Better to Be Safe Than Sorry
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
An admission: I love Lifetime television. My roomate and I knew living together would work out when we sheepishly admitted this to the other. (One of the joys of sharing an apartment with her is the lack of judgment when I suggest seeing what's on Lifetime.) We actually gave blogging a try as a team a few years ago and called the blog “Apartment 3A: Where everyday is just another Lifetime movie”. The idea was to recap Lifetime movies and also just generally blog, and let me tell you—recapping is an art best left to the professionals. Also, she wasn't so much into the blogging thing, and we just never got it going. But it was a fun concept. We titled every post after a Lifetime movie, and wondering, “Do I want to call this post ‘Armed and Innocent’ or ‘Victim of the Night’?” is much more fun than you think it’s going to be.
I have no idea why I like Lifetime movies. I know they’re awful, have bad film quality, make little sense, and are mind-numbingly stupid most of the time. But there’s nothing better than, say, a Tiffani Amber Thiessen marathon on Sunday after a late night out on Saturday. Truly. I defy you to show me something I like better.
Also, I love the ridiculousness of them. I mean, come on—as if Gerald McRaney could ever in real life bag a young, pre-Melrose Place Josie Bissett! And the titles kill me. I still laugh out loud when I remember the night Darren, making fun of me and my love of the station, imitated what a meeting to determing the titles might sound like:
Supervisor: “OK, so what’s this one about?”
Assistant: “Well, there’s a girl, and she’s fifteen, and she gets pregnant.”
S: “OK, call it ‘Fifteen and Pregnant’*. Next?”
A: “Jean Smart’s younger lookalike plays a single mom, who gets involved with a man** and her daughter catches them having sex, and…”
S: “Let’s go with ‘Sex and the Single Mom.’ Next?”
Now that I'm admitting to my ultimate guilty pleasure (and I hope you don't lose too my respect for me here), I thought I'd share the wealth of knowledge I've accrued through years of regularly tuning into Lifetime and Lifetime Movie Network. Since I'll be on hiatus until next week when I'm back from stuffing myself with turkey, I thought, well, what about an early Friday Five?
Top Five Lessons I’ve Learned from Lifetime Television (which can totally happen because these are based on TRUE STORIES, people. True. Stories.)
1: If your boyfriend wants to marry you, but he’s already married, that's a bad sign. If he then decides you should secretly marry while he finds a way to drive his wife to divorce him, and then uses a fake name to put on the marriage license because, you know, polygamy is illegal? Probably not a keeper.
2: Don’t let your neighbor fix up your house before you move in. He will install hidden cameras in the bathroom and bedroom and then watch you get out of the shower naked and do things with your husband that should really be kept between man and wife. Incidentally, there STILL isn’t a law against this, do you even believe it??? After all her crusading too.
3: If you have a very mysterious ailment, that leaves you ill, weak, and with some freaky rash that kind of resembles what I imagine one’s skin would look like just before the thing in The Grudge and The Grudge Two promos pops out, and the entire medical community in your city is unable to diagnose it, something peculiar is up. If you then divorce your husband and he remarries and then his new wife gets it? It’s probably a tip off that he’s sociopath and is poisoning you both. With Selenium. And he’s been buying old radios and scraping the old selenium off the batteries or whatever. So, I’m extrapolating here, but I’d just steer clear of any guys with a penchant for old radios. Just in case. Can’t ever be too careful. (In this particular movie, the first wife was played by Marg Helgenberger, and all I could think of was how her characters get totally screwed by outside parties in movies! Erin Brokovich, anyone? Also, her ex was played by John Ritter which, well, bad casting. He is Jack, and he can never be evil. Only a little too goofy for his own good.)
4: It’s totally possible for an older, widowed, bookshop-owning woman*** to fall in love with a semi-retarded gardener who ends every sentence with “that’s for sure,” and for them to get married. In order for them to fall in love, she needs to teach him to read of course, and everyone will just overlook the fact that she is OLD ENOUGH TO BE HIS MOTHER and also? That her developmentally delayed lover's dad totally had the hots for her for a while and hit on her at least once, which, ew.
5: If a child in the neighborhood goes missing and winds up dead, it’s always the cute, boyish, overly helpful soccer coach next door, and not the ex-con down the block. How many times do you people need to see this played out on the Lifetime Movie Network before you figure it out? It is always who you least suspect. Always.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
*Incidentally, the 15-year old was played by a young Kirsten Dunst.
