This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Love Triangle Tangle
Plot Overview
As authoress Patricia Santana describes a cast off selection, ‘“The reason I want this dress,” I said to my sisters as I ran my hands over the coarse, rotting velvet, “is to remind me of the horrible marriage my parents had, so I don't have one like theirs”’ (199). L.A. barrio homeboy Jackson Gray stood up to his abusive father to protect his mother who blew her brains out anyway. He determined in himself to be a better man and husband than he.
Jackson (Marc Gomes) was a
“workaholic” in college, and for recreation
he played golf limiting his opportunity for socializing. After
graduation he started his own business and had sexual relations
(“He used to do her”) with his assistant Carrie
“Goldilocks” McNichols (Kim Fields). He admits
only that “It happened once five years ago when she first
started.” Writer Paul H. Landis
writes In Defense of Dating:
It is quite logical to believe that some kind of dating is necessary to the development of the judgment and pair interaction that is at the root of real objectivity in mate selection. Those who have dated more than one person have a chance to compare and to learn some of the usual behavior patterns of members of the opposite sex. They learn to distinguish between those whose personalities seem to promise a durable compatibility and those whose personalities obviously do not. Dating is an exploratory experience through which young people learn. In most circles today, therefore, it is considered desirable that young people “circulate” rather than “go steady” from the beginning, that some variety of dating experience is favorable to ultimate mate choice. The girl who is considered desirable as a date by a number of fellows is presumed to be the one most likely to be sought after in marriage. (223)
That was not Jackson's approach to
finding his barfly wife Shari Gray (Cat Jagar). He “didn't
have time to go out and date. She said the right words and we got
married in Vegas.” She turned out not to be supportive but
rather provocative. If he divorces her, she'll go after his
business. They argue. She is discovered dead the next morning when
Jackson awakes in a stupor on the sofa. He'd gone to the Hewitt
Lounge and can't remember driving home. He admits, “I had a
couple drinks,” but we see him there with an open bottle of
whiskey and a glass. Just as he said he'd had one instance of sex
with “Goldilocks,” though she treats it more
like an open arrangement.
Female L.A. Detective
Brandy Taylor (Cynda Williams) being influenced from having had an
abusive father herself, thinks Jackson done it even though he
has a “weak” alibi from his doting assistant. Brandy
sets up a personal honey trap trying to get close to him. He is
inept at dating, but they play board games together that he always
loses having not had any prior practice. He admits to being attracted to
“strong women” who are these three women in spades.
Ideology
Plainclothes Det. Brandy in
an opening scene strong-arms a guy she catches slapping his
girlfriend around—who won't press charges. Her partner
castigates her, saying, “You were sorta out of control back
there.” Jackson for his part has never hit a woman, though
under provocation he would have liked to. When confronted at the
police station with his cuckolding “friend” David
Lindsey (Thyme Lewis,) the latest suspect, he jumps him and has to
be pulled off. He concedes, “I usually don't lose my self-control
like that.” Both Brandy and Jackson are pretty good
but not perfect at maintaining self-control.
Jackson falls short, though, in the
area of temperance of which self-control is but a part. He can
handle his liquor, but in an age of roofies it won't do to leave
one's drink unattended while hitting the rest room,
notwithstanding self-control at tippling. It's best to
limit drinking to one at a time and finish it first. Temperance is
what's really called for there.
The KJV of 1611 enjoined temperance in,
Acts 24:24-25, 1Cor. 9:25, Gal.
5:23, Titus 1:7-8, Titus 2:2, and 2Peter 1:5-6. When the KJV was (needlessly
in my opinion) updated by the ASV in 1900, temperance
was left in. Nevertheless, it has been reinterpreted
by many modern Bible translators as self-control so as
not to confuse the common man who since Prohibition in the 1920s
has come to regard temperance as applicable only to drink. My
Concise Thesaurus has “sober adj. temperate. A
person who is sober
is not drunk. A temperate
person exercises moderation and self-restraint and for that reason is
unlikely to drink to excess.” (170) Modern Protestant Bibles
such as the RSV (1952), and later NKJV, ESV & NIV now read
“self-control” where they used to read “temperance.”
For word selection illustration, I quote California Gov. Gavin Newsom who in a March, 2024
interview extolled President Biden, saying: “We have American
manufacturing coming back home, all because of Biden's wisdom,
because of his temperance, his capacity to lead in a bipartisan
manner—” Bipartisan leadership is by nature
temperate. The Jubilee 2000 Bible still uses
temperance. It's valid for more than drink.
According to Porter G. Perrin, Index to English:
The Meaning of Words 3b. Synonyms. A synonym is a word
of nearly the same meaning as another. … There are very
few pairs of interchangeable words.
(192) And
according to Fowler, “Synonyms, in the narrowest
sense, are separate words whose meaning, both denotation &
connotation, is so fully identical that one can always be
substituted for the other without change in the effect of the
sentence in which it is done. Whether any such perfect synonyms
exist is doubtful.” According to Professor George P. Marsh in
an 1859 postgraduate lecture on the English Bible of 1611:
“Words and ideas are so inseparably connected, they become in
a sense connatural, that we cannot change the one without
modifying the other. … A new translation of the Bible,
therefore, or an essential modification of the existing [KJV] version,
is substantially a new book, a new Bible, another revelation.”
(454)
Jackson is not moderate in thought when he was a workaholic at his studies. He was not moderate in feelings (“we were close”) when he was having sex with his assistant. He was immoderate in action when he spent large amounts of time at the office leaving little for his wife at home. He would do well to apply an ageless sports lesson, (1Cor. 9:24-25) “Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.”
Production Values
“” (TV Movie 2000) was directed by Timothy Wayne Folsome. Its screenplay was written by Stacey McClain, based on the novel, Hidden Blessings by Jacqueline Thomas. It stars Cynda Williams, Marc Gomes and Kim Fields who were well up to their non-demanding roles.
It rates for mature audiences. The music follows the moods. Dutch angles are employed to shoot the cockeyed scenes. Scene transitions are separated by blackouts to accommodate inserted commercials. Landmarks define L.A. Runtime is 1½ hours.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
This is a bare bones detective number without much in the way of action. Suspicions abound. A little bit of love spices it up. You'll get your money's worth, especially if you get it from the bargain bin.
Movie Ratings
Action Factor: Weak action scenes. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Well, at least you can't see the strings. Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall movie rating: Three stars out of five.
Works Cited
Unless otherwise noted scripture is taken from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software.
Biden, Joe. Quoted from Jack Birle's article, “Gavin Newsom calls Biden's age a ‘gift’ rather than a liability.” In The Washington Examiner. Web.
Fowler, H.W., A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. USA: Oxford UP. 1946. Print.
Landis, Paul H. Making the Most of Marriage. New York: Meredith Publishing, 1965. Print.
Marsh, George P.
“Disturbance of Formulas.”
Lectures on the English
Language. London: John Murray, 1863. Print.
——available to
read or download at www.bibles.n7nz.org.
Perrin, Porter G. Index to English. Chicago: Scott, Foresman & Co., 1939. Print.
The Right Word II. A Concise Thesaurus. Based on the New American Heritage Dictionary. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1983. Print.
Santana, Patricia. Ghosts of El Grullo . © 2008 by Patricia Santana. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org