Message Muddled in ‘Long Island Incident’

“Incident” doesn’t quite make it as a descriptive term for what happened Dec. 7, 1993, on a New York commuter train. “Horror” might more accurately describe the sudden burst of unprovoked violence, in which six people died and 19 others were wounded when a deranged Colin Ferguson opened up on unsuspecting passengers with a razor-bullet equipped, semi-automatic handgun.

The case received wide attention in the media, in part because of Ferguson’s bizarre efforts to serve as his own defense attorney, in part because Carolyn McCarthy, a Long Island homemaker whose husband was killed and whose son was seriously wounded in the attack, emerged from the trial an outspoken advocate of gun control and an eventual candidate for Congress.

“The Long Island Incident,” airing Sunday on NBC, concentrates upon McCarthy’s reaction to the devastating impact of her husband’s death and the crippling of her son. Initially concerned primarily with son Kevin’s remarkable recovery, she is eventually driven to take an aggressive public role against assault weapons.

Laurie Metcalf, in a role far distant from her Emmy Award-winning performances as Jackie Harris in “Roseanne,” finds multilayers of emotion and intelligence in her rendering of McCarthy. And MacKenzie Astin (son of actress Patty Duke and actor-director John Astin) balances Kevin’s sentimental appeal with a leavening touch of humor.

But curiously, given its central importance to the story, the actual moment of bloody ferocity is never seen. Nor does Ferguson, portrayed with an impressive sub-current of rage by Tyrone Benskin, ever come fully into focus.

This minimization--avoidance, even--of the act of violence undercuts the story’s effectiveness. Clearly concerned primarily with describing McCarthy’s transition from her private, domestic identity to forthright public figure, writer Maria Nation’s otherwise well-crafted script fails to fully connect that transition with the violent epiphany that directs McCarthy into her new passage.

It’s worth mentioning that, for some viewers, “The Long Island Incident” may come across as a one-sided polemic in favor of gun control. But here, too, as with the failure to depict the horror of Ferguson’s rampage, the picture undercuts its own goals by polarizing the problem.

Characters representing a National Rifle Assn. lobbyist, a Southern-accented congressman and McCarthy’s own representative, Dan Frisa, are portrayed as narrow-minded and self-serving--characterizations that tend to diminish the impact of McCarthy’s efforts.

And by reducing the anti-gun control lobby to cardboard cutouts, by focusing upon McCarthy’s brief legislative successes without illuminating the full extent of the gun control problem, the script dangerously minimizes the long-term persistence and power of the NRA and its legislative defenders.

* “The Long Island Incident” airs at 9 p.m. Sunday on NBC. The network has rated it TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children).