Cybill is Julie Walker, a gorgeous blonde who leads a seemingly storybook life in Southern California. Married to Jerry (Charles Frank), a successful lawyer, Julie has a stunning house, plenty of free time after taking care of her two kids, and rich, attractive friends, like best friend Maggie (Barbara Feldon). There's only one small problem: the spark has gone out of her marriage. Feeling neglected by her workaholic, pleasant-but-distant husband, Julie begins to question her marriage of nine years. Her friend Maggie admits to Julie that she often has affairs. Shocked, Julie wonders if she will eventually succumb to temptation, and have one herself. Maggie tells her that she sees all the familiar warning signs in Julie's behavior, and that she will eventually have an affair; it's only a matter of time.

So Julie, after repeatedly reaching out to her clueless husband, starts to fantasize about every man she sees, until she begins to fixate on the dust jacket photo of author Everett Hemming (Richard Kelton). Soon, she's seeing him occupy her every fantasy. Crazed to the point of incoherence, Julie finally makes the bold step of letting herself get picked up by Fred (Peter Marshall), a jogger she meets in the park. After dinner out, the couple go to a motel room, but Julie (wisely) chickens out. But when Julie finally meets author Hemming, the question becomes, "Will she or won't she?"

Hey, listen; I grew up on literally thousands of hours of this kind of crap, and I'm usually tolerant to the point of insensibility for all-star (hee hee), made-for-TV junk like A Guide for the Married Woman. Often, just checking out which "star" gets the worst cameo is worth the 97 minute running time (no question here: it's Chuck Woolery as the tennis pro). But nothing works in A Guide for the Married Woman, and I suppose a good deal of the blame lays on the gorgeous, shapely shoulders of animated dressform Cybill Shepherd. Shepherd, when handled very carefully by good directors like Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show) and May (The Heartbreak Kid), can be an effective performer. But left to her own devices with a nothing script and a fairly passive director like Averback, and she can be embarrassingly bad. Shepherd's fantasy sequences are, I assume, supposed to be the comedic highlights of A Guide for the Married Woman, but Shepherd's reaction shots are stupefyingly inept. At times looking almost cross-eyed, Shepherd does manage to squeeze off "blankness" and "petulance" quite well, but any intellectual or emotional state higher or more complex, eludes her.

To be fair, she's working with a script by Frank Tarloff (Father Goose, A Guide for the Married Man) that wouldn't have made it past the writer's room at Love, American Style. According to A Guide for the Married Woman, adultery is a lifestyle choice akin to determining what kind smoothie flavor you want: just plug in your various rationalizations for running around, and have at it. Definitely of its time, A Guide for the Married Woman plays like a bad late '70s' Cosmo article foisting cheating on its female readers as an empowerment tool for disaffected wives. One of the more ridiculous notions in A Guide for the Married Woman is that once Shepherd makes up her mind that she's ready to cheat, every man, and I mean every man, immediately comes on to her. It's just something men sense, as Feldon helpfully explains. Of course the men of A Guide for the Married Woman are all portrayed as horny, clueless apes ready to jump Shepherd's bones at a moment's notice (with Woolery literally doing so in an horrendously embarrassing fantasy sequence), while all the women are put-upon romantics fed up with disinterested husbands and calloused lovers. Cliches about men, women and the sexual revolution abound in A Guide for the Married Woman (wait till you hear that gawd-awful title tune by Maureen McGovern), but laughs are M.I.A..

Helping Shepherd out in A Guide for the Married Woman are John Hillerman (deadpan and oblivious), Peter Marshall (embarrassed and embarrassing), Elaine Joyce (wasted here, as with most of her roles), Eve Arden (unfunny in a badly written scene), John Byner (not a funny drunk), John Beradino (look him up), Mary Crosby (look her up), Bill Dana (a long way from Jose Jimenez), Bonnie Franklin (why?), George Gobel (I swear to God), Bernie Kopell (oily as usual, but not funny here), Tom Poston (cringe-inducing performance), Sarah Purcell (look her up), and of course, Chuck Woolery. Director Averback, a genial TV director who did a fairly decent Peter Sellers flick (I Love You, Alice B. Toklas!) and a funny war comedy (Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came?), obviously didn't care, or simply wasn't able to revive this lifeless so-called comedy. A Guide for the Married Woman is a deadening affair, and looking at that star and that supporting cast, it's not surprising.

The DVD:

The Video:
The full frame video image for A Guide for the Married Woman looks fairly good, considering its age, with a soft, gauzy look that was intentional (and typical of this kind of made-for-TV flick).

The Audio:
You can watch A Guide for the Married Woman either in its original English mono, or a new Dolby Digital English 2.0 stereo mix. A Spanish mono track is available, with English subtitles and close-captioning options, too.

The Extras:
There are, thankfully, no options for A Guide for the Married Woman.

Final Thoughts:
Please, don't waste your time. Even if you're a Cybill Shepherd fan, she's been better elsewhere, and you won't find any laughs here in this anonymous, disposable pap. Skip A Guide for the Married Woman.