Little House: "Bunny"

Since I didn't do one last week, I thought I'd bring you a bonus Most Awesome Thing I Saw On TV Last Week this time around. The bonus most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was the episode of Little House on the Prairie where Nellie was a bitch to Laura. Oh, wait. That was every third episode. This particular episode took place not long after what may be my favorite LHOTP (that's what the cool kids call it) ever, which was the "Gift of the Magi"-inspired Christmas episode in which Laura sells her pony, Bunny, to Nellie Oleson so that she could buy Ma a new stove, but Pa already bought Ma a new stove. So it starts in the schoolhouse, and Nellie is all torturing Laura by talking about how great Bunny is, and you knew something was up because Nellie was sitting right behind Laura and Mary instead of in her regular seat on the left side in the second row where she belongs.

So then Laura sees Nellie riding Bunny, and totally beating the horse with a whip, and Bunny takes off through the fields and Nellie runs into a low-hanging branch and falls off. And "Nellie" was clearly a man wearing a blond wig. So then Doc Baker comes and says that Nellie is fine, and that she has a concussion, but that she should sleep it off, when everyone knows that you aren't supposed to go to sleep if you have a concussion, like, can I see your diploma again, Doc Baker? So then Nellie has no feeling in her legs and they show super close-ups of Doc Baker pushing a needle into Nellie's toes, and her toenails are really gross, like it wouldn't have bothered me one bit if they had anachronistically given Nellie a pedicure. So Harriet is distraught and tells Nels to shoot Bunny, and Laura hears this and steals Bunny and puts her in the barn, and Ma and Pa and Nels all know but they don't care because they know it's not Bunny's fault. So then Nellie totally milks the whole paralyzed thing to get candy and new toys and one night Willie discovers Nellie dancing around her bedroom and she's not paralyzed at all, but Nellie promises to share her candy if Willie keeps his mouth shut. And Nellie takes advantage of Laura's guilt by getting Laura to do all her homework and Laura starts falling behind in her chores and at school because she's so busy doing Nellie's homework. And Laura has to turn down a fishing trip with the family and her new boyfriend Jason in order to do her own homework on the weekend. So Harriet goes out to the Ingalls's homestead to thank Charles for making Nellie's wheelchair, and she totally busts Laura riding Bunny. So Laura takes off on Bunny and she plans on going to the Olesons' house to apologize or something and she spots Nellie dancing around the bedroom with one of her new dolls. So Laura goes in and tells Nellie that they're supposed to go for a walk, and she pushes Nellie up a big hill in her wheelchair and then when Harriet drives by, Laura totally pushes Nellie down the hill! And Nellie goes bump bump bump and into a big pond! And then Nellie stands up and screams and Harriet thinks it's a miracle that Nellie can walk again and she falls off her carriage and then Nels tells Laura it's totally fine and even gives Bunny back. But the very last scene featured Nellie throwing a shit fit in her bedroom and breaking all her new dolls and screaming that she would get even with Laura! So that was awesome.

Little House: "I Do, Again"

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was one of the later episodes of Little House on the Prairie. Shout-out to my peeps in the Little House thread, even if they don't like to read my recaps! Holla! Anyway, in this episode, Laura announces that she's pregnant, and then Ma is like, "Hey, me too!" which I found kind of creepy but I guess in those days, when people got married at, like, sixteen, it would have been a lot more common, because no one is really shocked or grossed out. So Pa is all fired up because he thinks he might finally get a son, which is kind of rude to Albert, because even though he is adopted, they always made a point of telling him that he was an Ingalls and shit. So then Ma goes to Doc Baker to find out when she's due, and I'm glad I don't live in Walnut Grove, where you go to the same doctor for a cough, a broken leg, and a pregnancy test. Although now that I think about it, I only had one doctor growing up.

(Sidebar: My brother and I were asking my mom a few months ago why she never took us to a pediatrician as kids; we just went to the regular doctor in town. She said that she took one of us (couldn't remember which one) to a pediatrician once, and the pediatrician said that one of us had a heart murmur. So instead of, you know, getting that checked out, my mom just never went back to that pediatrician. And she still doesn't remember if it was my brother or me. My mom is crazy.)

Anyway, Doc Baker is like, "You're not pregnant." And Ma insists that she's missed two cycles, and Doc Baker tells her that she's going through the change, except he doesn't even say "the change" or "menopause" and I remember watching this episode when I was a little kid, and I totally didn't know what in the hell was going on, and I think I asked my mom, and given the story referenced above, I doubt I got a satisfactory answer.

So Ma begs Doc Baker not to tell Pa, and promises to tell him herself in time. So Ma practically has a nervous breakdown on the way home because she doesn't think Pa will love her anymore because she's not "a whole woman." So then Doc Baker finds out that Ma hasn't told Pa yet and he basically blackmails her into telling him, like, what business is it of Doc Baker's anyway? And I guess they didn't have doctor/patient confidentiality on the prairie. So then Albert runs and gets Pa at work and says that Ma is crying in bed, so Pa rushes home and Ma lies and says that she lost the baby. So Pa goes to see Doc Baker, for some unknown reason, and Doc Baker is like, "I'm sorry that I didn't tell you earlier," and Pa is no slouch in the brains department so he figures out that Ma was never pregnant at all, and Doc Baker explains why Ma lied. So then Pa goes and sees Laura, and she tells him to prove to Ma that he still loves her, like, isn't Laura a little too involved in her parents' marriage? So Pa decides to take Ma out of town on a vacation to go to a wedding of the son of their childhood friends. And on the way, they stop and camp out because there was no Motel 6 back then, and Pa makes up this whole story about how he didn't even know if he wanted the baby because he would be an old dad, and he was looking forward to having alone time with Ma, and she says she was feeling the same way, and I guess they had a change of heart about two seasons later when they adopted James and Cassandra, and meanwhile, they still have Grace who's, like, two, so there isn't going to be any alone time for a while, but whatever. So then they meet their friends and the friends' family, and then they go to see Ma's childhood home and Ma goes up to her old bedroom window and Pa climbs up the trellis and they reminisce about how Pa proposed right there, and then the trellis breaks and Pa goes crashing to the ground, but he's okay. And then they decide to renew their vows, like, did people even do that back then? So then the son of the childhood friend asks Ma and Pa to make it a double wedding, and if there's anything gayer than a double wedding, it's a double wedding where one couple is renewing their vows. So Ma and Pa renew their vows and Ma is happy once again and totally forgets that she's a barren shell of a woman, and everyone is happy. Which is awesome.

