TV REVIEWS : ‘Father & Son’ Delivers a Blunt Message

The drama “Father & Son: Dangerous Relations” (at 9 tonight, NBC Channel 4) sends a blunt message to young African-American fathers: Stop running from the mothers of your children and stop abandoning your babies.

Those are not female voices you hear manning the battlements but male voices, beginning with star and co-executive producer Louis Gossett Jr. He conceived the not-uncommon idea of a black father who dumps his wife and 5-year-old boy, then next encounters his son (Blair Underwood) 20 years later in a prison yard where they’re both doing time.

Released by a skeptical prison board that demands as a condition of their parole that the pair live together, the long-absentee father and his scornful son are nearly destroyed by reservoirs of guilt and anger, not to mention the dangerous lure of the city. They finally connect in an emotional breakthrough that you know is coming all along but that still kicks into high emotional gear when it happens because of Gossett and Underwood’s dynamic teamwork.

It’s a conventional TV movie by many standards, including a certifiable fantasy in the form of a sexy young businesswoman (Rae Dawn Chong) who helps the ex-con of a dad land a mechanic’s job at her boss’s car dealership. Chong indulges a mirthful come-hither look that inevitably leads to a torchy kissing scene with Gossett, who can’t believe his good luck. The fling is made all the steamier by a mutual chemistry that’s rare on TV or anywhere.

But with the sins-of-the-fathers parental theme about irresponsibility getting handed down generation to generation, Gossett, director Georg Stanford Brown and writer Walter Halsey Davis drive a withering arrow into a minority target that only African-American moviemakers could shoot.

They also target the social consequences of punks in the ‘hood (including Underwood’s rebel character) who make babies and split. In one telling scene, four boys/men joke and brag about the number of women they’ve made pregnant. “You’ve got a notch on your stick, man,” a young tough cracks to Underwood in a scene that dramatizes what amounts to a Spur Posse in Compton.

Airing against the backdrop of L.A.’s current tension, the movie is responsibly relevant, including several key scenes with a non-cliched probation officer (the vivid, no-nonsense Tony Plana).

Dramatic movies on TV about blue-collar, African-American males are so rare that when one does come along you hope it has something to say even as it lives by the commercial sword. This one has something to say and swings a mean sword while at it.