tennis with Joanna, who, once again, can only talk about Anthony, her ex-husband who dropped her because she's not a "creative" person.  At Mary's, Steve and Mary massage each other by the pool, but that quickly turns sexual, which is just gross, because he's old enough to be her grandfather.  "It's true what they say about you.  You are so damn sexy," she whispers.  That must have been a tough line to get out for our poor Mary.  I wonder how many takes it took.  He's at home with flowers for Candice when she returns, promising him she'll get him the "Family Reunion" script just to spend time with him.  "If I get it, I want a weekend alone with you," she says in desperation.  "Get that script and a weekend won't be long enough," he replies, smacking her on the ass. 

Just as Andrew is informed he's being kicked out of the apartment because his friend is returning, Catherine bounds in with the news that she's pregnant.  He can't get any acting roles and all of his scenes in various states of undress show he's clearly in great shape, so can you guess where he's going to get some quick cash?  You can't?  Then I'll wait, FINE!

There was a clue to it previously, but I chose not to mention it.  However, we can no longer avoid discussing the fact that Candice is...wait for it...a kleptomaniac!  Yes, she steals expensive things from the finest Beverly Hills stores.  And gets quite a rush from it, I might add. 

Dimwitted Andrew thinks he can fake his way into Stefanie's office by pretending he's pals with Warren Beatty, but she figures it out very quickly (Stefanie is so wonderfully smart!) and decides to give him a chance.  She allows him to read for her and she's impressed, but won't make any promises because he doesn't have an agent.

At the racetrack, Candy, Joanna and Mary are picking horses and Mary says she has the perfect horse for Joanna, "Major Stud."  "Actually, names don't mean a thing.  Only performance," she says, and talks about the stamina of her latest stud.  Thankfully the race is about to start, cutting off the puns, and Joanna admires the wallet Candice just stole.  Candice needs her pals because Joanna's father runs a studio and Mary's is a legend and only their help can make her party a success, the party she's planning that will put Steve back on top in Hollywood.  How can a party do that?  I don't know, but for over an hour, it's been discussed ad nauseum, so it's going to be a big event and when big events happen in stories like these, well, it will be a whopper!

The killer?  He's made it to Iowa, where he has a stupid conversation with a little girl trying to give away a cat about how important adoption is.  Yes, we get it.  He's angry to have been given up for adoption.  That's been obvious since his first scene.  He then helps a woman fix her car and she offers him a ride with her kids to Cedar Rapids.  He leaves the dead cat on the side of the road before getting in. 

While a clearly uninterested Steve suns himself at the pool, Candice rattles off her guest list, which includes everyone from Gregory Peck to John Travolta.  She tells Steve that Joanna is going to get them the script and reminds him of his promise.  She wants to go skinny dipping, but he brushes her off.  "Why is it you always make me feel like an intrusion on your life?" she asks.  He says he has "important things" on his mind.  "I'm important.  At least you used to think so!" she snaps before walking away. 

With doors slamming all over the place, Andrew finds Roddy's card and can't avoid the inevitable any longer (can you really say you didn't see that coming? I know I promised to wait until it happened to tell you, but I know you didn't REALLY need me to tell you where his plot--or any plot for that matter--was headed).

Suzanne and Anthony do it in the shower, which gives Suzanne a chance to model yet another towel, but she's serious about the part in his movie.  "I know what this town thinks of me.  They wouldn't even let me test for Joan of Arc last year," she pouts, in another Great Unbeatable Jackie Collins line.  Anthony concedes that Suzanne is a good actress (and how many takes did you need to say that without laughing, Sir Anthony?), but she's "about as right for the part as Sylvester Stallone."  Suzanne then plays her trump card.  "Think about this," she says, going over to the wall and revealing a hidden camera behind the mirror.  "That's blackmail!" Anthony says.  "I think of it as a negotiating posture," Suzanne says, employing her biggest words yet.  "Yeah, a negotiating position for a whore!" he rails.  But, she has the upper hand and my guess is she will get her screen test.

