“Homefront Ends Season in Glory”
by Matt Roush, USA Today, Apr. 26, 1993
Three and a half stars out of four
Homefront ends its sophomore season – all too soon, and arbitrarily shuffled to a new night and time – with a jim-dandy, two-hour finale titled “All Good Things.” As in “...must come to an end?”
Say it ain’t so. But, in this tough-luck season for TV’s tastiest entrees, it might as well be.
If so, the ardent fans are advised to just pull up their socks and (to quote the theme song) accentuate the positive. There’s so much to relish in this satisfying conclusion. What I’ve always regarded as a jaunty escape into the past has taken on deeper, richer hues of late. Yet it still clicks as confident, sparkling entertainment.
Of the many meaty (and easy to follow) subplots moving toward resolution, none is more surprising and affecting than the conflict facing Jewish concentration-camp survivor Gina (Giuliana Santini) and her gentle gentile fiancé Charlie (Harry O’Reilly).
Her faith intensified by surviving adversity, Gina rejects her suitor as an unacceptable husband, solely because he’s a Christian. His earnest efforts to meet her more than halfway open Homefront to discussions of religion that are rare in a medium that too often dismisses devoutness as delusion.
As subtext goes, the Homefront viewer might empathize with Charlie’s lament: “how am I ever going to get to be a convert if nobody gives me a chance?” ABC didn’t make it easy for viewers to get hooked this season, burying it, then returning it to high-profile Tuesdays perhaps too late.
Still, it’s never too soon to discover any series’ not-so-guilty pleasures, and these two hours have that to spare:
The charming on-and-off romance of Jeff and Ginger (Kyle Chandler and Tammy Lauren), victims of bad timing and foolish pride, gets another big chance. So do their separate careers, as Cleveland Indians ballplayer and comically inept early TV rookie. (A re-enactment of a primitive baseball broadcast is a show highlight.)
The strained relationship of the vividly portrayed upper-class Sloans (Mimi Kennedy and Ken Jenkins) has a profound impact on their long-suffering domestics, the Davises (Hattie Winston and Dick Anthony Williams). The Davises’ yearning for dignity leads to a delightful role-reversal fantasy sequence.
At the Metcalf home, where the polio epidemic and the red scare have taken financial tolls, radical change is afoot for the Kahns (Wendy Phillips and John Slattery).
All of these characters are endearing, durable, worthy of years’ more exploration. And their stories play out against a historical canvas with uncanny resonance. These two hours include now-timely references to Holocaust remembrance and to equal-rights struggles.
The show bows out with the notion that “the world truly is changing” and “Lord only knows what will happen next.” Because of ABC’s negligence and a Nielsen system that favors an unsolved-mystery, eye-witness-video brand of storytelling, we may never know.
But we can hope.