October True Crime: Too Close To Home (dir by Bill Corcoran)


The 1997 film Too Close To Comfort tells the disturbing story of the Donahues.

Nick Donahue (Rick Schroder) is a young attorney, a law school grad who has just joined the bar and who is still making a name for himself as a defense attorney.  He’s good at his job and if you have any doubts, his mother Diane (Judith Light) will be there to tell you why you’re incorrect.  Diane and Nick still live together.  They have the type of relationship where Diane casually walks into the bathroom to talk to Nick while he’s in the shower.

In short, they have a very creepy relationship.

Nick talks about needing to get a place of his own but his mother says that it’s too soon for him to spend all that money.  Nick wants to fall in love and marry a nice girl and start a family.  Diane doesn’t want Nick to have a life separate from her.  When Nick does end up marrying the sweet-natured Abby (Sarah Trigger), Diane snaps.  One night, Abby is abducted and is later found murdered.  Nick sobs and Diane holds her son and she doesn’t mention the fact that she’s the one who arranged for Abby to be killed.

The police figure it out, of course.  Diane wasn’t that clever.  When Diane is arrested and put on trial for murder, Nick is shocked.  With his mother facing the death penalty for murdering his wife, Nick steps forward to defend his mother in court.

Agck!  This movie!  Admittedly, this is a made-for-TV movie but it’s still creepy as Hell.  If anything, the fact that it was made for television make it even creepier than if it was a uncensored feature film.  Held back by the rule of television, the film has to hint at what would probably otherwise be portrayed as explicit.  That makes all of the little moments that indicate Diane’s madness all the more disturbing and frightening because they could be read several different ways.  This is a film where every line is full of a very icky subtext.  Diane is more than just an overprotective mother.  Her feelings for Nick are on a whole other level.

Fortunately, Judith Light is one of those actresses who excels at communicating subtext.  She delivers every line with just enough of an inflection that we know what she’s saying even if she doesn’t actually say it.  From rolling her eyes when Nick asks her to turn around when he gets out of the shower to the scene where she flirts with Nick’s new landlord, Light leaves little doubt as to what really going through Diane’s mind.  Rick Schroder has a far more simpler role as Nick but he still does a good job with the role.  He’s sympathetic, even when he’s refusing to accept the truth about his mother.

This film is all the more disturbing due to being loosely based on a true story.  The real Diana Donahue was named Elizabeth Ann Duncan and she was convicted of killing her son’s wife in the 1950s.  (Too Close To Home is set in the 90s.)  Her son really did defend her, all the way until her execution.  In real life, her son continued to practice law until 2023, when he was disbarred by the state of California.

As for the film, it’s a classic true crime made-for-TV movie that features Judith Light at her disturbing best.

Retro Television Review: St. Elsehwere 1.18 “Dog Day Hospital”


Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing St. Elsewhere, a medical show which ran on NBC from 1982 to 1988.  The show can be found on Hulu and, for purchase, on Prime!

This week, Judith Light has got a gun!

Episode 1.18 “Dog Day Hospital”

(Dir by Victor Lobl, originally aired on March 22nd, 1983)

Finally, Dr. Ehrlich is performing his first solo operation.  Dr. Craig is assisting but Ehrlich is in charge.  He gets to play his music in the OR.  He gets to decide what type of retractor to use.  It’s a simple hernia operation.  The patient (Sam Anderson) is awake and babbling through the whole operation.

Unfortunately, there’s also an angry woman in the OR and she has a gun.  Barbara Lonnicker (Judith Light) is eight months pregnant, despite her husband claiming that he got a vasectomy at St. Eligius.  As she already has several children to deal with, she wants to see the doctor who screwed up the vasectomy but she’s just as willing to shoot any other doctor to get her revenge.  The operation continues while Dr. Craig and Dr. Westphall negotiate with her.

