Hold the Dream (1986)

Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres.

Hey, it's it's good enough for Gaul and Caesar, it's good enough for Barbara Taylor Bradford.

Emma Harte est omnis divisa in partes tres.

We've seen A Woman of Substance.  Now it's time for the second part of the Emma Harte saga.  If Bradford is not as flashy as Danielle Steele, as giddily head-scratching as Judith Krantz or as blissfully wild as Jackie Collins, she does have a certain loopy authority and gravitas in her writing and "Hold the Dream" clings to that seriousness as tightly as possible, following the lead set by "A Woman of Substance."  That can be construed as taste, but it can also be construed as boring.

I guess "A Woman of Substance" was a big enough hit that by the time "Hold the Dream" was made, slumming vets signed up in droves.

Jenny Seagrove gets a morning call from Granny Deborah Kerr (whose slumming days ended here, since this was her last credit, but she still has her skills fully intact, not that she needs even 10% of them).  There's a big deal that would have the company Deborah started buying another one, and Deborah wants to make sure Jenny handles the negotiations properly.  Indeed, she's as steely as the old lady, playing such hardball that one of the current owners snaps, "they're all vultures."  Jenny's tactics put the kibosh on the takeover, but when she reports this to Deborah, it seems Deborah had set this all up, shrewd-though-poorly-dressed matron that she is.

We are introduced to a few more of Deborah's grandchildren and relatives to get the plot started, but at the onset, they are all interchangeable, except, of course, miniseries expert Stephen Collins, who is secretly in love with Jenny.  Also around is Liam Neeson, Deborah's oldest friend, done up here with a frightful white beard and a voice that sounds like he's chewing rocks.

Deborah senses her time running the empire is ending and one by one, people are lining up to either screw her over or share in the spoils.  Worst of all the hangers-on is Claire Bloom, Deborah's daughter, who is bitter that Deborah sacrificed motherhood for her career.  Deborah tries to mend fences, but Claire is unmoved.  Her son is getting divorced because he's in love with one of another of the brood.  This is news to Claire, though she does caustically note that, "you always wanted one of the Harte girls to marry a title."  Deborah slips into and Olivia de Havilland-style softness of speech, but it doesn't work.  Claire is hard and unyielding.

Liam is responsible for getting Deborah to a surprise 80th birthday party, and after some reminiscing and kind words, she accuses him of being as "full of the blarney as ever."  Liam's grandson Stephen is there, introduced him to Fiona Fullerton, obviously an American just by the way she dresses.  Jenny is upset that her husband isn't there, always putting his newspaper career first.  Everyone there has a plan. Dominic Jephcott, one of Deborah's grandsons, is bent on revenge and hooked onto Nicholas Farrell, whose company was supposed to be bought before Jenny ruined the deal (and this Nicholas and his father).  Stephen is in love with Jenny, but it's a secret.  Claire cozies up to her son Paul Geoffrey and his mistress, obviously trying to debunk whatever Deborah is hoping to get from Paul's divorce.  However, when his wife shows up spitting mad, it creates a bit of a scene.

The dancing starts with an idiotic synthesizer or something, and when asked what dance she'll dance, Deborah answers for everyone who has ever hated fad music, "I'm waiting for the waltzes."  Deborah then sees Stephen mooning over Jenny and even Fiona notices it.  In fact, it's the talk of the dance floor.

There are a cake, candles, a large cake knife and then Liam is requested to speak for all the assembled about Deborah, though it's relatively painless.  After all, this movie has crammed more plot into the first half hour than one would think possible, so no one gets more than a few sentences at any one time.  Deborah then speaks, drawing on that well of old-style training that netted her half a dozen or so Oscar nominations (no wins, sadly).  The big surprise is that Deborah is going to cede the empire to the grandchildren so she and Liam can take a cruise around the world.  An in-law is put in charge of the whole shebang, and even he seems shocked.  Jenny gets the department stores.  "I challenge you to hold my dream," Deborah coos.

Later on, Jenny's husband Nigel Havers is, as he always seems to be, upset.  He feels she shouldn't be working, just a wife and mother.  Some extremely unseemly and gross kissing ends the conversation, but Jenny refuses to let this discussion fall away to sexual interruption.  At the same time, Stephen and Fiona are going at it, but even she can tell he's not thinking of her.  Fiona, angry at Stephen, stands up naked and asks, "what makes you keep coming back to me bed all the time, all hot and bothered and raring to go, when the one you really want is" Jenny.  Hopefully this is Fiona's final scene, because she's pretty darn awful.

The corn factor zooms off the charts when Deborah shows up at Liam's and he gives her an engagement ring he had bought decades earlier, but didn't use because he thought she was too good for him (if you remember from "A Woman of Substance," she was a maid-turned-zillionaire, and he knows that, so it's a rather silly idea.  She wants it.  "Are we finally engaged?" she asks.  "Let's just say we're engaged to be closest of companions for the rest of our lives."  There's an awkward kiss, if only because Deborah is very old and, under the make-up and hair, Liam is soooooo much younger.  As we've been waiting for the whole time, Liam clutches his arm and then his chest, the surefire cinematic hint of a heart attack.  They have just enough time to admit their love for each other before he expires and she's left to cry her way to award nominations.  "I'm the last one," a pale Deborah tells her granddaughters as she looks at all the headstones in the cemetery.

After feeding her twins in a silk shirt that any new mother would know not to wear, Jenny has to go take care of her third child, her husband, who announces glumly he has resigned from the company, because "I've never like administrative work, I'm not good at it."  It takes not only a scene in the living room, then in the dining room, two places he can knock back the booze.  Jenny is not happy at this turn of events, but once again, Nigel placates her physically, in a joyless strangely neutered sex scene.

As second high-volume scene is next, a typical soap scene where the Paul's jilted ex-wife shows up at the family manse, drunk, and accosts her husband and his new gal, Sara-Jane Varley, yet another member of the family.  The wife staggers out to her car (yup, her car) and gives her Medea-like portents of doom.  Just so we don't think everyone is fond of high decibel yelling, there's a scene out of nowhere where Deborah ruminates on the dead of her husband decades ago, staring straight ahead and almost in a catatonic whisper.  "Yes, we know, darling," her daughter says, though Jenny sees something is very wrong.

It seems Paul's wife had left, in her car, to do exactly what we expected her to do.  Cue the police asking questions about the body and car in the pond.  Claire calls Jenny in hysterics, and when Claire informs her that Paul is a suspect in what not may be a drowning, Jenny realizes it could be true, and in a perfect Deborah Kerr imitation (though I don't think it's conscious).  "There is nothing to do...just stay calm and leave everything to me," Jenny tells her, whipping the family into their tasks and then calling the newspaper to tell them not to print anything about it.  Her family owns the newspaper, so the editor finds it an odd request since the news will be everywhere else.  Jenny is becoming a steely savvy woman with every passing (boring) scene.  She next takes on Sara-Jane, who wants to go be with Paul.  Jenny puts the kibosh on that and naturally, Sara-Jane listens.

Not impressed is Nigel, who rushes off to Jenny to scold her for threatening the editor at the newspaper he runs.  Jenny reminds him that Deborah owns the paper and has given her Power of Attorney.  That's news to her hubby.

In NYC, cousin/son/uncle/brother/ Valentine Pelka visits with Stephen, who is building a grand edifice.  Stephen is upset Jenny has to take control, though Valentine says it's because "she's the strong one."  Or has the biggest shoulder pads.  Naturally, Stephen wants to be with her, but can't.

Jonathan and Nicholas are forever plotting, doing everything but laughing over a cauldron filled with little children to prove how evil they are.  Jenny sees them and tells one of the female cousins (if you can keep track of them, good for you, I can't) she thinks she has one of Deborah's "cold feelings," puts her hand on her chin and then we know she's about to enter smarter-than-everyone mode.  As if we haven't the last gazillion scenes establishing Jenny as a younger Deborah, when she gets news from Texas that a family oil tanker in trouble, naturally she makes sure that "all the families are taken care of."  When Jenny tells Deborah (who is showing her character's slow decline by now adopting a crooked spine and a really bad wig, Deborah is at first sad, but then fiery, demanding to know what is being done about the oil spill.

On the phone with her man in Texas, Jenny pontificates, "there are only four things that are important: the injured men, their families, the wildlife and the good name" of the company.  Bravo, heroine, you have hart (or Harte, the company that must have the good name intact).  But, we've known that in literally every scene for longer than anyone can remember.  When she tells Nigel she has to go to Texas, he kicks up another fuss.  He accuses her of becoming her grandmother when fancy psychological terms that aren't real (I tried looking them up).  This whopper of a scene finds Nigel admitting he hates Deborah for stuff from the first movie, horrifying Jenny by referred to her new personal as a "cold calculating carbon copy of herself."  He almost had perfect alliteration there.  Two can play at that game, as she castigates Nigel for marrying her for the "money and power" he knew she would inherit as Deborah's heir.

Naturally, Jenny has to go to New York City, because no one else involved in the oil spill had the smarts to figure out holding a press conference promising no danger would be a good idea.  Really, no one.

Enter James Brolin, looking fetching in his beard and tight-fitting suit.  He's a banker involved with Stephen's business and now Jenny's.  He doesn't know Stephen has the hots for her, so he goes over her assets (as a person), looking to make a move on her, much to Stephen's discomfort.  But, this is how Stephen finds out Jenny is in town, sending her a horrid arrangement of violets.  Jenny is touched and calls Stephen to make plans.  Strangely, when she suggests getting together, he begs off.  Ten seconds later, he calls her back (he knows the phone number of where she happens to be) without any aid and decides to say yes to her invitation.  He is very standoffish, but Jenny calls him on it and he drops the facade.  "It is such a relief to be able to talk to you again," Jenny notes.  It's not exactly romantic, but it gives him hope.

Stephen warned Jenny about James, so she is guarded when they meet, but she tramples on him, agreeing only to discuss his offer to buy the oil company they own with Deborah.

Then it's off to Stephen's Connecticut fixer-upper for the weekend.  She attends wearing a head band, more shoulder pads than ever and some very fashionable boots.  "It has an air of permanence, are you planning to set down roots?" Jenny asks.  It takes a local neighbor to inform Jenny that Stephen is in love with her.  There she goes with the pensive blank look again, but decides to go with it!

She grabs the wine, a few glasses and stands by the fire so that Stephen knows what she wants.  Four hundred violins are helpful too.  He walks over to her...

She asks him to sit next to her so she ask Stephen if he's in love with her, since they have been honest with they each other "since we were children."  She speaks in a whisper, her way of playing coy, so grab the remote or else you're sunk, though frankly, you know al the words to this conversation already since this scene is in virtually every romance miniseries.  They kiss and if Jenny is about as sexy as a plastic chair, Stephen knows how to play this.  Mercifully we are spared everything that happens after she unsnaps her bra.

Stephen has a rule, that he never fools around with married women, though he waits until after they have had sex to mention it.  They confess their love and mutual desire at the airport before Jenny returns to England.  Due to some heavy drinking, Nigel calls Jenny to make dinner plans and then races his sports car to meet her.  That leads to our second car accident of the movie, but Nigel survives, barely.  Stephen calls, offering to fly to London, knowing full well that Jenny can't exactly leave her husband now, but he understands and agrees to wait.

Time for a trial!  We've had every necessary scene to make a miniseries except a trial, so as the second half of the miniseries starts up, Paul is on trial for perhaps having a hand in his wife's death.  A maid exonerates Paul, who strides out of the courtroom with his mother, Claire, but not everyone is so convinced justice was perfectly served.

Assuming a "never mix, never worry" type attitude, Nigel is downing bottles of wine and painkillers when Jenny pays a hospital visit.  This near-death experience has made him sure the marriage can be saved, but just as Jenny is about to opine differently, the doctor interrupts.  The doctor is worried about Nigel's drinking.  Frankly, I am too.  How does one get wine into a hospital?  Come on, that can't be easy!  But, the doc tells Jenny that Nigel must stay out of any "stressful" situations and needs a shrink ASAP.  That means Jenny can't say anything about the marriage, but that's fine, because Stephen has come to her and all is right in  her world.  For a few minutes.  "We'll be together eventually for the rest of our lives," naive goon Stephen tells Jenny, who knows she can't be with him fully until Nigel is well again.

Accosting Jenny outside her office, David Swift, the father of plotter Nicholas (and Dominic).  She prefers to avoid him but he has a convenient attack of...something and gets an invitation to her office, where he gives her some important information and has another of those attacks of...something.

Nigel, scheming on behalf of his long-dead family members, asks Deborah to return him to the position of Managing Director for her company.  By using the past as a weapon, he expects Deborah to cave.  "I never mix sentiment with business," the matron declares, "but I'm not saying no" and agrees to think about it.

A wedding happens quickly and then it's Christmas, where Deborah and Stephen sing a few lines, but Deborah opts to stay behind while everyone joins the carolers.  Then comes what should be a touching scene between twin granite dames, Deborah and Claire.  Claire begs for a lifetime of forgiveness and gets it, which we can only assume Deborah ain't gonna be around much longer.

Claire gets sucked into Nigel's plot, without knowing it, and then asks Stephen which of his hotels would be perfect for a "second honeymoon."  He then tries to kiss Jenny and she rebuffs him.  This leads to yet another argument.  "When something's not right, don't be afraid to let it go," Deborah tells a crestfallen Jenny, pushing out every syllable as if one of them will be her last.  But, for the second time in ten minutes, she keeps going despite all the clues of imminent demise.

Jenny and Stephen go to the field where they grandparents first fell in love, blah, blah, blah and then they spot Deborah.  I'm not sure how she got there, because the only car is the one Jenny and Stephen came in.  "Don't stay too long," Jenny warms Deborah, as it's cold out.  "No, it's time to go," Deborah says.  It this where she croaks?  Nope, sorry.  Not yet.

Instead, she heads to her department store, where she remembers very little and struggles to get to her office.  Clutching a picture of her long-dead husband, she can barely walk or see and falls to the floor, which is where Jenny finds her.  Deborah goes into the kind of acting that had died about 40 years earlier as she scoops out every word, telling Jenny "you must hold my dream, but you also have to have your own."  That phrase alone takes 12 minutes and whenever one cites the title, it's never a good sign. Deborah's eyes flutter and her head falls back.  NOW she's dead.  There is still a quarter of the miniseries left, but Deborah's part is done (and, unfortunately, a long and interesting career).  A church funeral and some time for the family at the grave are to be expected, as is Jenny, all in black, staring out from the family home as Stephen comes up beside her.

With our vet out of the picture (John Mills doesn't count, since he doesn't get more than a sentence at any given time), we are in the home stretch, but unfortunately, I'm having trouble caring about any of these characters.  None of them are any fun and there are just too many of them!

