Ned, a New York magazine editor, tries to escape the responsibilities of his rocky marriage, the neediness of his two teen daughters and especially the agony of putting his autistic son into an institution by thinking back on his boyhood in Massachusetts. As he returns to that life as an adult—walking into scenes of the 1940s with his parents as an adult—he realizes that life always was a challenging proposition. The boomeranging back and forth in time presented Schaefer and Gene Hackman, in his most outstanding TV performance, with enormous demands.

• Ellen M. Violett
• Ronald Ribman
• Earl Hamner, Jr.

• Mary Jackson
• Rosemary Harris
• William Shatner