I have to admit that I did find a lot of this episode to be amusing.  Ehrlich’s excitement over getting to do his first operation, Dr. Craig’s stuffy annoyance with being interrupted by a woman with a gun, and the patient’s nonstop rambling all made me smile more than once.  And Judith Light, not surprisingly, was great as the woman with the gun.  I loved the her husband was played by Tom Atkins.  You never know who you might see at St. Eligius!  That said, after the episode ended, I couldn’t help but think about how dumb the whole thing actually was.  How are people always managing to get guns into St. Eligius?  How did Barbara manage to get into an operating room without being stopped beforehand?  (Luther does tell her that she can’t be back there but he’s the only one who seems to notice her before she bursts into the OR.)  How come no one in the hospital seems to be more upset about the fact that there’s a woman waving a gun around an operating room?  At one point, Barbara shoots Ehrlich’s radio and hardly anyone seems to react.  The plot is played for laughs and that’s fine.  But, in this case, the story was a bit too implausible for its own good.

Meanwhile, Nurse Rosenthal returned to work after her mastectomy and struggled to get back into her routine.  Carolyn Pickles did a great job portraying Rosenthal in this episode.  And Fiscus and Shirley Daniels visited an old woman in a nursing home.  The subplots were handled well but, for the most part, this episode still felt as if it was trying a bit too hard.

Insomnia File #51: Ira & Abby (dir by Robert Clary)


What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or Netflix? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

Oh Lord.

So, if you were having trouble getting too sleep last night, you could have turned over to one of the many Showtime channels you could have watched the 2006 film, Ira & Abby.

I doubt it would have helped though.  Ira & Abby is one of those extremely cutesy little love stories where a neurotic guy meets a quirky woman and they spend the entire film having so many easily solved relationship problems that it’ll drive your anxiety through the roof just watching them.

Ira (Chris Messina) is the son of two psychologists (Judith Light and Robert Klein).  Ira is planning on becoming a psychologist himself and, of course, he’s in therapy.  At the start of the film, his therapist tells him that he’s beyond help and that he needs to do something spontaneous for once.  Ira takes this to mean that he should go the gym.

At the gym, Ira meets Abby (Jennifer Westfeldt), who is quirky and universally beloved by everyone who meets her.  (Westfeldt also wrote the script, which …. might explain a little.)  Abby has a positive attitude and lives with her musician parents (Fred Willard and Frances Conroy).  After Ira sees Abby somehow talk a mugger out of robbing everyone on a subway car, he decides that they have to get married.  Free-spirited Abby agrees.

Marriage follows!  Complications follow!  Annulment and remarriage and more follows!  Everyone ends up seeing a different therapist while, at the same time, Ira’s mom has an affair with Abby’s dad.  And yes, it eventually does end with every character in the film gathering in one room and taking part in a giant therapy session.  It’s exhausting to watch, largely because it just seems like all of the problems could be solved by people not being stupid or foolishly impulsive.  Ira is neurotic to the point of no longer being sympathetic.  Abby is so perfect and wonderful that you soon get sick of her and her positive attitude.  Even Ted Lasso would tell her to turn it down a notch.

The most frustrating thing about the movie is that it features good actors like Chis Messina but it goes out of its way to sabotage them every chance that it gets.  Out of the large and impressive cast, only Fred Willard and Judith Light manage to transcend the script.  I would have loved to have watched a movie just about their characters.

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk
  33. The Comedian
  34. The Minus Man
  35. Donnie Brasco
  36. Punchline
  37. Evita
  38. Six: The Mark Unleashed
  39. Disclosure
  40. The Spanish Prisoner
  41. Elektra
  42. Revenge
  43. Legend
  44. Cat Run
  45. The Pyramid
  46. Enter the Ninja
  47. Downhill
  48. Malice
  49. Mystery Date
  50. Zola

Here’s What Won At The Emmys Last Night!


Last night, Lisa Marie did not watch the Emmys because she says that, “I’m just not feeling TV this year.”  If Twin Peaks had been eligible to be nominated, I bet it would have been a different story!

