Three's Definitely a Crowd
Captain Nick Rawlings (Jack Wagner) is a smooth operator up in the skies, not letting even a storm break his composure or his plans. He is also a smooth operator down on the ground as not only does he have a wife, JoBeth (Shelley Hack), and son in Dallas he is also married to Alison (Joan Severance), a Chicago based business exec. But Nick can't stop there and he is preparing to ask Miriam (Nicole Eggert) who lives in Hawaii to marry him as well. When JoBeth becomes suspicious when she finds a receipt for an expensive ring but only gets a cheap one she hires a private investigator to look into things. That is not the worst of things as Alison's company is relocating to Dallas and has brought a house just down the road from his family home and Miriam has come back to Dallas as well.
"Frequent Flyer" is firstly one of those made for TV movies which isn't based on a true story but rather than inspired by a true story which to me means that there was some guy who had three wives and ended up getting crushed nuts when it came out but probably wasn't a pilot and wasn't called Nick or anything of the sort. Does it matter well in truth no because "Frequent Flyer" doesn't work and it wouldn't have worked if it was based on a true story. It has nothing to do with the casting as Jack Wagner is well cast as a bigamous husband as he pulls of the lothario bit, whilst Shelley Hack, Nicole Eggert and Joan Severance are entertaining as the wives, a diverse bunch.
The biggest problem is that "Frequent Flyer" doesn't know what it wants to be and flits between drama, comedy or full on rom-com. When ever we focus on Nick we have the comedy of him flying between his three other halves and keeping the pretence up. But then when ever we have Miriam in the scene it turns rom-com with her playing cute and bubbly. But then it switches again when it focuses on JoBeth and becomes a straight drama about her uncovering the truth about her cheating husband. It means what when the dramatic climax comes involving JoBeth it fails to have the right impact.
What this all boils down to is that quite simply "Frequent Flyer" doesn't work and it comes down to the simple fact it doesn't know what type of movie it wants to be and so the mixed tone doesn't work; weakening the drama with comedy but not making you laugh with the comedy due to the straight laced drama.
