Sara's Summer of the Swans

ABC's early live-action Afterschool Specials- of which this is one- were slow-paced tone poems... much more subtle and not nearly as heavy-handed as the series' films would become.

Sara is a negative girl with an absentee father, a brain-damaged younger brother, and an Aunt with enough testosterone to brew beer. This is her "awkward" summer... she's worried about her looks and popularity and generally judgmental toward everyone she meets. When her swan-obsessed younger brother wanders off one day to feed the birds, Sara has to face up to her mistakes and learns a valuable lesson with the help of Jan and Peter from The Brady Bunch. (No joke)

I guess the moral of the story is not to judge people too quickly (boring) and how your life really can change in the course of one day (true), but the dull, plodding tempo of the film makes it difficult to endure. Although the Afterschool Specials were made to encourage children to lead positive, moral lives, I can't help thinking that this movie would have been considerably richer had I gotten burnt beforehand.

The Reed Diamond who plays "Charlie" in this program is not the same person as the more well-known actor also named Reed (Edward) Diamond, who has an extensive list of acting credits, including JUDGING AMY and FRANKLIN AND BASH.

The more famous Reed Diamond used his full name early in his career, perhaps as a necessity to distinguish himself from the OTHER Reed Diamond, the one in this ABC Afterschool Special. Reed (Edward) Diamond is also younger than the Reed Diamond seen here, being born in 1967; he would only have been 7 years old when this production was filmed, and the Charlie character in the story is obviously older than that.

I got this because I wanted to see what Reed Diamond was like as a child. With "classic" Afterschool Specials released on DVD, it was easy to get. The show was pretty much like I thought it'd be: earnest, low-key, with simple moral and minor tension. The lead character is an extremely annoying teenage girl (that is to say, pretty realistic), but the actress takes a while to find her footing. The appearance of The Brady Bunch's Peter and Jan was probably the big draw (his part is far more important than hers). After you get used to the amateurish acting (par for the course in these kind of shows), it's really not bad. The story avoids too much melodrama and the point it makes isn't anything too earth-shattering.

In case you were wondering--Reed was cute as a button, and very good for a younger child actor (better than many of the older actors), but there's really nothing too obvious which you can see and say "I recognize who that is!" I'd have to see more intervening performances to see a progression.