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Together We Stand (CBS). In a close encounter of a more familiar kind, Elliott Gould and Dee Wallace Stone play parents who decide to adopt a child and wind up with two: a 14-year-old half-Vietnamese boy and a six-year-old black girl. Added to the Wasp pair already on hand, the newcomers set the family melting pot at high boil. The sentiment gets a bit thick, but there is something appealing about the war orphan's brashness ("My dad was a big hero. Maybe you heard of him -- John Wayne") and something real about the way the daughter, who was adopted years earlier, resents the attention given the newcomer. Gould, once Hollywood's epitome of anti-Establishment scruffiness, has drifted into sitcomland with surprising meekness. Still, even an Elliott Gould possessed by pods is better than nothing.
The Ellen Burstyn Show (ABC). Appearing in her first TV series, Burstyn plays Ellen Brewer, a college professor who shares a house with her separated daughter and her five-year-old grandson. Her opening lines, directed to the audience, are pleasantly sardonic: "Let me tell you how much I love being called Grandma . . ." But this grandma turns quickly into a cloying paragon of hip, enlightened '80s attitudes. When her mother (Elaine Stritch) sneaks into the closet for a smoke, Ellen admonishes, "You've read the Surgeon % General's report." When the family dog is about to have puppies, Ellen argues that her young grandson ought to be allowed to watch the event. And when one of her students wavers in motivation, she tries to encourage him by citing Bruce Springsteen. The Ellen Burstyn Show begs to be hugged but is easily resistible.
Our House (NBC). Wilford Brimley here reminds us that grandparents, long the most idealized of TV figures, can sometimes be crotchety as well. When his recently widowed daughter-in-law and three grandchildren move in, he welcomes them but grumpily resists the change in routine. To teach the children a lesson, he throws into the garbage the toys that they have left on the floor. Half the time he does not even look up from his newspaper when they are talking to him. Our House tugs at the heartstrings a little too aggressively, and Brimley's big scene (telling off the school board when it denies his granddaughter permission to transfer high schools) plays like a recruitment poster for Grandpa power. Still, Brimley's unsentimental portrait and an unusually well directed group of child actors give Our House a warmth and authenticity reminiscent of The Waltons.
It is probably no coincidence that Our House, the season's best family show, is the one that is not a half-hour sitcom. The form may simply have grown too fast paced and hyped with gag lines to accommodate the subtleties of relatives living under one roof. In a scene from Our House, Brimley is concerned about his grandson, who has been sulking because his moneymaking project of painting neighborhood curbs is being threatened by a pair of bullies. Brimley walks into the boy's room and finds him brooding alone. Instead of launching into a typical TV heart-to-heart talk, Brimley turns around and leaves without a word, thus imparting a lesson that even The Cosby Show never seems to offer: sometimes family problems are best dealt with by saying nothing at all.