**Played by Jake from Melrose Place! Lifetime is where all the formerly hot, now C-list stars of defunct Aaron Spelling series go to die.
***Played by Meredith Baxter-Birney, who is and always will be like royalty to me.
I have no idea why I like Lifetime movies. I know they’re awful, have bad film quality, make little sense, and are mind-numbingly stupid most of the time. But there’s nothing better than, say, a Tiffani Amber Thiessen marathon on Sunday after a late night out on Saturday. Truly. I defy you to show me something I like better.
Also, I love the ridiculousness of them. I mean, come on—as if Gerald McRaney could ever in real life bag a young, pre-Melrose Place Josie Bissett! And the titles kill me. I still laugh out loud when I remember the night Darren, making fun of me and my love of the station, imitated what a meeting to determing the titles might sound like:
Supervisor: “OK, so what’s this one about?”
Assistant: “Well, there’s a girl, and she’s fifteen, and she gets pregnant.”
S: “OK, call it ‘Fifteen and Pregnant’*. Next?”
A: “Jean Smart’s younger lookalike plays a single mom, who gets involved with a man** and her daughter catches them having sex, and…”
S: “Let’s go with ‘Sex and the Single Mom.’ Next?”
Now that I'm admitting to my ultimate guilty pleasure (and I hope you don't lose too my respect for me here), I thought I'd share the wealth of knowledge I've accrued through years of regularly tuning into Lifetime and Lifetime Movie Network. Since I'll be on hiatus until next week when I'm back from stuffing myself with turkey, I thought, well, what about an early Friday Five?
Top Five Lessons I’ve Learned from Lifetime Television (which can totally happen because these are based on TRUE STORIES, people. True. Stories.)
1: If your boyfriend wants to marry you, but he’s already married, that's a bad sign. If he then decides you should secretly marry while he finds a way to drive his wife to divorce him, and then uses a fake name to put on the marriage license because, you know, polygamy is illegal? Probably not a keeper.
2: Don’t let your neighbor fix up your house before you move in. He will install hidden cameras in the bathroom and bedroom and then watch you get out of the shower naked and do things with your husband that should really be kept between man and wife. Incidentally, there STILL isn’t a law against this, do you even believe it??? After all her crusading too.
3: If you have a very mysterious ailment, that leaves you ill, weak, and with some freaky rash that kind of resembles what I imagine one’s skin would look like just before the thing in The Grudge and The Grudge Two promos pops out, and the entire medical community in your city is unable to diagnose it, something peculiar is up. If you then divorce your husband and he remarries and then his new wife gets it? It’s probably a tip off that he’s sociopath and is poisoning you both. With Selenium. And he’s been buying old radios and scraping the old selenium off the batteries or whatever. So, I’m extrapolating here, but I’d just steer clear of any guys with a penchant for old radios. Just in case. Can’t ever be too careful. (In this particular movie, the first wife was played by Marg Helgenberger, and all I could think of was how her characters get totally screwed by outside parties in movies! Erin Brokovich, anyone? Also, her ex was played by John Ritter which, well, bad casting. He is Jack, and he can never be evil. Only a little too goofy for his own good.)
4: It’s totally possible for an older, widowed, bookshop-owning woman*** to fall in love with a semi-retarded gardener who ends every sentence with “that’s for sure,” and for them to get married. In order for them to fall in love, she needs to teach him to read of course, and everyone will just overlook the fact that she is OLD ENOUGH TO BE HIS MOTHER and also? That her developmentally delayed lover's dad totally had the hots for her for a while and hit on her at least once, which, ew.
5: If a child in the neighborhood goes missing and winds up dead, it’s always the cute, boyish, overly helpful soccer coach next door, and not the ex-con down the block. How many times do you people need to see this played out on the Lifetime Movie Network before you figure it out? It is always who you least suspect. Always.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
*Incidentally, the 15-year old was played by a young Kirsten Dunst.
**Played by Jake from Melrose Place! Lifetime is where all the formerly hot, now C-list stars of defunct Aaron Spelling series go to die.
***Played by Meredith Baxter-Birney, who is and always will be like royalty to me.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, November 22, 2006 at 11:26 AM.
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