What Matters Most

This Lifetime film involves the richest kid in a small Texas town who falls for a girl from the other side of the tracks. Much is made of the lack of identity of the girl's father, but in the end that turns out to be quite irrelevant to the proceedings.

There's no anonymity in a small town like this. Maybe if young Polly Cusumanno had grown up in a big city, her past might have disappeared, but in a place like this everyone knows everyone's business.

Including Marshall Teague, the richest guy in town. He wants son Chad Allen to marry the banker's daughter in fact he insists on Chad standing up Polly and taking Shonda Farr to the senior prom. They do have a rendezvous after the prom though.

Teague and his wife Gretchen German are an interesting pair though, a bit freaky. They are also single minded in training Chad's younger sister Kaitlyn Lewis to be a new Miss Junior Texas. Seeing her in that pageant reminded me of Jon Benet Ramsey and what her parents must have been like.

A serious crisis brings the parties together though not quite all at once.

What Matters Most is not bad for a Lifetime Channel production. Viewers from Texas seem to think it captured the culture very well and who am I to argue?