“Homefront Steps Lively on Post-War Nostalgia Trip”
by Matt Roush, USA Today, Nov. 26, 1991
Three and a half out of four stars
Homefront really swings tonight, to a snappy ’40s big-band beat and the equally catchy hum of jim-dandy storytelling.
This ***1/2 crackerjack episode (ABC, 10 EST/PST) is pure entertainment, thrusting nearly every major character – and there’s a bunch of them – into a rousing dance contest, with a screen test in Hollywood as grand prize. It spotlights all the rivalries, jealousies, resentments, budding romances and even societal concerns that make life in the post-WWII hamlet of River Run, Ohio, so fun to visit each week.
If you’ve so far resisted the lure of nostalgia, the pull of cunningly crafted soap opera, here’s an occasion to get hooked, to get (borrowing from the great tune) “In the Mood.”
Husband-wife executive producers Bernard Lechowick and Lynn Marie Latham hope the prospect of jitterbug-foxtrot-rumba music will draw in the older viewers who, surprisingly, have been the most resistant to try Homefront. In the key young-female demographics, the show has performed well enough for ABC to give it a full-season order.
The producers recall long silences, sometimes laughter, when they phoned the actors to ask of their dancing prowess. When they broke the news to Kyle Chandler, who plays gangly, stammering Jeff Metcalf, his muttered “Oh my Lord” became part of the script.
Jeff’s dance lessons, and hapless rehearsals with starstruck girlfriend Ginger (spunky Tammy Lauren), are highlights of this seamless and breezy hour, and example of what Lechowick calls their formula of giving “a payoff and a promise in each episode.”
Even in their previous gig on Knots Landing, this team rarely managed to construct episodes as satisfying and self-contained as they’ve done here. “Each episode can stand alone,” says Latham, who notes that there’s no cliffhanger tonight. We learn who wins, and we’re left wondering what will happen when, two episodes later, they head to Hollywood.
Their reticence to discuss upcoming story lines isn’t just for secrecy, they insist, but because “we really haven’t figured it out yet,” Lechowick says. “We have things planned, but the stories are pretty much in daily flux until finally edited. We can’t ever tell the actors very much.”
He does hint that the Christmas episode, representing the first yuletide after the soldier’s and war brides’ arrival, will include painful battleground memories for Charlie (Harry O’Reilly), the regular-guy welder who brought back a ruthless British wife. The sadness, though, will be leavened by a blessed event.
Social upheaval, already apparent in a union-vs.-management factory subplot, will continue to be an undercurrent, as real estate becomes an issue in a time of housing shortages.
If Homefront lasts long enough, characters eventually will learn what the word “suburb” means. What better place to dramatize the birth of the baby-boom generation?