But there is a will reading, by lawyer John Mills (this isn't even slumming, it must be a favor owed to someone) though the contents are no surprise.  What is a surprise are five codicils.  In the first, she leaves money and a diamond ring from his grandfather to Stephen.  Valentine is given money, a house and 35% of a Canadian newspaper.  The third codicil gives Nigel only 5%!  The other 60% is for Jenny.  Lastly, some properties originally promised elsewhere are given to her no-dialogue daughter.  That's a problem because Dominic had been counting on selling those properties to prop up the business he has going with Nicholas.  He objects, loudly, and is then told he gets to pick two paintings instead.  Deborah also prepared for the inevitable squabbling by proving she was of sound mind.  The room erupts in childish prattle until Jenny silences the whole family.

Jenny and Papa Paul Daneman figure out that Dominic has a scam going, but they need to prove it, so Paul suggests a real estate sale.  

Equally angry, Nigel and Jonathan plot.  Nigel wants to sell Dominic his shares, but not in secret.  Jonathan insists it be done with the approval of the board.

Ever wonder if love can blossom on a rocking horse?  I didn't either, but Stephen and Jenny make out while she's riding one in Liam's old house, where she declares she wants to live with Stephen.  Jonathan snakes out of the real estate deal meant to expose his dirty dealings, but Nicholas picks it up, so there is still hope.  But, it's not enough to "hang [Dominic] with." Luckily, there is proof to be found, where they can at least "challenge" Dominic.

Nigel wants to "patch up our marriage," with a whole bunch of conditions, but Jenny insists on divorce, even when Nigel threatens to sue for custody of the kids and move to Canada.  Papa Paul is a bit more level-headed about the situation, convinced that Nigel will go for "a settlement."

A board meeting is called and Dominic is confronted by the whole family.  He tries to weasel out of it, even taking his cousin down with him, but Paul fires him.  "I can hire and I can fire.  And I'm firing you!" he tells Dominic.  Dominic has to be forcibly ejected from the room as he sputters threats.  That takes care of a plot that was never interesting, or, at least, at the bottom of the interest pile.

Now we have to deal with Nigel, who will not take money from Papa Paul, but will take the newspapers, the ones he feels were stolen by Deborah from his family.  "Once I've got that, I'll start divorce proceedings," Nigel tells Paul, referring to the newspaper shares.

Jenny rushes to the Concorde and Stephen (for another very unsettling sex scene) because she believes Nigel has been taken care of by her father.  However, it's not that easy.  Since Nigel refuses to wait any longer, he takes Paul in his private plane to Nice.  Cue the phone, cue Stephen finding out bad news and steeling Jenny for it, cue Jenny uttering, "no, no, no" at the news that her husband and father were both killed when the plane crashed.  There is even some crazy thrashes and mussed hair, with Stephen unable to touch her.  In fact, "I can't bear to be touched by anyone," she tells her mother after the funeral.

She boots Stephen because she blames herself for their deaths.  "I have my work," she tells Stephen, who reminds her that Deborah also told her to have a dream of her own.  "It's a harsh world...there is no time for dreams," she says, robotically (which isn't that different from the way she's acted at any other point, one of the worst-acted leads I can find in a miniseries).

It would be nice if, instead of limping along, we raced to reunite the main lovers, but no, that's just not how it's done here.  Fiona returns to the movie after her brief scenes at the beginning, to say goodbye to Stephen, who has decided to move back to England to be near Jenny when she inevitably remembers she needs him.  Also back is James Brolin, billed as a "special guest star," but having lazed around his trailer for the last few hours after only two scenes.  Fiona and James have had a torrid love affair because Fiona believed James would leave her wife for her and the child they have together.  That was never James' intention and he even questions the paternity of the child since he knows she's been hanging out with Stephen (platonically, it turns out).

Why is this of any importance?  Because he has the hots for Jenny and their business relationship is rekindled.  He still wants her oil stocks, but eventually he does reveal who the secret buyer is.  When Jenny informs the oil company board, they are livid and offer her more money.  No, but she wants more of a say in the company and they approve her conditions.  This infuriates James, whose reputation is on the line about to lose a deal "to a slip of a girl."  He gets blotto, so by the time she arrives in an Alexis Colby business suit, he's ready to rape her.  They fight for a while, but she kicks him where it counts and is able to escape.  Why toss a rape scene in when we should be wrapping up?  Take a wild guess!  You don't need me to tell you.

But, before that, Jenny does what virtually every rape victim in 1980s movies does, she takes a shower.  Not like Pia Zadora in "The Lonely Lady," the weirdest rape-and-shower combo in all of film history.  Then a cousin comes to comfort her, seeing Jenny all bruised.  "That's dreadful!  I'll all a doctor," Cousin Inept-Acting says, with about as much gusto as if she were having the post office stop mail delivery while they go on vacation.  They hug, which is the first time she's let anyone do that since the deaths of her father and husband.

Next time we see Jenny, she's riding a white horse back in Yorkshire where Stephen just happens to be sitting and daydreaming, the place, of course, where their parents fell in love almost two miniseries ago.    Well, if you didn't figure out the ending two paragraphs ago, here it is: she asks him for the ring her grandmother left him, "not as a gift, but as your future wife."  And that, my friends, ends this saga.

Never wildly interesting, "Hold the Dream" is really a lukewarm project.  "A Woman of Substance" benefitted greatly from finer acting.  This one has, well, Jenny Seagrove.  That's not much.  Stephen Collins, with a bad British accent, does better than everyone else, but he is a pro at this sort of tripe.

Don't go far, there's a third coming soon.

A Woman Named Jackie (1991)

If you have to ask "Jackie who?" you might as well stop reading.

C. David Heymann's wildly popular dirt-digger on Jackie O comes to life with a literally breathless Roma Downey in a very good impersonation and all the Kennedy skeletons-in-closets you would ever want to know.  Jackie was still very much alive in 1991 when "A Woman Named Jackie" aired, but there is not a whole lot of fawning in the way nearly every other Kennedy miniseries had treated her, though there is a certain amount of respect that would disappear in tales shot after her death.  In fact, it was due to Heymann that we learned a whole new set of Jackie facts, whether you choose to believe them all or not, that repositioned her somewhere between the saint in the bloody pink suit and the hex of the Onassis family.

There are better Kennedy-related miniseries, there are worse, but there aren't many as juicy as this one, which actually took the Emmy for "Outstanding Miniseries."

We start with the expected flashback, but since Jackie was still with us, it can't be from her deathbed.  So, someone wondered, "hmmm, what would be a life-altering moment that would have one thinking about the past?" and decided to use the birth of Caroline's first child.  Well, that might work if this were Caroline's stormy but it's not.  They attempt to use the hospital thus: "I've spent so much time here...waiting...praying."

Anyway, trying to cover that mistake, the creators decided to throw us a piece of gossip first: Jackie is waiting, with John John (Andy Buckley), smoking a cigarette!  Yup, Jackie smoked.  Never in public, of course, but hey, according to Heymann, that was the least of Jackie's vices.

Then it's back to her birth, which of course she wouldn't be able to remember, but we'll skip over that.  Pop Black Jack Bouvier (William Devane, who had already played JFK in a TV movie) is very proud, but fussy Janet (Wendy Hughes) isn't the cooing type.  She gets that from her father, a grumpy old codger who can't wait to attack Black Jack for his drinking and gambling.  Little Jackie, now with younger sister Lee in tow, is used to hearing heated family discussions, though it makes Janet mad, not because the discussions are had, but because the nanny should be watching the girls.

At a horse race, Janet is of course aglow because there are people around, though Jackie is only worried if her father will show up.  "Need any help, Jackie?" a well-meaning extra asks as she mounts a horse.  "No.  It's Jacqueline.  Bouvier," she tells him imperiously.  Black Jack shows up, late, with a friend of Janet's on his arm no less, and the two predictably trade innuendos.  Little Jackie does not win.  Janet wasn't the type to fix a horse race (and has nothing but complaints when Jackie dismounts) and Black Jack was, but he didn't have the money (he's full of compliments for his fourth-place placer).

When Jack's affair hits the papers, Janet is pissed and blames his drinking.  "It never mattered when the Bouvier name got you into the Social Register," he notes.  "That's not why I married you," she claims.  "All you want to do is claw your way to the top of society because your father came from NOWHERE,"  he digs in.  Maybe someone should ask Auntie Edith Beale which name carries more social weight.  Or perhaps her daughter Little Edie.  Nah, this miniseries is way too serious to drag in that much comic relief.  Black Jack breaks the news of the impending divorce with aphorisms and solemn lines that he couldn't have managed sober or drunk, but we have to explain Jackie's intellect somehow.

Teenage Jackie (Sarah Michelle Gellar) parades down Manhattan streets with her father, scooping up packages and even a dog, when Lee spills the beans that Janet is marrying Hugh Auchincloss (Bob Gunton), though Jackie admonishes her joking father, "don't laugh, he's very nice...and very rich."  Bang, she's become a snob too.  Neither the Beales nor new cousin Gore Vidal seem to be at the wedding, and mopey Jackie wanders off before the "i dos."  Wandering into a den, citing it "awful," she finds fellow misfit step-brother Yusha (Boyd Gaines), who shares her disdain, at least some of it.  He jokes that she's going to "Miss Porter's," and she corrects him that it's Farmington.  "Those who call it Miss Porter's don't go to Miss Porter's," she glowers, but at least follows it up realizing she sounds ridiculous.

Ta-ta Sarah Michelle Gellar, enter Roma Downey, at Farmington in 1946, and now smoking.  Back Jack takes her to lunch, full of praise for her artwork and such.  He asks about her relationship with Hugh, a question four years too late, and the moves on to "what are you doing for boys?" an equally inappropriate question, but for different reasons.  She changes the subject, that she wants to be a "photographer's model" when she graduates.  Showing him a photo, she is rebuffed with an "absolutely not" as her father tears up the picture.  "All one really has is a reputation," he reminds her, a few hours early, still speaking in the language one can only call "drunken fortune cookie."  Back to the discussion of life after Miss Por...Famington, Jackie says, "I can promise you one thing, I'll never be a housewife," having already acquired that vague New-England-Mid-Atlantic-I-wish-I-were-kind-of-British accent that followed her the rest of her life.  The other girls may giggle at Black Jack's inability to walk a straight line, but it weighs on Jackie.  Well, frankly, what doesn't?  The girl hasn't cracked a smile since she started mining diamonds (if you know what I mean).

Yusha that she wants none of the typical country club boys, but when he points out Clay Holmby (Nick Gregory), how can she refuse to dance with someone that handsome?  On paper, he's ideal.  He's smart, "up and coming" on Wall Street, stunning to behold and he adores her. He even buys Vogue to see her picture in it "for winning the essay contest."  But even Yusha can see she's "bored to tears" with him, assuming she believes all the hype about herself in Winchell and Maxwell's mentions.  Not our Jackie, as she would rather be miserable.  "Who am I?  And what am I doing with my life that's worth a damn?" she wonders.  Deciding to drop out of Vassar, Jackie tells Black Jack she wants to work for a newspaper, covering politics, "something that matters."  Black Jack sees this as a personal betrayal, her finally taking Janet's side over his.  "I belong at the center of things and that is where I intend to be."  Wait didn't this woman just tell Yusha she wanted nothing to do with spotlight.

She then famously becomes a man-on-the-street reporter, asking inane questions like "what does a woman like?" by leading in with a  quote by Chaucer, whom no one knows.  I suppose we are supposed to laugh at how dumb they are in DC.  She's a flop because the pictures suck.  "They are out of focus, aren't they?" "Either that or I should sue my eye doctor," the editor says, quipping like every hard-boiled newspaper editor everywhere.  When she volleys that no one takes her seriously because she's a woman, she sounds like a spoiled movie actress.

More than half an hour into the movie and already engaged to Clay, she's introduced to Congressman John Kennedy (dependable Stephen Collins, always playing a miniseries second fiddle), who takes an immediate shine to her.  "Great, a politician.  All they do is talk about themselves," she complains to her girlfriend, but is told to keep an open mind.  There's something goofily  attractive about him, though seemingly they have not a thing in common, he who eats asparagus with his hands and she who cuts her into small bits with expensive silverware.  After an excruciating round of charades, there's a slapstick bit that involves a dog and a drunken suitor, the kind of scene begging to be cut.

"I find it hard to talk about private things," she tells John on a movie date, their first.  That's kind of oxymoronic, no?  Meanwhile, she keeps putting off a wedding date with Clay, must to Janet's dismay.  "We all have our parts to play in life," mother tells her, "and a woman may not get to choose, but she can carry it off with style and integrity."  Spoken like a true social ice sculpture.  When Clay shows up one day and Jackie doesn't want to see him, Lee (Ashley Crow), who hasn't made an appearance since she was about five, wonders aloud what is going on with her sister.  Well, Jack Kennedy is what's going on with her.  "There's something a little dangerous about him, like Daddy," notes Lee, who should have been a psychologist instead of...well...whatever the hell she was (and still is).  "I've never seen you this way." "I've never felt this way."  Clay finally gets the brush off when he brings Jacqueline home after a date (using the same outdoor set as the one with the dog-and-suitor scene, just decorated differently).  Naturally, it was kept out of adoring Jackie portraits that she bumped off one boyfriend for another, one who is "at the center of things."

Bringing John a picnic lunch to his office, Jackie sets it out and he asks, "French mustard?"  "But of course" (in a mocked French accent).  "I prefer American."  "Nobody said you were perfect."  Okay, now that we've established that John Kennedy is some sort of politician slash vaudeville comic, I'm expecting the striptease act to come next.  No, instead, Jackie proves how smart she is by offering to write him notes on Southeast Asia.  That AND mustard?  What more could a dumb rich boy ask for?  She necks in the car, always a plus, though she ruins it with more talk of Southeast Asia.  She and Funnybones Malloy are kissing when a policeman tells them to move along, but he's the grabby time and wants to get at least a few bases.

He's so serious about her, he summons her to Hyannisport, where the Kennedy clan is in full swing playing baseball.  Rose (Rosemary Murphy) and Joe (Josef Sommer) seem delighted to meet her, but the rest look positively puzzled at the pink princess.  "What position do you play?"  "I don't play much baseball, but I did do ballet."  "Hey, the deb prefers ballet to baseball!" one of the cackling Kennedy sisters caws.  Ah, now the whole family is filled with schtick artists.  That's new, considering every other portrait of the Kennedys has always painted them as sporty, but dull.  Maybe Joe Sr. really wanted them all to be clowns.  Speaking of Joe, he's already marked her out for greatness and they have a very serious conversation the first time out.  Though his daughters exist "to push the men along," he brazenly admits that he wants a powerful wife for the future president, the second man in the family to want that office, the first having died.  "We're a family of winners.  We marry winners.  I think you're a winner, Miss Bouvier," he tells her.  Marry winners?  Ethel?  Joan?  Peter Lawford?  Mr. Smith (Jean's husband)?  Yeah, prizes all!  I think what he means is HE married a winner (Rose's money) and John will marry a winner (Jackie's glamour).  As usual, Joe is marked as manically driven, though this Jackie is in on his plans from the onset.

