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Ed Asner dominated the proceedings of the 1977 TV movie The Gathering; inasmuch as Asner's character died at the end of that film, he is absent from the 1979 sequel The Gathering, Part 2. Said sequel could certainly have benefitted from Asner's presence, no matter how illogical that presence might have been. In Part 2, widowed Maureen Stapleton gathers her family together for the first Christmas after the death of her husband. She is being wooed by handsome industrialist Efrem Zimbalist Jr., and the family (Rebecca Balding, Gail Strickland, Bruce Davison et.al.) isn't all that keen on this contingency. Even more so than the first film, The Gathering, Part 2 has the smell of a pilot. It was originally networkcast on December 17, 1979.