As expected, Andrews trots off to Roddy's interior decorating/antique shop (as if Roddy isn't gay enough just by appearing in the scene wearing a cravat, we drop him in an antique shop as an interior decorator) to ask for his old job back.  Andrew is hesitant to take the work, but he has to find a place to live first.  Roddy says he has a place for him, so Andrew agrees to squire around the Texas ladies Roddy has ready for him.  When Roddy takes Andrew and Catherine to the house, Catherine falls in love with it and Roddy changes the story so that Andrew has to sleep with the women from Texas.  Incensed, Andrew refuses, but Roddy has him over a barrel (a position, I have it on good authority, that Roddy himself used to prefer), because all  he has to do is mention Andrew's past to squeaky clean Catherine. 

For pure cheese, you can't beat the scene where (a clearly guilty) Anthony takes Stefanie out on the town for their anniversary...to the hot dog stand where they met.  Only he's had it done up with a red carpet, a violinist and all the formal trappings.  The limo whisks them off to the top of the Hollywood Hills where the driver disappears for two hours. 

At a conference with Stefanie and Rod, Anthony nervously suggests Suzanne for the role of the virginal heroine, noting that she would even be willing to test for the part.  Rod is thrilled, because she's "big box office," but Stefanie, after learning it's not a joke, is outraged, suggesting Burt Reynolds for the part of virginal male in the script. 

Andrew and Catherine play their next scene walking on the beach in Malibu with Andrew wearing a leather vest to show off his body.  Let me guess, now Roddy is dressing him too?  With a bottle of poppers, he could get laid in any gay bar in West Hollywood.  Catherine asks to meet Andrew's mother, and he refuses.  He has to leave her to go meet Roddy's women, always dressing that up as "making contacts."  Get this!  She offers to go with him.  Oh, that would be cute.  "In this heat, forget it" is his way of getting out of that one.  A kiss and more twinkly music doesn't hurt. 

In an attempt to, I don't know, intersect some of the various plots, or perhaps just because of budget reasons, Roddy and Andrew have lunch before meeting the Texas women and Candice and Joanna are at the next table discussing the party.  Mary has guaranteed Robert will be there, Angie has signed on and even Suzanne, whom Joanna jokes has been rumored to be a "stand-in for porno queens."  Joanna cautions Candice that Suzanna "might even make a play" for Steve at the party, but Candice is confident that he never strays.  He's had more women than she has hairdos in "Hollywood Wives," and that's a lot!  Joanna manages to turn the conversation back to Anthony leaving her for a creative woman, spitting out a few sentences like they were hot coals in her mouth.  She asks Candy what she would do if Steve ever cheated.  "I'd kill him."

So, cut to Steve and Mary in her hot tub.  Mary tells him that if he left Candice, he could have a whole lot more money with her, especially when Robert kicks and leaves her everything.  She wants to be married, but he's enjoying the fact that they aren't, right as a photographer in the bushes starts snapping pictures of them. 

Let's take a moment to see more cracks in two of the wives' marriages and how they handle them.  First, there's Stefanie, certainly not stupid, who adds up some clues and thinks Anthony is drinking again, as he shakes his way through a glass of orange juice.  Of course not!  She's the one who dried him out the first time, but she won't do it again, laying down the law, but nicely.  She is Stefanie Powers, after all.  Not as nice is Candice Bergen.  Not only does Steve bait her by telling her the party is ridiculous, but he also calls her by...gasp...her real name!  "Etta is dead.  I told you never to call me that again!" she seethes and stalks off. 

