"Scattered Dreams: The Kathryn Messenger Story" (Sunday, 8 p.m., Ch. 5): has lofty aspirations that it almost entirely fails to meet.
This was supposed to be a powerful story of a family's struggle to overcome terrible wrongs and triumph in the end.What it turned out to be is a largely laughable travesty that's so poorly written, directed and edited it's just downright awful.
Tyne Daly, a great actress who should have known better, stars as Kathryn in this fact-based story. She and her husband, played so stoically by Gerald McRaney that he's almost catatonic, are migrant workers who've rented a farm in a Florida town apparently inhabited solely by evil "crackers."
The chief evil "cracker" is the town sheriff, a stereotype of epic proportions. The bad guys get the husband and wife thrown in a prison run by evil "cracker" guards on non-existent charges, and the kids locked up in a state home for orphans which - surprise! - is run by another evil "cracker."
The audience is treated nearly as badly as the Messengers. If spending five minutes watching Daly scrub a bathroom is your idea of entertainment, by all means tune in. When she finally tries to kill herself, you're almost hoping she succeeds.
As if the script weren't already bad enough, atrocious editing - strange "flash-forwards" and juxtapositions - manages to muddle up what is a horrendously simplistic story.
This is yet another made-for-TV movie about victims, but the real victim here is anybody who watches this mess.
* * *
"The Only Way Out" (Sunday, 8 p.m., Ch. 4) starts off with some promise. John Ritter stars as a well-adjusted guy who's in the midst of a very civilized divorce from his wife (Stephanie Faracy) and beginning a new life with his live-in girlfriend (Julianne Phillips). But when the wife's new boyfriend (Henry Winkler) turns out to be a psycho, things become complicated quite quickly.
Ritter's attempts to help his estranged wife alienate his girlfriend, and when he takes custody of his three kids until the wife gets rid of the crazy boyfriend, the boyfriend turns on him.
Ritter is OK as the good guy, but Winkler's shortcomings as an actor have never been more apparent. And both are trapped in what becomes an increasingly unbelievable script, all building toward a predictable, ludicrous and ultimately unsatisfying conclusion.
Hey, even ABC knows this is a lousy movie - why do you suppose a project with two big-name TV stars like Ritter and Winkler is airing on the Sunday before Christmas instead of during sweeps?