Word: daughters
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Lucille Ball, for example, is returning as a "free-spirited grandmother" who moves in with her daughter's family in ABC's Life with Lucy. Elliott Gould, Ellen Burstyn and Wilford Brimley are among the other stars who will be heading TV homes this season. Pam Dawber (Mork and Mindy) becomes a roommate and surrogate parent for a runaway sibling in CBS's My Sister Sam. In ABC's Heart of the City, a police detective has himself transferred out of the SWAT unit so he can spend more time with his motherless children. And Starman, also on ABC, brings...
...parent households are far more common than they once were, the old-fashioned two-parent model has staged a comeback. Indeed, the circle of kinfolk is expanding: grandparents are central figures in several of TV's newest households. Superficially, these shows have kept pace with the times; the teenage daughter's boyfriend is likely to have a punk haircut and be named Lash. But the uplifting message has changed little. Children still need firm, loving guidance, but will ultimately do what is right if left on their...
...hand, the newcomers set the family melting pot at high boil. The sentiment gets a bit thick, but there is something appealing about the war orphan's brashness ("My dad was a big hero. Maybe you heard of him -- John Wayne") and something real about the way the daughter, who was adopted years earlier, resents the attention given the newcomer. Gould, once Hollywood's epitome of anti-Establishment scruffiness, has drifted into sitcomland with surprising meekness. Still, even an Elliott Gould possessed by pods is better than nothing...
...Ellen Burstyn Show (ABC). Appearing in her first TV series, Burstyn plays Ellen Brewer, a college professor who shares a house with her separated daughter and her five-year-old grandson. Her opening lines, directed to the audience, are pleasantly sardonic: "Let me tell you how much I love being called Grandma . . ." But this grandma turns quickly into a cloying paragon of hip, enlightened '80s attitudes. When her mother (Elaine Stritch) sneaks into the closet for a smoke, Ellen admonishes, "You've read the Surgeon % General's report." When the family dog is about to have puppies, Ellen argues that...
...House (NBC). Wilford Brimley here reminds us that grandparents, long the most idealized of TV figures, can sometimes be crotchety as well. When his recently widowed daughter-in-law and three grandchildren move in, he welcomes them but grumpily resists the change in routine. To teach the children a lesson, he throws into the garbage the toys that they have left on the floor. Half the time he does not even look up from his newspaper when they are talking to him. Our House tugs at the heartstrings a little too aggressively, and Brimley's big scene (telling...