John proposes to Jackie, or rather tells her they are going to be married, when she is sent to London to cover Queen Elizabeth's coronation.  Finally showing his truer colors, John admits, "I wanted to marry you a year ago," a chilling head tilt to Joe's plans.  Jackie is suddenly not quite sure she wants this, and she goes to her mother, of all people, who unloads a tirade about the upstart Kennedy, and eventually, Black Jack (who, by the way is now coughing in a big chair, a sign of impending death).  "This isn't a horse show, we're not competing against each other," Janet says when Jackie accuses her of marrying a scoundrel and dumping him for a secure husband.  Ah, now we see where Lee gets her staggering ability to assess the minds of others.  She next turns to a stranger on the plane with her problems, an odd choice given how tough a time she has with opening up (as she told John on their first date, remember).  Oh, and the woman she talks to is an old flame of John's.  You saw that one coming.

Hold on tight for a romantic walk on the beach.  "It's so hard to be married these days," Jackie says, as if she has so much experience.  "I love you, I want to be your wife, I want to have your children," she continues, with all the warmth of a popsicle.  "We'll have fun," John replies.  "Spoken like a true Kennedy," she opines, and not happily.  We're about to make our Faustian pact, or, more accurately, our first Faustian pact.  You mean Camelot was all a business deal?  Oh, just you wait!

Janet puts the wedding together, against her better judgment, having to "bend" to Joe's desires, and calling his guest list something "like a summit meeting," and odd term for the 50s, considering summits of between the US and USSR didn't kick in until the 70s.  Black Jack arrives in town for the wedding, clearly not well.  Unfortunately, he gets sloshed and doesn't show up for the wedding, Hugh having to step in and give her away.  She's informed of the switch on the red carpet outside the church, complete with mobs of women proclaiming their eternal devotion to her.  Actually Hugh is the only person at the wedding smiling.  Even the priest doesn't believe this one!

Freshly wed, Jackie cries with only her mother offering a shoulder to cry on.  She would get more succor from just holding a pillow.  Jackie then spends her honeymoon writing a forgiveness letter to her father.  John tries to be a little lovey dovey, but she puts him off so long that when she finds him, he's entertaining young ladies at the pool (okay, it wasn't actually that long, I was being polite).

Funnybones Malloy is back when Jackie screws up scrambled eggs, cracking wise as he tries to get to work, having to put up with her decorating desires while the car bleats for him.  She said she never wanted to be a housewife, but she tries awfully hard: golf, bridge, everything she hates, but all "to make Jack happy," she tells Yusha, discovering her golf ball in the sand, leading to the inevitable line, "whenever you are in a trap you try to get out," delivered by Yusha.

To be fair, Jacqueline does try her best.  When she forgets about a lunch for a 20-man Greek delegation, she calls for delivery.  "Did you have something to do with all this?" Funnybones Malloy rather nastily sasses.  Hey, the guys are fat and happy, what are you complaining about?  You could be married to Ethel, you know!  It's at this lunch that John collapses in agony and has to be taken to the hospital, her first trip to the dreaded place she mentioned on the opening scene.  Yes, her first time at a hospital since she was born, it seems.  I would say that's a damn good avoidance record.  That's the positive.  The negative is simply bad dialogue and a stupid framing idea.  "His publicity people are playing up the war hero angle," she complains, again to Yusha, though John manages to continue being a Senator from his hospital bed, where two exceedingly glum doctors handle delivering bad news.  Having surgery is a risk, but they have to do it.  For the first time, he actually needs Jackie and confides in her.  "We're a team, right?" he asks.  "Right," she replies, sobbing, something Bouvier women have never done.

John wakes up from surgery to see Jackie (and a picture of a mostly naked actress on the wall behind her).  She is by his bedside day and night, even through a "very serious" infection (that news told her extra blandly).  History shows that he pulled out of it all just fine.  I guess this was all included to soften their marriage a bit.  They go to Hyannisport to recover, where Joe takes charge like a general and where his siblings give him a football right out of the ambulance.  Poor John is a caged prisoner caught between his clucking mother, scheming father, nameless siblings and Jackie, who forces him to read and listen to her periodic bouts of flirty intelligence.  He somehow manages to write "Profiles in Courage" during this convalescence.  "Now we're going to make this book a winner!" Joe declares.  "Joe, a book isn't a political candidate, you can't just make a bestseller," she replies with outrageous naivete.  "Two calls, one to assure rave reviews and another to have my people go out across the country and buy every copy.  That's how you make a winner!"

Finally in her own house, Jackie is pregnant and wants to hang a "hideous" fish on the wall.  Much to Janet's dismay, Lee helps her.  Why?  "Because she's older," and a few sentences later remarks, "people catch lots of things on vacation and don't hang them on the wall," referring to the fish, or perhaps gonorrhea.  It's hard to tell with her acidic delivery.  Janet fears her daughter is becoming a Kennedy.  "Make babies, make politics," Jackie says, patting her stomach.  Janet doesn't want Jackie going to the Chicago convention and "you tell Joe Kennedy I want a healthy grandchild."  No ma, you tell him!  That conversation I would like to see.

The only person who has any sympathy for the clearly uncomfortable Jackie is the first person in the movie drawn without any glaring faults, the one and only Lady Bird Johnson (Carlin Glynn).  Lady Bird wises her up to some political realities, while not ducking the fact that she sashayed on over to also find out if John is "looking for delegates."  "Neither is Lyndon" she says and then excuses herself to "do what we have to do...laugh at the jokes" and all that rot.  Jeepers, not even Lady Bird Johnson is without ulterior motives?  Jackie hasn't met a genuinely good person, well, ever!  That's even more unlikely than waiting almost 30 years to visit a hospital.  Adlai Stevenson is the presidential candidate, but John is definitely in the running for Vice President, along with everyone else.  It's lucky for John he didn't get on the ticket because Eisenhower was unbeatable.  However, John takes a call from Joe. "I was just talking to the Pope, our father...in 60, we go for the top spot."

Jackie goes into labor picking flowers with her mother (luckily, nothing got on the flowers, or Janet would have lost it!).  She wakes up in the hospital (trip #2) with Bobby Kennedy (Tim Ransom), giving her the awful news that her baby died.  John is on vacation in Italy (one she sent him on without her).  Two guesses what John is doing in Italy. Stomping grapes?  No.  Bangin' babes?  Yup.  Extra helpful Janet rages, "it's Jack's fault for not being here," yet again without a kind word for anything Kennedy.  To make matters worse, Janet picks this time to reveal to her that "friends of mine in Italy have seen Jack in the company of a young woman."  "If you ever want to be President of the United States, you haul your ass back to your wife," John's friend tells him, when the senator wonders what he should do.  Okay, even in a marriage of convenience, you know to be by your wife's side the second you find out something catastrophic has happened.  "I've failed you as a wife and you've failed me as a husband," Jackie says angrily when he arrives.  "You have no idea what I've been through and I don't think you even care!"  Then it's onto the pity party, nothing that Pat just had a baby and Ethel is due yet again, oh, and also that they "turn their heads when it comes to their husbands indiscretions."  Zing!  This round goes to Jackie.  Having just suffered the death of an infant, she has all the storytelling cards.  Trying to argue would make John the ultimate heel.  "You forget, I grew up with one of the great philanderers of all times, I know how it's done, Jack," she adds.  Then comes the melodrama.  "We don't have a home.  I'm going to live with my mother."  John can fight that one, since he has lost the child too, but he's back in trouble when she cries that it took him five days to get to the hospital.  To be honestly, it's rather an overstuffed scene, tackling way too many issues, but it is some sort of climax, one in a hospital, of course.

Wearing an insanely large hat and a polka dot dress, a rare fashion misstep for Jackie, she goes to her father for solace.  Rose Kennedy has her opinion as well.  "High born ladies like Jackie weren't mean to have children," she says, though Joe shuts her up rather violently.  "I don't like the rumors.  Time magazine sounds like you're headed for a break-up," Joe admonishes John.

Then comes a scene that was considered shocking in Heymann's book and in the miniseries: the Faustian Pact, Part 2.  If the story behind it is true, it's a whopper of a bombshell, and if it's not, it certainly had people talking!  Joe and Jackie take a walk in the garden.  They have seen through each other since the beginning and Jackie is not afraid of Joe.  "These are Jack's priorities: politics, other women, the Kennedy family and then maybe vaguely he remembers he has a wife," she claims.  "There's a different between love and sex.  Come on you're a big girl," Joe replies, not giving an inch to her proper lady sentimentality.
"What will it take you to come back?" Joe asks.
"What is this, a business deal?"
"I asked a question."
"More time alone with Jack, less time with the family."
"Fine."
"That means when we're in Hyannisport or Palm Beach, we have dinner with you once a week, not every night."
"Fine."
"You better straighten that out with Rose."
"Done."
"No more phone calls during dinner and at all hours.  You better straighten that out with Jack."
"Okay."
"I want a home of my own."
"Name it."
"Washington, so Jack can come home for dinner.  I want a house in Georgetown and a free hand in decorating it as a gift from you."
"Within reason."
"No, absolutely outside of reason."
"You're a tough kid," Joe replies, laughing, "okay, what else?"

And here it comes.  The line that would destroy the illusion of Camelot forever.

"A million dollars in cash."  She looks at Joe and wonders if she went too far, so she says "I'm just kidding."
"You can have it if you want it."
"Am I that much of a political asset?"
"Let's just say I want you to be happy."

The deal having been concluded without so much as a handshake, Jackie returns to the loving daughter-in-law, takes Joe's arm and says, "Then fix it so I can have a baby.  How are your connections in that one, Joe?"  "I'll put in a word for you upstairs."  It's this scene that shocked readers of Heymann's book and was meant to do the same in the miniseries, and sure packs a punch, knocking the stuffing right out of the priggish Jackie imagine.

For Jackie's life up until the assassination, there had been rumors of infidelity, of marriage problems, etc., but the press was respectful and the couple never wavered in their public devotion to each other.  But, it's this exchange that, if true, is the smoking gun that explains why they married, why they stayed married and why Jackie tended her husband's flame until at least the last 1960s.  The God John Kennedy had already taken his lumps for decades by this point: mistresses came forward, Marilyn Monroe, Joe's supposed purchasing of votes, mob connections.  Dead, he was fair game.  But, Jackie was still alive and the most famous woman in the world still when Heymann wrote his book and this miniseries was filmed.  The Goddess Jackie was suddenly torn from her pedestal right here, and, if Heymann is correct (and with Jackie and Joe dead now, there is no way to know), it makes everything else in her life suspect, a proposition that had occurred only to a select few.  When Christina Onassis roared about Jackie, everyone thought she was a crackpot.  But, with history changed like this, perhaps Christina Onassis wasn't so far off base.

Anyway we continue with the miniseries as that is the task at hand.  Historians and gossip writers will forever continue to shower us with new takes on Jacqueline.

The house in Georgetown that Jackie wanted is the same set pier we've seen over and over again, being given a remodel inside as Jackie is plump in pregnancy again.  Jackie isn't even pretending anymore.  John gives her a string of pearls for a birthday present and she reminds him they are supposed to go to a party at her mother's that night.  Just a look from him tells her he's forgotten.  "Don't worry, you remember the most important part," she says, fingering the pearls.  Lee calls with the news that Black Jack is in the hospital, but not to fly up because it's just for tests.

Cue Jackie and Lee in all black at the coffin of their father, whose funeral is sparsely attended.  John asks Hugh who the weeping women in the back of the room are.  "They aren't family.  More like a fan club," he notes, adding, "you know what women say, once you've been with Black Jack Bouvier, no other man will do."  "It's not a bad epitaph," Joe remarks, always the hell.

And finally the couple has a healthy baby, little Caroline.  "She looks just like you," John says.  Yeah, maybe as a baby, but look at her fifty years on, she's all Kennedy.

Now it's safe for Joe Kennedy to get what he wants: John in the White House.  The first call is to Frank Sinatra to deal with "High Hopes."  "Don't hide Jackie," Joe reminds John, who says that Jackie hates campaigning.  "Jackie and I have an understanding.  She may not admit it, but she's getting a taste of power.  She's got a whiff of the White House.  She'll work her ass off to get there," he says confidently.

Campaigning in Wisconsin, John is called back to Washington to vote on the Civil Rights bill, but Jackie tells him to go and she'll do the campaigning.  John tries to think it's because she likes the attention, but she "likes the crowds."  No, she made a deal and she's living up to her end of it.

A blow-up ensues when a very pregnant Jackie refuses to attend the Los Angeles convention for fear of losing the baby.  John insists she be there when he accepts the nomination.  "Four years ago, I was a naive political wife, desperate to please you and your family.  Now I'm a mother and I know what's important.  I'm staying home," she says.  "That's just great!" John explodes.

By that point in time, Jackie wasn't needed to assure votes, though if she had been there, some matters might have been different.  John goes to dinner with Peter Lawford (Nicholas Walker) and trusted aide Ken O'Donnell (Clark Gregg) when in comes Marilyn Monroe (Eve Gordon) to join them.  "I'm always on time for the Senator," she purrs.  This Marilyn is alternating idiotic and knowing.

Election night arrives and it's a nail biter.  Even in the wee hours of the morning, "it's too close to tell" who won the election.  Somehow, the Jackie and John manage to sleep, woken by the doorbell.  It's the Secret Service, "here to provide security for the President-Elect."  That means he won!  Jackie is less than thrilled with the surge of attention on her, but John is unsympathetic.  That goes with the job.  Off he goes and naturally she goes too, into premature labor.  This time, John is on the plane when he gets the news and he turns it around as soon as they get the news.  Only moments later, they get the news that he now has a son.

A photographer shows up at the hospital and pops out of a closet.  The Secret Service tackles him to get the film.  "You said they would protect us," a horrified Jackie brays.

The inauguration means the pillbox hat.  We haven't heard from Janet in a while, and she's as vicious as ever.  Imploring Jackie to get her ass down to the inaugural balls, she's not happy with the hairdo a sassy man is giving her.  It looks like a rat's nest.  History would be on Jackie's side this time.  The inaugural balls means Jackie in that cape, her second fashion triumph of the day.

