March 28, 1996

Tearful finale for Road To Avonlea

By JIM SLOTEK -- Toronto Sun

A million-plus Road To Avonlea fans are getting exactly what they want and deserve Sunday after seven years -- a four-hanky finale.

Actually, what they really want would be another seven years of Hetty, Olivia, Felicity and the rest of the King clan of Avonlea, P.E.I., on the CBC.

But the Corp. is going through another phase of reinventing itself, and these days entire lifetimes are less likely to be played out onscreen -- a la The Beachcombers and Front Page Challenge. Although it's worth noting that this decision was out of the CBC's hands. The plug was pulled by executive producer Kevin Sullivan.

As it is, viewers have seen best-friends Sara Stanley (the "Story Girl," played by Sarah Polley, of the original Avonlea books by Lucy Maud Montgomery) and Felicity King (Gema Zamprogna) grow from children to young women.

The latter of the two characters has a wedding in the works Sunday, but we won't say to whom.

A fine period soap opera, as proudly Canadian as anything our industry has ever produced, Road To Avonlea pulls out all the stops on the way out with So Dear To My Heart, a nicely-wrapped episode directed by Graeme Lynch.

It opens on a train with the matriarch Hetty (Jackie Burroughs) and Felicity returning with Felicity's old flame, the orphan boy Gus Pike (Michael Mahonen). He's alive, but blinded after being presumed lost at sea in a quest for his real parents.

All of which leaves Felicity in a bind with Stuart McRae, the handsome young banker to whom she became engaged after the "death" of Gus.

Complicating matters further is proposed surgery that may cure Gus's blindness, or which may leave him dead after all.

Busying up the plot is the fate of the burned-down Avonlea cannery -- the lifeblood of the town's economy.

Traditionally a comic relief couple (and my favorite characters), Jasper and Olivia (R.H. Thomson and Mag Ruffman) are held accountable by the townspeople for rebuilding the cannery, but Jasper's efforts are stymied.

His failure makes an enemy of Aunt Hetty, who ends up declaring a private little war on the whole family.

By the end, of course, hearts are sauteed gently over a low flame, and the Kings and the town of Avonlea are looking to their future with hope.

(The plot aside, there's an extra emotional jolt as the camera catches the late Barbara Hamilton in a few scenes. It may be her last onscreen work).

The whole thing is as sentimental as a Hallmark card or a Rockwell painting, without a single false note.

I haven't been a die-hard Avonlea fan, but I have been occasionally sucked in, and its charms are -- were -- undeniable.

Sullivan has a replacement project, Wind At My Back, airing on CBC next season in the same timeslot as Avonlea. Let's hope it measures up.

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