Rules of Attraction

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw On TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was actually a movie, but it was on HBO, so I guess it counts. It was the film adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis's novel, The Rules of Attraction. Let me just say straight off that the movie is terrible. I'm not sure how it happened, but Roger Avary managed to take a film that was filled with sex and drugs and still make it boring. Anyway, it's awesome because it stars Dawson! And he does bad, bad things. So instead of listing the plot, which is stupid, I'm just going to tell you all the awesome things you can see Dawson do if you watch this movie. I highly suggest recording it, and then just fast-forwarding to the Dawson scenes. Dawson drinks whiskey straight from the bottle! Dawson has sex! Dawson drives a motorcycle! Dawson looks angry! Dawson sells drugs! Dawson hangs out in his underwear and adjusts his package! Dawson takes a shit! Dawson picks his nose! Dawson says, "Rock and roll!" And he says it on two separate occasions. Dawson kisses a boy! Dawson masturbates while listening to "Afternoon Delight"! Dawson has sex with Mary Camden while 'shrooming! And then later, Dawson punches Mary Camden right in the nose! So all of that was awesome.

Average Joe

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week wasn't all that awesome, but it was sort of awesome, and I didn't see anything else, so it'll have to do. I watched the premiere of Average Joe and I did enjoy all the dorky-looking guys trying to pretend the only reason they didn't have wives was because women are shallow, when in fact, a lot of them were just kind of annoying. There were some decent guys in there, too. But the awesome part was when the bachelorette was about to meet her suitors, and she was clearly expecting a bunch of model types. So they had a stretch limo pull up and this hunk got out and the woman was all excited to meet him and he walked up and was like, "Hi! Nice to meet you. But I'm not one of the eligible bachelors." And then he just got back in the limo and drove away. Awesome! And the woman was like, "Wait! Can't you stay?" And then a bus drove up and the nerds piled out and her facial expressions were hilarious. I have to wonder what the producers said to her after that to get her to stay. And then another kind of awesome part was that there is one guy who is more traditionally good-looking, so he's an asshole, and he just thinks he's the greatest thing and I hope the woman eliminates him this week. That will be awesome. Also? His name is Zach. Perfect. And then there's the college professor who is so pretentious and obnoxious and thinks he's so smart. I know I'm supposed to root for the nerds, but that guy's just a douche. He even dressed like a douche. He wore a long coat, and he's about five feet tall and he just couldn't pull it off. So while it was not the most awesome thing I've ever seen, it was pretty awesome.

Little House: "At the End of the Rainbow"

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was the episode of Little House where Laura and her little buddy (who looks like a Monchichi) think they find gold in Plum Creek or whatever the creek was where they always went fishing. So it all starts when Mary drops a nickel on the ground and Willie and Monchichi get in a fight over it. Luckily, Mary is able to identify her nickel by the dent in the side (what?), so Miss Beadle gives it back to her and makes a comment about Sutter's Mill. This leads to a class lesson about Sutter's Mill, because Miss Beadle is all about the teachable moments. So then Laura and Monchichi go fishing and Monchichi hooks a fish and his line gets snagged and Laura goes into the water to help out and she's thrashing around like a bear and the fish gets away, plus she scares off all the other fish, like, good one, Laura. But then Laura notices all of these gold flakes on the bottom of the creek, like, how did they come to this creek practically every day and never notice the gold flakes before? But such is the way of Little House, so you just have to go with it. So then Laura and Monchichi decide to take all the gold out and get lots of money for their families, but they have to keep it a secret or it will be Sutter's Mill all over again. But the awesome parts were the fantasies that Laura had about her life after she got rich from the gold. In the first one, she and Mary wore all white and tiaras and rode up to school in a carriage. And Nellie and Willie were standing there in ratty clothes and dirty hair, like, I don't know why they got poor just because Laura got rich, like, apparently the wealth in Walnut Grove was a zero-sum game. And then Laura and Mary presented Miss Beadle with a box full of shiny apples, and then Nellie gave Miss Beadle an old, wormy apple and Miss Beadle just tossed it over her shoulder, which was pretty awesome. And then in Laura's second fantasy, the whole Ingalls clan was dressed all in white and the dirty Olesons were waiting on them hand and foot. And then in her third fantasy, every business in town had been renamed for the Ingalls family, including the Ingalls Mill, the Ingalls Bank, and the Ingalls Mercantile. Also, the town was renamed Ingalls Grove. So I guess Laura never heard of a little thing called humility. But then at the end, it turned out that it was fool's gold instead of real gold and Laura was all bummed out and they played the Little House theme in a minor key, but then Pa came and they had a heart-to-heart and everything was better. Which was awesome.

House Wars

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was a new show on the USA Network called House Wars. It features four families, each of which moves into a new house in a development in Arizona. Each family is also teamed up with a designer, and each week, they have to decorate one room in the house. The rooms are then judged, and at the end of the season, the team with the most points wins their house. It sounds pretty basic, but the producers obviously made an effort to put each team with the designer that would cause the most conflict. This week, the teams had to work on the master bathroom, which included installing the toilets, sinks, showers, and flooring. The first team got pissed off at their super-flaky designer, and one woman called the designer a bitch about three times. Which was awesome, since the designer is so self-absorbed that she couldn't figure out why her team was pissed. The second team got a designer who clearly doesn't want to do any work, because she disappeared once the challenge was announced, and only showed up again at the very end, when she informed her team that she had just spent $600 on fabric, which put them over budget. In addition, her team only had a few hours left, and they hadn't even installed the tub at that point. The third team is all youngish women who have never done home stuff before, and so their designer ends up doing most of the work while they have paint fights. And the third team is a dad and his hottie triplet daughters. Their designer is a total diva named "Barclay" who actually slammed one triplet's arm in his car door "accidentally" when they got in a fight. So far all of the conflict has been between teams and their designers, but since each team consists of family members, I'm sure they will start arguing soon. And it will be awesome.

