Category: Emmy Nominee/Winner

There’s a weird bit about this TV movie about the events preceding the Challenger explosion that really stood out for me. There’s no real intro at the beginning of the film and no epilogue to what happened after the shuttle took off. It’s as if they had no expectation that someone in the future who was unfamiliar with the event may run across the film. Granted, I was one of the millions of American school children terrorized by watching the event live as it happened on a school television, but there’s now multiple generations who have come since. The movie is passable though lengthy. There is a lot of talk about O-Rings from the scientists and decision makers, which gives the strong impression of criminal negligence on the part of some of those who gave the go-ahead. There’s also some nice background on the lives of the various astronauts. It has a great cast including Joe Morton, Richard Jenkins, and Karen Allen giving a somewhat excessively smiley performance as Christa McAuliffe.

I read the novel this miniseries is based on when it first came out, so had enough distance to not completely remember the original work but enough to note the subtle differences between them. In dual roles, Mark Ruffalo is a pair of identical twins living in 1990s Connecticut. When one twin, a sensitive soul who has suffered from mental illness for much of his life, publicly cuts his hand off as a protest to the Gulf War, his brother tries to get him the health care he most desperately needs. The second twin does this while also suffering through his own problems and also delving into family secrets through the courtesy of their Italian grandfather’s unpublished memoir. It’s a dark depressing that miniseries, but also a deep showcase for Ruffalo’s incredible talent. There was also some genius casting in multiple iterations of the twins at younger ages. These actors are further supported by a pretty great cast which includes Juliette Lewis, Melissa Leo, Archie Punjabi, and Rosie O’Donnell.

It’s not surprising that this TV movie feels a bit like an afterschool special since it’s based on a young adult novel. I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out the setting. All the characters have inconsistent southern accents and cotton is grown in the area, but there are references to the main family having moved north and written descriptions of the plot describe it as being set in the midwest. The plot itself centers on the coming-of-age for a young Black girl adjusting to her new surroundings and the pervasiveness of racism. I watched this to see Charlotte Rae and Alfre Woodard and they both performed fine for television.