TV REVIEW : Unflinching Look at Fetal Alcohol Syndrome in ‘Cord’

“Born and grown in methanol, for him life was drowning. There was no shore.”

Those are the last words you hear in “The Broken Cord,” the poignant father-son drama about a developmentally impaired boy, at 9 tonight on ABC (Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42).

The words, from Michael Dorris’ 1989 nonfiction bestseller, linger and echo long after you turn off your TV set because they hauntingly sum up the shattering message of this provocative story: If you’re pregnant, don’t drink.

Jimmy Smits, in his best and most human role to date, plays the real-life, unmarried, adoptive father of an American Indian boy permanently disabled by a mysterious malady that not until years into the youth’s retarded life is finally diagnosed as the devastating disease known as fetal alcohol syndrome.

For those who are considering raising a family or for those parents into denial--like the father in the story who believes a loving environment is all his child needs to grow up normally--this drama is guaranteed to hit a nerve. And for those who barely understand what FAS means--which is most of us--”The Broken Cord” is the TV movie at its most socially useful.

A lot of jokes have been made over the years about the disease-of-the-week TV movie. The ailments were often so exotic that they made the rest of us feel safe. But at the end of this personal odyssey, accompanied by a brisk catalogue of case studies, no pregnant woman who only imbibes in moderation will feel safe.

But no movie theme, however portentous, is sufficient onto itself. What earmarks this production is Ann Beckett’s unsentimental screenplay and the fact that we see the victim at three markedly different ages of his life. Director Ken Olin (the former star of “thirtysomething”) sensitively shades a trio of young actors who play the retarded boy as a 4-year-old toddler, an adolescent and a young man of 21 (in order: Fredrick Leader-Charge, Michael Spears and Frank Burning).

Through all of this, Smits, portraying a college professor of American Indian Studies in rustic New Hampshire, gives a tender, durable performance underscored with forgivable flashes of anger and impatience as he struggles to understand the boy’s bewildering behavior.

The dad’s situation scares one prospective wife away. But finally he finds a woman to love (Kim Delaney), and she adds another level of devotion, adoptive and otherwise, to this celebration of parental love.