Santa Cruz Sentinel from Santa Cruz, California • Page 53

5potltghr Santa Cruz Sentinel Friday; Feb. 72, 199T 5 69 i Mm A Ml JM Get out your hankies: ABC kills off its best and brightest By TOM LONG Sentinel staff writer And so we left the dancing midget doing the disco duck atop a bed last week as Harry S. Truman wept over the death of his lover and the evil Bob crawled about in the background, challenging Agent Cooper. Visions such as these do not make for good fad material. They made for great television, though, and the series will be seriously missed.

POPULARITY killed "Twin Peaks." Popularity of the instant culture kind, not, of the enduring variety. The news last week that last Saturday's "Peaks" episode would be the last for a while, and that there would likely only be six more be 'thirtysomething's' Mel Harris and Ken Olin put on their happy faces, no matter what. fore the show's official demise, came as no big surprise. The show had been languishing at the very bottom of the ratings since "Peaks" was skewered by a num resent the show's time slot. OK, maybe you didn't have a chance of getting out on a Saturday night anyway because there seems to be a permanent market shortage of babysitters.

But at least last year you could rent a video and control your viewing through the wonder of the "pause" button (such has become the thrill of Saturday nights). This year you had to wait around for "Twin Peaks." Still, "Peaks" probably wouldn't have fared a whole lot better in another time slot. By the beginning of this year the show was battling an intense backlash from people sick of hearing Laura Palmer's name. For the hordes who had jumped onto the show's bandwagon by last year's end there was massive disappointment when "Peaks" producers rightly refused to tie up the Palmer murder mystery in a neat little package a la "Dallas" and other traditional prime time soaps. Despite its good intentions and lofty attitude, "Twin Peaks" became a fad last year and the show's complex nature made sure it was a fad born to quickly fade.

Fads need quick, easy resolutions and simple characters and ideas; "Twin Peaks" actually got better and more complicated this year. ber of things, the most obvious of which was its move to the 10 p.m. Saturday night slot this season. ABC tried a brave new experiment would baby boomers with kids buck all trends and elect to stay home on Saturday nights to watch some intelligent TV? So two Tuesdays back we sent Nancy into surgery. And we wept and wept as she went under the knife.

Friends wept, kids wept, husband Timothy Busfield (probably the show's best actor) wept uncontrollably in rest room stalls and in chapels. Then the good news Nancy doesn't have cancer anymore! She's cured! Yuppie hallelujah! Unfortunately, as Gary (Peter Horton), one of the show's other main characters is driving across town to celebrate and share in the baked brie, he gets crushed to death in a seven-car pile-up. More weeping. Way more weeping. This past Tuesday we all sat around in Michael and Hope's house and had visions of Gary when he wasn't dead.

He was a really neat guy we all realized. Weep, weep, weep. Now he's gone forever. Weep, weep, weep. Pretty soon we're all going Another fine ABC show was put on hold this week, namely "thirty-something." "thirtysomething," which I constantly want to kick in the pants for its stupid lower-case title affectation, remains, despite itself, one of the best shows on TV.

And one of the hardest to watch. I used to resent the spoiled yuppie characters of this show for having too much money and too few real worries. I no longer resent them, they just depress me. For those who don't follow the show, its most attractive character, Nancy (Patricia Wettig) has been walking through the past year's worth of shows looking like a death's head grotesque while battling ovarian cancer. Being as how February is sweeps month and the race for high ratings is hot and heavy, the show's producers decided this would be a nice time to resolve Nancy's problem.

to be gone forever. Big, big weep, weep, weep. There is nothing wrong with "thirtysomething" and there is a whole lot right about "thirtysomething," including fine acting, tight scripts and a willingness to tackle tough issues. But one has to actually steel one's self to watch the show a good deal of the time and I have to admit, I'm not tough enough to watch this series week after week. Still, I would hate to see the series either cancelled or compromised.

There have to be some hard and challenging shows on television or it will become the swill soup of programming it is often accused of being. If it wants to retain its current status as the best major network, ABC needs to hang tough with "Peaks" or "thirtysomething," preferably both. But don't hold your breath. Lining up "China Beach" at 9 p.m. and "Peaks" at 10 p.m., ABC bet it could change the viewing patterns of Americans and many including this none-too-pre scient reviewer cheered.

