Television Reviews : Anatomy of a Split in ‘Who Gets the Friends?’

Vikki Baron, upscale housewife and mother, is married to a doctor named Buddy who emotionally abuses her. One afternoon, he announces he’s leaving her--just after they’ve made love. Vikki, devastated, clinging and weeping, begs him to stay.

Are you laughing yet?

What, you don’t think being forced to sell your home, having friends who choose sides and trying to find a job after being unemployed for 17 years is hilarious?

CBS’ “Who Gets the Friends?” tonight at 9 on Channels 2 and 8, takes great pains to prove you wrong.

The results are, well, painful.

A surprising amount of talent has gone into this cutesy romp, written by director Lila Garrett and Sandy Krinski, and featuring Jill Clayburgh and James Farentino as the splitting couple.

Farentino plays a cliched, depthless, sitcom baddie, giving not a clue as to why anyone would mourn his loss.

Clayburgh, no stranger to marital victim roles, has never been so soggy. Her character Vikki spends most of the film in pale and haggard ineptitude, being “dizzy.”

She is soaked by sprinklers, runs down the street in her socks, accidentally gets a black eye and humiliates herself attempting to make Buddy jealous with a handsome artists’ model, who, chuckle, turns out to be gay.

Her one-dimensional friends are unredeemably rotten, but it takes Vikki a while to catch on. Lucie Arnaz, as the “good” friend, looks terrific but is given criminally little to do.

Oh, yes. The Barons have a young daughter, but in true sit-com tradition, she’s there for one-liners. Only Clayburgh is allowed to feel pain here.

Clayburgh’s sufferings do come to an end--in a sudden, sappy-happy wrap-up in which Vikki has become a successful cartoonist and media celebrity, the envy of her friends. Even her bad-guy ex-husband goes all dewy-eyed seeing her on television.

Did she do it all herself? Not exactly. You see, she met this great guy. . . .