TV Reviews : ‘Battling for Baby’ Is a Tear-Jerker

If your idea of TV heaven is watching Suzanne Pleshette and Debbie Reynolds duke it out (figuratively speaking), then CBS’ “Battling for Baby” (at 9 p.m. Sunday on Channels 2 and 8) is a hot ticket.

Pleshette and Reynolds play estranged childhood friends whose daughter and son, respectively, marry. The birth of the couple’s first baby intensifies bad feelings as Marie (Pleshette) and Helen (Reynolds) compete for the infant’s affection. Eventually, of course, said infant brings them together in a tear-drenched, “I love-you” happy ending.

In their by-the-numbers script, writers Walter Lockwood and Nancey Silvers underscore the conflict by making Marie a renowned, career-driven concert pianist and Helen a down-home, cake-baking beautician, who gave up her own promising music career to be a housewife.

Helen revels in grandma-hood; Marie worries about being seen as old, even though her handsome conductor (Leigh Lawson) is making plain his romantic interest. The grandmas even snipe and squabble nastily (for our amusement) in the delivery room.

No one suggests that their quarreling is selfish and uncaring, not even daughter Katherine (Courteney Cox) and son Phillip (John Terlesky). Come to think of it, no one seems to notice when Marie and Helen wrestle each other off a park bench, either.

The biggest surprise, however, is that Pleshette, who looks pretty classy during most of the show, plays the film’s first romantic scene in a leopard-print turban and tortoise-shell, cat’s-eye glasses, looking remarkably like Second City TV’s Edith Prickley.

Only the cast’s likability adds weight to this air ball.