With the women from Texas, Andrew is the dumbest hooker on record.  Hell, he even uses his own name.  The women are salivating over him.  They make sure he's not gay first and then refuse a trip to Rodeo Drive?  "All those foreigners?" one clucks.  They want one thing from him, and he's very nervous.  He has theater tickets for them and they find the theater "boring...very boring."  I had trouble containing my wild glee when the two old broads suggest a threeway and actually use that world.  Oh, the Great Unbeatable Jackie Collins is fearless!  They will double Roddy's price if he agrees.  He insists on $1000.  "Well, what are we waitin' for?" they say in agreement.  Breaking the news to Catherine isn't easy.  She cries on the phone, the whole works.  I'm all for a good threeway, but watching my poor darling Andrew actually get it on with two elderly ladies is tough to watch. 

It is tough to manage, as well, because Andrew can't do it.  He breaks away from them, throws the money back and leaves in a huff.  He best get home soon because a mysterious man is watching Catherine through binoculars. 

While waiting at lunch for Mary (who is having sex with Steve), Candice tells Joanna the whole story of her friend "Etta," a fat ugly school joke who was raped and had to give up the baby, but moved to Hollywood to work in a studio make-up department.  "A studio joke," Joanna laughs.  But, "Etta" lost all the weight and changed her name.  Yup, Candice spills it all to her true pal Joanna.  "It hasn't been so easy for me to get to this point in my life and I want to stay," she assures Joanna.  Joanna assures her she will never have to go back to "Etta" because every man "in this town needs us, depends on us.  They couldn't do anything without us!"  We've needed some out-in-the-open feminism.  That's what built The Great Unbeatable Jackie Collins--making her readers feel like queens.  "What about her baby?" Candice rhetorically asks.

We catch up with our mother-seeking killer in Las Vegas, boarding a bus for Los Angeles. 

The mysterious man with the binoculars is none other than...Rod Steiger, who has become so infatuated with Catherine (in the day or so she's lived in Malibu) that he wants her to play Nikki (the role Suzanne wants) in "Family Reunion."  Being pregnant, she's no virgin, and she's definitely not an actress, so she's stunned into silence. 

The private investigator taking pictures of Mary and Steve is working for Mary's father, Robert Stack.  Robert orders all the photos destroyed, but the wicked laugh the PI gives means he's got other plans for those pictures. 

Stefanie and Anthony have an annoyingly cloying scene on a pier where Anthony tries to apologize.  Stefanie accepts it, but for the life of me, I'm not sure for what he's apologizing.  She doesn't know about the drinking or the cheating.  After he finishes, he then cons her into letting Suzanne do a screen test, allowing her to think it will be awful and put them in the clear.

It's finally the day of Candice's party.  Today, she seems to have a maid, because after telling Steve to "stay out of everybody's way" by going to the gym (which he needs) and getting a hair cut, we hear her tell someone that the caterers are due to arrive shortly.  As soon as she buzzes out, Steve calls Mary.  When she calls him, the machine picks up and if you were alive in 1985, you'll know that if you picked up the phone while the machine was recording, your conversation was recorded.  It will be so much fun when Candice eventually hears such lines as, "all I need to do is dry off and I'm on my way" from Steve or "don't bother, I'm only going to get you all wet again" from Mary. 

Our killer has made it to Hollywood and Vine, the only place in Hollywood where he shouldn't stand out.  He's stopped by a drug dealer and asks, "did you ever see 'Dirty Harry'?"

"I don't want to hear anything about 'creative control!'  I'm fed up with 'creative control!'  There's no such thing as 'creative control!'  This line is shouted by Rod, but honestly, it sounds like something Aaron Spelling would say after someone told him to cut down on sex or glitz in one of his TV shows.  He's upset because Stefanie keeps standing her ground on this, her first picture, having told him that "the only thing wrong with this movie is you!"  Rod then asks Anthony about his affair with Suzanne.  "She was a hooker when I met her," Rod says, explaining that they have a session "once a week...it keeps the old ticker in shape," and also that he's her "father-confessor." 