At the White House, Jackie, in jodhpurs, is already making changes.  She refuses to greet the staff en masse, preferring to do so one-on-one, and says "don't call me the First Lady.  My name is Mrs. Kennedy."  She has everyone sign confidentiality agreements and comes off as exceedingly imperious.  He answer to John's note that everyone is complaining that the French chef isn't American is to tell him to push through the naturalization papers.  She wants to do "something useful" and redecorate the White House, going into a comedy routine mocking foreign guests that belonged somewhere about an hour ago.  She promises to make the White House a showplace for the nation without spending taxpayer money.  "Be careful, remember what happened to Marie Antoinette," John warns her.  "Eat your cake, darling," she coos, a cute line wasted on her uncultured hubby.

Jackie raises the funds by publishing a book celebrating the changes she's made and the taxpayers are thrilled.  In passing, we find out that Joe had a stroke, and then so-called Dr. Feelgood arrives to administer B12 shots, which he does for the President and every famous celebrity he's addicted to his phony concoctions.  We've managed to hit everyone in one scene or another, even Dr. Feelgood!  It's a regular old Kennedy Cliffs Notes party.

She refuses to see a delegation from Miss Porter's, from Vassar and even her mother, but she will see George Balanchine.  "No to anything that doesn't have to do with my promotion of the arts," she tells her secretary.  John insists she goes to France, where she just has to "look ravishing and speak beautiful French."  She charms De Gaulle as no one else had ever been able to do.  Strangely, John's line, "I'm the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris" is not used in context, but merely in a rather bizarre conversation between husband and wife where her eyes are bugging out over Parisian splendor.  He admits his success in France is due to her.  They then dance alone in an opulent hallway.

John prefers romps in the swimming pool to cello recitals and the like that Jackie has arranged.  This is the focus of "A Woman Named Jackie" as it's her story.  Apparently she had no care of the Russians, of the Cuban Missile Crisis or the Bay of Pigs or anything political.  But, she does toss floozy underwear at him and we do get to see Marilyn perform her infamous "Happy Birthday" at John's Madison Square Garden party.  Jackie watches with Janet, and for once, they seem to agree with appropriately pinched faces.  Note to the people who cast Marilyn: you're about six sizes too small in the waist.  Janet insists Jackie do something about the women, but Jackie isn't exactly in a position to divorce her husband like Janet did.

As for Lee, she reminds Jackie at a fashion fitting to buy American and then admits her marriage is over, but "I've been spending a lot of time with Aristotle Onassis."  At least they got that detail right, Lee was there first.  Directly following is a low point of the miniseries, when Marilyn calls for John and Jackie answers.  Jackie challenges her, offering to "step aside" if they really do want each other.  "Then you two can get married and live in this damn White House," she bleats, continuing until Marilyn definitely gets the message.  "What a bitch," Marilyn says when Jackie hangs up.  I told you, that was just plain dumb.  Bobby tells his brother that tapes exist of John and his women.  Hoover has gotten them from the mob.  So, Bobby is dispatched to Los Angeles to tell Marilyn "it's finished."  Oh, but he adds, "she can be very difficult to resist when she wants to be."  "I know."  "I had a feeling you did."  Ah, the Kennedy men!  Funnybones Malloy is back immediately, saying, "let's talk about something more difficult, what do you want to do about Mr. Castro?"

Skip the scene of Marilyn's last night.  It doesn't belong here and it's very poorly done.  What does belong is the one-sentence pubic speech Jackie has to deliver to the press, with her game face on.  Unfortunately, the first scene lasts an eternity and the second a second.  After that, Jackie freezes out John, understandably.

When Jackie discovers she's pregnant, it's not John she tells, but Bobby.  "I'm afraid to hope again," she tells him, confiding in the Kennedy brother to whom it was said (and it's completely chaste so far) she was the closest.  Sadly, this baby is born, but does not live long.  At a rainy funeral, John is there with Rose, Jackie still in the hospital.  Yes, the hospital.  We still haven't even hit ten visits, FYI.  John tries to bond with Jackie, but she is not interested.

But, she can deal with Joe again, now that he's incapacitated.  Feeding him applesauce, she delights in the one-way conversation.  In a melancholy mood (what others are there?), she tells him, "I miss you so much.  I miss your energy and your vision.  You were always so good at fixing things.  Can't you tell me what to do?"  Joe swats the bowl from her hands, so Jackie grabs a brush, tends to his hair and...sings!  Yes, Jackie Kennedy sings to her father-in-law.  This is an interesting scene because it shows that the pact she and Joe made actually bonded them together stronger than it did she and John.  However, it's a creepy scene nonetheless.

After tending to show, Jackie is the recipient of a temper tantrum from Caroline, but Lee calls Hyannisport in the middle of things.  She's on Ari Onassis' (Joss Ackland) yacht.  "He wants to give it to us," Lee shouts through the phone, because he "knows you need a vacation."  John and Bobby are furious when Jackie tells them the news.  "You might as well get used to him, because he's going to marry my sister," Jackie retorts.  "Not until after the 1964 election.  I've already discussed that with her," Bobby informs Jackie.  Jackie pulls the "I need to get away" card, hinting at the loss of the baby, and John and the American people will just have to deal with it.  John suggests FDR Jr. and his wife as chaperones.

Immediately, Ari adds some cheer to the gloomy enterprise.  The Jackie-the-Martyr years have been awfully dull, duller even than her dull childhood.  Jackie asks Lee if she is going to marry Ari.  "First of all he hasn't asked me.  Second, I'm still married to Stas.  Third, he's still got Maria Callas on his mind," Lee says as a boat of photographers hurry by.  "Get her back here!" John demands when a picture of her suntanning lands in the paper with the headline "Jackie Mourns."  He has a telegram sent to her: "Dear Jackie.  Get your ass back home."  He forgot STOP.  Before she leaves Ari, he gives her a gleaming ostentatious necklace.

Back home, Jackie, who has worked wonders with De Gaulle and Kruschev is asked to go to Dallas with  John to help heal wounds within the Democratic party.  "No bubble top" on the car, John insists.  Roma Downey is back to using her vacant I-hate-my-life look that has been omnipresent since she married John.  But, this time, it brings her and John closer.  They hug, admit love and kiss.  "He brought us together, didn't he?" meaning poor Patrick.  It's so nice this new spirit of togetherness, right as they are about to be torn apart permanently.  It's a bit too convenient, a bit too sappy, a bit, well, too miniseries-esque.  We've learned so many bad things about these people, do we really believe in this sudden change of heart?  We will never know.

"Can't we go to Texas with you?" Caroline asks.  "Not this time, it will just be a bunch of boring grown-up speeches," Mom says.  We're really giving this the full works, no disrespect to the assassination itself intended.  I don't envy Roma and Stephen having to recreate one of the images burned in the heads of so many people with such harsh and unbelievable permanence.  Shots are fired and John falls into Jackie's lap.  She jumps on the back of the car as the Secret Service takes over.

Lady Bird rushes to Jackie at the hospital, insisting that they have to change her clothes, which begot Jackie's famous line (and deservedly so), "I want the world to see what they've one to Jack."  She tells a doctor, "I don't want a sedative, I want to be with my husband when he dies."  They actually allow her in the operating room, where she falls to her knees and crosses herself.  Indeed, she is there when he is pronounced dead.  Where Roma has so far been doing a (very good) imitation, here she gets to show some acting chops.  A scene like this is up there with a courtroom blowout in most acting dream roles.  She removes her wedding ring and slips it on his finger.  Ken, flouting Texas law, insists the autopsy not be performed there and tells the crowd that all decisions are now up to the President.  President Johnson (Brian Smiar), immediately shown to be a buffoon.

The casket is placed aboard Air Force One and everyone is crying in horror.  Jackie's suit doesn't have much blood on it, strangely.  Because of the uncertainty, Johnson insists on being sworn in before the plane leaves the ground and "wants Mrs. Kennedy there for the swearing in."  "I owe the country that much," Jackie agrees.  Another famous tableau is rendered.

At Andrews Air Force Base, Bobby boards the plane, brushing off Johnson and heading right for Jackie, both lowered with the casket in another of the day's infamous images.  Surprisingly, Janet is at the airport to inform Jackie that yes, the children have been told.

I must admit, from the moment the shots rang out to the moment the hearse at Andrews pulls away, the miniseries corrects itself, tucking away the gossip and playing the scenes straight as they happened.  Other than an obvious attempt to smear Johnson a bit, it's handled with sincerity and solemness.  And if you are going to cry, and you can, it will be during the scene where Jackie discusses the event with the kids.  No mother should ever have to deal with such tragedy, but Jackie handles it beautifully, having her kids write letters to John.  Lee is there for support, but Jackie has her own letter to write.  It's a difficult few scenes to tuck into such a chewy and mud-slinging movie.  "This is your father's bed," she says as she puts her son in it, "I want you to remember it because we'll be leaving soon."  She then retires to her own room to finally do the crying she hasn't been able to do.

But Jackie is back in full form as she plans the funeral details.  Others try to stop her, but she declares, "I want this funeral to remind the American people of that they have lost," she insists, though the hints of stage management going beyond national tragedy are definitely there.  Subtle, but there.

With Johnson's eulogy playing in the background, Jackie has a private funeral with the kids and sees the body one last time with only Bobby.  "And so she took the ring from her finger and placed it in his hand," he says over and over in a very moving tribute, which goes a long way to undo the damage they have done in his two brief scenes so far.  Well, for a moment, at least.  He starts to pester Jackie to come to the White House, for political reasons, and after doing an imitation of him, calls him an "oversized cow-punching oaf."  She says, "it will be a long time before I accept an invitation from Colonel Cornpone and his little pork chop."  OUCH!  Her tirade ends when a bus of tourists pulls up outside and she decides she can't go outside too much.  "Why can't they leave us alone?" she cries.

Of all people, it's of course Bobby and Ethel (Kathleen McNenny) who provide Jackie the most comfort, with their 1,613 children good playmates for her two.  Well, okay, it's Bobby more than Ethel.  Bobby, who hates Johnson, wants out of the administration, but Jackie urges him to continue, especially since he's a father figure for her son.  But, Jackie saves her crying fits for the middle of the night when she's most likely to win an Emmy.  Rather unbelievably, she takes a late-night walk to the house where they first met, noticed by no one until a photographer discovers her.

Therefore, she moves her kids to New York City.  Redoing yet another home, she tells Lee, "sometimes I just wish I could say to hell with all of them."  "Why don't you?"  Jackie doesn't answer, but it's a perfectly legitimate question.  Of course, as the widow of a slain president, she really can't, but there are options besides pouting all the time.  Lee is worried that Jackie only cares about "Jack's place in history" and is forgetting her own life.

There's another problem: Jackie is broke.  John left her nothing and the Kennedys aren't footing any bills.  Her business manager suggests going to Ari Onassis.  She doesn't want to ask him for anything, but when John John is razzed at school and gifts start showing up for the children (cars and carousel horses), and we know how Jackie's head is turned by gifts, she reconsiders.

The dreary childhood years were not very exciting (except for Janet's wacky outbursts).  The Kennedy years were dignified, and we know Jackie was heavily medicated to get through them, I hope the reason why Roma chose to play the scenes as a sleepwalker, but the REAL fun of Jackie's life came when Onassis took over.  Unfortunately for "A Woman Named Jackie," there's less than an hour left to get through not only him, but the 15 years after his death.  However, let's see what muck we can dig up.

It starts off innocently enough, which Jackie confessing only that she has "escorts to certain events," and as Ari chuckles over that, he puts a hand on her knee.  "You know I adore you, Ari, but we're just having dinner," she says in an extra soft whisper.  There's nothing subtle about Ari Onassis.  He buys out a restaurant for the night and then does the cooking himself.  Jackie can't help but have a glimmer in her eye, because Jackie does love anyone who devotes any time (or money) to her.  Ari wants Jackie to understand that he feels Lee is only a friend, but Jackie ignores the implication and rambles on about how great he's been to her since Patrick's death and then since John's death.  "Maybe we Greeks have an instinct for tragedy," he says, in a classic bit of understatement where he is concerned!  He then starts speaking in Greek fortune cookie-ese, a twist on the other fortune cookie-eses we've been unlucky enough to hear.

Caroline is accosted at school by a crazy woman (she has flaming red hair, so we know she's nuts), and Jackie isn't happy.  But, she can't escape just yet because Bobby wants to run for the White House.  Jackie promises she'll "be there for the part in '68," but things are coming to a head.  She doesn't feel safe.  Bobby's earnestness earns her "support."  Bobby wants to know how serious she is about Onassis and she dances around it, but he's a political liability.  "I won't have the Kennedy dictating who I can see!" she insists.  The conversation goes back and forth, but Jackie is whispering more silently than ever now, so I couldn't quite catch one side of it.

Guess who else doesn't like Onassis?  Yup, Janet.  She's still around still a snob.  "I hate the way he chases around," she sniffs.  She thinks it's "vulgar" the way he loads everyone with gifts.  "He's a vulgar man," Jacqueline admits.  Ari and John John bond over fishing, so Ari gives him $100 to buy worms but John comes back without worms.  He gives him another $100.  "I've never bought worms," he says when Jackie tries to explain the problem is that it was too much money, not too little.

Ari makes life in Greece sound so captivating that Jackie can't resist and is thrilled that not only do the press not know her whereabouts, but the Kennedys aren't pestering her either.  Ari preys on the feeling of security he gives her and proposes marriage, though by saying "I'm ready to get married again, how about you?"  Not smooth, but she's already had that.  "I promised the family I would wait to make a decision until after the election" about any marriage proposal that comes her way.  "They think I have so much power, but they do not know about the power of love," Ari says, having a grand old time.  Joss Ackland digs into these cheesy lines with gusto, one of the best television Ari's of all.

Then June 1968 happens.  Before Jackie gets the call, Caroline asks "is there enough room in the White House for all of our cousins?"  It's a fair question and most people would love to know how that would have worked, but crazy Sirhan Sirhan robbed us of that chance (and if you believe later books about Jackie, Onassis could have been behind it all).

It means another trip to the hospital, this time to comfort Ethel.  Talk about wacky scenes, this one almost sweeps the rest away!  Ethel, understandably hysterical, wants to know why it happened, saying "you've been there, you know."  "I don't know anything," Jackie replies.  Ethel wants a priest, but won't get Jackie go to find him and leave her alone.  "If there's one thing the Catholic Church knows, it's death," Jackie says, as some sort of comfort.  Is that not the strangest line?  I assume it was tucked in there by someone with an ax to grind, but it's downright laughable!

"I hate what's happening to this country.  I don't want to live here anymore.  If they're killing Kennedys, my children are the number one targets," she tells Lee, who "flew in direct from London."  Now that's something I did not know, that dependable sister Lee was at the hospital in Los Angeles with Jackie and Ethel.

And with that, Jackie packs up the kids and hightails it off to Greece.  But, it's not so simple.  The Kennedys send Teddy (Dylan Price) to negotiate with Ari.  Jackie has already made Faustian Pact, Round 2, but somehow Uncle Teddy has to tie up loose ends.  Time with Onassis was never about love, but Jackie and her kids were too precious as American icons for the Kennedys not to have a say.   I know, Teddy seems an odd choice, but he's the only one left.  Who else can they send?  Eunice?

