TV Reviews : The Travails of a Teen ‘Torn Between Two Fathers’

Stepdads get a boost in today’s thoughtful “ABC Afterschool Special,” “Torn Between Two Fathers,” at 3 p.m. on Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42.

Debbie (Elizabeth Bliss) is a well-adjusted teen who has lived happily with her mom (Susan Blakely) and her hearing-impaired stepfather Tim (Richard Kendall) for 11 years. When Mom is killed in a car crash, Debbie’s real father, Peter (Carl Weintraub), compounds her loss by uprooting her from her home and forcing her to come live with him, his wife and their two young daughters.

Peter is impatient when Debbie can’t adjust. Debbie, who loves him but considers Tim her real father, learns from an older teen that she can fight Peter legally and decides to do so.

Directed by Richard Masur, written by Pennie duPont and Courtney Flavin, the show is mostly one-dimensional but nonetheless refreshing--while Peter is hardheaded, there are no villains, only good people with conflicting ideas of what is right.

As is often the case in these short dramas for young people, however, the adults here are not drawn as fully as the teen protagonist. Bliss has some fine, forceful moments, particularly in a tearful, graveside encounter with Tim.

Peter, on the other hand, comes on strong, but tidily retreats when he is shocked into understanding his own psychological motivations. Tim’s passivity is childish and unrealistic--he leaves the fight entirely to Debbie. Actors Weintraub (of ABC’s “Dads”) and Kendall are left with nowhere to go.