'Forgive or Forget' Taps Into Our Universal Yearnings

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Most of Love's guests aren't famous. In fact, if you tune in you're more likely to see two ordinary sisters reunited after a decades-long feud than the leader of the free world. But, says Love, who ends each show with the mantra “Never underestimate the power of forgiveness,” the message is still clear: “The world is going to hell in a handbasket. I'm trying to teach people that if we love each other and learn to forgive each other, we can make the world a better place.”

Forgive or Forget isn't pure altruism. The guests all tell shocking, heartrending stories, which the audience receives with a lot of hooting and hollering, and more often than you'd think, the door swings open and the wronged party (who's been watching the apology backstage on video monitors) isn't there. This, of course, is cause for high drama. One penitent, after seeing that her apology wasn't accepted, collapsed and had to be helped offstage. Still, Krasnow sees the door as a metaphor, a larger-than-life teaching tool about forgiveness versus revenge and the moral dilemmas our choices pose.

This particular dilemma is nothing new to American television viewers, says Angela Nelson, assistant professor of popular culture studies at Bowling Green University in Ohio. “The plot of most sitcoms revolves around forgiveness,” Nelson says. “Someone has given offense, or there has been some misunderstanding of the mores of social behavior, and in the end forgiveness has to be extended somehow. So as a culture, we've come to expect a conclusion, or resolution, to our problems. In sitcoms, there's usually someone who plays the role of the parent figure, the person who mediates the disputes. It seems like we're often looking for that in real life.”

Mother Love would like to step into that role for the whole country and become the Great American Peacemaker. Step one is winning the trust of her guests and studio audience. Step two is gaining the attention of the Nielsen families.

“I think they know where I'm coming from,” she says of her viewers. “They know that I'm real. They know that I love them and that they're all my babies. They listen to me and I just hope that I can help them do the right thing.”

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