Our young married couple has moved back in with Andrew's hooker buddy Stephen Shellen, but since Catherine doesn't understand why, he's upset and when she's upset, she cleans.  The kitchen area, the living room, with a scrub brush, whatever is needed.  With nothing else to clean, she hauls Andrew outside for a conversation we knew was inevitable, but frankly I don't understand why it's in this place.  It's the "what happened to the man I married?" speech.  Sure, the unsuspecting wife of the guy doing wrong always gets one in a miniseries, but in actuality, Andrew hasn't been acting that strange.  Married only two months, she also doesn't know him that well anyway.  He spends all of his time looking for a job, so on the one "date" he was sent on, that time away from her was easily explained.  Okay, there are the apartments and houses constantly popping up and being yanked away, but Andrew has maintained his personality.  He's never gotten angry at her, never hit her, hasn't started drinking or doing any of the behavior that warrants that speech in this place in the story.

As expected, Candice hears the message on her machine and cries (but without tears).  So, she does what any self-respecting Hollywood wife would do, makes herself a drink and goes to summon the pool boy (good luck to him getting that fringe costume off her--I'm not even sure how it's on in the first place).  But, there's a hitch.  The pool boy leaves before she can get him!  So, she does the second thing any self-respecting Hollywood wife would do, goes to Beverly Hills and shoplifts.

Casting agent Dorothy Dells, who only speaks in innuendos, has heard about Andrew's luck maybe possibly perhaps kind of sort of getting a shot at a screen test for "Family Reunion" and decides he should "meet the right people."  She offers to take him to Candice's party as her "young handsome escort" and when he asks if he can bring his wife, she replies, "maybe you can bring your in-laws too."  When she starts to drop names, he suddenly forgets his wife and agrees to go.  "It's black tie.  Your waiter's outfit will be just fine," Dorothy says as she shoves Andrew out the door. 

Unfortunately, the eagle-eyed people at Gucci see Candy steal the necklace and arrest her (which means taking her to the manager's office, not jail), where she threatens to cancel her account.  Since she has no ID on her, they are not willing to let her put the necklace on her account.  She switches tactics and mentions her husband's name, having the manager call the barber shop, where, get this, she leaves a message with the barber to have Steve call her at Gucci!  "There's one other place," she says mournfully before dialing Mary's.  Mary doesn't answer, as she's in bed with Steve and "forgot to turn the machine back on after" Steve called earlier.  Oops.

The killer buys an illegal handgun, "the one that Clint Eastwood used in 'Dirty Harry'" according to him and "the most powerful handgun ever made" according to the drug dealer. 

Catherine has left Andrew and after being offered a job by a street pimp, she finds a store looking for a receptionist, a dream job she mentioned to Andrew a while back when offering to help with the income.  Suitcases in hand, she goes inside to apply.  It's a hair salon, so of course it's run by James "Gypsy" Haake, a flaming queen (named Koko, no less--not Coco, Koko).  She lies about her age.  "Chutzpah!" James declares and hires her.  He even has a place for her to live, so she's hired on the spot.  "You gotta start workin' today, because the phones are drivin' me crazy!" Koko says.  Without so much as an explanation of how the salon works, she answers the phone and starts booking appointments. 

Mary has two problems.  The first is that her father Robert Stack wants to spend more time with her.  The other is Candice, who now knows about her husband's infidelity.  And if she cannot provide any ID, she'll go to jail., 

The detective who has been following and filming approaches him on the street so he can blackmail him.  Suzanne, in a gigantic bath, calls Anthony to find out when her screen test is happening.  See, her blackmail works too!

The hot chick from the pool where Andrew and Catherine lived tells Catherine that Andrew "needs action, and a lot of it."  That's why she slept with him.  The bitchy woman plays both sides, telling Andrew that Catherine never calls.  For some reason, hair client Meg Wylie has taken a shine to Catherine and invites her to Candice's party.  "My husband is still on safari," she tells us.  But what will Catherine wear?  Her caftan-loving boss says he has "dresses I haven't worn yet!" before marshaling the entire salon to help find glamour.

Steve bails Candice out of the Gucci manager's office and can't understand why she would shoplift.  She gives him the "I want to be noticed" speech that crackpots often do, but he has no right to judge as he's sleeping with Mary, a fact Candice knows.

