Yammering from her prison cell-”I was never a woman scorned. . . . I didn`t do anything to be treated like this,” she railed to TV Guide-Betty Broderick is angry with the way she is being portrayed in a new CBS movie.
Having spent much of the time-since killing her ex-husband and his new wife in their bed-manipulating the media until she was considered some sort of feminist folk hero, Broderick would appear to have had no influence whatsoever in ”Her Final Fury: Betty Broderick-the Last Chapter” (8 p.m. Sunday on WBBM-Ch. 2).
It follows the story started in last season`s ”A Woman Scorned,” one of the highest rated TV movies of the year. That film, uncompromisingly detailed in its story of the marriage and vicious divorce of Dan and Betty Broderick, was nevertheless sympathetic enough to rekindle the debate about whether Betty was a heartless killer or a woman abused to the point of homicide.
No such controversy will ensue after Sunday night. Again played brilliantly by Meredith Baxter-all rage below the surface-Broderick comes off as a beast, a master of public relations and media manipulation. Not only did she hire a public relations firm to help her with her I-was-a-victim message, but she also gave interviews in which she all but cried about being dumped for a younger woman because she had failed to ”maintain her girlish figure.”
So effective was Broderick that she was able to win sympathy from many. Her performance at her first murder trial resulted in a hung jury. But as the movie portrays the second go-around, a tough prosecutor, Kerry Wells (Judith Ivey), was able to separate facts, and some of her own feminist leanings, from fiction.
She knew Betty`s evil and the film gives us plenty of examples, most of them from the jailhouse. It was there that Betty became so violent that it took five guards to subdue her; there that she shouted at one guard, after she refused to wear her identification band, ”I don`t need a wristband. I need a secretary”; and there, before a court appearance, that she demanded to be taken to the infirmary, so she could touch up the dark roots on her dyed blond hair.
The portrait that emerges is of Broderick as an amoral narcissist, a killer who deserves little sympathy and no pity.
– You will probably never see ”The `90s” again. PBS has not renewed the show for another season. But there is the last, engaging and incisive episode, which takes us behind the scenes of the presidential debates.
”It`s Debate-Able” (10 p.m. Friday on WTTW-Ch. 11) is a stunning example of what ”The `90s” could do: With a series of pieces from independent videomakers, it strips away the superficial and gets at real truths and images. It proves more insightful than all the staged and polished sound bites that dominate politics.
Hillary Clinton sits in the back of a limousine and rips the press; we witness a very weird national ”photo-op”; hear ”spin doctors” indulge in a post-debate frenzy; David Halberstam analyzes Perot; and . . . there is so much to savor and think about, including this great line, from a citizen: ”If God intended us to vote, he would have given us candidates.”
– A pleasant antidote to the mess of political rhetoric by which we are surrounded can be found in ”Mastergate” (9 p.m. Sunday on Showtime). This television version of Larry Gelbart`s 1989 hit Broadway play is a rapid-fire satire that takes the measure of every political scandal in history.
Working from a premise that involves the government`s purchase of a Hollywood movie studio as a cover to launder money to buy armaments,
”Mastergate” gives us a congressional hearing room in which questions abound, such as ”What does the president know and does he know he knows it?” The cast, playing it as straight as one could desire, is peopled with pros, from Richard Kiley as a senator, to James Coburn as a patriotic general, Dennis Weaver as a frenetic vice president and, finally, Burgess Meredith as a CIA director who speaks (indeed, he appears) from the grave.
Gelbart`s ear for the pompous is unerring. He lifts the mangled cliche to high art.
Short takes: How hip is Perry Mason getting? Even though he`s told affectionately by a former lover, ”You never change, Perry Mason-you only weather,” his latest caper, ”The Case of the Heartbroken Bride” (7 p.m. Friday on NBC-Ch. 5), starts with a music video featuring singer Kaitlyn Parrish (Heather McAdam). It`s her wedding to which Perry and Della have been invited, only to observe the young bride arrested for the murder of her drunken uncle. Who-really-dunit? Could be the groom`s sister (Linda Blair), a record pirate (Stephen Stills), the father of the bride (Ronnie Cox) or. . . ? ”The Execution Protocol” (7 p.m. Sunday on the Discovery Channel) is set in the Potosi Correctional Center near St. Louis. There we meet three condemned men and those charged with carrying out the death penalty. In frank and often moving conversation, the 90-minute documentary gives us a closeup of capital punishment in America. ”If I`ve got to go, I would prefer it to be by the most gruesome method going . . . to wake the public up to the fact that it`s murder,” says one of the condemned men. The film is full of such forthright impressions and observations as it takes as detailed-and chilling-a look at the issue and reality of capital punishment as I`ve ever seen.
Political satire has been one of the most durable elements of ”Saturday Night Live,” from Chevy Chase and his pratfalling takes on Gerald Ford to this year`s on-target impressions of Perot, Clinton and Bush. ”SNL`s Presidential Bash” (8 p.m. Sunday on NBC-Ch. 5) is a satisfying best-of bash, with such devilishly on-target jabs as John Belushi`s Kissinger, Dan Aykroyd`s Nixon and Carter, and Phil Hartman`s Ted Kennedy.
