Word: cuteness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...city yuppie's romantic small-town fantasy. There is no bigotry or narrow-mindedness in this small town; the residents are all closet highbrows. The townspeople read D.H. Lawrence and quote Voltaire; the local tavern plays Louis Armstrong and Mildred Bailey on the jukebox. For Joel there's a cute, available brunet (Janine Turner) and a philosophical Native American pal (Darren E. Burrows) who is conversant with movies like The Wages of Fear. Gosh, it's not even that cold; the characters may be bundled up in parkas, but we never see their breath. That's what shooting near Seattle...
Final stop is Continental Toyota, where a slick, streamlined Celica has been waiting to capture Heather's heart. She jumps into a white $14,600 hardtop and opens the sun roof, declaring, "This is so cute!" The floor model has a stick shift; instantly Heather insists, "I could learn manual shifting." She would drive it out the door right now if she could. Julie says, "I don't think there's even a comparison" with the Calais or the Sunbird...
...story is a random walk -- no cause, no effect and no harm done -- with the author's mischievous grin taking the curse off a detectable undertone of "Ain't I cute!" Getting non sequiturs to tail up like circus elephants doesn't always work, even if the paragraphs are amusing. In a sketch called Blumenthal on the Air, an American disk jockey for some reason is based in Paris and unaccountably burdened with a surly Iranian wife. He broods murkily without enlightenment, and so does the reader...
Clearly, we are not in Twin Peaks territory. Miller-Boyett's shows are what used to be described as lowest-common-denominator programming: cuddly, heartwarming, undemanding. They usually focus on wholesome families with incurably cute tots and problems that are solved in a few swift strokes just before the closing credits. Their interchangeable theme songs reinforce the upbeat message. "Standin' tall on the wings of my dream," goes the ditty for Perfect Strangers, while Going Places celebrates the "wide open spaces for my dreams," and Family Matters opens jauntily: "All I see is a tower of dreams/ Real love bursting...
Modern costumes and anachronistic gestures, such as the exchange of an elaborate high-five between the Duke and Sir Thurio, heighten the dialogue's clumsiness. Although these modern touches are cute, most of the staging and delivery of the lines is traditional. Wu's decision to combine classical and modern elements rather than focus on one type of interpretation makes the dialogue appear archaic...