TV Review : ‘Mother, Daughter’ an Affecting Drama

“Between Mother and Daughter,” today’s “CBS Schoolbreak Special,” covers the same ground--the impact a mother’s breast cancer has on her teen-age daughter--as last week’s “ABC Afterschool Special,” “Notes for My Daughter,” with similarly affecting results.

In today’s hourlong drama, Carla (A. J. Langer), a popular, self-absorbed 16-year-old, is horrified when she learns her mother (Lindsay Crouse) has breast cancer. An athlete who is body- and health-conscious, Carla initially reacts as if her own pain and fear are the larger issue. She adopts a sullen facade to distance herself from her mother, and broods about what the mastectomy will look like and whether her father (Dan Lauria) will “stick around” after the surgery.

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Gradually, Carla gains understanding for her mother’s struggle and is able to reach out with compassion and a new realization about the importance of being valued for who you are, not what you look like.

The cast, directed by Matthew Diamond, does a fine job with Pamela Douglas’ thoughtful script. Lauria conveys a loving husband’s frustration at not being able to protect his wife from pain. Christopher Daniel Barnes, as Carla’s older brother Danny, is appealingly tender.

Crouse brings depth to her character’s struggle to cope with what is happening to her as both a woman and a mother. And, although Langer plays adolescent Angst so well in the beginning that she’s unlikable, she makes a moving and believable transition to a more mature empathy.

The emotional integrity of the two brings genuine poignancy to the film’s last and most moving scene between a mother at her most vulnerable and a daughter discovering she has the strength to offer comfort.

* “Between Mother and Daughter,” CBS, Channel 2, today at 3 p.m.