Oliver Watson has never been luckier: he is a successful advertising executive, shares a marriage of eighteen years with Sarah and has three loving kids: 17-year-old Ben, 15-year-old Melissa, and 9-year-old Sam. His perfect life suddenly falls apart when his wife Sarah announces that she wants to enter a graduate school 200 miles away from home, as she regrets that she gave up her bohemian protester's life and promising writing career to become the wife of a conservative traditionalist. Oliver unsuccessfully tries to save his marriage, until Sarah announces that she is seeing someone else. The children start acting out as a reaction and life is complicated by the death of Oliver’s mother and accepts a job in L.A. where he falls in love with Charlotte Sampson. Life again challenges Oliver when Charlotte is offered her dream job on Broadway.
Acting
Kate Mulgrew's simmering resentment as trapped housewife Sara.
Director
Michael Miller
Patrick Duffy
Oliver Watson
Kate Mulgrew
Sara Watson
Ben Affleck
Ben Watson
Lynda Carter
Charlotte Sampson
John Anderson
George Watson
Jenny Lewis
Melissa Watson
Matthew Lawrence
Sam Watson
Robyn Peterson
Daphne Hutchinson
Richard McKenzie
Jeremy Bosworth
Gloria Dorson
Phyllis Watson
Mimi Cozzens
Margaret Porter
Peter Hansen
Doctor
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This TV movie aired on CBS in 1991 and served as backdoor pilot for a series that never happened—apparently America wasn't ready for weekly Patrick Duffy feelings.
The 'trapped housewife goes back to school' trope peaked here between The Feminine Mystique and Eat Pray Love, with Sara's bohemian past coded as her 'authentic self' Oliver supposedly killed.
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