"The Road Home" is too telling a title for CBS' new intergenerational family
drama. This new series is all dressed up with nowhere to go. Ingratiating
acting, and atmosphere thicker than the kudzu of its Tidewater North Carolina
locale, can't hide the fact that nothing much is doin' in tonight's pilot
episode (at 9, Ch. 7).
This might not matter for CBS, which scheduled its new series as the
follow-up hour to "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman," Jane Seymour's critically
reviled Western. Just as "Dr. Quinn" reaches into the past for escapism from a
troubled world (with whopping ratings to show for it), "The Road Home" heads
South, in the present. That -- plus the lead-in from "Dr. Quinn" -- is why
executive producers Bruce Paltrow and John Tinker, of "St. Elsewhere" fame, may
luck into a hit.
Karen Allen and Terence Knox (formerly Dr. Peter White on "St. Elsewhere")
are Alison and Jack Matson, who each summer show up at the home of Alison's
folks for some quality time along with their four children. For the grown-ups,
the charms of the coastal Carolina homestead of Walter and Charlotte Babineaux
are irresistible. So is familial intrigue.
"People here have music in their soul," Alison coos to Jack on the porch.
"You can hear it in the way they call their children, the way they walk down
the street. It's a melody, a rhythm. . . . I think my father's having an
affair!"
He isn't, of course: Cads are in short supply in this neck of Carolina.
Unfortunately, economic hardship isn't, and the Babineaux's shrimp-fishing biz
is going to the bad. Before the debut episode is over, Walter Babineaux (Ed
Flanders, formerly Dr. Westphall in "St. You-Guessed-It") lures his son-in-law
into staying on to help.
"Yep, it's gonna be a long two weeks," various Matsons say, prophetically.
It's just as well. Charlotte Babineaux (in a sterling performance from
character actress Frances Sternhagen) may have a faithful husband, but she
apparently also has imminent Alzheimer's. Meanwhile, the Matson children
promise to be a handful. As teen-age D'arcy scopes out the local teen hunk
doing lawn chores, Jack Matson says, "I don't like the way he holds his weed
whacker."
Copyright © 1993 Globe Newspaper Company