TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS

A worthy topic for discussion--what about the stragglers and hold-outs on the N. Y. battleground of the sexual revolution?--slips deep into soap operatics as Fifties' sentimentality meets Seventies' sleaziness, According to screenwriter Mann, look into a typical Manhattan office, an insurance company, say, and you'll find any number of heart-stringy case histories: a mother-encumbered secretary who's stuck in a hopeless affair with a married man faces oncoming middle age (""Maybe I can have sex for sex's sake, just like a man""); a gorgeous, lucky ingenue stumbles upon her ""perfect"" new husband's homosexuality and goes Hare Krishna; an unattractive, overdressed loner, desperate for a husband, mistakes a Grossinger's Casanova for a Sir Galahad; the office sexpot learns that sex is not enough (""Maybe one damn day she'd find out what she was looking for""); a man-hating divorcÉe teases but never pleases (""Take your penis and go""). To these heartbreak hang-ups Mann adds the business-is-a-jungle ethic (failing salesman suicides, office rebel says ""I can't kiss ass""), a couple of terminal illnesses, and an out-of-sync sense of the current N.Y. Jewish milieu (his Jewish wedding is right out of Goodbye Columbus). Some atmospheric Manhattan scenery and dialogue help, but not nearly enough to lend credibility or texture to these stagy episodes, interwoven with no special grace and played for both easy tears and quickie titillation.