American Family: “La Cama”: A Review

By Nicholas Stix

When this series, about an extended hispanic family, ran from 2002-2004, I watched it religiously. The quality was uneven.

Why did I watch it? Probably, because it starred Edward James Olmos. Back when I was with my longtime, dominican ex, I’d seen Olmos’ tour de force movie, as star and director, American Me (1992), about a chicano gangster in los angeles, and before that, I’d seen him in Stand and Deliver (1988), a romanticized biopic about legendary, bolivian-born math teacher Jaime Escalante (1930-2010), for which Olmos was up for Best Actor. (Stand and Deliver was romanticized, because it asserted that Escalante had a perfect record teaching barrio chicanos calculus. Nobody’s that good.)

At least one episode of American Family featured Esai Morales, a very pretty, youngish actor who, however, had very little talent, and got work exclusively through affirmative action and ethnic politics.

Morales’ character was coming on to a female character, but exclusively through idiotic, leftwing talking points.

Other episodes featured Raquel Welch, then the world’s most stunning 63-year-old, who fortunately had more talent than Morales. (Welch had recently discovered that she was hispanic.)

But the foregoing was a mere build-up to “La Cama” (“The Bed”), a stand-alone teleplay.

Edward James Olmos’ character comes back from the war (WWII? Korea?) in uniform. In the first scene, he and his wife (Sonia Braga) are played by younger performers, because by then the middle-aged Olmos and Braga were simply too old to pull it off credibly.

There’s no action to speak of, just scenes from a marriage, the joys and heartbreaks of a man and a woman in love, living together for 50 years, with exquisite work on every level. It all takes place in the couple’s bedroom.

Unfortunately, somebody had to die first. It was the wife.

This was one of the most powerful hours of TV I’ve ever seen, like something by Capote.

If you watch it, you’re gonna cry.