Stolen Innocence

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was yet another TV movie on the Lifetime Movie Network starring Ms. Tracy Gold (a.k.a. Carol Seaver) and titled Stolen Innocence. In this one (which was based on a true story!), Carol plays an eighteen-year-old who hates her parents and goes out and gets drunk all of the time. So, your typical eighteen-year-old. Except she and her best friend run away, but they only get, like, two towns away before they run out of money and the best friend wants to go home and it's her car so Carol hitches a ride with a trucker, like anyone thinks that's safe. But this trucker was a Christian or something because his truck said something about Jesus so he didn't try to kill Carol or anything. So then they got to a truck stop and Carol hooked up with Thomas Calabro (a.k.a. Evil Doctor Michael Mancini on Melrose Place). Except that Michael had a pageboy and wore hats all the time which made you start to think that the hair was really a wig, which it totally was, but also that it was one of those wigs that's attached to a hat, which is funny. So then Carol took off with Michael to Vegas, and she was totally in love with him even when she found out that he had stolen checks from a former employer, and even when she found out that he was previously married and had two daughters he never saw, and even when she found out he had stolen guns in the back of his truck. None of that bothered Carol too much. The thing that bothered her was when Michael tried to get Carol to take a gun and she wouldn't, so he pulled her hair and the gun went off and hurt Carol's eye. And then Carol was pissed and wanted to go home. So Michael came up with the brilliant idea of trying to get ransom money from Carol's parents, and Carol's parents called in the Feds. And then when they were supposed to be meeting to make the cash/Carol exchange, Carol's dad spotted them and despite the fact that they were at a complete stop and in a convertible, Carol totally didn't try to jump out of the car, which was bogus. So then there was a big standoff in a motel and Carol got to leave, but she was upset because she couldn't take her kitten (and I'm still not sure what the point of the kitten was) but then she and her kitten got to safety but Carol had decided that she still loved Michael and didn't want him to get killed even though he nearly killed her and raped her a few times so then the FBI agent (played by a really fat Terence Knox) talked Michael out of killing himself and he surrendered. So I'm not exactly sure whose innocence was lost, since Carol told Michael that she wasn't a virgin when they met, but it's such a typical TV movie title that I'm sure they just couldn't resist. And it is a pretty awesome title.

She's No Angel

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was a movie on the Lifetime Movie Network (or LMN, for those in the know) called She's No Angel. It starred Carol Seaver (Tracey Gold) as a woman who worked as a bar waitress. So one night this guy grabbed her ass, so Carol decided to quit, but the ass-grabber was her boss's brother, so her boss refused to pay her, so Carol had no money with which to leave town. So then Carol closed the bar and the boss's brother raped her so Carol stuck him with a knife and then the boss tried to beat her up so she stuck him with a knife too and ran off. So then Carol hitched a ride with these newlyweds and Carol tried on the wife's engagement ring and just then they got in a giant car accident but Carol was ejected from the car so she was the sole survivor. When Carol woke up in the hospital, the driver's parents were there, and they thought Carol was their daughter-in-law, whom they had never met. So Carol half-assedly tried to set them straight a few times but not really, because her new in-laws were really rich and owned a vineyard and totally took her in. So then Carol found out she was pregnant by the boss's brother but her in-laws thought it was their grandchild. And also, Carol started hooking up with her "husband's" best friend, which is kind of ghoulish, but whatever. So then Carol's old boss figured out where she was and tracked her down and started blackmailing her. So Carol gave him some money she stole from the vineyard, and then gave him an heirloom bracelet that her mother-in-law gave her, and then some vintage bottles of wine. And the whole time, I guess I was supposed to feel sorry for Carol, since she was the protagonist and all, but I really kind of hated her. Everyone else was so nice, and she kind of sucked. I think I even liked the boss better than her, because even though he was a blackmailer and a rapist's brother, he was just looking for vengeance since his brother was dead. So finally Carol decided to write a note coming clean with her fake in-laws and then run away and have her baby alone, but the boss showed up one last time and then Carol's boyfriend showed up and tried (and failed) to beat up the boss. So then an alarm went off and woke up the in-laws and the father-in-law came out with a shotgun but he got knocked aside so then the mother-in-law (played by the mom from E.T., also known as Mrs. Covington) blew the boss away with the shotgun. So then you'd think that they'd all tell Carol to fuck right off since she'd lied to them and stolen from them, but instead they were all hugging her and shit. Which was horseshit. They should have prosecuted her! But it was still awesome.

Starting Over

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. First, a Most Awesome programming note: there's a new season of Endurance starting on NBC on Saturday, September 27th. Check local listings. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was the new Bunim-Murray show, Starting Over. First of all, it's on every weekday. Every weekday! And since women are usually the ones who cause all of the drama in a Real World house, Bunim and Murray only allowed women in the Starting Over house. And boy, are these women messed up. They are supposed to be in the house so that they can change their lives, but some of them seem to only be there to get on television. Okay, I guess that part is not that different from The Real World. But they do have some crazy ladies in that house. Like there's Nyanza, who reminds me of Tami from The Real World Los Angeles, but a little bit less crazy. But Nyanza really loves herself, which makes me wonder what exactly she thinks she is going to change about herself. I think Nyanza would be a lot happier if she could change everyone in her life instead of herself. And then there's Maureen, who wants to become a stand-up comedian. The problem is that she's not funny, has no sense of timing, and is frankly kind of scary. Also, stinky, because she rarely bathes. And then there is Andy. Oh, Andy. She looks like Brooke Shields, but bigger and more mannish. And she's crazy! And manipulative! And overly dramatic! And antagonistic! The usual problem with B/M shows is that they start out strong and then get really boring or repetitive. (See: The Real World/Road Rules Challenge). I'm hoping that doesn't happen with Starting Over, because once a woman achieves her goals, she gets to leave the house and a new person come in. Oh, and I didn't even mention the life coaches. Life coaches! Awesome.

