Special Teaches Lesson About Inner Beauty
“Through Thick and Thin,” an “ABC Afterschool Special,” airs today, 4 to 5 p.m., on Spokane’s KXLY-Channel 4.
Have you seen Alicia Silverstone? What a porker, and we’re not talking Babe. Silverstone looks as if she has been spending most of her time at the doughnut shop since she starred in “Clueless.” All the guys in Hollywood bark “Wide load!” when she waddles by.
I know, you’re not supposed to write stuff like that in the newspaper. You just chuckle about it at the water cooler - yes, even you, caring and enlightened mother of two who wouldn’t think of saying a word if your friend’s 19-year-old daughter popped up after freshman year with an extra 15 pounds.
In Hollywood, last year’s talk of “gifted comic actress” - and, who knows, perhaps Silverstone’s $10 million contract - have disappeared under the weight of a little baby fat.
Into this happy context comes “Through Thick and Thin,” an “ABC Afterschool Special” about girls’ bodies, in which the stupid boys do bark “Wide load!” and the vapid, cute, thin girls hang out only with their mirror images.
It will air today from 4 to 5 p.m. (on Spokane’s KXLY-Channel 4), and there may be no better sharing experience this month, on TV or anywhere else, for a mother and her elementary school-age daughters.
“Through Thick and Thin” is a minimalist fable - even the delightful music is dominated by somebody playing the piano with one finger - about a fat high school girl and her skinny twin, who magically exchange bodies.
Annie Meisels, from “As the World Turns,” plays Trish, and Leslie Hibbard, whom you may have seen in the “CBS Schoolbreak Special: Same Difference,” plays Lori. There’s no way they could be sisters, much less twins. But “Through Thick and Thin” doesn’t worry about such details.
Forget that their schoolmates’ obvious and instantaneous responses to newly fat Lori and newly thin Trish don’t even nudge the needle on the drama scale. Executive producers Fran Sears and Delores Morris have crafted Madeline Di Maggio’s script into a charming story, fraught with lessons about the triviality of appearance. Former fatso Trish learns the best lesson that being thin is not all it’s cracked up to be.
“Through Thick and Thin” uses fun fiction to perform the same swell service that “The Body Trap” did with real children discussing real problems on Nickelodeon two weeks ago, when Linda Ellerbee succinctly summed up the topic, “We often mistake looks for personal worth and happiness.”