I tried; family honour required it. But I couldn’t find a picture from the six episodes where her son was played by my cousin. Still, I was watching the show before either he or his character were born, so it’s not as though he’s the only reason I care. Besides, Candice Bergen hs done so much more than play Murphy Brown.

Though it is, of course, worth remembering that she may well have helped influence an election. Only helped; 1992 was a complicated year. There was the whole Perot thing, too, and all sorts of other issues. But still; the fact that the Vice President of the United States chose to attack a TV character as part of the campaign was misguided. The show handled it with class, too, by showing multiple examples of real-life families that didn’t fit the “traditional” family model.

Okay, though, more than Murphy Brown. My sister and I once watched in fascination The Wind and the Lion, wherein Arabian prince Raisuli (who but Sean Connery?) kidnaps wealthy American Eden Pedecaris. I can’t exactly say that she pulled the whole thing off, but she did as well as could be expected, all things considered. It’s a ridiculous film, and she manages to maintain at least a hint of dignity in it.

I’ll admit I haven’t seen a lot of her work. Still, she’s a joy in Gandhi as photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White, and indeed she’s worked as a photojournalist in real life as well. She’s a lot of fun on The Muppet Show, but then, you figure she was used to working with puppets, having grown up with Charlie McCarthy as an “older brother.” She was the first woman to host Saturday Night Live, the first person to host twice, the first woman in the Five-Timers Club. She’s done a lot, is what I’m saying.

Her recent roles, it seems to me, all seem to take some inspiration from Murphy Brown. She plays a lot of prickly women with dry senses of humour. And that’s fine; that’s great. I like prickly women with dry senses of humour, and Candice Bergen is good at playing them. I just wonder what range she might have if she were allowed to stretch a bit more. Or maybe she doesn’t feel she has it, and she takes the roles because she knows she’s good at them. Maybe, if I’d seen more of her earlier movies, I’d have an opinion on the subject.