Maternal Instincts

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week, which may also be the most awesome thing I've seen on TV all year. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was a made-for-TV movie on the Lifetime Movie Network called Maternal Instincts. Delta Burke played a woman who really wanted to have a baby, even though her husband wasn't that into it, and she would say things to her friends like that she thought mothers who worked were immoral. So she was kind of crazy to start out with. And then she was having some sort of surgery to help her have a baby and they found cancer and her husband and her best friend told the doctor to give Delta a complete hysterectomy.

Once she gets home, Delta has all these temper tantrums and in one of them she throws the cradle they had bought, which breaks into a thousand pieces, like, Delta Smash! So then Delta confronts the doctor and finds out that it was her husband's decision, and she storms off to their cabin on the lake and while they are fighting, her husband slips on some fish guts, hits his head, and dies. Yes, fish guts. And Delta isn't sad, but just raises her eyebrows, because she's crazy. So then she goes out to lunch and sees a baby and goes into the bathroom and has a temper tantrum. So then she's watching TV and eating ice cream and she sees her doctor on TV, explaining about how she (the doctor) is pregnant and taking progesterone to prevent miscarriage and Delta freaks out and throws her ice cream at the TV. So Delta becomes obsessed with ruining her doctor's life, and she sneaks into the doctor's house and replaces the progesterone with olive oil, which the doctor doesn't notice, somehow. So then Delta gets the receptionist at a biomedical lab fired and starts the crazy-person mainstay: a scrapbook of clippings. So then the doctor almost has a miscarriage because she's been injecting olive oil, and Delta's working at the lab now, so she screws up the doctor's blood sample, and also switches the results on all of the doctor's patients' test results. Then Delta gets a job with her best friend, who discovers what Delta is up to, so Delta tosses her off a building, which no one notices. Then, Delta tries to seduce the doctor's husband, and when it doesn't work, she runs him over with her car and dumps him on the doctor's doorstep. So the doctor takes her husband to the hospital and then gives birth due to the shock, and meanwhile Delta has gone back to her original job of working in the hospital nursery so of course she steals the doctor's baby and the doctor and takes them down to the boiler room. But the most awesome part was when the doctor woke up and Delta was chasing her around with a giant wrench and they fought and the doctor pushed Delta down a flight of stairs. But the sight of Delta Burke in a nurse's uniform running around in a hospital boiler room with a giant wrench was fucking hilarious. So then the doctor and her husband and their baby are all fine, but Delta goes to the loony bin and sits in a padded room singing to a doll which was actually kind of creepy for such a ridiculous movie. But also, awesome.

Joe Schmo

And now it's time for The Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was the new faux-reality show Joe Schmo on Spike TV. If you haven't heard about it, the producers got a group of actors and then one regular guy, and they told the regular guy that he was on a reality show, but really the whole thing is fake. So it's kind of like watching a regular reality show, but they try to make it totally over-the-top, and you think any minute the guy is going to figure it out, but so far he hasn't. They even have the requisite smarmy host who delivers super-cheesy lines, complete with dramatic pauses, and they cast all the reality-show types, like the Virgin and the Asshole and the Old Crusty Guy. There was a lot about it that was awesome, including the immunity challenge where they all had to touch various body parts to a naked porn star and the last person to let go won immunity. So the producers planned to have it be a showdown between the regular guy and the asshole, but then the regular guy let go first, totally ruining their plans, and they showed a shot of the people in the control room gasping, which was awesome. But the greatest part was the elimination ceremony, where they all "voted" for one person to leave. And the contestants all lined up on these bleachers and the host walked in and just stared at them for ten minutes before speaking, just like on The Bachelor. And each contestant had a commemorative plate with his or her face on it. A plate. Awesome. So then the host read off the votes and the schemer was voted out. So she had to serve her plate to the host and then she gave the most ridiculous speech about snakes and rats and cockroaches. And then the host was like, "Ashes and ashes, dust to dust, from the point forward, you are dead to us," and he threw her plate in the fire! Awesome! And she stomped out and the host was trying to give some concluding remarks but you could hear the schemer in the background yelling because she couldn't figure out how to get out of the house. So everyone thought the regular guy had to have figured it out at this point, and one of the contestants went up to his room for damage control, but it turned out the regular guy was just pissed off because the schemer -- with whom he was supposed to have an alliance -- had voted for him. I thought the whole show would be really dumb, but maybe after recapping six seasons of Real World, as well as Love Cruise, Boot Camp, Tough Enough, The Mole, and Joe Millionaire, I just really appreciate spoofs of reality shows.

Little House: "Survival"

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was thanks to the Little House on the Prairie marathon on the Hallmark Channel. I actually saw an episode I've never seen before! So that in and of itself was awesome. In this episode, the Ingalls family is coming back from a big trip to Mankato. These three dudes ride up on horseback, and one of them is the Sheriff from Sleepy Eye. They're looking for the last member of the Sioux tribe, a guy named Lame Horse. Which is more like Lame Name, since it doesn't exactly inspire confidence. The Sheriff wants to kills Lame Horse. Also, the Sheriff warns the Ingalls family that a blizzard is coming, and since this was before the days of Triple Doppler radar, he knows it because his foot got frostbitten twice and now it tells him when snow is coming. Pa scoffs at this, because it's way too late in the year for a blizzard. So next thing you know, it's a total blizzard and the Ingalls family holes up in a conveniently abandoned house. Pa goes out to chop some wood for the fire, and his horse is like, "Neigh!" and Pa's like, "What's up?" and the horse is like, "Neigh, neigh!" and Pa figures the horse is on crack but we know it means that Lame Horse is nearby. So Pa comes back with the wood and he and Ma have a conversation about how they don't have much food left and things are tense. So the next day, Pa goes out hunting and gets a deer but it's still a total blizzard so he falls down in the snow. Meanwhile, the Sheriff (who totally knew there was a blizzard coming but ignored it for some unknown reason) stumbles into the Ingalls's temporary housing, and Ma helps him warm up and feeds him, even though he's totally creepy. So then Lame Horse finds Pa and brings him to the house and the Sheriff makes Ma tie Lame Horse up even though Lame Horse saved Pa's life. That night, while everyone is sleeping, Lame Horse totally uses the fire to burn through his ropes and escape. Awesome! So then the next morning, the Sheriff is all pissed off and yells, and Pa gives him this totally anachronistic speech about loving other people despite their racial differences, like, somehow Pa was the Martin Luther King of his day. And then Pa has to go out to the barn to shoot one of the horses so that they have food, and he's all sad about it and the horse is like, "Neigh?" and Pa is like, "Sorry, dude." And then Lame Horse comes back and drops off a deer for the Ingalls family. But the Sheriff sees Lame Horse walking away and totally shoots him but not fatally, and Ma nurses Lame Horse back to health because all he needed was to get his Ingalls on and he's all better. And Pa shames the Sheriff into giving up his bloodthirsty hunt and then the storm stops and they all go home. And the horse was like, "Awesome! I totally lived!"

