Television Reviews : A Family Takes Look at Its Own Problems

“Pieces of Silence,” an hourlong program dealing with alcoholism in the family, looks pretty much like what it is: A low-budget chalktalk made for a local television station.

But this program, airing tonight at 10 p.m. on KOCE-TV Channel 50, has a kicker: It was produced by the family with the problem--mother, father and five adult siblings--who are struggling together to pick up the pieces of lives crippled by alcohol abuse.

Personalization is what is effective in support groups that deal with alcoholism and co-dependency, such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Alanon. It is effective here.

Psychologist Robert Subby addresses an audience about his mother’s drinking problem, his father’s response to it and its affect on the children. Anger and pain are still close to the surface.

This is interspersed with individual taped interviews with each family member, revealing a fascinating spectrum of perspectives.

Mother and father, a physician, both acknowledge their inability to deal with emotions. Robert was his mother’s confidant and bartender, protected by his older sister when he became a teen-age alcoholic. Two younger sisters sought personal validation outside of home, and an older half-brother, brain-damaged by an illness, still feels the sting of rejection.

And, for years, no one talked to each other about what was going on. Ever. It just wasn’t done.

“Each time we break the silence,” says Subby, “somebody escapes a little bit.”

This is not a program overladen with the rosy glow of success. The Subby family’s healing is tentative.

The most eloquent statement is made not in words, but in pictures.

Shot after shot of Subby family photographs are shown throughout: An attractive, normal middle-American family enjoying special occasions and vacations; later, the ravages start to show. In the most recent pictures, we see a family in recovery.