TV/MOVIES
Fox's latest teen TV effort rekindles frosh memories
Class of’96
Jason Gedrick, Lisa Dean Ryan and
Gale Hansen
Tuesday, 8:00 p.m.
FOX (WLFL Channel 22)
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Last Tuesday night, FOX as
sumed the role of tour guide
and introduced the nation to
Havenhurst University. It was
a nice tour —one that television view
ers had long deserved.
Unlike A Different World or The
Facts of Life, the Class of ’96 bears a
feeling of collegiate realism. In both
tone and mood, ’96 is the small screen
equivalent of Dead Poets Society.
And although TV Guide recently
profiled the series’ cast, it excluded a
very important star the Havenhurst
campus. Shot on location with a back
drop uncannily similar to Duke Uni
versity, Class of ’96 absorbs the viewer
in an ambiance laden with huge Gothic
buildings and a plethora of century-old
Documentary filmmaking is Alive and kicking
Lorenzo's Oil
Nick Nolte, Suasn Sarandon
Varsity
•••• 1/2
Alive
Ethan Hawke
Willowdaile
I suppose it’s a bit presumprious to
review both of these films at once,
and I’m sure there’s a joke in there
somewhere, but they both act as
good stereo instructions on what to and
what not to do when you are busy film
ing a true story. Both of them force you
to redefine what it is you consider being
“alive,” but only one of them can bring
you right to the edge of your own toler
ance, awestruck with anguish, arching
with a painful beauty, making you be
lieve in miracles and heroes. I’ll start
with the one that doesn’t.
“Alive," for those of you who didn’t
go through that “natural disaster" craze
in the late ’7os, is the story of a Brazilian
rugby team whose plane crashes in the
Andes mountains. After weeks of starv
ing and solitude, they hear on their
transistor radio that the search for them
is called off —and decide to take
things into their own hands. Resorting
to cannabilism, (“People will under-
ratings
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ROB BRITTAIN
oak trees.
But while Havenhurst University
has the look and feel of Duke, its faces
and personalities are much more remi
niscent of those at Carolina. J ust take a
glance at the Class of' 96’s seven-mem
ber cast of characters thank good
ness, there are no Dookies to be found.
First, meet the young ladies. Aside
from the heinously rich Jessica Cohen,
we are also introduced to the sex-crazed,
good-time girl Robin Farr and her
overly-dramatic sidekick, Patty
Horvath.
Of the three women, the ’96 pilot
played favorites by focusing on Jessica.
Unlike her rich-bitch predecessors, J es
sica seems much more human than ei
ther Whitley Gilbert or Blair Warner
she is much less willing to flaunt,
much more willing to love.
Trailing the beautiful Havenhurst
women is a diverse, I-wanna-be-a-stud
foursome. There is “Stoke" Dexter, the
Alex Keaton clone, Whitney Reed, the
movies
IAN WILLIAMS
stand,” says one of the stranded) the
survivors try to build up their strength
so that they can damn well rescue them
selves with a voyage through the moun
tains.
It’s such a good story, full of heroism
and strange threads of fate, that even a
shoddy version for the screen would be
watchable. “Alive” is even better than
that, with good performances, effects
and scenery, (the crash itself is amaz
ing) but I can’t help but feel that what
we have here is a little, we 11... disin
fected.
A dog-eared copy of “Alive” was
passed around by my 7th grade class
mates, and although I never read the
whole thing, we all read the outlined
paragraphs with the grossest stuff in it.
That macabre mixture of disgust and
arousal that stirred in our junior high
souls as we perused the gruesome details
was missing in the movie, which would
be fine were it not replaced by this
incessant motif of “survivor nobility."
Instead of telling any individual sto
ries, the makers of “Alive” want us to
see the survivors as metaphors for that
fightin’ spirit, buttressing each heroic
deed with swells from the soundtrack
and gradually reducing potential char
acters to the same personalities
that haunt those World War II trench
movies. In doing so, it gets short on
particulars: how did they spend their
days? What was left in the plane? And
yes, what did it taste like? What’s left is
somewhat of a Disney adventure movie
with a crash diet; those ragged pages in
my 7th grade lunch line were much
more powerful.
By amazing contrast, “Lorenzo’s Oil”
is high on particulars and low on the
matic bombast. It’s the story of Lorenzo,
a young boy who acquires a genetic
disease that gradually strips him of all
parental-dictated preppie, Antonio
Hopkins, the jock-tumed-scholar, and
David Morrissey, the gutsy scholarship
student who’s good at everything, bad
at nothing.