Kate's Secret

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was actually a classic movie I rewatched for the first time since health class in eighth grade called Kate's Secret.It stars Meredith Baxter Birney as a housewife named Kate, and she has a secret: she's got really large front teeth and kind of looks like a rabbit. Oh, and she's bulimic. Her husband is all successful and she has a preteen daughter and she's a housewife and her mother is really overbearing. So she's worried that her husband is having an affair with his colleague and she thinks she needs to be the perfect housewife in order to keep his interest so she binges and purges. But not in a messy way where, like, she pukes up blood or wears away all the enamel on her teeth. In the first binge, she goes into a grocery store and hides behind one of those cardboard standups while she scarfs down like three Pinwheels. And I'm like, "That's binging? That's dinner in my house!" And then she goes and pukes it up in an alley or something. And then she gives a big party at her house and her husband ignores her and instead of telling him to fuck off because she spends a lot of time cleaning his house and cooking his dinner and raising his child, she starts stuffing chocolate cake in her mouth and basically eating all of the leftovers from the party. And then her mom comes in, like, why is her mom at her house all the time anyway, and she lies and says that the dog ate the chocolate cake and made a mess. So then she goes to a fancy party with her husband and feels all inadequate because she's just a housewife and then she passes out in the bathroom. And I realize that eating disorders are very serious and I have sympathy for those afflicted, but the movie kind of made it seem like she should just get a part-time job or something. Or tell her mother and her husband to fuck off. So then she gets admitted to an eating disorder clinic and it's kind of like Girl, Binging and Purging with the wacky crew of disordered eaters including Miss Patty from Gilmore Girls and Mackenzie Phillips in her super-druggie days. And Meredith Baxter Birney's roommate is Tracy Nelson and it's kind of sad because I think I read in People that Tracy Nelson really did have an eating disorder in real life so she's not so much acting and she's a model and her mother is telling her not to gain any more weight than she has to, and you'd think her doctor or therapist would tell her mother to fuck off, but they don't, and then of course Tracy Nelson dies because Meredith Baxter Birney can't die because she has a daughter and that would be too realistic. Plus, she only purged like twice before being admitted. And I think the lesson you were supposed to take away was that people who are unappreciated get eating disorders. So then Meredith Baxter Birney totally gets better, but not before a visit from her best friend, played by Shari Belafonte, who wears super-hiddy '80s fashions like a long gauzy skirt with socks and sneakers. But the only thing I got from this movie in eighth grade was that my best friend and I, whenever we felt really full, would be like, "Man, I'm like Meredith Baxter Birney stuffing down Pinwheels in the supermarket." Which is awesome.

True Life: "I'm Getting Divorced"

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw On TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was an episode of True Life called "I'm Getting Divorced." It featured two young women. One woman's parents were getting divorced, which was boring, so if you record it, just skip those sections.The awesome part was the story of Jennifer, who married Jason on Valentine's Day 2003. At first, it seems kind of normal, right? People get married too young and then realize they've made a huge mistake. Your first clue that something is horribly wrong is when Jennifer shows you pictures of their matching tattoos. Then Jennifer says, "I saw that he loved me and I totally overlooked that [the music cuts out] he was an ex-crack addict." Hee! I mean, it's sad that he's a crackhead and all, and I felt bad for, like, a minute, and then I realized that they agreed to have their stories told on national television, and throughout the episode, you can tell that they are totally playing to the cameras, so then I didn't feel bad anymore. But wait. It gets better. A month into their relationship, Jason was arrested and went to jail for five months. Then, a week after he got out, they got married. So they were together for six months before getting married, but five of those, Jason was in jail. So after their marriage, they moved in together, and Jennifer didn't know that the whole time, he was still using crack. She didn't know? Girl, please. So, she moved back home. And Jason called her a lot and Jennifer pretended she hated it, but you could tell by the look on her face that she secretly kind of liked it. But this is the most awesome part. Jennifer says that there are a lot of reasons why she wanted the divorce. She continues, "But the number one reason I was being so pushy about getting my divorce ASAP [pronounced A-SAP] is because I need my freedom. I need my freedom to do what I was put on this earth for, and that is...to rap." AWESOME! Turns out Jennifer (or if you want to call her by her rap name, Slim JG) is recording an album. And she is so completely terrible. She sounds like she's reading her lyrics from a sheet of paper (because she is) and she has no rhythm and...she's just awful. And she has a tattoo that says Slim JG. So Slim JG is sure that she's going to make a ton of money off this album and she doesn't want Jason to get any of it, so they need to get a divorce. Which is about when I started to wonder if Jason was the only crack-smoker in the relationship. And so much more happened, so all I can tell you is that you must catch this episode. You just have to. It is awesome.

