As Time Goes By

I was going to write about the NBC program "American Dreams," but then this morning I ran across an item announcing that a musical version of "Casablanca" was being prepared in, of all places, China. The show would include, it said, several tap dances and the song "As Time Goes By." Notably it did not say a tap dance number to "As Time Goes By," which would require a real up-tempo version, testing Sam's nimble fingers. Then again, maybe the Chinese could get Deborah Allen to choreograph it, as she did with the memorable soft shoe to "Saving Private Ryan," one of Oscar's Great Moments. Beyond that, I'm not sure where the other musical numbers would fall. Granted, there is the dueling Marseillaise-Nazi song bit, and perhaps some tender love duets between Sam and the Claude Rains gendarme. Then again, Nazis have been musicalized successfully in recent years. I just hope the trend stops here, and does not worm its way into "Schindler's List." Okay, enough.

NBC just moved "American Dreams" to Wednesdays, which is a bad sign for that series because it pits it against other popular programs such as "Lost," "Smallville," and "American Idol," an indication that it is on the chopping block. That would be a pity, because this has been one of the best produced and most authentic dramas on television. Yet it still has a surprisingly low profile and no buzz whatsoever. I think I know why, and the reason is unfortunate--too much emphasis has been put on its precise production values and not enough on its cast chemistry.

The show premiered with major hoopla (as opposed to Major Hoople) four years ago as an episodic version of NBC's "The Sixties" miniseries of a decade ago. It traces the lives of a Catholic Philadelphia family from the JFK assassination--a de rigeur historical turning point--through the entire decade. The gimmick was its interpolation of musical numbers performed by current stars impersonating actual performances on "American Bandstand," as viewed through a black-and-white monitor on the Bandstand set. This engaging feature has yet to lose its appeal; it's a kick to see Kelly Clarkson limn Connie Francis singing "Where the Boys Are," or Brandy doing Gladys Knight, and often the numbers provide ironic counterpoint to the dramatic events. The show is edited briskly to accommodate its several story lines, efficiently employing its large cast.

Furthermore, the writers and producers make a real effort to stay authentic to time and place. I am a demanding judge of this, because I actually lived in Philadelphia as a college student during this period, and am contemporary with the major characters, some of whom go to Penn, as I did. So I attend to the references, and every show makes some allusion to Bookbinders, Wanamakers, Penn (not Penn State, no never Penn State) or Frank Rizzo. I do quibble at minor inaccuracies, such as coed dorms at Penn (uh-uh), but they do have the students dressing in tie and jacket for dinner, which was an annoying requirement of my freshman year. I might like to hear some Philadelphia accents, but only for their added authenticity, not for the disagreeable way they fall on tender ears.

For all the attention to detail, though, the show has a major failing that will prove its undoing--it has no breakout star. The cast is perfectly capable and works well as an ensemble, but it almost blends into the background. Brittany Snow as Meg, the putative lead and Bandstand dancer is pleasant and pretty--I can believe her as a Philly High School senior--but has none of the charisma of, say, Amber Tamblyn in ""Joan of Arcadia." The most promising performer, Will Estes as J.J. the eldest son, had an exciting, if predictable, plot line in the requisite Vietnam section, but back home he's just a pompous morose ex-GI just waiting for his post-traumatic stress to set in. The teen antics of Meg and her friends are not very original and I have trouble buying Meg's anti-war activism.

The emphasis on the younger characters is necessary, I suppose, to capture the family audience, since the historic thrust of the show is interesting only to the Baby Boomers and any of the remaining Gen Xs and Ys who might want to know what happened in the world before Watergate. Sorrowfully, the Baby Boomers are no longer the desired demographic for advertisers, and this will spell the doom of "American Dreams" even if megaproducer Dick Clark recovers fully from his stroke. All the under-50s will be tuning into the finals of "American Idol" or the captivating but elusive "Lost" for the rest of the season, and I'm afraid we're never going to see Meg and her friends pout over the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. But for the record, kiddies, they really happened.