Word: melodrama
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There's more than one way to film a sex scene. You can use MTV's strobe-lit quick cuts of gleaming torsos or Melrose Place's campy, heaving melodrama. But when Rick and Lily, the fortyish divorces (O.K., Lily doesn't have hers yet) whose romance fuels the new series Once and Again (ABC, Tuesdays at 10 p.m. E.T.), first make love, it's done like this: long, somber takes. Clumsy false starts. Cuddling. Tears. And talking. Lots of talking...
...Wring me out!" cried one normally stone-faced critic at the Cannes Film Festival after seeing this vivacious screwball melodrama, which won Almodovar the Best Director prize. Hot tears are an apt response: the two most innocent characters die; the others grieve and carry on womanfully. At the center of the film is Manuela (Cecilia Roth, in a heroically clenched performance), who goes to Barcelona looking for her ex-husband and ends up mothering half a dozen lost souls. She is Mother Courage, Mother Teresa and your mom on her very best day. But All About My Mother also gives...
...throwback. Unlike other broadcast biggies, he doesn't bully his callers or sensationalize his material. He knows it's sensational enough, so he sells it with a soothing baritone and the coaxing, folksy manner of a modern Arthur Godfrey. He doesn't whine or blurt, even if melodrama is swirling around him. When Bell abruptly left Coast to Coast last October for three weeks and took another hiatus this April, he showed old-fashioned reserve in keeping his private anguish private...
Still, there are signs of progress even here. Felicity's virginity loss last season, though tinged with guilt, was refreshingly free of melodrama. And TV's embrace of bad sex is, at best, a stab at honesty, which isn't always pretty. Carrie wonders, "Have we put such a premium on being open and honest with one another that we've misplaced the boundaries of propriety?" Perhaps, but they often came with fictions and stereotypes. For City's cool superwomen, a little cynicism can be empowering, as on an episode about an acquaintance's whirlwind wedding. A lesser sitcom would...
That soaps have failed to evolve their formula for melodrama is surely one of the factors responsible for their diminished ratings. During the past five years, the number of women ages 18 to 49 who watch daytime dramas has declined 36%. Comparatively, the number in that group who watch prime-time network television has dropped 27%. Certainly women are more time-pressed than they were even a few years ago, and they are spending more of their spare time with cable TV and talk shows. But it could also be that their soap opera needs are being met elsewhere...