The only line in a scene where Angie tells her assistant of her past association with Steve, who dropped her soon as he became famous is "boy meets agent, boy loves agent, boy loses agent."

Here's news: Candy and Steve have a son.  I only know this because in Candice's big monologue she mentions taking him to school every day.  The rest of the conversation is cliche.  "I gave you the best years of my life." "You don't know how sorry I am."  As she leaves, she turns and says, "oh, and after tonight, I'm leaving you."

Party time!  Steve is nowhere to be found, Angie is snippy, Joanna caustic and Candice handles it all well.  Stefanie arrives in a VW bug, and Robert tells her he's "impressed by her sense of economy."  Anthony can't go with Stefanie because he first has to get the blackmail tapes from Suzanne.  But, Suzanne has heard that the part is already cast (Catherine), so made plenty of copies.  If he doesn't get her the screen test, "I'll go to the movies with [Stefanie].  Then comes a moment so ludicrous, it can only have happened in Hollywood.  Anthony chokes Suzanne, looking like he's going to stoke out any minute and then kisses her so they can have sex.  Outside of the bondage world, you just don't expect to see such things. 

Back at the party, zingers are shot so fast that nearly everyone gets wounded in under an hour.  Take this exchange: Robert asks "what should we toast to" and Steve replies "talent."  "And to those who don't have it!  Meow!  Andrew shows up on the arm of the casting director and everyone loves Catherine.  Angie snubs Steve every chance she can get.  Oh, and of course, Joanna is still pining for Anthony. 

Since Stefanie has been relegated to the role of den mother to all of Hollywood, she finds Andrew at the party and tells him not only did she get him an appointment with Angie, but told the latter that he's as good as Pacino.  Across the room, Andrew sees Catherine, but before he can ask why she is there, Rod barrels over, having found his elusive goddess for the picture.  There is a lot of arguing, but it ends with Catherine saying, "I don't want a role in your movie.  I don't want a role in any movie."  There's a girl who knows what she wants," clucks Stefanie as Catherine makes a dramatic exit.  I think we're supposed to understand that Stefanie sees some of herself in Catherine. 

Mary finds a way to get Steve to dance with her and she puts her hands all over  him.  He tells her to cool it, but she has this 14-carat line: "The proverbial cat is out the proverbial bag" and then kisses him wildly in front of everyone.  Robert has to go break them apart.  An uncomfortable dance between Steve and Angie, who has a grand revenge plan in her head, wants him in her office at 9am on Monday. 

Father and daughter have a heart-to-heart.  He wants her to calm down and she just hates him.  But why?  Well, apparently Mary caught him "making love to a 15-year old girl on your dressing room floor."  Robert knows Mary is repeating his mistakes, and he also tells her he's always loved her.  He's not good at showing emotion.  As Mary falls into his arms wailing "Daddy" Robert tells her he's coming home "for good."  Fifteen years of misery can finally be buried.  When Frances congratulates Mary on the detente, Mary tells her she's pregnant with Steve's child, so tempers are bound to erupt soon enough.

Rod has good news for the crowd.  Robert Stack has agreed to come out of retirement and to "Family Reunion," which is good news for everyone but Steve.  Robert goes over to Steve with the double whammy of "you could do television" and "next time you touch my daughter, I'll kill you." 

A drunken Stefanie (after drying out Anthony, she still drinks?) baits Rod one too many times, so he tells her that Anthony is at Suzanne's.  Indeed he is, doing what a lot of aging leading men did, especially on TV.  While having sex with Suzanne, he has a heart attack (if The Great Unbeatable Jackie Collins had not written this, I would have assumed it was an Aaron Spelling twist since he used it a few years before when Cecil Colby died in bed with Alexis).  Suzanne can't think of anything better to do than ask "are you okay" at a high decibel level.  "Forgive me [Stefanie]" are his last words before collapsing. 

