Return to Reason

For the love of God, if I could somehow learn how to paw the damn remote. For six hours Nerdia and her bf, my bff&e, and I watched a vapid 1983 Australian mini-series called Return to Eden. I tried to distract them with toys and head-butts to no avail. Our heroine-without- a-personality, Stephanie Harper (who becomes Tara Wells after a temporary memory loss and near death experience), was a heiress with children who marries a pompous tennis star for her money and her best friend. The plot takes an interesting turn when the tennis star throws Steffy into a river full of crocodiles. Inexplicably, the heiress survives and is nursed to health by an outback loner we never see again and by a plastic surgeon who falls in love with her, scars and all. He isn't even bothered by her lack of personality. He remakes her into a beauty and confesses undying love for her. She leaves him and moves back to town deciding to become a super-model in a strange plot for revenge against her husband and husband-stealing friend. At this point, I'm licking my balls because she doesn't even make an effort to find her kids and tell them she's okay. She doesn't even go to the police! It's all part of her nefarious plan. She becomes a huge success. Meanwhile, the tennis star finds out he will not get access to the family fortune for seven years and his relationship deteriorates with the friend because she turns into a sloppy drunk out of guilt or boredom, I'm just a dog and can't connect the dots here. I found myself lying listless on the sofa, yearning for someone there to get a clue and turn the channel. Part of Stephanie's looney plan was to make her tennis star husband re-fall in love with her as Tara Wells so she can string him along. Hours later, the tennis star confesses to Tara that he never loved Stephanie. And Stephanie/Tara appears suddenly hurt. As if being thrown to crocodiles wasn't a big enough clue. Meanwhile, the plastic surgeon from the island keeps coming back and pledging undying love for her. She rebuffs him for some reason unknown to dogs and man and he starts stalking her. I'm creeped out by the whole cast at this point. The payoff, when Stephanie unveils her true identity, is truly anticlimactic. The tennis star decides to rekill her. The sloppy drunk runs around the ranch like a headless chicken and no one behaves with any kind of conviction. I could have done a better job on this convoluted, senseless script. Nerdia and her bf, my bff&f, thought parts were hilariously over-dramatic and they kept humming the ridiculous Falcon-Crest like theme song all night. In the end, my bff&e said all the characters seemed to be in their own mini-series with a myriad of non-connecting character arcs. He only kept watching to figure out Stephanie's hidden scheme. I did enjoy the special feature interview with Aussie pop frontman of The Australian Crawl, Janes Ryene, who played the tennis snob. He seemed to have a sense of humor about the whole thing. In retrospect, he did a great job in his first acting job. But was it worth six hours of my short furry life? Hardly. Once Nerdia and her bf, my bff&e, had the gall to fall asleep with the TV on. I had a dream I was a model with poofy hair and puffy dog-shirt sleeves.