‘Good Doctor’ Strains Family Ties

With Michael Gross in the title role, it’s hard not to see the TV movie “The Good Doctor: The Paul Fleiss Story” as a dark version of his old series “Family Ties.” He again plays a liberal, loving dad with a bright, charismatic, ambitious child who wants to be rich.

The difference is that Heidi Fleiss is more rambunctious and less ethical about how she makes her money than Alex Keaton was.

And Paul Fleiss is a lot less effective as a parent than Gross’ Steven Keaton. Indeed, Fleiss’ unwillingness to rein in his daughter as a child or to condemn her activities as an adult is the theme of the movie, as scripted by Karol Ann Hoeffner and directed by Michael Switzer. He is the embodiment of permissive parenting run amok.

Fleiss, a longtime pediatrician in Los Angeles, pleaded guilty last year to three felony counts of conspiring with his daughter to defraud the Internal Revenue Service by concealing money she made as the Hollywood Madam, and making false statements to federal banks.

He served as a consultant on “The Good Doctor,” and the film basically supports his publicly expressed contention that he “only wanted to help my daughter.” It soft-pedals how much he knew about her criminal activity and ignores completely the extent to which prosecutors said he was involved in helping her launder her illegal income. His only misdeed here is allowing Heidi (Tricia Leigh Fisher) to talk him into signing an incomplete loan document that she later falsified to buy the $1.6 million home from which she ran her prostitution business.

Yet Fleiss does not get off the hook completely. Through the character of a friend who is hearing Fleiss recount his problems with Heidi, the filmmakers pillory the doctor’s judgment from start to finish.

“You’re an idiot!” the friend (George Segal) exclaims at one point, clearly voicing the verdict from the court of public opinion. He adds at other points: “Were you afraid of your own kid? . . . You should have had more control when the kids were younger. . . . A good father doesn’t look the other way while his child is doing something so wrong.”

Viewers are left to wonder, however, whether Fleiss has gotten the message, even today. At the end he is still not certain he and his former wife made any mistakes, and if they did, “we made them out of love.” Someone needs to tell him that part of loving your children is using discipline to teach them about morals, right and wrong, respect and personal responsibility.

* “The Good Doctor: The Paul Fleiss Story” airs at 9 tonight on CBS (Channel 2).