Battle of the Network Stars

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw On TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was definitely the multiple episodes of Battle of the Network Stars that were on Trio. But the best one was the first episode, from 1976. First of all, because it was the first one, it was totally unpolished and even more ridiculous. Howard Cosell was the announcer, and during the relay race, he kept saying that people "breasted the tape" at the end, which was kind of awkward when the winner was a woman. Although, according to Cosell, none of the female participants were women. They were all "girls." And speaking of girls, there was this horrific interview with Farrah Fawcett-Majors where she talked about how she loved being married to Lee Majors and she hurried home from filming Charlie's Angels every day so that she could make him dinner and then she actually said, "It's something I need to do as a female or a wife" and then Howard said, "I know Lee and he is a male and he likes to dominate," like, how does Howard know that? And then during the swimming competition, the bathing suits were totally see-through and I think I saw Ma Ingalls's nipples, which was fucking creepy, and then I saw everything Tim Matheson has to offer, which was quite a bit, frankly. And when they introduced all of the contestants, I had heard of most of the people except for the people on NBC's team. I had never heard of the people or the shows they came from, which makes me think that NBC's 1976 line-up was pretty fucking lame. And the most awesome part was when Bob Conrad's team was penalized during the relay race and he totally had a meltdown and started yelling, "Like hell! Like hell! Like hell!" and puffing away on a cigarette and finally he had a tie-breaker race with Gabe Kaplan to decide it and Gabe Kaplan actually won! You go, Mr. Kotter! God, there were so many more awesome things, but I will conclude by telling you that they had characters from the ABC special Return to Oz demonstrate the obstacle course, so the Cowardly Lion belly-crawled under the net and then the Tin Man ran through the tires and then the Scarecrow did the monkey bars and the music playing during this demonstration was "The Hustle." I swear to God. And that's just one episode. They showed five this week! And there's a marathon on Sunday, which you should totally watch if you are a fan of awesome television, as I am.

Visitors of the Night

And now it's time for The Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was a made-for-TV movie called Visitors of the Night and starring Markie Post and Candace "D.J. Tanner" Cameron as Markie's daughter. So D.J. was in high school and she and her mom kept fighting all the time, and then mysterious crop circles started appearing in the fields outside town. And then Markie Post went to the dentist and flipped out, so the dentist sent her to a hypnotist. And while she was hypnotized, Markie Post started having visions of aliens and space ships and being abducted. And then D.J. started disappearing for hours at a time and blacking out, so Markie Post figured out that the aliens were abducting her too. But at first, you thought maybe D.J. was part alien or something and there was this scene in school where D.J. had to give a presentation in school on physics, and I thought maybe she would turn out to be a genius because of her alien DNA, but really she just started yelling about how we're ruining the planet so I don't know what that was about. And then Markie Post figures out that both she and D.J. have been regularly abducted by aliens their whole lives, and then the spaceship comes back and Markie Post yells at the aliens to take her instead of D.J., and they do, and she finds out that the aliens have been harvesting the women's eggs to try to make a human-alien hybrid baby, but they failed because the babies don't have emotions and they can't cry or some such horseshit. So Markie Post gives this passionate speech to the aliens about how you can't raise a baby without a mother and single fathers around the world flipped off their televisions and then the aliens let her go home and she promises D.J. that it's all over and the aliens won't come back, and then in the very last scene the aliens totally come back and take Markie Post and D.J., like what kind of ending was that? I'll tell you what kind. An awesome one.

Melrose Place

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week were old episodes of Melrose Place on E! I'm not going to list off all of the things about the episodes that were awesome, because the answer would be "Everything." But here are a few highlights: Allison's gigantic jaw and constant stuffy nose; Amanda's desperate need for a hot oil treatment; Billy's mouth-breathing; Jo and Jake's complete lack of storyline and yet the writers still finding time for them to roll around naked a few times; Matt's appearance in exactly two scenes in five episodes; and best of all was the close-up on Michael's butt-clenching while kissing Kimberly on the beach. I think the moment I realized how awesome this show was occurred when Jake and Jo's storyline consisted of Jake cheating on his taxes and then realizing that it was wrong so he and Jo went to the mailbox and convinced the mailman (who was picking up the mail at midnight, for some reason) to give them back the returns. Wasn't that a storyline on The Andy Griffith Show at one point? (Minus the cheating on the tax returns, because no one in Mayberry would cheat on their taxes.) And yet, genius. Plus, butt-clenching. And it's just starting to get good because next week is the episode when Amanda buys the apartment complex, and if I recall, that's when all hell broke loose.

Who is Julia?

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw On TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was a movie called Who is Julia? on the Lifetime Movie Network. Mare Winningham played a poor woman who was just trying to take her really ugly son to see Santa Claus. And then there was Julia, this blonde woman who was like a model and married to one of the Hardy Boys, but what she really wanted was to have a baby. So Julia's at a stoplight and she sees Mare and Mare's ugly kid standing on the street corner and she's all googly over the kid, which was ridiculous because the kid was like Mini-Jack Osbourne. And then the kid starts to run out into the street because he's not only ugly but also dumb, and there's a cement truck coming and Julia hops out of her car to save the ugly kid and she gets flattened by the cement truck. And at the exact same moment Mare Winningham has, like, a brain attack and collapses. So both women are taken into the hospital and of course, the surgeons decide they're going to transplant Julia's brain into Mare Winningham's body. And Mare's poor dumb husband agrees to it because Mare is brain-dead and the surgeons are pressuring him. So then Mare/Julia is in a coma for like a year or something and finally she wakes up and she's freaked out because, you know, she has a whole new body and she looks like white-trash Mare Winningham. But with her doctor's help, she starts to get better, and then there's this really creepy subplot where she's kind of in love with her doctor and he's really inappropriately touchy with her and the Hardy Boy Husband complains and the doctor says it's all Mare/Julia's fault when he was all touching her face and shit. So then Mare/Julia and Hardy Boy Husband aren't getting along so well, so Mare/Julia runs away and ends up getting kidnapped by Mare's poor dumb husband and taken to see the ugly kid and then the poor dumb husband tries to rape her, and then Mare/Julia is all understanding about it. So then Mare/Julia goes back to her Hardy Boy Husband and then the movie just kind of ends. So the ending wasn't that awesome, but all of the medical scenes were awesome because the hospital set was about as big as my living room and Joe Don Baker was one of the doctors and the "science" behind the brain transplant made no sense at all. But after seeing a movie like that you kind of understand why Mare Winningham has fallen off the face of the earth.