Yeah, well, nice try. 'China Beach" has already been officially axed and "Peaks" has been sent into the netherworld for the time being. Even hardened Peakies began to a bit with what should be the "easy" parts of the equation. There are gaps in the film's plot apparently it helps to have read the book and while Demme infus.es little scenes with almost unbearable terror, he lets the movie's bijj climax get away from him. These turn out to be minor flaws, though knocking the movie down a couple of notches from great to merely good.

It's still a wild ride, though, for those who have the stomach for it. with this sort of reversal of expectation. Demme, who has always been fond of twisting conventional definitions, is right at home creating the skewed world in which Lechter is the only one who knows what's going on and even winds up in the role of "guide" to anxious young Clarisse. While Foster's and Hopkins' performances are terrific and the story is striking enough to make this film unique, Demme stumbles just 'Lambs' horror show makes heart bleat faster marriages of intriguing intellect and barf bag details. While the situation is pretty thoroughly repulsive, not to mention often degrading, not to mention quite scary, Demme is never gratuitous with the creepy stuff.

Instead, the creator of "Something Wild" establishes a similarly unpredictable context here, mixing suspense and thrills and even black humor in provocative fashion. Foster, coming off her Oscar-winning role in "The Accused," turns in an even better performance here. A West Virginia drawl shades her portrayal of the ambitious criminology student whose own intelligence and courage is never more than one step ahead of her doubts about herself. She winds up being the first really new hero for the '90s but never loses the very human dimensions of Clarisse. And Hopkins is merely magnificent in the fascinating and frightening role of the Saddam Hussein of the criminally insane set a man whose disregard for civilized behavior is matched by his mind-boggling ability to play by his own deranged set of rules.

In one scene, when Lechter has to be moved, an army of police transport him in straight jacket and restraints, with an absolutely medieval-looking leather mask, complete with bars over the teeth. Somehow the scene doesn't inspire confidence. The more power that is brought against him, the more absolutely frightening Lechter becomes. His escape is inevitable; in the process he reduces a whole army of SWAT and other police officers to impotent ineptitude. "Silence of the Lambs" abounds Free, Confidential, Professional Counselingfor Alcohol ofDrugwoblems If someone you know has a problem with alcohol, cocaine, marijuana or other chemical dependencies, call us right now.

Well give you free, confidential, professional counseling right on the phone. And we'll help you discover recovery, for the experience of a lifetime. gentleman when he's not biting someone's tongue out he's not exactly the sort of person you'd like to spend time with, even behind a thick plexiglass wall, in the deepest basement of the most maximum security facility for the criminally insane. But spending time with him is just what FBI recruit Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) gets to do in the Del Mar's new thriller "The Silence of the Lambs." It's kind of the hair of the dog approach to high tech criminal investigations. The FBI is pursuing a new serial killer dubbed "Buffalo Bill" for his tendency to skin his female victims and Clarice's boss (Scott Glenn) thinks the deranged mind of Hannibal the Cannibal might provide some help in getting into the mind of the crazy guy still running around on the loose.

Filmgoers had their first meeting with Dr. Lechter in "Manhunter," adapted from an earlier novel by Thomas Harris. This time, the always interesting director Jonathan Demme takes on the task of getting Harris' unique vision to the screen and comes up with frame after frame of great depravity. The film is one of those screen By RICK CHATENEVER Spotlight editor WHAT'S the most hideous thing about Dr. Hannibal Lechter? Is it the way he kills people, serially, in fairly grotesque ways? Nah lots of people do that.

Or is it the way he eats their body parts sometimes with an elegant sauce out of Bon Apetite magazine, sometimes raw? You've got to admit, that's a pretty unique way to violate the sacrosanct relationship between patient and doctor. He is, or was, a psychiatrist, after all. That's how he got his nickname Hannibal, the Cannibal. But, as portrayed brilliantly, creepily by Anthony Hopkins, the most hideous thing about Hannibal the Cannibal is the sense you have when you look into his eyes. The realization that he is so much smarter than most of us mortals is absolutely terrifying especially when coupled with his dietary habits and his fairly fastidious concern with what he calls "good manners." Even though Lechter prides himself on self-defined civilized behavior and endeavors to be the perfect Community Hospital Recovery Center The Qir.t tdstwood Youth Program 576 Hartndl Sunt Monterey, CA 95940 '(800) 528080 or (408)373-0924.