Instead, she asked me to watch the ceremony and let everyone know what I thought.  It needed less politics and more cats.

Here’s the list of winners:

COMEDY

BEST COMEDY SERIES
“Atlanta”
“Black-ish”
“Masters of None”
“Modern Family”
“Silicon Valley”
“Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”
X — “Veep”

BEST COMEDY ACTRESS
Pamela Adlon, “Better Things”
Jane Fonda, “Grace and Frankie”
Allison Janney, “Mom”
Ellie Kemper, “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”
X — Julia Louis-Dreyfus, “Veep”
Tracee Ellis Ross, “Black-ish”
Lily Tomlin, “Grace and Frankie”

BEST COMEDY ACTOR
Anthony Anderson, “Black-ish”
Aziz Ansari, “Master of None”
Zach Galifianaks, “Baskets”
X — Donald Glover, “Atlanta”
William H. Macy, “Shameless”
Jeffrey Tambor, “Transparent”

BEST COMEDY SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Vanessa Bayer, “Saturday Night Live”
Anna Chlumsky, “Veep”
Kathryn Hahn, “Transparent”
Leslie Jones, “Saturday Night Live”
Judith Light, “Transparent”
X — Kate McKinnon, “Saturday Night Live”

BEST COMEDY SUPPORTING ACTOR
Louie Anderson, “Baskets”
X — Alec Baldwin, “Saturday Night Live”
Tituss Burgess, “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”
Ty Burrell, “Modern Family”
Tony Hale, “Veep”
Matt Walsh, “Veep”

BEST COMEDY DIRECTING
X — “Atlanta” (“B.A.N.”)
“Silicon Valley” (“Intellectual Property”)
“Silicon Valley” (“Server Error”)
“Veep” (“Justice”)
“Veep” (“Blurb”)
“Veep” (“Groundbreaking”)

BEST COMEDY WRITING
“Atlanta” (“B.A.N.”)
“Atlanta” (“Streets on Lock”)
X — “Master of None” (“Thanksgiving”)
“Silicon Valley” (“Success Failure”)
“Veep” (“Groundbreaking”)
“Veep” (“Georgia”)

DRAMA

BEST DRAMA SERIES
“Better Call Saul”
“The Crown”
X — “The Handmaid’s Tale”
“House of Cards”
“Stranger Things”
“This is Us”
“Westworld”

BEST DRAMA ACTRESS
Viola Davis, “How to Get Away with Murder”
Claire Foy, “The Crown”
X — Elisabeth Moss, “The Handmaid’s Tale”
Keri Russell, “The Americans”
Evan Rachel Wood, “Westworld”
Robin Wright, “House of Cards”

BEST DRAMA ACTOR
X — Sterling K. Brown, “This is Us”
Anthony Hopkins, “Westworld”
Bob Odenkirk, “Better Call Saul”
Matthew Rhys, “The Americans”
Liev Schreiber, “Ray Donovan”
Kevin Spacey, “House of Cards”
Milo Ventimiglia, “This is Us”

BEST DRAMA SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Uzo Aduba, “Orange is the New Black”
Millie Bobby Brown, “Stranger Things”
X — Ann Dowd, “The Handmaid’s Tale”
Chrissy Metz, “This is Us”
Thandie Newton, “Westworld”
Samira Wiley, “The Handmaid’s Tale”

BEST DRAMA SUPPORTING ACTOR
Jonathan Banks, “Better Call Saul”
David Harbour, “Stranger Things”
Ron Cephas Jones, “This is Us”
Michael Kelly, “House of Cards”
X — John Lithgow, “The Crown”
Mandy Patinkin, “Homeland”
Jeffrey Wright, “Westworld”

BEST DRAMA DIRECTING
“Better Call Saul” (“Witness”)
“The Crown” (“Hyde Park Corner”)
“The Handmaid’s Tale” (“The Bridge”)
X — “The Handmaid’s Tale” (“Offred”)
“Homeland” (“America First”)
“Stranger Things” (“Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers”)
“Westworld” (“The Bicameral Mind”)

