In a Split Second

Actor Corbin Bernsen and his actress wife Amanda Pays co-host this glitzy guide to child emergency situations which originally aired on NBC. After a brief introduction, in which viewers are reminded that 20,000 children died in preventable accidents last year, the program gets down to business by running a kid through a glass door and then playing the age-old audience participation game: "your kid has just run through a glass door; seconds count; what would you do?" We then watch the parents try to staunch the fake blood and cut to commercial. Which is not to say that In A Split Second is a bad children's emergency video (for the price, it's actually okay), it's just so predictably network television scuzzy. Good special-interest video producers, for example, know that you don't play upbeat music during scenes of kids being cut to shreds, bludgeoned by automobiles, or cartwheeling down a hill and breaking a leg. They also know that it's not necessary to actually hire make-up and special effects artists just so you can show fake blood, a smashed-out tooth, and--the coup de grace--a kid's face grossly swollen from a bee sting (it looks like the kid is wearing a $2 Halloween mask). Tackiness and excess, two areas in which television excels, are the guiding principles here, but--on the plus side--the show does, in it's own quaint bull in a china shop fashion, manage to get across some good information regarding burns, cuts, broken bones, bike and car safety, water hazards, and pill overdose. Libraries without the more expensive Infant & Toddler Emergency First Aid (VL-7/94) or similar fare should probably purchase this one. Recommended, with reservations. (R. Pitman)