Review of Something About Amelia

I was a child when this debuted on tv to all sorts of critical acclaim, praised for being groundbreaking and brave. Lauded with award nominations. I never saw it then, of course, but I remember hearing people talking of it in hushed tones, but still had no idea what it was about. More than 20 years later I happened to catch it on a rebroadcast and I was astonished how awful it was in every way. I swear, it was as if a pedophile wrote the script in a desperate attempt to get sympathy for other pedophiles. The plot opens with pretty, smart thirteen year old Amelia growing up in upper middle class suburbia with her parents and younger sister. Right out of the gate things seem odd, her father (played by Ted Danson) seems like a jealous boyfriend when he hears she wants to go to a casual dance at school with a boy in her class. He seems to try and strong arm her into spending time alone with him at home and when she refuses, he says he'll get her younger sister to hang out with him, instead. The interchange upsets Amelia to the point she starts spacing out in class and flunking tests. A school counselor asks her what's wrong and Amelia blurts out the truth - her father has been sexually assaulting her by coercion and manipulation for years, and now she's afraid since she actively started trying to avoid being alone with him, he's moved on to start grooming her beloved little sister. The counselor is horrified, and takes her words seriously, calling in her mother (played by Glenn Close). What does her mother do when Amelia and the counselor inform her? She gets enraged at Amelia and calls everyone in the room a liar, storming out with her daughter. The counselor calls the police, who remove Amelia to a foster facility as an emergency measure, yet tell the dad they won't arrest him. Amelia goes into therapy at the facility with the therapist telling her she did nothing wrong. It's the only glimmer in this production of focusing on the victim. The mom rails against her daughter for lying, her father plays dumb and her little sister, who hasn't yet become her father's victim, is baffled. When the mom finally starts to realize her daughter is likely telling the truth, does she kick her husband out and press charges? Nope. She gets them into couples therapy. She talks nauseatingly about how she's so jealous her husband "cheated..." with their underage daughter. Is she for real? She starts yelling at her husband about how he hasn't wanted to sleep with her for years, because of course that's what's important here (eye roll). Her husband finally confesses and counters that when she had a health scare years earlier he was lonely and felt like he got no attention, so he decided why not force his 11 year old into sex acts...and it continued because she (the wife) later got a higher paying job than his and made him feel immasculated. A ludicrous therapist tells the mom she should have sympathy for her husband's motives, which are valid. Again, what?? So glad mom and dad are trying to work on their marriage by outlining reasons to justify the crimes that one of them committed on their daughter and the other one feels resentment for. Plus, why does no one mention that this wasn't some temporary insanity on the dad's part, when Amelia started avoiding him, he began making plans to do the same to his younger daughter. That's a serial pedophile, not some troubled soul. In all this, Amelia is practically forgotten. The mom keeps trying to find ways to stay married and get custody of Amelia back (again, why is she desperate to stay in a marriage with a man who spent years raping their child and planned to do the same with their other one?). Another family therapist tells Amelia she should forgive her father and "move on," so he can heal. Wow, so glad the story calls for telling a victimized child to forgive and forget so her assailant can get back to his old life. Really, if you watch this, you'll be yelling at the tv like I was. It's insulting and gross, almost entirely focused on the "poor" mom and dad who treat it all like an inconvenience that calls for a few couples retreats and the child who has been scarred for life should get over it because they don't want to acknowledge the true horror of what's been done to her. How did this win nominations and awards? It's an insult to child victims of abuse everywhere.