The Edge of Innocence

So now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was a movie on (what else?) the Lifetime Movie Network called The Edge of Innocence starring Kellie "Becca Thatcher" Martin and James "Cyclops" Marsden.First of all, I loved this movie because every time I saw it on my list of recorded shows on my Tivo (or Ti-faux, because it's not actually a Tivo), I started singing, "I've been living on the edge of a broken heart! I don't wanna cry!" which is a song from the '80s by some chick rock band that I had all but forgotten. But anyway. In this movie, Becca was totally crazy and manic-depressive, except not really depressive but just manic, and really only manic in that she talked really fast and didn't wait for people to answer one question before she asked another. So she ran away from home and went to a carnival and rode the roller coaster because do you get it that the ups and downs of the roller coaster were like the ups and downs of her moods? So then she went on the Ferris Wheel and started hallucinating and climbed out of the car and then almost fell, so her mom sent her to the loony bin. And she met an anorexic girl named Ally, like this must be the general loony bin, because don't anorexics usually get put in a special eating disorder clinic? Or have my Lifetime movies led me astray? And there were other crazy kids there including Jamie Kennedy, who was gay, and Joshua Jackson, who had an imaginary friend, which was hilarious. But I don't think it was supposed to be. So Becca meets Cyclops, who isn't really crazy, but just bad and went to the loony bin to avoid juvie. So they fall in love and do it and then the authorities say that they can't be together until they leave the loony bin, and then they are both supposed to be released on the same day, like, what are the chances, and Cyclops gets into a fight with his hypocritical dad and doesn't get to leave. So then Cyclops pulls a knife and a bunch of the kids bust out together but two of them accidentally shoot a security guard so they go back and then Ally Anorexic gets caught when they are all running away, so she goes back. So Becca and Cyclops decide to go to Mexico, but Becca is now, like, ten days off her meds so she starts to get all crazy again, like, this movie wasn't that good when it was called Mad Love, so why make it again? So then I honestly don't remember how it ended but I think Becca threatened to kill herself again on the Ferris Wheel and Cyclops saved her and realized how sick she was, so he made her go back to the loony bin and promised to wait. Or possibly one of them died. I think I fell asleep after Josh Jackson wasn't on anymore. But the first hour was awesome. And another awesome thing you should watch is Made on MTV, because a new season just started and it is a great show.

90210/Endurance

And now it's time for The Most Awesome Thing I Saw On TV Last Week. It's actually a tie. The first most awesome thing was the episode of Beverly Hills 90210 where Kelly takes in Tara, the crazy psycho. So Tara becomes obsessed with Kelly, and the writers basically rip off Single White Female right down to the matching haircuts, boyfriend-stealing, and pet-killing, although in Kelly's case, Tara killed her goldfish, like, who cares about their goldfish that much? Anyway, Kelly tells Tara to move out, and the actress playing Tara (who also played stupid she-wolf Veruca on Buffy) looks so much like Cheri Oteri that I kept expecting the whole storyline to be a skit on SNL. So Tara pulls a gun and forces Kelly to drive to some cliff, where they were going to kill themselves via carbon monoxide poisoning. I think was the same cliff that Val threatened to jump from at one point, so they should just go ahead and name it Suicide Leap or whatever. So Kelly pretends like she really wants to die so that Tara unties her, and then Kelly grabs the gun and rolls out of the car, and then Tara goes to the nuthouse and is never, ever mentioned again like every other storyline on 90210 that was quickly forgotten, even though for most people it would be the most dramatic and unforgettable moment in their lives. But when shit like that happens every day, I guess it's not as memorable. And the second most awesome thing was this show that has been on for a few years on Saturday mornings called Endurance. It's basically a teenage version of Survivor, but better, because in addition to all of the inherent drama of the competition and the voting off and stuff, you have the inherent drama of junior high school with the crushes and the cattiness. And there is this one girl who is the most popular and everyone loves her, and she totally knows it and lords it over the others. So of course her name is Ashley. And she has a henchman in the second most popular girl. Whose name is, of course, Sabrina. And in the episode I saw, they were going to vote off the sort of awkward frizzy-haired girl. So Frizzy begged not to go, and on this show, two teams are marked for elimination and then they compete to stay by playing a hilarious version of Rock Paper Scissors. So Frizzy's team ended up winning and staying, and then Frizzy was all hugging the other girls when she got back to camp, like, those bitches tried to get rid of you and now you are hugging them? So it serves the dual purpose of being really juicy and backstabby as well as reminding me how fucking glad I am that I'm not thirteen years old anymore. Plus they have super-complicated names for everything like (I'm making these up) the Tree of Survival and the Temple of Backstabbing Bitches and stuff. It's awesome.

The Killing Secret

And now it's time for the Return of the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was a movie on (where else?) Lifetime Movie Network called The Killing Secret. It starred Emma from Kate & Allie as a cheerleader with a quarterback boyfriend. I don't really remember the boyfriend's name, so I'm just going to call him Todd, because he was such a Todd. Anyway, Todd was (unbeknownst to Emma) having an affair with Punky Brewster, who was from the wrong side of the tracks and had to sew her own clothes with special fancy buttons that she found on discount at the thrift store. So I guess because Punky was poor, Todd knocked her up, and she said she wanted to keep the baby, but Todd was all rich and shit, so he wasn't having it, so he killed her at this warehouse owned by his rich dad and dumped her body in the lake. As you do. So Punky is reported as missing and Emma joins this stupid search party for her in the woods at, like, midnight! Why wouldn't they search during the day? I don't know. So then for really contrived reasons, Emma befriended Punky's mom, and then all of Emma's friends were pissed because she was friends with a middle-aged poor woman, I guess. And then Punky's body washes ashore during a beach graduation party attended by Emma and Todd and all of their rich friends. So Todd is the main suspect but the cops can't really arrest him because while they know he was doing it with Punky, and that she was pregnant when she died, they don't have any other physical evidence. And then some crazy street guy gets arrested for the crime and everything settles down. But then Emma sees a picture of Punky wearing a shirt with fancy buttons on it and she remembers that she found a fancy button on the floor of Todd's dad's warehouse one time right after Punky went missing, so she goes to the cops, but they won't listen to her. So she decides that she needs to go to the warehouse and C.S.I. the place herself, so of course Todd shows up and tries to kill her, but then Punky's mom shows up with the cops and saves Emma and Todd gets arrested. Oh, and I forgot to mention that Todd's dad was J. Peterman from Seinfeld, which only added to the awesome-osity.

