Woman on the Ledge (1993)

Network: NBC
Original Air Date: March 15^th, 1993

Like Fantasies, Woman is one of those few movies that get made to capitalize on the fandom of soap operas. Not just with an over the top scenario either, this movie stars all your favorite daytime Kings and Queens in all their wide eyed glory.

Quinn (Deidre Hall from Days of Our Lives), Rachel (Leslie Charleson from General Hospital) and Steffi (Colleen Zenk-Pinter from As the World Turns) are best friends going all the way back to grade school. Each one wears a little charm bracelet with a bell because as children they swore they could hear each other’s chimes wherever they were. They were wrong. Each woman is facing a momentous decision in her life and one of them will literally end up…on the ledge! Dun…dun… dun!

Each woman represents a personality type we can relate too (sort of). Quinn is that extra hot career woman who always looks perfect, always knows the right thing to say and lives in one of those awesome houses with a hot tub on the roof. Yeah, I totally relate to that. Well, her problem is that she has a really tiny window of opportunity to have a child. When that window is gone, she may have to…. gulp!... adopt! The shame! She tells her handsome boyfriend Bob (Peter Bergman from All My Children) to knock her up and he immediately leaves her. Desperate, she even hits on a guy in an orchestra who calls her “ma’am”! YE-OUCH!

Rachel is that woman who married her high school sweetheart and lives in domestic bliss with him and her children in another giant domicile. Her big problem is that some strange lady keeps calling and her man Jeff (Josh Taylor from Days of Our Lives) is being all secretive and stuff and then one day Rachel even sees him hugging a woman! Well, it takes her all of about 2 minutes to jump in the sack with here recently separated friend Ted (Michael Zaslow from One Life to Live). I mean, it takes less than a day. Like, confront your husband for Pete’s sake before you do something like that! So of course, now her life is in total shambles and just you wait until you find out who that secret lady actually is. Oh Rachel… why?!?

Steffi is a weird one. She’s this nerdy chick who performs in an orchestra and sees this really scary therapist named Doctor Martin (Ken Kercheval from Dallas in an extraordinarily menacing role), who keeps referring to their sessions as “work”, which is a nice word for rape! Anyway, this Steffi lady insists on continuing to see him, even though he is not only forcing her to perform sexual favors, but is also trying to put a wedge between her and a new boyfriend named Elliot (the gorgeous Kale Brown from One Life to Live looking not so gorgeous). And she won’t even give him that little sumthin-sumthin’, which blows me away, because once I was at a Starbucks and Kale Brown was standing next to me and it took about all I had not to pounce on him. All I can say is this girl has problems.

These three women share, compare and the like although each one is hiding a significant secret about themselves. That’s where it pays to be a soap opera actor. Woman is based more on what isn’t said than what is. There are lots of reactions to information, and it’s those looks that truly indicate what is being thought. Lesser actors would just end up glaring at each other. That might be funny, but then there wouldn’t be any really drama and it’s all about the drama, you know.

Woman is a pleasant time waster, where everyone’s life is just enough of a spectacle to keep you going. It’s basically Lifetime Television before there was Lifetime Television. I really liked both Leslie Charleston and Deidre Hall and I just adored Ken Kercheval, but then again, I always do. He’s really good here and I kind of wish the movie was about him. They could call it Dr. Rapist M.D., or something (the M.D. obviously stands for medical deviate!).

By the way, Kale Brown and I have the same birthday. Isn’t that totally awesome?

Oh sure, he looks nice here...