Andrew offers to take Stefanie home because she's so drunk.  "I don't want to go home." "Where do you want to go?" Eye contact.  Everything but the porn music.

True to her word, things are over between Candice and Steve.  The moment the last guess and staff leave, she brings him a suitcase and orders him out. 

Stefanie and Andrew spend the night together in a motel, but purely as friends.  Stefanie groans about her problems and he does the same.  In the morning, he has to get to Angie's, and while he's showering, Stefanie hears about Neil on the news and they rush over.  Rod doesn't want to let anyone in, but Stefanie say, "for God's sake, I'm his wife!" Anthony is unconscious, but that doesn't stop Stefanie from crying big as she apologizes.  Outside the door, Joanna shows also claiming to be his wife.  When she sees Stefanie, the latter tells her he had a heart attack in the bed of another woman.  "Who?" Joanna wants to know.  "Neither of us," Stefanie says and flounces off.

Andrew leaves the hospital to meet with Angie, who asks if he has a wife, because it will be hard to make him a "sex symbol" so he lies and says he's not married.  She invites him to her house for dinner that night and then extends the same invitation to Steve.  The pieces are falling into place! 

Just FYI, I haven't forgotten our killer.  He's in LA now, skulking around vacant lots and houses, apparently with some sort of plan in mind, though crazy pants hasn't revealed it to us yet.  He goes to the adoption agency and holds a gun on the woman who sold him, gets the name of his mother and then kills the woman. 

Mary and Steve meet for lunch.  She thinks it's because he wants to move in with her and he wants to brush her off.  Mary lowers the boom that she's pregnant and refuses to get an abortion.  She wants them to get married.  He says, "I just can't turn my back on [Candice]." 

As proof of how lousy she feels, Candy has gone from fringe and leather to terrycloth.  Joanna tries to cheer her up, telling her she's an independent woman and can live without Steve!  They then agree to go to the hospital, which is where Joanna thinks she should be. 

Angie's dinner from hell is exquisitely trashy.  She doesn't miss a trick.  The campaign of "who is Ross Conti" that she used for Steve is now "who is Buddy Hudson," and Andrew's picture is far sexier.  "He's going to be the biggest star in this town since, well, since you," she acidly notes.  Just as Angie was telling Steve how much she's hated him for 25 years, her assistant comes in with the news that Anthony has died.  At the blackmailing photographer demands his money from Steve or he'll go to the National Enquirer.  "Show all the pictures you want and then GO TO HELL!" Steve roars.  Come on, not even a process server would show up at a funeral!  Oh, Hollywood.  Oh, The Great Unbeatable Jackie Collins.

Wait, it gets better!  Only steps from the grave, Rod tells Stefanie that Anthony "was like a brother...but now that he's gone, I'll have to renegotiate your contract."  Ever elegant, Stefanie whispers her response into his ear.  This is camp classic HEAVEN! 

Looking wonderfully homeless, our killer decides it's time to shore his locks.  He goes to a beauty college where it's cheap.  Koko's would be too expensive. 

Candice arrives home from the funeral to find Steve sitting among a jungle of apology flowers.  "Do you think I'm going to forgive you 'like that'?  You are some baby," she stings, using the word that Joanna always uses for the men in Hollywood.  But, she has the upper hand, telling him he can have the house, that she has already packed up and is leaving.  Where will she go?  "I don't know.  Someplace where there are real children to take care of."  Get it? She lavished attention on her husband because her baby was taken from her.  Deep, huh?  Well, not really, but since when does The Great Unbeatable Jackie Collins need to be deep?

As things are wrapping up, we go into the Land of Convenient Lunacy.  Throughout the movie, Andrew and Catherine have made mention of his mother, but so little that it goes by unnoticed.  Well, now with his wife back, he decides to go see K Callan and confront her about some molestation that happened between mother and son.  "But I'm not your mother," she explains.  He's adopted, as if that makes the childhood trauma is any less horrible just because he's adopted?  They simply leave that alone and don't discuss it before Andrew runs away.  I assume in the book, this plot had far more to it than a casual mention and a two minute scene. 