Teddy says that if Jackie marries Ari, the Kennedy income, the widow's pension and the Secret Service all disappear.  Ari says he'll cover it all.  Oh, and here's the dirtiest dirt: the Kennedys want a cash payment of their own.  Ari agrees to pay a third of the figure and then sends Teddy to splash in the pool with "some very interesting young women."  Alexander (Jad Mager) and Christina (Nadia Dajani) glower a few feet away.  Since all is settled, we can recreate the next famous photo of Jackie, the darling of the United States towering over her new hedgehog of a husband, neither looking particularly happy, their four children even less so.  Janet and Hugh recount the fun late night comedians and the newspapers are having at Jackie's expense, such as "Jackie Weds Blank Check."  Janet's reply?  "I can't say I didn't warn her."  The whole country new this was a marriage of convenience.  Ari wanted to boast that he landed the "most desired woman in the world" and Jackie wanted his security and his money.  "With me, you are going to open up like a flower," Ari tells her before she goes on a fantastic shopping spree.  It's his wallet that she's opening up, and with no shame.

Jackie is not as thrilled to be trotted out like a show pony for Ari's ghastly friends, every bit as gauche and boorish as he is.  He's cruel when he feels their bargain has been violated, but it's too late to back out now.  One lovely day, Jackie asks Christina where Ari has gone and Christina oozes, "Paris probably.  I think he misses the opera."  Jackie was a pro at that sort of game long before Christina was ever born, and counters back with, "then I shall go to New York, why don't you come along?  We can go shopping."  Christina is not looking for new friends, saying "don't try to make me into some vapid American model.  I'm the daughter of a billionaire.  I know very well how to spend money," but then gets even nastier, asking "do you know why me married you?  Just to prove to Stavros Niarchos that he could have the most desirable woman in the world.  They've been rivals in the shipping business for years.  You're just another supertanker, Jackie."  And if the stories are true, that was one of the nicer things Christina said to Jackie's face (what she said behind her back was often hysterical, but also rather pathetic, given her own issues).

Part of the bargain Jackie has with Ari was that she only had to spend a few months of the year with him.  The rest were all hers, and when he showed up in New York, she wasn't thrilled.  "I wish you'd call before you just show up," she castigates him.  "You can't stay here," she adds.  "Why on earth not?"  "I'm redecorating your room."  The conversation goes on like a tennis volley, getting angrier and angrier, though Jackie's whispers have acquired some venom.  "I'll be at the Pierre until Thursday," he says on his way out.  "That's nice to know.  I usually have to call your secretary to find out where you are," she snaps back, finally becoming Janet's daughter.  The dialogue sizzles with miniseries grittiness and it's fun!

Janet joins Jackie at a fitting and seems to have mellowed.  She actually takes Ari's side, liking the fact that "John has formed a deep attachment" to the little gnome.  "Culturally, we have nothing in common," Jackie replies, a wild line that sounds like something her mother would have shouted decades ago.  It's actually a damn good line.  I wonder if Jackie ever actually said it.  "Why don't you try to work it out?" Janet asks, "you don't get that many good chances in life, Jacqueline.  I would hate to see you throw this one away."  Jackie actually takes that advice and joins Ari for dinner.  They exchange affectionate words, just like Jackie and John did before Dallas, but a phone call interrupts them.

Alexander has been injured in a plane crash.  Jackie swings into action, calling the world's finest doctor and arranging to get them to Greece quickly, but Alexander's injuries are too severe and he dies.  Ari is a broken man after his death and any attempt Jackie makes to be even understanding or cordial are rebuffed.  Ari believes the crash was "a plot against me," though Jackie thinks it was "an accident, an act of God."  She's not looking for a fight, but he's furious.  "You accepted the murder of my son just like you accepted the murder of your husband," he growls.  And that's just the beginning.  He claims she never cared who killed him and then asks Christina, "did you see her at her husband's funeral?  She never cried once."  Christina is more than happy to agree.  Jackie trumps that by reminding them that "he died in my arms," so Ari changes tactics.  "Did you shed one tear for my son?  And in New York, when we heard the news, you were immediately on the phone, so calm, so aloof."  How many ways does he want it?  Jackie is no prize as a human being in this miniseries, but she's hardly bad enough to deserve the bile he pours out on her.  Actually, for the first time, Christina sides with Jackie.

Apparently, Ari wants to divorce Jackie, but after having her followed and her phone bugged, he has no proof of infidelity, so he instead starts a public smear campaign.  He wants Jackie to sign a "new financial agreement," and her advisor tells her to do so.  After all, Joe Kennedy is dead and "you've cut ties with the family," he reminds her.  "The only way to protect you, Jackie, would be with a new financial agreement," he tells her, noting that she's basically nothing without a powerful rich man.

By 1875, Ari is in the American Hospital in Paris dying.  Jackie comes to pay a visit, causing Christina to flee the room in a Greek temper.  "It must be close to the end if you've come all the way to Paris just to see me," he quips.  He has some late-in-the-game words of wisdom for her, delivered with the expected death-bed theatrics by pro Joss Ackland.  Another hospital scene, by the way.

Once again a widow, Jackie of course has no desire to stay in Greece and eventually ends up as a ritzy book editor in New York City.  By this point, she's the grande dame of American society, the ultimate "get" as a celebrity, but finally living more quietly.  After her first day on the job, she comes home to John John having been offered a chance to play his father in a movie.  Jackie refuses, insisting he graduate first and then never become an actor.  "It's the one thing I'm good at," he pouts, but she says, "you have even begun to discover what you're good at."  Time would prove it wasn't law and it wasn't the magazine business.  It probably would have been politics.

Anyway, Caroline goes to bat for her brother, saying that this is all a repeat of the arguments Jackie had with her mother.  But, there's a difference.  "I was a Bouvier and you are Kennedys.  My mother didn't have to protect me from deranged assassins or people on the street from the time I was five...you and John have inherited a different world."  No matter what dirt has been dug here about Jackie, there was never any indication she was anything but a brilliant and caring mother, very protective of her children, who both turned out quite well.

Cantankerous Janet is still alive.  Hugh has been dead a decade and they have to sell the mansion, moving Janet into the "servant's quarters," but Janet's mind is going.  She doesn't remember Caroline or her fiance, but she remembers John Kennedy.

Looking more like late-career Ann Miller, Diana Vreeland (Nan Martin) swoops into Jackie's office to pronounce, "it's simply marvelous--you, our most cherished national treasure an editor!"  Diana decrees that the office should be red...or pink.  "Pink is the navy blue of India," she says, in her best Auntie Mame imitation.  Why Diana Vreeland tells her holding the grandchild Caroline is about to birth is "the most special feeling in the world, it's what life is really about" makes no sense at all, but we're minutes from the end and they are simply tossing anything at us.  Apparently Jackie was editing a book on Imperial Russia for Diana.

Given the flashback insistence of the miniseries, we end up back in the hospital where Jackie waits nervously with John for Caroline to give birth.  I imagine the scene was filmed early on because the Jackie of this scene doesn't look at all like the Jackie of the last few scenes, where she had become middle aged (though always glamorous).  There is one insanely stupid line left.  Caroline gives Jackie the baby to hold and announces, "we're going to name her Rose, after Grandma Rose Kennedy."  Really?  That Rose?  Never heard of her.  For Pete's sake we had to be reminded who Rose was (and at that point, still was, as she was alive, though probably not kicking).

Admittedly, Jackie cooing in the hospital room with her first grandchild is an odd place to end the story, but Jackie was still alive and there wasn't a whole lot else to tell.  No one could know that Jackie would live only a few more years and risk waiting.  By 1991, this sort of storytelling was getting decrepit, so they had to strike while the Heymann iron was hot.

What works best here is not the dirt about Jackie.  In a way, that's expected.  Heymann and others had been writing tell-alls about people at the top for years.  Gone was the time when any celebrity was exempt from the treatment.  People were less shockable by the late 80s and early 90s.  Everyone knew somehow that Jackie had married Onassis only for his money and security.  There were always snickers about John Kennedy's affairs.  There would be whispers of Jackie's, but only after she was dead.  Though people were less shockable, they were still fairly reverent of Jackie, so the mudslinging here is interesting done: mud is slung AROUND Jackie.  Other than the business deal of a marriage she did with Joe Kennedy, the faults tend to settle on Janet or Black Jack or John or Joe or Ari.  It's not that Jackie was a saint, for the story clearly shows that she knew how to battle with the best of them, but those around her were such deep sinners that nothing she did could possibly compare.

Not until Caroline is long gone will anyone really attempt to smear Jackie in the way they have smeared everyone around her (and most of them seemed to have deserves smearing).  But, how much more is there to find out?  Did she have an affair with Bobby?  I don't know, but do we really care at this point?  The "national treasure" she's referred to here is generations gone.  To history, she's the pretty First Lady who was witness to one of the most shocking moments in 20th Century Presidential history, and though books will be written about her where none will exist for Mamie Eisenhower or Jane Pierce, celebrities have done way worse than marry for money in the decades since Jackie did it.

A word about the acting.  Roma Downey must have been scared as hell to take on such an iconic role, especially with Jackie still alive!  She was not a well-known actress and Jackie is in nearly every scene of this 6-hour miniseries (she sits out Marilyn's death scene and a few others, but that's it).  This is a gigantic role about a gigantic presence in American history.  Daunting, absolutely.  Roma actually delivers.  She gets the Jackie-speak down perfectly, but there's a problem inherent in that.  It doesn't allow for much acting.  When you have to whisper and under-emote everything you say, you don't get to go up against smarmy Josef Sommer or howling Joss Ackland.  They have the fun roles, so they have the fun acting.  What Roma does is anchor the piece in reality, not an easy task considering she was playing the most unrealistic woman in the world at the time.  She certainly did it better than Francesca Annis or Jaclyn Smith or any of the other miniseries Jackies.

Only one question remains: what every happened to Clay Holmby?

Scarlett (1994)

You dare to ask "Scarlett who?"

There is only one, Scarlett O'Hara, and you know it! 

But, unfortunately, she's not confined to "Gone With the Wind," where she belongs (let's not start on the 1970s musical adaptation that played Tokyo and London before attempting Broadway, but closed during its try-out).  In the 1980s, a massive publicity stunt had Alexandra Ripley chosen to write the sequel to "Gone With the Wind," but when the book came out in 1991, it was met with critical dismissal (read the reviews, they are pretty damn funny).  However, the book was a giant hit and therefore Hollywood came a-callin'. 

To be honest, even though "Scarlett" is trash, and even though it's an offense to "Gone With the Wind," it should be perfect for a miniseries.  Okay, it takes place after the Civil War, but we know how much the miniseries loved that period in general.  It's a big opulent costume drama that needs lavish attention and lots of hours and it is chock-full of scenery-chewing parts for slumming actors (and this one has a limitless well of them).  Plotwise, the whole thing lumbers between having none and lurching into serious overdrive, but it's not at all surprising that it was destined for a miniseries.  In fact, "Scarlett" is really one of the absolute last gasps of the network format.  There would be a few other entries in the 90s and beyond, but if one sees "Scarlett" as the end of it all, I can't blame you.  By this point, there were apparently no good books left to film (except the classics, which were still being regularly filmed in the UK), few chilling crime tales left to tell.  Everything has seemingly been done and had imitators.  "Scarlett" was too popular a property not to film, but after that, it would be rare that the networks would indulge in the miniseries format, usually just for Stephen King or the occasional larger-than-life true story.  Attention spans grew shorter and competition from cable too difficult for the networks to devote hours and hours to one expensive movie.  Thus, cable took over and network television was left with shorter "movies of the week" until they too disappeared and cheap quick reality shows would dominate the network offerings.

It's not the fault of "Scarlett" that the network miniseries died out.  It was on its last legs anyway, but something this rococo tripe surely couldn't have helped!

(I will use the fictional names of the characters here since many of them are more familiar than the actors playing them.)

The movie begins in Atlanta, 1873, the funeral of Melanie Wilkes.  Scarlett (Joanne Whalley), showing up late and saying to herself, "soon this awful day will be over and I can go home to Tara," is not met with welcoming eyes by the mourners.  Ashley (Stephen Collins) is overcome as they lower the coffin and Scarlett rushes to him, only to be chased off by his hissing family, so she goes to the grave over her daughter, buried nearby. 

Uncle Henry Hamilton (George Grizzard) comes to visit a lonely drinking Scarlett, giving her a chance to complain about the behavior of those at the funeral.  He's also there to offer advice, since "feelings are running high against you here in Atlanta" since it was town opinion that she was chasing after Ashley.  He thinks perhaps she should go away for a while.  "You got the tar and the feathers?" she yells, offended at the very thought of it.  He's also kindly enough to wish her the best after the "sorrowful end" of her relationship with Rhett.  "It was sorrowful, but whether it's the end or not remains to be seen," she scowls. 

However, Scarlett follows Uncle Henry's advice and goes to visit her sister Suellen (Melissa Leo) and brother-in-law Will (Ray McKinnon).  He warns her to be nice to her sister and she carps "fiddle-dee-dee...I'm not one to hold a grudge."  When she gets to Tara, she's aghast at the ramshackle sight.  Suellen, pregnant for the third time, is in no mood for Scarlett's fake friendliness and asks why she's even bothered coming.  "To see Mammy, of course." 

About 150 years old by this point, Mammy (Esther Rolle) is "ready to lay down her earthly burdens," dying in bed.  Naturally, Scarlett can turn any moment around to herself.  Mammy says Scarlett doesn't need to say she loves her because "I already know."  Not good enough.  Scarlett didn't tell Melanie or Rhett and they are now gone.  Scarlett dashes off a telegram to Rhett begging him to come to Tara to say goodbye to Mammy.

Dinner is a high-octane row.  Scarlett complains about the dreariness of the place, and though Suellen chides her for dressing so opulently, Scarlett has tried to send money, but Will refuses.  There's even more good news.  Their other sister sold her third of Tara to the Catholic Church when she became a nun.  Suellen is still bitter that Scarlett married Frank Kennedy, but Scarlett sees it differently.  "If you knew what man Frank Kennedy turned out to be, you'd be thanking me!" she yells.  After Suellen gets a few good digs in (and reminds us of Scarlett's marital history), Scarlett yaps, "I guess [our sister] is the only saint in this family.  I obviously do not qualify!" and storms out of the dining room. 

As for Rhett Butler (Timothy Dalton, who was part of the onset of the miniseries in "Centennial"), he's doing card tricks over at Belle Watling's place as Belle (Ann-Margaret) looks on with a smile for her favorite.  One of the girls asks Rhett to repeat a card trick and he purrs, "if I was right, I win."  "What do you win?" she asks.  "How many guesses do you need?" Belle replies.  At least smooth-talking Rhett never changes.  As soon as he gets the telegram, he rushes off to Tara.

