ceebeegee This ABC Afterschool Special is a little bizarre but worth viewing anyway. Melora Hardin gives a nicely understated performance as a pre-teen whose parents have just gotten divorced--she is devastated and has shut her father out of her life. She finds a partner in misery in Dana Hill, a girl in the same apartment building whose parents are likewise divorced--the story's main flaw is the heavy-handed way it drives home how NEW and WEIRD divorce is. It wasn't *that* unusual in 1980! The story's strength is its clear-eyed look at girls' friendships--how sometimes, despite all efforts, one friend will simply outgrow another. Dana Hill's frantic attempts to hold on to her friendship with Hardin--threats, gifts and a constantly-asserted loyalty pact--are touching, and she ups the dramatic stakes nicely voodoo rituals and the like. The dialogue is a little awkward at times but the two actresses negotiate most of it skillfully.*Spoiler* The best scene is at the end--after Dana Hill finally goes over the edge and is sent away, Hardin comes to a halting realization about how relationships can change, and no one's at fault, it just happens. It sounds corny but she delivers the lines well. Then she calls her father for the first time in the whole movie, and quietly tells her father how much she misses him.

mamamiasweetpeaches After School specials were Hit or Miss affairs. Usually when you watch an old one now (And you CAN, for now they are finally for sale at AMAZON. Yay!) you find yourself thinking "Hmmmm. That wasn't as good as I had remembered.") WHAT ARE BEST FRIENDS FOR is actually pretty darn good. There's a new girl in town named Amy and she's moving into an apartment with Mom who just recently split up with Dad. Amy has decided to give Dad the cold shoulder, hide away his picture in cold storage and refuse his phone calls and such. She meets Michelle Mudd (Dana Hill), a girl her age whose parents are also divorced. Because they both children of divorce ( a point that is driven home to be so out of the ordinary that these two girls are a rare breed shunned by the rest of the kids. This was the '80s. People weren't as divorce happy as we are now) Michelle tells Amy they have to be friends. But not just friends. Best friends bound by a voodoo pact,an exchange of jewelry and an oath of loyalty. So now whenever Michelle sees Amy talking to other kids she freaks out screaming "Loyalty" this and "Loyalty" that. Michelle gets weirder as the show goes on. She starts out meditating and chanting and lighting candles and such. Then one day Amy walks in unannounced and catches Michelle doing a weird voodoo ritual in her bathroom dressed in a voodoo priestess cape and kabuki style goth make-up (probably from those late 70's Do-It-Yourself KISS make-up sets). It seems that when Michelle doesn't like someone (Like Dad's new girlfriend!) she does voodoo to try to wish them away. This, I would imagine, would make it hard to break off a friendship with the girl since I'm sure if you upset her she would be putting the black magic towards getting even with you and making your life a living hell. As weird an After School Special as your likely to ever see: Watching Dana tiptoe down a corridor and sneak into Amy's apartment in goth gear with a mysterious bundle of newspaper in her hands freaked me out a little, and my daughter was glued to the TV set! Check it out.