'John From Cincinnati': Yeah, they really went there

Let's imagine a conversation between the Rebecca De Mornay of 1983, fresh off of playing working girl Lana in "Risky Business," and the Rebecca De Mornay of 2007, currently playing surfing matriarch Cissy Yost in "John From Cincinnati":

Lana-era De Mornay: Yeah, beautiful women always get stuck playing prostitutes but, you know, it was a fun movie and that cutie Tom Cruise seemed like a real up-and-comer. Totally not weird at all.

Cissy-era De Mornay: Well, as you get older, there's much talk of roles for women of a certain age -- the famous line is that you're either playing the babe, the district attorney or the grandmother. And admittedly, I am playing a grandmother in this show.

Lana-era De Mornay: Yeah, but you're a totally hot grandmother! Irrationally hot! Almost chronologically-impossible-to-be-a-grandmother hot!

Cissy-era De Mornay: Why, thank you. But all that aside, I think I've managed to put a twist on the ol' grandma routine.

Lana-era De Mornay: How so?

Cissy-era De Mornay: Well, in Sunday night's show, my character was revealed to be an incestuous pederast!

Lana-era De Mornay: (Silence)

Cissy-era De Mornay:  It was very dramatically revealed. John appeared to me -- as though in a vision -- while I was tinkering with a gun in the kitchen.  He reminded me of the day I molested my then-13-year-old son Butchie, sending him into a downward spiral of shame and quite possibly into his heroin addiction. The character has pretty much wanted to off herself since then, but John talked me out of it. He said I had more to give the world, and that I couldn't kill myself in the kitchen because Shaun would find me and I couldn't so severely screw up another Yost teenager.

Lana-era De Mornay: (Silence)

Cissy-era De Mornay: Lana-era De Mornay?  Hello?

Lana-era De Mornay:  Eww. I mean, at least Tom Cruise's character was in high school. And he had a Porsche.

(Annnnndddd ... end scene.)

So there you have it, folks. On the plus side, it was the first circumstance of character continuity that "John" has seen -- Cissy went crazy over the return of Shaun's mother last week because Tina is a prostitute/porn star.  And while it's not the most savory combination for the mother of your grandchild -- it still makes her way, way, way less creepy than a child molester.  And that's gotta be a hard realization to come to.

To her credit, De Mornay played the scene where she is confronted by John quite well -- and it sets the bar very high from here on out.  In a show full of characters as unknowable crazies, she can now be readily identified as loathsome.

-- Ann Donahue