Even the director must abide by the priorities set by audience surveys. "The themes were set before I entered the project," Trikonis said. "I can only assume that there are trends that run through a society, and the people who are choosing the work will make choices based on those trends."
"We don't do things because they're major themes. That's where we'd like to be, but we're not," he said. The television powers imposed other aspects that Parker was not so amenable to. The choice of Anderson, for example, was one she was not pleased with. "It's a matter of sensitive and intellectual versus superficial and a intellectual," she said. "They're more likely to bring in somebody for TV appeal, whether or not it's right."
"When Parker and I got together, we did think about getting an unknown for her role, you know, making a star. But the network said. 'We want somebody with name value,'" Trikonis said.
"With an unknown, your're more vulnerable to their experiences," he said, "but with somebody who's been on TV for years, you already know how she's going to react."
Trikonis added that he might have liked a little "more sex" in the film. "In a theatrical you might get away with more skin than this. There are some scenes in dorms when I would have liked to have had more, but the networks don't want girls in panties or bras," he said with a straight face.
But ultimately, participants ascribed the product to the bureaucratic process which marks TV. Said Kim Delaney (Jenny on "All My Children"), who played Anderson's Harvard roommate. "It goes into so many people's hands, it's turned over so many times, you have to try to do what you have to do, and that's all."