Missing ''The Guardian''

From:Palm Beach Post
By Greg Stepanich

Cleaning up during a redesign of our house, Sharon found an old TV guide from August stuffed into a magazine cozy near one of the big wingback chairs. One of the letters to the editor complained about the cancellation of CBS' The Guardian, and asked whether the lead actor in that series, Simon Baker, had any other projects in the pipeline.
The letter reminded me of my eternal and undying bitterness toward Les Moonves and the rest of the CBS big shots who canceled this show, replacing it with Clubhouse, a show whose trailers were so bad it wasn't even worth tuning in to see whether it lived down to its promise.
No, there had to be millions of us who actually took time on Tuesday nights to watch The Guardian, and found in it what Sharon and I found: A drama about real, conflicted people, in which things rarely worked out, and the overall tone was that of life as it actually is, full of ambivalence and drift, and nonetheless enlivened with moments of passion and happiness that inspire us to continue.

For those who never saw it, The Guardian was about a young Pittsburgh lawyer named Nick Fallin (played by Baker, an Australian) who got busted on cocaine charges and was sentenced to thousands of hours of community service working for a pro bono legal services firm that handled child custody cases. Nick was a tortured guy, resentful of having to work in the child welfare system, and deeply in thrall to his darker impulses. These impulses were displayed in a more sublimated way by his lawyer father Burton, played by Dabney Coleman, who gave a brilliant portrayal of a man who had achieved success at the expense of a healthy relationship with his son and his own tendency to cut ethical corners.
One of the key plot elements in the three years the show was on the air was Nick's relationship with a coworker named Lulu (the beautiful Wendy Moniz), who got married to another man before succumbing to an affair with Nick. Her marriage ended, but her relationship with Nick didn't quite gell — though she became pregnant with his child, and learned the baby would be born with Down syndrome.

This basic melodrama was played out amid numerous shorter stories of fights over children, all of which required plenty of screen time for child actors, and here it must be said that The Guardian found some of the most talented young actors to be seen anywhere. Among the best performances was one by a young actress playing a 12-year-old girl dying of a fatal illness (I don't remember what) whom Nick decides to adopt. The girl dies in surgery, but before going in for the procedure gave a world-weary, mature but optimistic speech to Nick; it was a splendid piece of acting, and also pointed up Nick's essential lack of maturity.
Other good things about the show, in addition to the fine regular cast — Alan Rosenberg, Charles Malik Whitfield, Raphael Sbarge — included the wonderful cameos by Rita Moreno, as Lulu's mother, Henry Gibson (he of the flower and doggerel on Laugh-In) as a cold-hearted industrialist, and Farrah Fawcett, as a deeply troubled mother of a deeply troubled kid. There was even a very brief cameo by Will Ferrell as an earnest, talented but doomed guest lawyer at the agency.

Excellent actors, an involving story that continued over numerous episodes (with a cool theme song by The Wallflowers), set not in L.A., Vegas or New York but in also-ran Pittsburgh (where a tribute to the show was held in September). Show creator David Hollander, I read somewhere, is also a playwright, and he knows how character drives drama, and he made sure his characters were absorbing and realistic. It was a fascinating show to watch, beautifully acted and paced, and blessedly free of the moralizing, hero-making or humiliation you see in every other show. These were regular people, mostly trying to resolve their major life issues and be happy.

Just in that — in being a drama that tried to be entertaining and yet be true to life as it is really lived — it was uplifting, in spite of the often-somber story lines. The Guardian showed it was possible to write a weekly TV drama for mass audiences that is full of loose ends, unresolved problems, and ambiguity. Some of these ends were tied up for the last episode when it became clear CBS wasn't going to renew the show, but enough were left open that there would be plenty of drama left for many future episodes.

There's my appreciation/fan letter, many months too late. All I can say in conclusion that the show made many Tuesday nights at home special for Sharon and me, and we still miss it.