After Suellen looks him up and down and gets in some smart-ass remarks about how well Rhett has done while the South languishes, Rhett says he had to come as soon as he saw Will's telegram about Mammy.  Yup, Scarlett used Will's name to lure him there.  Even Ripley's awful writing can't diminish two fictional legends (though she tried hard and the miniseries tries just as hard).  Mammy asks Rhett to make sure she's buried in the red petticoat he bought her.  She has a second favor to ask.  "I want you to take care of Miss Scarlett.  She needs carin' so bad," Mammy asks and Rhett promises.  And with that, Mammy dies a perfect miniseries death, surrounded by lighting and music as her hand falls limp to the sheets. 

Awkward!  That's the only way to describe the reunion of Rhett and Scarlett, who poo-poos the lie and tells Rhett she's hoping for "civilized and courteous conversation," no matter how "estranged" they are.  With euphemisms, Scarlett is a champ!  That approach gets her nowhere, so she tries another: "do you think it would have been different if my child have survived?"  Nope, he's still not biting.  How about full-on guilt for lying to Mammy?  "You are such a child, Scarlett," he finally snaps.  DUH!  Since she won't divorce him, he agrees to be around just enough for appearances.  "The Yankees should have hung you when they had the chance," she howls throwing a glass at him. 

If Scarlett is feeling sorry for herself, Ashley is doing even worse, but that's no shock.  He's never been the strongest type and this time has crawled into a bottle.  Scarlett gives him tough love.  "It this want you Melanie to see when she looks down from heaven?" and then grabs his hand so they can have tea.  A while later Uncle Henry comes to tell Scarlett that "you have one of the greatest business minds I've ever seen, despite the fact that you're a woman" because she sold off her lumber company to Ashley and it's tanking; Ashley is broke.  The Panic of 1973 (not that Uncle Henry uses those terms) has hit and no one is building, so no one needs lumber.  Scarlett does manage to ask if her money is safe and it is.  She has a plan.  "Who is the best builder in Atlanta?" "I guess you could do worse than Big Sam," he says.  "Our Big Sam?  Our foreman from Tara?" "Former foreman...have you ever heard of Lincoln?" Uncle Henry asks, exasperated.

Big Sam (Paul Winfield) "did prosper" and Scarlett offers him the chance to build 25 homes on vacant land, insisting Ashley supply the lumber and also remaining a silent partner.  Scarlett O'Hara, a silent anything?  Only because she ends a scene saying, "tomorrow is another day" is she at all recognizable in this sequence of events. 

Despite Reconstruction laying heavy punishment on the South, Atlanta's giant masked ball is happening.  "I gather you've come alone, but it's just not done in polite society," Aunt Pittypat says, nearly choking on her words.  She has a good retort in that she "hasn't seen much polite society here this evening" and she's not alone because "God is always with me."  That's even more vulgar than showing up alone to someone like Aunt Pittypat, but before we can get her reaction, Ashley comes to sweep her into a dance.  A perfectly good line wasted by bad direction. 

When Rhett shows up, things crackle a bit.  He introduces himself to her as Blackbeard.  "Bluebeard might be more like it," she drawls and asks if he recognized her.  "I didn't need to find the most ostentatious gown in the room to find out who was under it," he says.  I know, I know.  They did this all back in "Gone With the Wind."  But, the only reason this sequel exists is to remind us what once was (and apparently showing a rerun was, what, bad business?).  Rhett agrees to go back to the house for the sake of propriety, but once inside, jumps up the red staircase to his room.  Scarlett grabs a bottle of liquor to her bed.

The next morning, loyal Pansy (Rakie Ayola) brings her coffee and advice that she's "doing herself real harm" by drinking like she does.  Pansy is suddenly the smartest person in Atlanta and could be its first member of AA.  Scarlett decides to go visit Charleston.

To meet her at the train station are Aunt Eulalie (Elizabeth Wilson) and Aunt Pauline (Barbara Barrie).  Unfortunately, they tell her that Rhett's mother Eleanor (Julie Harris) has insisted she stay there, rather than with her clucking aunts.  I'm not sure which is worse.  Scarlett is horrified.  Mrs. Butler invites Scarlett to attend a meeting where they make crafts to raise money for the Widows and Orphans Fund.  Tearing through the roads of Charleston and knocking out a few carriages doing it is Sally Brewton (Jean Smart), smoking a cigarette and barking at Scarlett, "who is that?  A new recruit for our disgustingly worthy cause?" 

Just as Sally is talking about growing up with Rhett, he arrives from Philadelphia with his mother's plundered tea set.  Sally jumps into his arms and then he finds Scarlett.  After pretending he's unhappy, he drags Scarlett to her room and into another argument.  He says Charleston will see right through her attempts to pretend shes a lady and then rips apart her clothing trying to make it presentable.  Scarlett reminds him she's descended from kings on the O'Hara side.  "Is it just the one king or many?" he quips and bounds out of the house as she's yelling at him. 

"I want to look like a lady," Scarlett tells her mother-in-law.  Miss Eleanor has to attack that one very wisely, so she fumbles a few sentences and then agrees that perhaps Scarlett's "vitality" is too much for the bluestocking Charleston crowd.  First lessons, "you have no need of rouge on your face...and some of your clothes are ill-considered."  From there, it's off to the market where she encounters Sally and advises her on picking vegetables due to her experience in the fields (which, let's be honest, wasn't quite comprehensive).  "We need women like that in Charleston," Sally tells Miss Eleanor. 

As a first step, Sally goes to see Rhett at his plantation and talks up Scarlett as an "amazing woman."  However, though still in love with her, he thinks of her as childish and ridiculous.  Then Scarlett pays a visit where Rhett offers her $50,000 to agree to a divorce.  Then, speaking like two auctioneers, they agree to terms: basically that they will stay together for the season, he will pretend to be a husband, she will keep his "wicked ways" from everyone, she will never return to Charleston after the year.  She tries to seduce him, but it doesn't work.  "A girl can't have everything," she says, happy enough for now that she's made a sound business deal.  However, that night, Rhett goes to her room and spends a lot of time gazing at her lovingly.

If the action is going to switch to Charleston, and frankly, I don't understand why it has to as Atlanta is still replete with good fun and characters, so is Belle.  In the indelicate words of one of her girls, "Belle's opening up a whorehouse."  This is going to make even pretending faithfulness to Scarlett a bit trickier for Rhett. 

Indeed they are.  One of Charleston's grandest affairs is a race.  Everyone is there.  Oh, just in case you don't realize it's a race being done in the South, the helpful score does an oom-pah-pah version of "Camptown Races" as underscoring.  Subtle, "Scarlett" is not.  Rhett is quite comfortable introducing Belle to his mother and Scarlett and Scarlett, knowing exactly who she is, asks what brings to her Charleston.  When Miss Eleanor hears it's business, she says she's "fascinated by ladies with business interests, so very unusual, isn't it."  What kind of business?  "I arrange social get togethers," she says, taking her leave with a zing meant for Scarlett's understanding.  He wins.  "He sure can ride," Lulie (Sara Crowe) chirps, which gets a knowing glance from Belle. 

There is another big ball, although it takes place for only about four minutes, which is as long as any large set piece here is (those big events are where much usually takes place, but there isn't any plot so far in "Scarlett," so there is nothing to move forward).  However, at the end, Rhett reminds Scarlett it's the "last" ball of the season and Scarlett, as always, says she doesn't want to discuss the deal between them that is now finished.  "We'll talk about it tomorrow." 

If you thought "Camptown Races" was lacking in finesse, how about when Rhett agrees to take Scarlett sailing...both still in their ball gown attire!  Just as Scarlett says, "I've never had so much fun in my life...more of less," with a lecherous twang, we see storm clouds overhead.  It's a gigantic storm that capsizes the boat.  He somehow gets Scarlett to a seaside, begging his unconscious wife, "don't die on me."  Naturally, he has to remove all of her clothing, and his, lighting a warm fire as well.  That's a very nice set-up for when she opens her eyes, now isn't it? 

"What happened, it was, uh, a celebration," Rhett tells Scarlett, but Scarlett isn't buying it.  "It was your true heart.  You love me, you love me, you love me!" 

She then sleeps for 24 hours and wakes up to Miss Eleanor fumbling for any excuse not to tell her Rhett is gone, finally leaving Scarlett with a Dear Jane note.  He admits he loves her, but that it was "ill-advised" and he can "never see her again."  Ever.  As in permanently. 

Evenings of whiskey at the fireplace are finally relieved when Ashley comes to Charleston on a visit.  He has some photographs to show her and she volunteers to go to his room to see them.  He doesn't think that's wise, but a fiddle-dee-dee later, she's on her way up, with everyone, of course, wondering at her brazen behavior.  The photos are of the houses he's been building with Big Sam.  "I do wish you would come back to Atlanta, very much," he says before planting a kiss on her.  She hurries out of the room. 

Miss Eleanor is horrified to find out Scarlett was in a hotel room with a man!  Scarlett says she was only up there 10 minutes and "I'd need more time than that to get my shoes unlaced, let alone my corsets!"  Miss Eleanor is steadfast and tells Scarlett she's no longer welcome.  "That suits me just fine because this is no longer a house in which I care to be welcome," she replies with a slam of the door.  Slamming a second in her room, she dashes for a hidden bottle of booze stashes in a hat box.  "What have I done to myself?" she asks looking in the mirror?  "Is that cowardly disgusting creature Scarlett O'Hara?  No, it is certainly not.  Scarlett O'Hara does not drown in sorrows.  Scarlett O'Hara does not hide and wait for what she wants.  Scarlett O'Hara goes out and gets what she wants!  Coward, coward, coward!" she says, hurling the bottle at the mirror.  Not quite the "I will never go hungry again speech," but I guess we'll have to live with it.  Maybe now, some plot will kick in. 

As soon as Scarlett informs her aunts she will go to Savannah with them to visit her hated grandfather, she wakes up and vomits.  Never will you see a happier vomiter.  "We were always two pieces of a darling thing, my dear Rhett, now we are three" she says to herself.  So ends the first part on a Scarlett-with-a-plan.

Scarlett's World Tour continues in Savannah for Grandfather Pierre Robillard's birthday.  She is told to keep her "somewhat forthright manner" in check by her aunts, who have a habit of repeating each other's sentences.  Scarlett finally has her meeting with her grandfather (John Gielgud, summing BIG TIME and sporting a ridiculous French accent).  She tells him she's also in Savannah to attend to matters regarding Tara and to see her O'Hara relatives.  "Ah, the peasants!" he says.  "When my youngest and most cherished daughter wed herself Gerald O'Hara, there was no visible bottom to the pit of disastrous folly into which he flung both herself and the honorable name of Robillard," he spits out, trying to make that bit of melodrama seem even a tad Shakespearean. 

Understandably, Scarlett dashes off to meet her O'Hara relatives, first running into Jamie (John Kavanaugh), who takes her home to his brood.  These humble folks are a delight, and she's charmed.  They are a big family, not wealthy, but very close and accepting.  Not the Robillards, to be sure.  They even have a big night of Irish dancing right there in their parlor.  It's all going so well until Scarlett faints.  She hasn't told anyone she's pregnant and therefore refuses all help from her Robillard aunts, who live to fuss over sick relatives.  She gives "my darling little indisposition" a very long monologue, so thankfully it isn't fully grown in her to even have ears yet. 

While Scarlett is telling Maureen (Anita Reeves) the story of her life, her priest cousin (and arms dealer) Father Colum O'Hara (Colm Meany) all the way from Ireland and there are more smiles.  Back at the Robillard house, it's clouded in darkness and a formal meal for her grandfather's birthday.  He's in a military outfit and grumpy as hell.  She announces that she will stay in Savannah when her aunts go, and somehow convinces her grandfather to let her stay, though he says, "it's a matter of supreme indifference to me." 

Scarlett drags Pansy to Sisters of Mercy, who own the third of Tara that she wants back.  There she has to square off against the Mother Superior (Betsy Blair).  She is told that only the Bishop can make the decision to swap Tara for cash (in the form of a donation, of course), but apparently the Mother Superior has a dog-eared copy of "Gone With the Wind" in her wimple because she asks Scarlett how she figures she can own Tara without Suellen's agreement.  "I'll just have to think about that tomorrow," comes the predictable answer, the one that has ended way too many scenes already. 

Father Colum has no "influence" with the Bishop, who has turned down Scarlett's request for Tara, but he does offer her another suggest, that he tell the foreman of the crew building the new church to slow down their work until the Bishop comes around.  "That's blackmail!" Scarlett jumps, but she's all for it.  "Family, it's a grand thing," Jamie toasts. 

In the "if it's bad, it's probably worse" sweepstakes, Scarlett comes up against a cropper.  Grandfather Robillard offers her his entire fortune if she stays in Savannah to take care of him and his "every comfort."  Considering he hauled her out of bed to tell the cook his breakfast wasn't hot enough, that could be a big problem.  However, he's 94, so maybe it won't be a long problem.  Initially, she turns it down, though $500K is worth reconsidering, but she says no.  "How dare you turn up your Papist peasant nose at the opportunity to be mistress of this great house and attendant to its master!" he says, going into spasms of alliteration.  Cue the divorce papers from Rhett and another swooning faint from Scarlett. 

It's here that Ripley's story becomes so unbelievable (I couldn't resist) and so off-track, that it can never actually return.  Refusing to let Rhett know she's pregnant, Scarlett decides in an instant to go to...IRELAND!  Margaret Mitchell infused every scene, every chapter, every line of "Gone With the Wind" with old-style Southern demeanor.  The original novel is about those people at that time in history and how they reacted to their rather small world being caught up in larger developments.  However, at no time did any of them even mention something as far off as Boston, let alone Ireland!  So, sending the story there makes as little sense as sending it to Shanghai or Cairo, except for the fact that there will be more O'Hara relatives wandering about.  Gone is Mitchell's world.

"I never thought I'd live to see another place as gorgeous as Georgia, before the war across," she tells Colum as they ride to the kin.  Along the way, they come across a hut being torn down because an English landlord has not been paid his rent.  Welcome to another Civil War, Scarlett, but this one won't make a lick of sense to you if the one you lived through still hasn't fully seeped in. 

It will, because we have dastardly Lord Richard Fenton to make it so.  He's the English brute behind the evictions, and he's so depraved, that he uses his Irish peasant girls for sexual gratification too evil to even be seen in a book he has. 

