Daddy's Disturbed Little Girl

By Richard Stengel

With a movie about incest, TV again explores the forbidden

Television taboos are made to be broken. Violating them is a venerated tradition, a familiar ritual preceded by elaborate puffery: solemn sermons or titillating teasers aimed at increasing curiosity and ratings. Though often a mindless come-on rather than a thoughtful coming out, the "breakthrough" can sometimes mirror changing cultural mores and set the stage for bolder TV sequels.

In the fall of 1972, ABC's That Certain Summer sensitively, if self-consciously, examined a homosexual relationship between a devoted father and a younger man. Yet it was not until the sitcom Love, Sidney, nine years later, that an apparent homosexual was depicted with some degree of calm as the title character in a series. In 1974, A Case of Rape with Elizabeth Montgomery was the first major TV drama to take a composed but telling look at that crime from the woman's point of view. The identical theme was sensationally exploited the same year with Born Innocent, which cast Teen-Ager Linda Blair as the victim of a sexual assault committed with a broom handle. Although prime-time dramatizations of proscribed subjects get most of the attention, taboos are often first broached on soap operas. In October, for example, the creators of All My Children arranged the maiden, if not maidenly, appearance of a continuing lesbian character.

Now a new ABC movie is billing itself as the first serious drama to explore another forbidden television topic: father-daughter incest. (Brother-sister love was peeped at earlier this year by NBC'S Princess Daisy.) The two-hour show Something About Amelia, scheduled for Jan. 9, is receiving the prudent treatment that is usually accorded "controversial" subjects. Its promotional material comes replete with warnings for parents and a scholarly bibliography. Nevertheless, despite the effluence of manufactured sanctimony, Amelia is a taut and honest, if somewhat monochromatic, treatment of a painful subject.

Steven Bennett (Ted Danson of Cheers) drives the kind of station wagon that has ersatz wood along the sides. He is a likable TV dad who lugs a briefcase to an unspecified job and calls his daughter "Princess." With a model wife (Glenn Close) and two exemplary daughters-in-residence, everything ought to be as comfy cozy as Father Knows Best. But Bennett conceals a malign secret: he is sexually abusing his 13-year-old daughter Amelia (played with poker-faced intensity by Roxana Zal).

Amelia confutes the stereotypes of incest and most TV movies: there is no drunken, leering father and no happy ending. If anything, the characters err slightly on the side of restraint. The main flaw in this relentlessly flat and realistic approach lies in the written character of the social workers and psychologists who deal with the problem. They are all unrelievedly sympathetic. But this is a minor quibble. Amelia provides an exception to the network's tired formula for taboo breaking by avoiding prurience and comforting cliches.

--By Richard Stengel