Hey, I Remember This Show: I Married Dora

Wow! I used to have such a crush on Elizabeth Peña back in the 1980s and her role as Dora Calderon (the "Dora" of the title, natch) on this show was one reason why. (Her role in 1987's La Bamba was another.)

Unfortunately, the show didn't exactly showcase her abilities to any great extent. And I suppose it says something about how well it showcased the rest of the cast that I keep forgetting Juliette Lewis was on this show too.

Plus there's the whole "Dora is an undocumented immigrant who has to get married to an U.S. citizen to stay in the country" angle which I could have done without. Indeed, it seemed funny that at a time when I was running into Anglo-Hispanic couples all over the place, the only way network TV could conceive of such a pairing on a prime time show was as a green card marriage. Somehow that doesn't say anything flattering about how far we Americans had come in the 1980s from the days of I Love Lucy.

Oh, well. I've seen worse.