fletch lives
Hans-Max 2022 TV Draft: Round Five-Pick One-Sisters (1991-1996)
Hanspostcard/Max has a TV draft challenge. This is my Round Five pick.
I didn’t catch the first season of this show during its original run but, started watching during season two (it was a while before I got to see season one). I was immediately hooked by the quirky interaction between the sisters and their day to day lives in Winnetka, IL and, I was already a Patricia Kalember fan due to the short-lived Kay O’Brien TV show. ~Vic
Created by Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman, the series begins one year after the death of the family’s father, Dr. Thomas Reed, a workaholic, played in flashbacks by three different actors but, mostly by Peter White. The matriarch of the family is Beatrice (Elizabeth Hoffman), a long-suffering, neglected wife, who turns to alcohol to deal with the doctor’s multiple affairs. She has four daughters:
☆ Alexandra…”Alex” (Swoosie Kurtz), the eldest. She married a plastic surgeon that had affairs on her and she divorced him, retaining some wealth. After battling breast cancer, she became a talk show host. She frequently butts heads her daughter, Reed Halsey (played by three different actresses, most notably Ashley Judd). She eventually remarries.
Image Credit: TMDb
☆ Theodora…”Teddy” (Sela Ward), the second daughter. At the beginning of the series, she is returning from California and is shocked to discover that her ex-husband, Mitch, is engaged to her youngest sister, Frankie. She, drunk, temporarily, stops the wedding with a shotgun (she inherited Beatrice’s drinking habits). An artist in school, she becomes a fashion designer, helming three different companies. She goes on to marry twice more…to Det. James Falconer (George Clooney), the cop that investigated her daughter Cat’s rape (he was killed in an explosion) and Dr. Gabriel Sorenson (Stephen Collins), the doctor that saved her life when she was shot in the head.
☆ Georgiana…”Georgie” (Patricia Kalember), the third daughter. She is the stay-at-home mom with the most level head of all the sisters. A part-time real estate agent, she is the one the other sisters come to for guidance. She and her husband, John, have two sons, the youngest surviving leukemia. She carries and gives birth to Thomas George, Frankie & Mitch’s son. After trouble with her first son, she has an affair with her therapist, separates from John, has a second affair with a much younger classmate in college and, eventually returns to John.
☆ Francesca…”Frankie” (Julianne Phillips…Springsteen’s first wife), the fourth daughter. She is a highly paid executive, a workaholic like her father and discovered that she was infertile. Georgie becomes her surrogate for her baby. Her work habits break apart her marriage to Mitch. Afterwards, she quits her job and buys a local diner. She eventually moves to Japan for another job.
☆ Charlotte…”Charley” (a doctor, originally played by Jo Anderson, then Sheila Kelley) as the unknown, fifth, illegitimate daughter that shows up in the fourth season, looking for a bone marrow donation (a shift in the story-line as Julianne Phillips prepared to leave the show). The nicknames are a product of their father wanting boys and never getting one. The four older sisters tagged Charlotte with her own nickname.
Supporting Characters:
★ John Witsig (Garrett M. Brown), Georgie’s husband.
★ Mitch Margolis (Ed Marinaro), Teddy’s high school sweetheart, ex-husband & Frankie’s ex-husband.
★ Catherine “Cat” Margolis (Heather McAdam), Teddy & Mitch’s daughter that goes on to be a cop.
Much of the show is full of flashbacks, particularly the interactions of the sisters growing up.
Trivia Bits:
♦ Patricia Kalember’s husband in real life, Daniel Gerroll, had a recurring role in season five. He played psychiatrist Dr. David Caspian, who was counseling her character Georgie.
♦ Julianne Phillips and Patricia Kalember also co-starred in Fletch Lives.
♦ Elizabeth Hoffman was a minor, recurring character on Stargate SG-1 and played Eleanor Roosevelt in two mini-series: The Winds of War (1983) and War & Remembrance (1988-1989).
Scene & Opening Theme
Movie Monday: Fletch Lives 1989
Chevy Chase
Julianne Phillips
R. Lee Ermey
Thirty years ago, today, the #1 film at the box office was Fletch Lives, starring Chevy Chase, Hal Holbrook, Julianne Phillips, R. Lee Ermey, Richard Libertini, Randall ‘Tex’ Cobb, Cleavon Little, George Wyner, Patricia Kalember, Geoffrey Lewis, Richard Belzer, Phil Hartman and Noelle Beck. Released March 17, it was a sequel to Fletch (1985), a movie about an investigative reporter named Irwin Maurice “Fletch” Fletcher, a character created in 1974 by mystery writer Gregory McDonald. It was directed by Michael Ritchie with music by Harold Faltermeyer.
Fletch fans rejoice! The reckless I.M. Fletcher, investigative reporter, returns to the screen. This time, the chameleon-like reporter ventures to Belle Isle, a sprawling 80-acre Louisiana plantation which Fletch inherits from his aunt. Trouble begins when a lovely attorney mysteriously turns up dead, a neighborly lawyer warns him to leave town and a ravishing real estate agent comes calling with a persistent offer he may not be able to refuse. Fletch must unravel the reasons for the mad land scramble with his trademark bag of hilarious disguises.
Quotes
From Chris Willman:
[…] a movie with a hero whose every other line of dialogue is a snide wisecrack directed at a fool. In this meager sequel, as in its popular predecessor, Chevy Chase demolishes every easy target in sight with a quip of the tongue. Some of the lines are funny but, after a while, you just want to smack him. […] Chevy, who isn’t playing a character (least of all the character first created by novelist Gregory McDonald) so much as reprising his nonplussed, punchline-spouting “Weekend Update” anchor role. […] Ritchie lets sophomoric scatology predominate over satire at every turn and, […] the gags are more crass than corrosive. […] moviegoers might think twice about signing on as the film makers’ partners in put-down when they’re clearly also its targets. Beware: [the movie] may assume that all Southerners are dim bulbs but, it doesn’t think you’re so bright yourself.
From Roger Ebert:
[The movie] is one more dispirited slog through the rummage sale of movie clichés […] If you were writing a screenplay, would you think a movie involving […] pathetic clichés had the slightest chance of interesting anyone? Chase’s assignment is to bring an angle, an edge, to plot materials that are otherwise completely without interest. And it’s theoretically possible for that to happen […] But, Chase is wrong for this material because of the pose of detachment and indifference that he brings to so many roles. He seems to be visiting the plot as a benevolent but, indifferent outsider. […] sometimes he seems to be covering himself, playing detached so that nobody can blame him if the comedy doesn’t work. In this film he seems to have no emotions at all […] Chase is at arm’s length from the plot, making little asides and whimsical commentaries while his hapless supporting cast does what it can with underwritten roles. A mystery is concealed somewhere in the folds of the movie’s plot but, one that will not surprise anyone who has seen half a dozen other mysteries. The identity of the bad guy can be deduced by applying the Law of Character Economy, which states that the mystery villain is always the only character in the plot who seems otherwise unnecessary. It admittedly takes a little more thought than usual to apply the law in this case, since so many of the characters seem unnecessary.
Trivia Bits
♦ The original character from the novel was a Marine veteran.
♦ Though there were eight sequels, and prequels, written by Gregory McDonald that could have been used as the basis for the second “Fletch” movie at the time, Universal decided to write a completely new story.
♦ The last name of televangelist Jimmy Lee Farnsworth is the same as that of the widely acknowledged inventor of television, Philo T. Farnsworth.