After Scarlett makes him promise to go along with her story of being a widow, so it won't look bad when the baby comes (FYI, in the book "Gone With the Wind," Scarlett has a few children, not just Bonnie, so it would be interesting to know where Ripley placed them, unless, of course, she never bothered to read the book and went straight to the movie), Colum shows her "the first Tara," not just a millennium-old pile of rocks set amidst the green Irish landscape.  "This was Tara!" he says, with the music kicking in, though this Tara's theme song is pretty wan.  Scarlett, suddenly able to root herself in something other than, well, herself, picks up a pile of dirt and sticks it in a little satin bag. 

In case you are wondering what happened to Rhett, he's been squiring Miss Anne Hampton (Annabeth Gish) around, and only long into a blossoming courtship, does she reveal she's the one who saw Scarlett go into the hotel room with Ashley.  Don't be fooled by Anne's delicacy.  "Weren't you perfectly furious when you heard..." Rhett admits Scarlett is not conventional and neither is he.  "But she's a woman," Anne insists.  "So she is," Rhett says with a broad smile.  This leads to a discussion of a woman's "prerogative" and Rhett eventually coming to her room at night.  The Rhett Butler we know would not be at all attracted to this simple virgin. 

Scarlett goes to visit an abandoned castle that is seen as cursed by the locals when Lord Richard arrives.  Guessing she's from the southern part of America, he offers his condolences on the war.  "We lost the war, sir, but we were not vanquished," Scarlett insists, throwing his words back at him.  He does not tell her he owns the land.  He tells her the story of the house, built by an Englishman who helped peasants to get to America, though they all drowned on the way, the Englishman was killed and Irishmen followed in retribution.  Only then does he reveal himself to be the castle's owner. 

The O'Haras are aghast at Scarlett "consorting" with Lord Fenton, but in typical Scarlett fashion, she says, she wants nothing to do with "politics."  She launches into a tirade that covers both Ft. Sumter and General Lee "and I'll have no more!"  Her uncle has a different take on it, calling it "human suffering."  Suffocated, she decides to move to another simple shack, and now the atypical Scarlett returns, seemingly thrilled with the modest, okay, spare, okay, non-existent, furnishings. 

Scarlett buys Ballyhara and its land.  A town drunk lets everyone know, saying there is work for all getting it back in shape.  "Here's to Scarlett O'Hara" they cheer as hoisting their pints in a pub.  Father Colum and his followers have decided she can help their cause.  The O'Haras are forced from their home until Scarlett pays the back rent and pulls down the apparatus they were about to use to knock it down.  Before departing for America, Colum tells Scarlett the Bishop in Savannah is ready to rethink his position on Tara.  He also hires Mrs. Fitzpatrick (Rosaleen Linehan) as housekeeper, who refers to her as "The O'Hara," the new head of the O'Hara family "and all its branches."  Oh, for crying out loud!  Scarlett has trouble making it to the head of the staircase, let alone the family.  Puffed up by this news, she decides to take Mrs. Fitzpatrick to the pub for lunch, where women are a rare thing indeed.  They hoot for her as if Liza walked into a gay bar.

Colum warns Scarlett about Halloween and sadistic Lord Fenton (who loves beating up his servant girls) seems to be enchanted by Scarlett, whom he offers to take to Dublin.  On rainy All Hallow's Eve, Colum arrives with a letter from Charleston that Rhett has married Anne (he decided he had to after sleeping with her, though Belle told him it would ruin his reputation) and the horror of what she sees brings on labor.  Colum fetches the O'Hara women to help with the birth and they strap her to the kitchen table for a c-section, and a damn painful one.  On that note, we end the second part.

A year later, Scarlett is celebrating her daughter's first birthday, though we're reminded by Mrs. Fitzpatrick and others that Scarlett almost died giving birth.  Scarlett is introduced to Mary Boyle (Tina Kellegher), the very servant girl Lord Fenton has been beating and burning and whatnot.  As for Rhett, she tells Colum, "I'll let him know when I'm ready," about the baby.  Rhett is back home to celebrate his first anniversary to Anne.  He's decided to take Anne to England and Ireland to buy horses. 

Lord Fenton is, in Scarlett's words, "making advances" as he's played suitor from far off way too long.  She is coy, but when he makes mention of the "State Ball," you know she'll go.  Scarlett never misses a ball, especially when the "Viceroy and his missus" will be there.  The Irish relatives and gun club pals are not happy at this budding relationship.  Colum finally tells Scarlett about the rebels and ties it to the South after the Civil War to get her to understand.  He shows her the gun collection and then the softer side of the rebellion, the education and help to the poor.  It's even against the law to learn Irish.  "I might be better off if I didn't understand a word of what you are saying," Scarlett says cynically. 

Now, back to the real Scarlett, the one who says "fiddle-dee-dee," she goes to an Irish horse show, where Colum assumes she'll be swindled by the horse traders.  One is selling a three-year old, but Scarlett takes one look inside it's mouth and declares, "I've got a grandfather younger than that!" 

Bing bang boom.  "Scarlett, you look like you've seen a ghost," Colum says when...wait for it...Scarlett sees...wait for it (as if you didn't know it was coming)...Rhett Butler at the very same obscure Irish horse sale!  "I have a seen a ghost, and one of my own making," she replies.  Unafraid, Scarlett walks right over to him.  She asks if his wife is there and he says "she's not generally fond of horses," to which Scarlett quips, "I hope that's her only failing."  He tells Scarlett he wants a horse that will win the Kentucky Derby, "a new race" that they hope to be a big success.  Rhett introduces her to Sir John Morland (Brian Bedford) who invites her to a fox hunt.  Rhett is a bit annoyed when she says she's "widowed."  She begs him to go through with the lie and he says, "it won't be easy pretending I'm a corpse."  He even gets to Anne to agree to go along with it at the Morland fox hunt. 

Lady Morland (Delena Kidd) is the very personification of the English upper crust, down to the accent and the nose way high in the air.  Scarlett asks what happens if the fox gets away, a question that is anathema to her, so she turns away.  Trying to outrun Rhett, Scarlett is knocked from her horse by a branch (I thought for sure she would pull an Auntie Mame and catch the fox), only to wake up with Anne sitting by her side.  This is an uncomfortable reunion. Furthermore, Scarlett is humiliated, as "I haven't been thrown from a horse since I was 10 years old."  Scarlett is at his sugary nastiest best, and sweet Anne is no match for her.  And when Anne announces she's pregnant, Scarlett is so upset the scene has to fade out because there are no words (or, apparently, good writers to make them up).

That was a nice bit of actual Scarlett O'Hara, but back in Ripley's story, Scarlett is going to Dublin with Lord Fenton, telling Colum that it's just for fun and so what if he's English?  Hmmm, the Southern Belle we all knew would have played sick rather than have to attend a beloved ball with a Yankee, so her inability to care what her Irish kinfolk think is a bit out of character.  However, she corrects it by giving Colum a donation for the rebels, but for the good part, not the killing part.  And it's a lot of money.  "I have a tendency to overdo things," she admits. 

Another ball, but this is the grandest yet, with servants in powdered wigs and ladies in tiaras.  Scarlett looks ravishing in a fetching in a dress completely different from the others, to stand out, and is introduced as "Madam The O'Hara from Ballyhara."  "I feel like Cinderella," Scarlett says innocently, before she and Lord Fenton turn it into a ghastly series of puns that knocks all the stuffing out of the legend. 

Rhett sniffs her out in her hotel and with the baby there, the jig would be up.  The last time they were together, she left without saying goodbye, and she nervously says she had to, since she "hadn't been thrown..."  yeah, yeah, since she was 10.  We've heard.  Mrs. Fitzpatrick brings the baby down, so Scarlett has to hustle Rhett into the hotel garden.  Scarlett admits she's still in love with him, and he's terrible patronizing when he puts a hand on her shoulder and says, "I'm sorry."  His inability to admit he's still in love with her causes her grief and she runs off. 

The mantle of cheesy flattery is taken over by Lord Fenton, who has an annoying habit of merely repeating what Scarlett says and adding a question mark.  "In the spirit of candor," he says, to start off a long line about he's in love with her.  He doesn't understand her "reticence."  "It's not you I don't care for, it's another man that I love," Scarlett says honestly.  "Will you pine the rest of your days for a dead man?" Lord Fenton asks.  "I want to live!" Scarlett says with Lord Fenton pawing at her and then they go full out sexually.  "You've made me an extremely happy man this evening," Lord Fenton says with typical English reserve.  Mrs. Fitzpatrick comes to deliver a telegram to Scarlett and Lord Fenton purposely comes out of the bedroom.  Since Mrs. Fitzpatrick is a part of the rebel group, that's not good.  Plus, Scarlett is furious with him.  "As your servant," Lord Fenton says, Mrs. Fitzpatrick has to keep it quiet, he says, though he also says, "we're all sophisticated" and that no one will think anything of their liaison.  He's such a cad, she slaps him, and that he doesn't take well (though no doubt will get off on it later on). 

The telegram?  When Scarlett gets around to it, it's from Uncle Henry to say that Suellen is ill and wants to see her.  Is Scarlett's great Irish adventure over?  No, of course not.  She's leaving her daughter behind.  "They're lovers," Mrs. Fitzpatrick says to Colum as Scarlett leaves, fearful that Scarlett will spill the rebel secrets to her new boyfriend.

It's sassy fighting Scarlett who arrives back in Atlanta.  Will tells her Suellen got sick having a baby, a boy.  "So she could have died just because you wanted a boy?" Scarlett asks, not ten seconds off the train.  Suellen is very sick when Scarlett gets to the hospital.  "You don't think I've come halfway around the world to watch you kick the bucket do you?" Scarlett asks when Suellen says she might live.  Was that phrase even around in the 1970s and would Scarlett have uttered it? 

Pansy is waiting for Scarlett when she arrives home at her Atlanta house, having worked for India and Ashley and even Aunt Pittypat (as a way, no doubt, to remind us they are all still alive and well).  Scarlett spends the night at the hospital with Suellen, whom sickness has turned very sweet.  If the scene doesn't remind you of Scarlett tending to sick Melanie, then the writers have done an even lousier job than I first suspected.  "I'd say it was time we buried the hatchet," Scarlett says.  "You mean other than inside each other?" Suellen jokes, which is very un-Melanie, to be sure. 

Unfortunately, literature's most boring character outside of Melville's whale, Ashley Wilkes, is indeed still alive.  He first thanks Scarlett for saving his company and he wants her to wipe away all reminders of Rhett as "he was never worthy of you," but Scarlett refuses to say why until Ashley takes her in his arms.  Then it's off to Uncle Henry to divest herself of all Atlanta assets (except for Tara, of course), but Uncle Henry warns her about the bad state of the market.  "People are moving down not up," he tells her about her big house, though the small houses she bought with Big Sam and Ashley are worth a fortune.  "I guess the past has been neatly and finally put behind us," Ashley says, unable to get Scarlett to stay in Atlanta.  "Almost," Scarlett says.  There are two hours left, nothing is finished. 

Suellen is finally well enough to go back to Tara, which has never looked so shabby.  "Now there's just the one piece of business for me to attend to, that'd be Tara," she tells Suellen and Will.  "I'm giving it away," she says.  Will and Suellen both panic.  "To who?"  "To Suellen."  Awwwwwww, Scarlett is learning.  She's maturing.  A little.  Maybe.  She does say one very odd thing: "maybe one day you'll pass it along to your son and another Gerald O'Hara will be master of Tara again."  Um, he is Gerald Benton, Suellen's son.  Nobody corrects her.  "The hatchet is buried," Scarlett says to Suellen and then takes the dirt from Ireland to her father's grave, "from the first Tara, pa, to the last." 

Now it's back to Ireland, her daughter and a heavily glowering Mrs. Fitzpatrick, whose stern countenance makes her a wannabe Mrs. Danvers.  As she reads a letter from Lord Fenton, he's busy sharpening a razor and waiting to beat up a girl again.  "What sort of unspeakable devil could have done what you've just done?" she says afterward, still tied to the bed.  Oh, and she's pregnant. 

Colum is acting strangely around Scarlett, why?  "I'm smitten," he says, though we've known since he started sniffing one of her handkerchiefs.  She's shocked, but he tells her to leave. 

Rhett?  Rhett who?  Oh, that boring guy who keeps popping up (no, not Ashley, the other boring guy)?  Training a horse late one night, he has visions.  Anne wakes up and waits for him on the steps.  "You haven't been the same since we came back" from Ireland, and she thinks he is thinking only of Scarlett.  "Maybe you've only needed spectacles to see me," she wines!  Apparently he speaks her name when he's sleeping. 

Lord Fenton is welcomed back to Ballyhara with open arms and the staff off for the night.  Hell, they can't even get fully up the staircase before they are all over each other.  However, she doesn't want Colum to act strangely around her and refuse him as a friend.  "In this instance, your beauty is only surpassed by your wisdom," he says, which she fiddle-dee-dees and then moves on to discuss her attraction to Lord Fenton. 

Colum is eating when Mary comes to him with her woes.  He hurries off to Lord Fenton to make sure he provides the money to send Mary away, but Lord Fenton refuses, not afraid of Colum's religious rantings.  However, Colum mentions Scarlett, but Lord Fenton remains calm and pulls a gun.  Colum says he's not frightened by it, not until Lord Fenton puts a hole in his chest and kills him!  The only thing this villain lacks is a mustache to twirl.  He's a truly horrid figure, and with no shame.  That's way out of Scarlett's league.  She is fine with selfish people, but not cold-blooded killers!  Lord Fenton drops Colum in a ditch to end the third chapter.

So, the final portion of the story starts with Father Colum's funeral.  Perhaps guilty, maybe a lot ashamed, Mary wants to throw herself off a cliff, but stops short.  It only gets more macabre as Lord Fenton waits a few yards away for Scarlett to drop flowers at Colum's grave.  "He must have been rather a fine fellow to have taken your heart.  I wish I would have known him," the cad has the nerve to say before Scarlett reveals that he was a rebel and "they think that's what got him killed."  Lord Fenton decides she must go away with him to England.  That's gonna make her REAL popular in the village.  Mary wants Scarlett to take her, because "I cannot remain in Ireland" due to her pregnancy.  Talk about your ironies, eh?  Lord Fenton taking Scarlett taking Mary. 

Yellow fever has come to Charleston.  Even Anne comes down with it and though Rhett and Miss Eleanor seem worried, I don't think anyone will miss her too terribly much if they lose her, even though she never bear Rhett a child (they never quite say what happened, though Anne seems to have been pregnant while a year or so of time elapsed with the other characters).  Her funeral does give Sally a chance to pop by, even if she has no lines.

Dripping with furs, Scarlett takes her daughter and Mary to England, where she gets a huge house, quipping "nothing's too good for the Irish!"  Both Mary and Lord Fenton have to do some quick acting when they meet in Scarlett's parlor during tea.  "Your Samaritan inclination seems to be flourishing," a nervous Lord Fenton tells her, as Scarlett promises him Mary's situation will get worse before it gets better.  Lord Fenton traps Mary in the drawing room, where he slaps her silly and threatens her. 

