The Amish--Viewed Hollywood’s Way

Belinda Montgomery is a nice companion for Merlin Olsen, but he works better with Dick Enberg.

NBC football commentator Olsen and Montgomery are Aaron and Sarah Miller in “Aaron’s Way,” NBC’s horse-and-buggy-speed series about a Pennsylvania Amish family adjusting to life in Northern California. Why are these people in Northern California? Because the script says they are.

“Aaron’s Way” premieres as a two-hour movie at 8 tonight on Channels 4, 36 and 39, and thereafter will be available at 8 p.m. Wednesdays in its regular hourlong form. Long or short, “Aaron’s Way” is apparently not the Amish way.

“This is for the birds,” says Pennsylvania scholar John Hostetler about the program’s depiction of the Amish, a tight-knit society that shuns cars, electricity, contemporary dress and other modern trappings in the belief that old is best.

“What I despise (about the series) is the condescension,” says Donald Kraybill, another expert on Amish culture. More from them shortly.

We meet Aaron as he flies into San Francisco for the funeral of his eldest son, Noah, who has died in a surfing accident after leaving Pennsylvania four years earlier. Now flash forward six months. After marrying off their eldest daughter, the Millers hastily leave behind their Amish community and friends and relocate with the rest of their brood to alien Northern California to be near Susannah Lo Verde (Kathleen York), the young woman carrying Noah’s unborn child. They will also harvest Susannah’s grapes.

This is prime time, so it could have been worse. They could have become private eyes.

Aaron and Sarah and their three kids move in with Susannah and her mother, Connie (Jessica Walter), and brother, Mickey (Chris Gartin). That’s a mere eight in one house.

Meanwhile, the grapes are picked, the baby is born and Merlin is Merlin: not a lot of acting range and energy to begin with, but as an Amish with enough heavy virtue and goodness to sink California into the Pacific? Hold on to your eyelids.

It doesn’t help, either, that Aaron tends to communicate in leaden proverbs. He can’t even give a simple answer to a question. How did his chat with Susannah go? “Like throwing a pebble in a pond. I must wait and see how far the ripples go.”

The fundamental defect of “Aaron’s Way” has little to do with Olsen, however, or with the other cast members, who perform adequately. To buy into “Aaron’s Way,” you have to believe that Aaron and Sarah would migrate to California in the first place, without other Amish families for support, exposing themselves and their children to an environment that clashes with their heritage.

There are always Amish--especially the young, such as Noah--who abandon their enclaves and their cloistered, straw-hatted, horse-drawn-carriage, Old Order Amish ways for the values of the outside world. And we learn that Aaron himself has had such longings. But Sarah is so conservative and devoutly Amish that she refuses even to accompany Aaron west for her son’s memorial service. Then later, at the drop of a bonnet, she agrees to move her family west? Sarah’s complete reversal in co-executive producer William Blinn’s script simply isn’t believable.

The relative ease with which the Millers assimilate and are charmed by the modernization that they have long shunned, moreover, demeans Amish culture--as if their beliefs in simplicity were shallow, frivolous and loosely held.

Connie to Sarah: “I was wondering if after dinner, you’d mind if I took your kids on into town, fed them a Tastee Freez and maybe we went to the drive-in.” Not only does Sarah not mind, but she goes along. So there they are, Connie and the Amish Millers, sitting in the car, eating popcorn and watching a kung fu movie.

And there’s more, as one of the Turner girls gets her hair done at Connie’s beauty shop, and Connie coaxes Sarah and her kids into buying some non-Amish clothes. For a moment, at least, you think you’re watching “The Brady Bunch.”

No wonder “Aaron’s Way” comes across as “gross” to Hostetler, the Elizabethtown (Pa.) College sociology professor who has written a number of books about the Amish and says he rejected a request by the producers to be a consultant for the series.

“They asked me to be an adviser,” Hostetler said, “but only after they made the first two shows and I couldn’t change it. I did send them three pages of what I thought was wrong with it, but they didn’t respond.”

Blinn denied that Hostetler was asked to be an adviser for the series, but acknowledged asking him to comment on the pilot. He said that Hostetler pointed out “where we stepped and misstepped.” Added Blinn: “For all the technical errors, I think the emotional honesty is there.”

Hostetler said he was shown the premiere and found it a “gross misunderstanding of the Amish.” The soul of the series--Amish parents exposing themselves and their children to the influences of California--”is the same as an American family suddenly deciding to teach their children to become communists,” he said.

“A family would never take off like that and go to California,” agrees Kraybill, Hostetler’s Elizabethtown College colleague, whose two-year study of local Amish culture is due to be published as a book this year.

“If they were going to leave the church, they would do it locally and move to another church that was more progressive. It would be done more thoughtfully. They wouldn’t jump 360 degrees from their roots. It would happen over two or three generations.”

How much more interesting it would have been to dramatize the Amish culture in its natural environment, struggling to survive on its own terms in its own terrain, rather than being absorbed into California.

Kraybill saw tonight’s premiere and has many criticisms, but one above all others: “The whole tone of the thing makes the Amish look like idiots,” he said. “They make them look like they lived in a cave or the jungle or something and suddenly became aware of what modern society is like. It is so condescending. She (Sarah) opens a refrigerator and jumps back when the light goes on. Well, the Amish have modern refrigerators in their homes--they don’t have electricity, but they have gas.”

TV has a long history of distorting minorities. And now millions of Americans will view Amish solely through the prism of “Aaron’s Way.”

“It’s misrepresentation of a group,” Kraybill said. “It’s antiquated stereotypes, no different than a TV show perpetuating stereotypes of blacks and Hispanics.”

Hostetler and Kraybill found “Witness,” Peter Weir’s 1985 film about a Philadelphia cop hiding out among the Amish, far more credible in its portrayals of Amish than “Aaron’s Way.” Filmed in Lancaster County, Pa., even “Witness,” though, was reportedly faulted for its violence by leaders of the pacifist Amish.

There’s violence on the premiere of “Aaron’s Way,” too, when Aaron breaks up a fight between a service station attendant and a friend of Noah’s who visits the Millers back in Pennsylvania. The fight erupts after the service station attendant ridicules Aaron and orders his horse and carriage off the premises.

“That would not happen,” Kraybill said. “An Amishman would not move that quickly to break up a fight. And the service station attendant would not say what he did. The Amish are common and highly respected in Pennsylvania. They bring millions of tourists and millions of dollars into the state.”

In Episode 3, Aaron puts his Amish brawn to use again when he enters a biker bar to arm wrestle a character played by former pro football star John Matuszak. An Amishman who arm wrestles?

It’s a quip from Connie in the second episode that sets the tone of the series, however.

“This will be an adjustment,” Aaron says about enrolling his kids in California schools. “An adjustment is what you get from a chiropractor,” Connie says. “This is going to be cultural whiplash.”

Hollywood’s way.