Teen tearjerker plods to predictable finish
Women give birth every day. We’re all living proof of that. But there’s no drama in dull demographics. Until now, if you wanted a Lifetime tearjerker about birth and babies, you had but two choices: a film about a teen who gives birth before she’s ready, or one about a willing wife who can’t give birth at all.
But now, “Mom at Sixteen” (9 p.m., Lifetime) tackles both issues in one two-hour helping. Viewers who like their “After School Specials” filled with overwrought performances should not miss this.
Terry Jeffries (Mercedes Ruehl) is one harried mom. She’s got a newborn baby, a spunky 14-year-old named Macy (Clare Stone) and a sullen 16-year-old named Jacey (Danielle Panabaker). Dad’s not in sight, and from the sounds of some icy phone conversations, he sounds like he checked out of the picture permanently.
And to top it off, Terry and her brood have just moved to a new school district.
For dramatic purposes, the new school is in some kind of suburban Sodom and Gomorrah. The local kids do drugs and have sex all the time and brag about it with wild abandon.
Donna (Jane Krakowski), a perky guidance counselor, fills her class with teenage “rap” sessions. She sits Buddha-like on her desk while the kids talk about “hooking up” and “friends with benefits” and other teen notions of casual, consequence-free coupling.
But of course (cue the solemn music) the consequences are all too real. Midway through act two, we discover that Terry’s newborn is not Terry’s at all and that she’s raising Jacey’s love bundle as her own to spare her A-student daughter the ruined life of a teen mother.
At the same point in the movie we learn that Donna and her handsome husband Bob (Colin Ferguson) have been trying desperately to conceive and/or adopt a child. Just in case your heartstrings are not sufficiently tugged, they’ve even devoted a room in their cavernous house (on teachers’ salaries, no less) to a fully stocked nursery.
Cautionary tales about teenage sexuality always walk that fine line between melodrama and camp. And “Sixteen” often tilts toward the latter.
Jacey’s amphetamine-fueled teenage rage gives her plenty of chances to misbehave and act out. She aims most of her cruelest barbs at Donna.
The film reaches a cranky apotheosis when the mean teen snaps, “I don’t care if you’re too old and dried up to have babies!”
But as Shakespeare taught us (or was it Nick Lowe?), you’ve got to be cruel to be kind. And eventually Jacey and Donna reach an understanding that even Mr. Magoo could see coming a mile away.
A 15-year-old named Johnny narrates a “reality” show about working in his family’s wedding chapel in the new series “Las Vegas Garden of Love” (9:30 p.m., Family). Not only do we meet Johnny’s circuslike extended family, we learn that he’s “home schooled.” Yikes!
Other highlights
Dora becomes a big sister when a new baby arrives on “Dora the Explorer” (1:30 p.m., Nickelodeon).
A new home for a sick boy on “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition: How’d They Do That?” (8 p.m., ABC).
Viewers chose tonight’s episode of “Everybody Loves Raymond” (9 p.m., CBS).
Jack uses Dina to bait Marwan on “24” (9 p.m., Fox)
A teacher gets more than an apple as her reward on “Extreme Makeover” (9 p.m., ABC).
A skateboarding gamer dude ends up dead on “CSI: Miami” (10 p.m., CBS).
A TV rerun ends in homicide on “Medium” (10 p.m., NBC).
Two battling parents and four defiant kids equal a job for “Supernanny” (10 p.m., ABC).
Cult choice
Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea, Rudy Vallee and Mary Astor star in director Preston Sturges’s 1942 comedy “The Palm Beach Story” (5 p.m., TCM).