Old old money doesn't take too well to Scarlett.  Lady Fenton (British acting legend Dorothy Tutin) and her daughter, look way down on Scarlett, noting that, "you could hardly be expected to know this, but only the queen is referred to as ma'am."  The whole stuffy dinner crowd doesn't have to say "vulgar" for us to know what they are thinking.  "It was Ireland that killed my husband," Lady Fenton snaps after Scarlett says how much she loves it.  Scarlett listens to a bunch of Irish knocks for a while, but she isn't our Scarlett O'Hara for nothing (and thankfully the story remembers it).  She gives it right back to everyone when they refer to the rebels, citing her cousin Colum as a shining example (not knowing the murderer is sitting next to her). "Really, Scarlett, there is no evidence to substantiate that accusation," is all Lord Fenton can say. 

Escaping without too many scratches, Scarlett has Lord Fenton over for some bubbly.  He comments that never before has he been served champagne in a kitchen by a lady.  "Have a seat then," she retorts.  Scarlett tries to send him off, citing exhaustion, but he pushes it and grabs her, rushing out in a huff as he destroys the champagne set.  Then she has an erotic dream that starts with her and Ashley but turns into an erotic dream about her and Lord Fenton in which he gets violent.  It's odd for Scarlett and even odder for the miniseries, which was always a very prudish and sex-free genre even when it thought it was being otherwise. 

Scarlett bumps into Morland at the theater and then gets a letter from Sally, which makes three thoughts of Rhett within minutes.  The letter bears the news of Anne's death.  Speaking of Sally, she pops by Rhett's to "see if you've grown a beard and hair like a bona fide hermit instead of just acting like one."  Ah, good old Sally, we've missed her wit, especially since she's the only one in the story with any to spare!  Sally urges Rhett to get away from home, "just close your eyes, grit your teeth and jump the fence, damn it!  Hell, it ain't that high," she commands.

Lord Fenton is sent packing by Scarlett, though he says, "I'm unaccustomed to being discarded like an old shoe," though no doubt he would find a use for the leather and nails in one.  "I'm trying to be a lady about it.  I hope you'll be a gentleman," she says, but he laughs, "a lady, you?"  He's not given to fond farewells.  He tries to force himself on her, so she bites his lip, he knocks her down, she screams, the butler hears, but he gags her so no other noises can be heard and tells him all about Mary.  "You filthy disgusting son-of-a-bitch," she howls, as her butler stands stupefied on the stairs, "if you ever come near me again I'll kill you!"  However, he follows her upstairs and confesses to killing Colum as well while undressing.  She tries to hit him with a candlestick, and no one stops him as he rips off her clothes and slaps her around.  The servants keep to themselves and Mary hides in her room, not venturing out until the silents have died down and Fenton is smoking a cigarette.  Scarlett starts shouting and slapping again, but Lord Fenton knocks her to the ground and rolls over to sleep. 

As every clock in the house chimes midnight (literally, every clock), Scarlett wakes up to discover a knife stuck in Lord Fenton.  Even Scarlett assumes she did it and is led off, in her ripped gown and bruises by the police.  Mary has disappeared when the maid goes to fetch her.  If we hadn't hit ridiculous heights so often in this ludicrous plot, we've just hit perhaps the most ridiculous.  We did this all in "Gone With the Wind," another self-defense killing, though not of a Lord, I suppose.

"A murderer?  That enchanting creature?  Ridiculous," says Morland, echoing my sentiments.  He's only puzzled because her last name is Butler. 

Sally, brandishing her trademark cigarette, finds Rhett packing after receiving a telegram from Morland.  Lord Morland visits Scarlett in prison to find out her story.  She confesses to lying about her marital status, but does not remember killing Lord Fenton, only being "violated."  "I'm not more capable of killing someone...at least not Richard," she says, also admitting to once before killing, though that was a "Yankee soldier about to rape me."  Lord Morland wants to know if anyone else knows about this killing, as it would be very bad for her case. 

Rhett and Sally race to England and Rhett vows whatever money it takes for a good lawyer, the best being Lord Morland, who isn't sure he wants the case.  Rhett goes to see Scarlett in the dreary prison.  "I know you didn't do it, though I wouldn't put it past you," he says, and the familiar name-calling starts up again.  He's not particularly helpful, though she tells him of pregnant Mary having disappeared.  He assures her, "no one is going to hang you."  It's then she picks to tell him she has a child...and it's his!  How very daytime soap opera of her.  He grabs her in anger with a familiar, "damn you, Scarlett!"  He wants to get the kid and take her away, but Sally convinces him otherwise.  "Her cup's runneth over with troubles, are you going to drown her in the bargain?" she asks. 

Scarlett doesn't help herself any being questioned by Morland and Rhett, saying that any woman would have "shot him on the spot" upon learning of what Lord Fenton did to Mary.  Bad choice of words and sentiment.  Sally is far more compassionate, though she has a scary tendency to sing "Dixie" when nervous. 

Naturally, there is a trial, and I have to think it's because Ripley wasn't smart enough to think outside of conventional soapy plot twists like Margaret Mitchell had (she was soapy, but never conventional).  Mary shows up at the trial and bolts as soon as Morland recognizes her (she was at the theater with Scarlett).  Rhett catches her and begs her help.  "We know someone else did it, we just don't know who.  There's a good chance Scarlett will hang," he pleads, but Mary runs out of the moving carriage and jumps into the Thames, with Rhett diving after her!  They both live, but the doctor won't let her see Mary. 

The trial gets worse when the maid testifies that she knew Scarlett and Lord Fenton were having an affair, because she saw him come out of the bedroom "in the middle of the day."  Rhett is next to testify, having to admit that Scarlett lied about the baby.  The barrister calls that an "extreme reaction," though Morland objects.  Rhett laughs as he is questioned about Scarlett's lies because that's the Scarlett he's always known.  Rhett is asked if he's sure he's the father of the child, and he says "none whatsoever."  Has anyone else watching considered Ashley?  After all, he was seen going into that hotel room alone with her and the timing would be perfect.   Then again, it's hard to picture Ashley actually having sex and siring a child, so maybe that's why no one else has tossed in that little wrench of a plot turn. 

Mary wakes up in the hospital, but they were unable to save the baby.  Rhett brings Scarlett a picnic lunch in prison and she jokes, gallows humor at its best, about her "bad character," but Rhett says she only makes decisions without thinking about what will happen tomorrow.  Ah, tomorrow, her favorite time of life.  He then pays Mary a visit, trying every trick to get her to snap out of her stupor, or perhaps fake stupor. 

Yes, it can get worse for Scarlett.  Lord Fenton's sister happily confesses that he told her Scarlett has murdered the Yankee soldier.  Mary steals a coat and escapes from the hospital into the twisted London streets.  Somehow, she finds her way to church in the very outfit she had last been seen wearing.  Where did she get that?  She left the hospital in a nightgown. 

Worse still.  The butler testifies of Scarlett's threat to kill Lord Fenton and then seeing her with the knife in her hand.  Then it's finally Scarlett's turn to take the stand.  Mary is there, but no one seems to recognize her.  She testifies that she was angry enough to hit Lord Fenton, but not to kill him.  She's then asked about killing the soldier, which she barely remembers, and is cloudy on this one because she hit her head.  Her whole time on the stand is absolutely insane, the worst kind of trial writing, with appropriately sniveling lawyers twisting around words and whatnot.  Naturally, Scarlett gets to speech it up a bit, tears and all, with Joanne Whalley going for the gold. 

As expected, Scarlett is found guilty and she is sentenced to hang.  And then Mary finally pops up to tell the truth.  Our Paint-by-Numbers session has finally come full circle, as we knew it would.  It just took FOREVER to get there.  "I done it for all the evil that was in him," she cries after describing it all.  "I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart," Scarlett tells her on the way out of prison, leaving Mary to rot.  She's going back to Ireland, "and this time my husband's coming with me." 

Off to Ireland they go and Rhett gets to see his daughter, finally.  Such a neat and tidy parcel "Scarlett" has become, eh?  "Say hello to your daddy, darlin'," Scarlett drawls once the kid wakes up.  "Well you do now," Rhett declares.  Rhett and Scarlett toast by the fire, with Rhett saying, "let's hope she has her mother's brass and her father's brains."  She then takes him to her bed, "the world's largest," she says, where she promises he won't even know she's there.  And they remain on opposite sides of the bed.

There is a jolly festival with more Irish dancing, as you would expect to celebrate the freedom of The O'Hara.  An O'Hara cousin tells Rhett how lucky he is "to have an angel for a daughter and a saint for a wife," which Rhett doubts before joining the dance.  Mrs. Fitzpatrick thinks he's "criminal handsome" and they laugh merrily about lovely possibilities.  Hell, Rhett even reads to the kid.  Scarlett still wants to know "about you and me...and you and me and her."  Can he love her again?  He's still bitter about being left for dead.  "It wasn't a question about loving you, but living with you," he says, causing her to rattle off and to shut up, he grabs her, bends her over and kisses her big time.  "Heaven help the man who ever loves me," she murmurs.  "Heaven help me," he says and he once again carries her up the stairs, which would be an apt ending, except that they have to delight in afterglow for a while. 

Even then it isn't over.  Scarlett and Rhett go walking in the mountains with their daughter and she comments on "how nice" they have been to each other all week. "You've changed, Scarlett," he says and she promises, "I'll do better this time."  Where will they live?  He's in Charleston and she's in Ireland.  "We belong together Scarlett.  The world is where we belong.  All of it.  We can go anywhere.  As long as we're together, the world will belong to us."

"That's a lot of property," she notes, causing him to laugh as they walk through the remains of the first Tara. 

There are many problems with "Scarlett" but most of them are with the book, simply compounded by the miniseries.  As I said earlier, there was an inevitability to "Scarlett" being turned into a miniseries and certainly so many were eager for a follow-up to the beloved "Gone With the Wind."  But, like most sequels, the sequel is never the equal.  The main fault lies with Alexandra Ripley and her inane plot.  Sending Scarlett to Ireland?  Sorry, but that's so untrue to the characters.  The characters Margaret Mitchell created were full-blooded Southerners, aware of only their world and what the Civil War did to it.  What in tarnation is Scarlett O'Hara doing in Ireland, getting mixed up in Irish-English politics, with a murderous English lord and a dank prison cell?  Scarlett's world extended no further than the Georgia border because she was so delightfully self-centered on herself and her life at Tara. 

Now, the portion of the story that follows Scarlett to Charleston is fine.  It stays Southern, though lacks any hint of Reconstruction Era poverty since everyone she knows (except her sister) is wealthy.  If Ripley's story lacks any of the time's reality (and almost no plot), it at least has the characters.  But, once Scarlett goes off to Ireland, the whole story jumps the tracks and can never return.  I know, in calling it "Scarlett," Ripley wanted to make sure we understood that this is the continuation of Scarlett O'Hara, not Scarlett and Rhett and Melanie and Ashley and Aunt Pittypat.  In fact, Melanie is the luckiest one, because she has a reason for disappearing from the story (death), while the others have to suffer being merely shoved aside for new and completely uninteresting characters. 

Because the Civil War is not the driving force behind the miniseries, it lacks the tension that "North and South" or "Beulah Land" or "The Blue and The Gray" have.  Under their stories, silly or not, is the imposing war and what it will do to the well-ordered lives of the main characters.  There is no war here, and frankly, these people are not exciting enough when not faced with catastrophe.  They are simply ordinary, which is why I guess Ripley found it so easy to dispense with them.  Their replacements, unfortunately are no better (it's probably a good time to mention that the Mitchell estate had another sequel written, in the hopes that we would forget "Scarlett"), and Irish politics of the late 18th Century are not enough to grab an American audience for six hours.

However, that didn't stop "Scarlett" from getting made, even as late as 1994, when the medium was already all-but-obsolete.  Is there anything left in the miniseries gas tank to get this by?  Yes, actually.  A fortune was spent on it.  It looks every bit as expensive and thorough as its cousins from the previous decade.  It feels big and epic, no doubt about it.  We have all of those slummers who didn't say no to being cast.  John Gielgud and Julie Harris and Elizabeth Wilson and Barbara Barrie and Ann-Margaret (much better used in the same period's "Queen") and Jean Smart all pop by long enough to heavily populate the guest star list and add their wattage.  But, ultimately, the fate of this story rests with the people we have known and loved since "Gone With the Wind."

Now, forgive me for saying this, but I don't think "Gone With the Wind" is a masterpiece, book or movie (though the movie is an improvement on the book).  It's a florid soap opera, very decorous, but a soap opera nonetheless.  There are dozens of historical novels that tell virtually the same story, but Mitchell's characters were so unique, so gripping, especially Scarlett and Rhett.  Faced with the Civil War, they were able to have personalities bigger than life, bigger than most of the real-life people who have become legends of the time.  Hell, some even think they were real!

Joanne Whalley is divine as Scarlett.  I suppose it was too much to find an American actress to play Scarlett yet again, but certainly there was no casting war over the miniseries, and the right choice was made (Leslie Ann Warren had already played Scarlett, in the Broadway-bound flop and done similar work in "Beulah Land," Leslie-Anne Down had already done "North and South" and though Ann-Margaret might have done a grand job in her youth, let's leave her with Belle).  Whalley throws herself into the part every bit as vigorously as Vivien Leigh, and has more than twice the amount to do scene-for-scene, but this Scarlett is made to go through so many idiotic twists that it's hard to create a vibrant character, though Whalley comes as close as I can imagine anyone doing.  The same cannot be said for Timothy Dalton's Rhett Butler, as he just pins a fake smile on himself and hopes to get away with it like Clark Gable did.  Dalton is a far better actor than Gable, and usually wonderfully magnetic, but he knows his part sucks here and there's no reason to put much effort into it.  Let's not even talk about Stephen Collins' Ashley.  Right actor, wrong part, not his fault.  Fun juicy characters like Belle and Mammy are dispensed with awfully quickly, while new ones with potential like Sally are left as window dressing.  For crying out loud, they try to pass Pansy off as Prissy, but her learning to read is not something Prissy would have EVER considered! 

You won't see anyone releasing "Scarlett" in a box set with "Gone With the Wind."  I'm sure fans of the latter have already forgotten the former even existed, but it's there, both in black and white on the and full color on the screen.  Perhaps the last truly expansive miniseries attempted by a network, "Scarlett" emerges as a showy folly, not really because of anything Hollywood did to it, but what a hack writer did before Hollywood even got there.  The ghosts of Margaret Mitchell and 1939 remain undisturbed, not to worry. 

Questions?  Comments?  Want to laugh about "Scarlett?"  Drop me a line at hpmaraka@gmail.com.