Television: The $390,000 Man

It is well after the late news and deep into the monster-movie hours, the time when TV punishes insomniacs with ads for truck drivers' academies and once-in-a-lifetime offers—"Send $6.98 for records, $8.98 for eight-track tapes" —for Tchaikovsky's Greatest Hits and the Best of Connie Francis. Suddenly, a smoothly handsome, oddly familiar-looking young crooner appears on a softly back-lighted stage. While he pumps a microphone and purrs out a ballad, viewers begin to wonder: Como's kid brother maybe? An Italian Goulet? Then on comes the voiceover, hailing the "mood rock" sound of that...