The killer shows up at Angie's dinner party from hell, part 2.  The assistant answers the door and is horrified at what Andrew has done to his hair.  Okay, folks, it's finally time I came clean.  The actor playing the killer is Andrew Stevens.  One role wasn't enough for such an actor of his caliber, so they found him a piece that had TWO roles for such an actor of his caliber.  Angie and the assistant think it's actor Andrew going for a role when he shows up acting strangely.  Even after the killer announces he's not Andrew, they still think he is.  When he pulls out proof of her having delivered twins, she tells him, "they told me the babies were stillborn," that she would never have given up her own sons.  The assistant tells him to blame the lady at the agency, but he's already killed her. 

Catherine's appearance at Angie's is a shock to Killer Andrew, who kills the assistant and grabs Catherine, leaving Angie enough time to call the police.  Catherine refuses to believe he's not actor Andrew.  Catherine makes a run for it just as Steve is arriving and of course Killer Andrew and Steve fight for the gun.  Steve is shot just as actor Andrew arrives.  "Nobody ever cared about me.  I would have been a good boy...you should have been a better mother to me," the mad twin says, with Angie swearing again she didn't know he was alive.  The two Andrews struggle for the gun and thankfully it's the good twin who plugs the bad one. 

Get out the hankies, folks.  Dying, Bad Andrew says to Angie, "why didn't you love me, mother?"  "I never knew I had a brother," Bad Andrew says to Good Andrew in the midst of death twitching.  "You're my mother?"  "I guess I am," she says, as if there's something to be unsure about.  Why would they give the kids away?  "Maybe your father can help you understand," she says, nodding to Steve.  Now you can see why the title of the movie's "Family Reunion" is so ironically apt. 

Candy shows up at the hospital to take Steve home after recuperating from his gunshot scratch.  Why?  "I got jealous.  If anybody is going to shoot you, I want it to be me," is her terrific reply.  However, she puts him into the limo and goes her own way. 

The movie ends with Rod Steiger talking to the reporters assembled at the hospital, but about the movie he's planning.  Something about the wilds of Africa and WWII and Suzanne Somers.

Impeccable trash.  That's what "Hollywood Wives" is.  There is no masquerading here, no attempt to gloss over the idiocy of Hollywood folk, just a blatant expose and that's what makes it so much damn fun.  Jackie Collins, who had an inside track for years, no doubt based the character on people she knew, and what better location to use than Hollywood, where nothing is real? 

Proving that there was little reason to dress this up as anything but a gigantic royal cheesefest, why not go out and hire the weirdest assortment of actors?  Rod Steiger is so loud in all of his scenes I wondered if perhaps he wasn't starting to go deaf.  Between them, Robert Stack and Steve Forrest were about 204 years old in 1985, and one as bad an actor as the other.  Yes, we're supposed to believe that they are the biggest stars in Hollywood?  Angie Dickinson's super agent is well-played.  Candice Bergen has the hardest role, really the linchpin role, and she's a smart actress, so she knows here when to pull back and when to lay it on thick.  I wish the same could be said for Mary Crosby who acts only in oversized emotions.  Poor Joanna Cassidy has nothing to do.  Stefanie Powers plays the role she always played.  Remember, in 1985, Anthony Hopkins was not the megastar he would be a decade later, more known for his British stage work than anything else.  So, this must have seemed like a plum role, though he treat it like the plum has turned  into a prune.  Andrew Stevens, sexy as ever, is fine in two roles.  The few vets tossed in (like Roddy McDowell) certainly understand this ain't Chekhov.  In that vein, it's really Suzanne Somers who comes off best.  Playing a bimbo was something she did well from the beginning of her career, but this bimbo knows how to rig a house with camera systems.  She has the worst lines and the worst plot, but Suzanne gives it everything she has and is delightfully daffy here.