TV REVIEWS : Williams, McGillis Develop ‘Bonds of Love’ in Tale of Retardation

Treat Williams and Kelly McGillis, in down-home roles that carry them far afield from their customary TV portrayals, unfold a tale of mental retardation in “Bonds of Love” (at 9 p.m. Sunday on CBS, Channels 2 and 8).

The core of the story, based on true events, is the entitled bonds of love that develop against all odds between a sweet, rural young man (Williams) who’s mentally impaired and a young woman (McGillis) with a history of abusive husbands who finds a happy alternative to the cads in her life.

Retardation-themed TV movies are not new, but the romantic angle here is certainly different, dramatizing the genuine physical and emotional love between characters with radically disparate mental capacities. Metaphorically speaking, this is a modern variation on “The Beauty and the Beast.”

But what gives Mary Gallagher’s script its shaded distinction is that the man is not an extreme case. He’s pinned down during one of his court hearings as having an IQ of 58, which is technically described as “mild retardation.”

In short, he’s terribly vulnerable to life’s slings and arrows, like the so-called town buddies who fill him with beer and dump him on a Kansas highway. But he’s not helpless. And once having tasted physical love, he bursts from home against the heated objections of his overprotective but loving family.