BEST DRAMA WRITING
“The Americans” (“The Soviet Division”)
“Better Call Saul” (“Chicanery”)
“The Crown” (“Assassins”)
X — “The Handmaid’s Tale” (“Offred”)
“Stranger Things” (“Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers”)
“Westworld” (“The Bicameral Mind”)

MOVIE/LIMITED SERIES

BEST LIMITED SERIES
X — “Big Little Lies”
“Fargo”
“Feud: Bette and Joan”
“Genius”
“The Night Of”

BEST TV MOVIE
X — “Black Mirror: San Junipero”
“Christmas of Many Colors”
“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”
“Sherlock: The Lying Detective”
“The Wizard of Lies”

BEST MOVIE/MINI ACTRESS
Carrie Coon, “Fargo”
Felicity Huffman, “American Crime”
X — Nicole Kidman, “Big Little Lies”
Jessica Lange, “Feud: Bette and Joan”
Susan Sarandon, “Feud: Bette and Joan”
Reese Witherspoon, “Big Little Lies”

BEST MOVIE/MINI ACTOR
X — Riz Ahmed, “The Night Of”
Benedict Cumberbatch, “Sherlock: The Lying Detective”
Robert De Niro, “The Wizard of Lies”
Ewan McGregor, “Fargo”
Geoffrey Rush, “Genius”
John Turturro, “The Night Of”

BEST MOVIE/MINI SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Judy Davis, “Feud: Bette and Joan”
X — Laura Dern, “Big Little Lies”
Jackie Hoffman, “Feud: Bette and Joan”
Regina King, “American Crime”
Michelle Pfeiffer, “The Wizard of Lies”
Shailene Woodley, “Big Little Lies”

BEST MOVIE/MINI SUPPORTING ACTOR
Bill Camp, “The Night Of”
Alfred Molina, “Feud: Bette and Joan”
X — Alexander Skarsgard, “Big Little Lies”
David Thewlis, “Fargo”
Stanley Tucci, “Feud: Bette and Joan”
Michael Kenneth Williams, “The Night Of”

BEST MOVIE/MINI DIRECTING
X — “Big Little Lies”
“Fargo” (“The Law of Vacant Places”)
“Feud: Bette and Joan” (“And the Winner Is”)
“Genius” (“Einstein: Chapter One”)
“The Night Of” (“The Art of War”)
“The Night Of” (“The Beach”)

BEST MOVIE/MINI WRITING
“Big Little Lies”
X — “Black Mirror: San Junipero”
“Fargo” (“The Law of Vacant Places”)
“Feud: Bette and Joan” (“And the Winner Is”)
“Feud: Bette and Joan” (“Pilot”)
“The Night Of” (“Call of the Wild”)

VARIETY/REALITY

BEST REALITY COMPETITION PROGRAM
“The Amazing Race”
“Amercan Ninja Warrior”
“Project Runway”
“RuPaul’s Drag Race”
“Top Chef”
X — “The Voice”

BEST VARIETY TALK SERIES
“Full Frontal with Samantha Bee”
“Jimmy Kimmel Live”
X — “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver”
“Late Late Show with James Corden”
“Late Show with Stephen Colbert”
“Real Time with Bill Maher”

BEST VARIETY SKETCH SERIES
“Billy on the Street”
“Documentary Now”
“Drunk History”
“Portlandia”
X — “Saturday Night Live”
“Tracey Ullman’s Show”

BEST VARIETY SERIES DIRECTING
“Drunk History”
“Jimmy Kimmel Live”
“Last Week Tonight with John Oliver”
“Late Show with Stephen Colbert”
X — “Saturday Night Live”

BEST VARIETY SERIES WRITING
“Full Frontal with Samantha Bee”
X — “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver”
“Late Night with Seth Meyers”
“Late Show with Stephen Colbert