I watched the last half-hour of a...

I watched the last half-hour of a TV movie called “Sharing Richard,” and I’m so angry about the depiction of the relationships between the three female friends and the one man they dated that I had to write this letter. This was a story with a skewed sense of power. The women were willing to trash their friendships for artificial intimacy (after all, Richard was making love to all three). Then when the news breaks to him that his three lovers are friends, he is angry at being exploited and the women feel bad for embarrassing him and hurry to apologize. Why on Earth did these women apologize for being used by an insensitive womanizer?

The concerns of singles regarding dating are very real and complicated issues. The movie’s plot utterly made fools out of these four characters whose self-awareness, self-esteem and mutual respect seemed to be in the dirt. Women were in their usual role of apologizing for messing things up and the man could somehow spread his “caring” among many women. The movie pretended to have a modern plot but frankly it was a long way from giving any kind of decent message about modern relationships.

Ilene Blaisch, Studio City