The Times Record, Tuesday, December 3 1980
New passion soap opus debut Saturday
There is so much heavy breathing on "Secrets of Midland Heights" that the show sounds like an asthma clinic. "Midland Heights" will have its passionate premiere at 10 p.m. Saturday on CBS. A dozen sexual athletes cavort as the regular cast. The first two people seen on the show are a couple kissing in a car. After that you have to look fast to catch anyone standing up. The third character seen is a high school football star who gets hurt. The fourth person spotted is his girlfriend, who appears like a fervent Florence Nightingale to make love to him in his hospital bed. The main social center in Midland Heights is a motel called the Granary Cabins. The traffic gets thickest this weekend when a couple of high schoolers go there for a tryst, only to discover his father and her mother billing and cooing in the cabin next door.
"Midland Heights" was created by David Jacobs, who is also the architect of Dallas." "Midland Heights" is kind of like a kiddie car "Dallas," with the cast on the average about a generation younger. "Midland Heights" looks like what might happen if Lucy Ewing, the nubile granddaughter on "Dallas," assembled all her friends for a pajama party. The thin thread upon which all these bedsheets hang is that there is one rich family, the Millingtons, that controls the small Midwestern college town of Midland Heights. Since no one else in town ever seems to think of anything but sex, it's easy to see how the Millingtons have retained their grip on the levers of power.
The matriarch of the clan is Margaret Millington, played by Martha Scott. She has a slimy, worthless son, Guy Millington, and a beautiful and good-hearted granddaughter, Ann Dulles. The unsavory Guy perpetually plots against Ann, his niece, because he wants to inherit the family fortune and cut her out of it. I won't waste your time by calling the roll of all the layabouts who compose the rest of the cast, except to mention two.
One is Lorento Lamas, who seems likely to make a lot of teenyboppers' hearts go pitapat this winter. He is the son of a Hollywood dream couple of yesteryear, Fernando Lamas and Ariene Dahl, and he has inherited all the good looks of both of them. On Midland Heights," he plays the football star. Burt Carroll.
The other performer worth noting is Linda Hamilton, who played the role of Greta Hideout on "Rape and Marriage - The Rideout Case,'' a special that aired earlier this fall. Much more accessible on "Midland" than she was on "Rape," she plays Burt's girlfriend, Lisa Rogers.
In laying heavy emphasis on the sexual activities of young people, "Midland Heights" represents a departure from the norms of prime-time TV. In general,in the past, teen-age sexuality was a synonym for trouble. On this series, the carefree attitude it that everybody's doing it. I'll let you decide for yourself whether that's a bad thing, like the sexually suggestive blue jeans commercials that were recently ruled off the air, or a good thing, a reasonably accurate reflection of the increasing sexual activity by teen-agers that is indeed going on in real life. Probably it's not worth worrying about It's hard to imagine anyone taking "Secrets of Midland Heights" seriously. It's just fun-loving ole David Jacobs pulling our leg again, in addition to the many legs of his high-kicking characters.
By
Paul Raven ·
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