Reviews

The pilot managed to introduce a large cast of complex characters while maintaining individuality and clarity--and the characters and their problems were interesting to boot! Calista Flockhart gets to use her very real acting ability portraying a character who has very little in common with Ally McBeal. Tom Skerritt and Sally Field are terrific as the parents, and each of the brothers and sisters has his or her own problems to deal with, and yet the story doesn't have the feel of a tear-jerking melodrama. The ending of this episode was a shocker, and it will be interesting to see if the writers can maintain the tension in future episodes.

I scanned the comments and saw some references to Shakespeare and Greek tragedy, and I believe there was a glance at Dostoevsky, but it seems odd to me that no one noticed the obvious look-back to Theodore Dreiser's "An American Tragedy" or the play based on it, or the movie adaptation entitled "A Place in the Sun". But the plot, with minor variations, is basically right out of that source, commingled with a bit of Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" (telegraphed in the film by Chris's reading). Allen has often been heavily allusive in his scripts, to Ingmar Bergman and others, but I can't recall any other of his movies where virtually the entire plot seemed borrowed and from a fairly obvious source. P.S. Apologies to Roland Zwick. Upon perusing the comments more thoroughly I see that he had called this movie Woddy Allen's version of Dreiser's AN American TRAGEDY some time ago. Sorry about that.