Grating Kate

National Review Online, March 11, 2001

"Daddy, we saw a naked lady!" That was the first significant on-screen dialog ever spoken by the actress Mary Stuart Masterson (as little Kim Eberhardt in The Stepford Wives). Don't expect any such excitement from Ms. Masterson's new TV show, Kate Brasher (Saturdays, CBS). Billed as an "inspirational family drama," Kate Brasher does everything it can to deliver on the grim threat implicit in those three sinister words. Kate, we are told, is a "loving, hardworking mom who will do anything to give her kids every advantage." This, presumably, is why she decided to name her second son, Elvis. When we first meet her, she is a feisty waitress in a LA diner, making jokes about the eatery's pizza and tipping food into the lap of a lecherous customer. And this is not Ms. Brasher's only job. After hours, she works as a cleaner at a bowling alley. With her two boys, Daniel and the unfortunate Elvis, to support, Kate seems to exist in near Joad-like poverty (a sub-plot in the first episode revolves around Daniel secretly buying Elvis a pair of socks), although she does manage to decorate her apartment with a certain austere Pottery Barn chic and drive a vintage Volvo.

Failure on this scale takes some explaining in the prosperous America of the last ten years. This show does not try. To start with, it is simply mis-cast. To play a convincing hardscrabble mom, you have to have a convincing hardscrabble face. Rosie O'Donnell or Roseanne Barr come to mind. Played by the attractive Ms. Masterson, an actress with the refined looks of the fourth generation Wellesley alumna that she is, it is simply not credible that this bright, articulate woman is unable to have gotten herself a better job. Maybe Kate's ex-husband, Al, is to blame. He is long gone, of course, and so is any realistic hope of child support. In a brief phone call during the first episode, Al reveals himself as the formulaic male of contemporary drama, shifty, evasive, and exploitative.

Oh yes, this is going to be a family show all right, but one where there is no room for dad. And that little omission should, also, give Touched By An Angel fans and other traditionalists a clue as to the "inspirational" nature of the show. While it is true that Kate does turn to random sentences of the Bible for fortune cookie-style advice, she ultimately finds her salvation in the here and now. She becomes a social worker with a local community center, the nauseatingly named Brothers Keepers. It is a career move that should tell everyone everything they need to know about the series' ideological leanings.

This job change is triggered by dark dealings at the bowling alley. The boss, a man, turns out to be shifty, evasive, and exploitative, and he tries to cheat his all-female workforce out of their hard-earned wages. Kate turns to Brothers Keepers for help. When she shows up at the community center for the first time, its premises are bustling in that purposeful, important way that Hollywood uses to show organizations of which it approves. The staff are harried and under pressure as they nobly attempt to repair the shattered lives of their clients. Joe Almeida (Hector Elizondo), director of the center, does, however find time to shout at a couple of property developers, who are portrayed in the way that Hollywood uses to show people of which it disapproves (WASPy, smartly dressed). He also participates in a sting operation against another shifty, evasive, and exploitative male, on this occasion, yes, you guessed it, a deadbeat dad.

Eventually, Kate manages to attract the attention of Abbie Schaeffer, one of the center's in-house lawyers. In a move that could have saved this miserably uplifting show Abbie is played by Rhea Perlman, Carla from Cheers. At last, a heart of stone. But it is not to be. Despite a few flashes of the old venom, Abbie is no Carla. What's more, she manages to help the women of the bowling alley prevail over their evil employer. In the meantime, Kate solves the mystery of a deranged old lady, who (wisely, given the quality of the scriptwriters) has been hanging around the center refusing to speak to anyone. This success convinces Joe to offer our heroine a job at $500 per week as a trainee social worker. This is, apparently, a pay cut for the struggling waitress, but even though she needs every last dollar for her children, she decides to accept. Well, what else can we expect from a woman who, according to the promotional literature for the series, "remains steadfast in her belief that, no matter what, the universe will provide"?

With Kate installed as a social worker, the program can follow a comfortably predictable path. Brasher home life will be heart-warming, but ostentatiously impoverished (Week 2's crisis involved the affordability of dessert topping). Beyond Kate's immediate family, men will continue to be shifty, evasive, and exploitative. Just so that viewers did not forget the crimes of this ghastly gender, the second episode featured a divorcing husband attempting to swindle his soon to be ex-wife. She, of course, was about to be made homeless, while he was attempting to hide $95,000 in salary. The main exceptions to this rule of male nastiness are likely to be either men like Joe Almeida, who are left-wing and at least vaguely "ethnic" or, as an alternative, those guys fortunate enough to have some redeeming disability. We were allowed, after a while, to come to like the tetchy dad of hyperactive Simon, but only after we discovered that the lucky fellow was blind.

Hyperactive Simon? Oh, he was an artistically gifted ten-year-old, who ran around the center at great speed and painted murals. Simon was also the subject of a sub-plot about Ritalin-doping by our schools system. To be fair, that was a refreshing subject for this show to take on, but its impact was somewhat diluted by the humiliation of Elvis. Elvis is a smart kid, and finds his English teacher hopelessly inadequate. We are told that he should not complain. In a way that bears some resemblance to the treatment of Simon, Elvis is coerced into shutting up. He comes to accept that the teacher has more important work to do than worry about the needs of her more clever pupils. An embarrassing public apology ensues, and the show has reinforced its anti-elitist credentials.

Hyperactive Simon was more fortunate. Gloria, the rich lady performing community service at Brothers Keepers, was able to pull strings with the lieutenant governor and get him placed in a school for the gifted. However, this is not a show that likes the wealthy. Gloria is a caricature plutocrat straight out of the pages of Trotsky, a domineering, insensitive woman with no practical skills. Her one good deed is quickly canceled out by her sneering refusal to have anything to do with the center once her sentence has concluded. As she leaves, an angry Joe Almeida is quoting Malcolm X.

Well, we should not be surprised. Ms. Masterson is one of these actresses who like to see themselves as "activists." She has been quoted as saying that there is a political agenda to the series.

Indeed there is, but does it have to be quite so dull?