Speaking of testosterone, Morrissey
seems to have been given a double dose.
The result? He is the most complex,
three-dimensional character of the
bunch.
Accordingly, at the end of the pilot
episode, series creator John Romano
awards Morrissey the added responsi
bility of playing series narrator.
And in a slow, thoughtful soliloquy
Morrissey explains: “Your true birth
place isn’t the place where you are bom,
but the place where you find out who
you really are. This is the September of
my nineteenth year. And I’ve come to
Havenhurst... I’ve come to the place of
my birth."
Aside from setting the tone for this
coming-of-age series, Morrissey’s voice
over also is representative of the Class
of ’96’s best writing.
And unlike previous college series,
’96 offers the hope that a college series
might explore story lines other than
those revolving around the sex lives of
its characters.
his body functions. Nick Nolte, as his
Italian father, and Susan Sarandon, the
adamantine mother, devote the better
part of their years to Lorenzo and stop
ping and reversing the horrible disease.
There aren’t enough boys with the af
fliction to make it a profitable pursuit
for pharmaceutical companies, so the
two parents are left to their own re
search to come up with something that
will work.
In the meantime, Lorenzo suffers
horribly, in ways so degrading and un
imaginable that it is a little hard to
watch. As he worsens, his mother stiff
ens her resolve and alienates anyone
who doesn’t meet her Herculean ex
pectations.
His father becomes maniacal, delv
ing deeply into biochemistry and
neurophysics so that he can understand
the fatty acids that are taking his son
away. Both journeys are fascinating to
see, with both actors abandoning them
selves to the roles. Nick Nolte’s Italian
accent, though a little unnerving at
first, works its way into the movie’s
vernacular —and Susan Sarandon is
terrific. In a season bereft of good
women’s roles, she is a fantastic ex
ample of a strength and steadfastness
that is distinctly female. Her stare is
positively fierce.
Like any good documentary maker,
director George Miller takes us through
every step of the treatment, all of the
false leads and fruitful breakthroughs,
and by assuming that the audience has
a dose of intelligence, we long for a cure
as much as Lorenzo's parents. In fact, by
watching them at work, we understand
more about Sarandon and Nolte than
any other plot contrivance, and why?
Because we, too, are left to our own
devices on this one, and our journey is
exhaustingly satisfied because we have
to make ourownconclusions. “Lorenzo's
Oil,” is not just a great story, it’s the best
movie I’ve seen in a year.
In ‘.‘Alive,” a random seat assign
ment may determine life and death,
and in “Lorenzo’s Oil,” an old, tiny
Do your friends look like this?
Although the series is far from being
stellar, it represents a very important
step in the right direction. At long last,
television may bid a fond farewell to the
days when its college students worried
more about their zits than their exams.
medical article on rats may save a hun
dred boys from an unconscionable
deteriation. The idea of fate being so
simple and powerful is at the same time
comforting and horrifying. And any
true story can bring us right there, as
long as the storyteller can trust us with
our own survival.
nielsen ratings
1. 60 Minutes, CBS
22.5 rating, 20.9 million homes
2. Inaugural Gala, CBS
22.0,20.5 million homes
3. Murphy Brown, CBS
19.4.18.1 million homes
4. Home Improvement, ABC
18.7.17.4 million homes
5. Roseanne,AßC
17.9,16.7 million homes
6. Murder, She Wrote,CßS
17.4,162 million homes
7. CheeSjNßC
17.3.16.1 million homes
8. Fuß House, ABC
16.6.15.5 million homes
9. Love and War,CBS
16.3,152 million homes
10. HorthemExposure,CßS
162.15.1 million homes
Listings indude the week’s ranking, with full season
to-date ranking in parentheses, rating tor the week, aid
total homes. An T in parentheses denotes onetime
only presentation. A raSng measures the percentage of
the nation's 90.4 million TV homes.
((*•**'*
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Page 9
DTH • Omnibus •
Thursday • January 28, 1993
With the Class of ’96, the well
rounded college student migrates from
reality to fiction. And from the looks of
the ’96 pilot episode, combining reality
with the collegiate experience finally
has become en vogue.
Crook’s
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Chapel Hill, loith Carolina \