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Marlo Thomas in Two Against Time

Houston Chronicle: April 22, 2002, 1:54PM —
Marlo Thomas always was a good crier, and Sunday on CBS, she cries up a tear-jerker.

Two Against Time is Thomas' first TV movie in eight years, and she's not That Girl anymore. She's Julie Portman, a divorced mother of two whose life is about to be shaken by a double hit from a tragically unfeeling fate.

Son Michael (Troy Hall) is in college, and he's everything any mother would want her son to be. Daughter Emma (Ellen Muth) is into the terrible teens, and at this point, whatever Mama wants, Emma wants the opposite. Emma is impossible.

It doesn't help, either, that Julie's having trouble making ends meet, and her ex (Peter Friedman) has just reneged on sending the money for Michael's tuition. Her son can't get his grades if it isn't paid, and Julie's the only one with guts enough to ask for it.

This tale is "inspired by" a real family's story, and so far, it's not an awfully different household than a lot of real families.

Those problems, Julie can handle. And down at her job at the restaurant, there's a handsome lobster fisherman (Joe Penny) who's trying his best to make her life a little happier. Julie's best pal (Connie Matthews) is on his side. She's counseling Julie to give love a chance.

But Julie is about to get knocked off her feet.

Daughter Emma has cancer. And Emma is making a bad thing worse. Her doctors and nurses are about to vote her "one of the toughest patients we've ever had." Emma's taking the anger over her illness out on her mother, or anyone else who tries to help her.

Now comes the knock-out blow: Julie has cancer, too.

How this unhappy mother and daughter come to terms with their disease and repair their relationship with each other is the next step.

Time to pull out the hanky, if you haven't already.

There are several things that detract from the drama. First, the setting. That picturesque, snow-covered fishing village (somewhere around Toronto, actually) gives it a storybook look that just doesn't fit. Second, the romance with the lobster fisherman is first overplayed, then underplayed, then disappears altogether.

In the end, though, the tears do flow.

It's been 31 years since Thomas, 63, sailed onto television to make a sitcom name for herself in That Girl. She played a perky actress determined to make it on her own in New York, in a time when most of that girl's girlfriends were still putting marriage at the top of their wish lists.

That Girl was just recently inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame, but that was by no means the first of Thomas' TV honors. She won four Emmys for specials she produced and starred in. One of them, Free to Be ... You and Me, also won a prestigious Peabody Award.

And for those too young for such TV trivia, Thomas is the wife of Phil Donahue, the silver-haired pioneer of TV talk, who'll soon be trying to rejuvenate his career on MSNBC. They met when she was a guest on his old show, and TV legend has it that veteran Donahue viewers knew right then that Phil had fallen.

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