Little House: "A Matter of Faith"

Note: I did a full recap of this episode for charity here.

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw On TV This Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV this week was another episode of Little House on the Prairie, just like the first one I did. In this episode, Ma scratches her leg on a piece of wire while she's getting out of the wagon, and then Reverend Alden stops by and asks Ma to bake some pies to help raise money for a church, but the Ingalls family was supposed to go on a little overnight trip. So then Charles totally volunteers Ma to stay home and bake the pies while he takes the girls on the trip, like, maybe Ma doesn't want to bake some damn pies, Pa! So the plan is that Ma will bake pies on Saturday and then Reverend Alden will drop her off at the meadow for a family picnic on Sunday. So the whole family leaves and Ma gets to baking but the scratch on her leg is bothering her so she slaps some bread and milk on it, like, I don't know what in the hell that was supposed to do, but this was the olden days when they didn't have hydrogen peroxide at Oleson's Mercantile. And Ma is getting all sweaty and stuff, but she manages to get, like, twenty pies baked, and sets them on some shelves outside the door to cool. So Doc Baker stops by and Ma tells him about her leg and he's about to step inside and have some pie and check out the cut when a neighbor rolls up and says his son fell out of the loft, so Doc Baker takes off. And Ma, of course, volunteers to help out, but they're like, "Just bake your pies," so she does. So that night, Ma's leg is getting worse and she takes down her hair, which was kind of when you knew something was wrong, because Ma's hair was always up except for a couple of times when she was eating popcorn in bed and reading her Bible. And then there's a huge thunderstorm, so Doc Baker has to stay over at the neighbor's and never gets back to check on Ma's leg. And then the Ingalls's cow gets out of the barn and maybe if they ever fed that cow it would stay in the barn but I think it was out foraging for hay or something in the wild because I could see the cow's ribcage, it was so skinny. So Ma heads out into the storm, but the cow won't budge, and then Ma faints and lands right in a mud puddle! So she wakes up and crawls back inside. And then she's trying to make a fire to warm up and she lights some newspaper and notices a story in the paper about a family's house being robbed so she goes over and locks the door and then I think Brian DePalma directed this segment because there's lightning flashes and close-ups on Ma's eyes and all I know is when I saw it when I was, like, eight years old it was pretty fucking scary. So Ma tries to settle her nerves by reading the Bible, but she passes out on the floor.

The next morning, Reverend Alden and Mrs. Foster come by to pick Ma up, but since Ma locked the door to prevent robbery, they can't get in, and Ma is still passed out on the floor, so they assume she isn't home and take the pies and leave. And Ma wakes up and throws a rolling pin at the window and breaks it, but it's too late and they are gone, so she manages to unlock the door before passing out again. Meanwhile, the cow has wandered over to the neighbor's house (the one with the injured son), and the son offers to take the cow home, but the neighbor is all, "Let Ingalls come and get his cow if he wants it so bad!" And after Ma was so nice to him! Bastard. So then the infection in Ma's leg is really, really bad and gross and, like, blackened and stuff, so Ma starts reading the Bible for comfort or something and she reads this part about "If thine hand offend thee, cut if off" and then she goes and gets a butcher knife out of the drawer and starts boiling water and reading the Bible and then she puts the knife in the fire to sterilize it or something and then puts a tourniquet on her leg and then passes out again and I'm just thinking that the knife would in no way be able to hack through her bone, but whatever. So then Reverend Alden and Mrs. Foster find Pa and the girls at the meadow and Pa is shocked that Ma isn't with them and he gets all worried so he leaves the girls with Reverend Alden and takes off like a bat out of hell in the buckboard. And his route just happens to take him by Bastard Neighbor's house, and Bastard Neighbor is all complaining about the cow and Pa realizes that if Ma let the cow wander about the countryside, she must be in deep shit, so he goes like an even faster bat out of hell and gets home and Ma is passed out on the floor, so I guess she never got the chance to hack her own leg off, thank God. So then everyone comes home and prays real hard and Pa cries with Laura because Ma might die, but then they pray some more and then the fever lifts and everyone is happy. All I know is that after I saw this episode, I poured like two bottles of peroxide over every cut and scratch I got because I did not want to be in a position where I had to hack off my own leg. But that episode was awesome.

The Cool and the Crazy

The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was a television movie called The Cool and the Crazy, starring Alicia Silverstone and Jared "Jordan Catalano" Leto. It was set in the '50s, and I don't know what it is with TV movies being set in the '50s, but there you go. Alicia and Jordan play a high-school couple who get married right after graduation in a double ceremony with their best friends, and then they all get apartments near each other and get pregnant at the same time. So Alicia and her friend (played by Jennifer Blanc who was Kate, Bailey's girlfriend, on Party of Five) get bored with hanging out with their babies all the time, and Kate starts having an affair with a total greaser and hooks Alicia up with her boyfriend's friend, who is not just a greaser but also crazy like a shithouse rat. So they all sneak out all the time and have sex with their boyfriends and stuff and Alicia spends most of the time whining because she's just not a very good actress. And also I think the script was not quite finished when they started filming, so every scene begins and ends with improvised business and Alicia and Kate couldn't quite pull it off so every scene starts with them giggling and shoving each other and skipping and shit and then they deliver their lines and then they giggle some more. So Alicia's crazy greaser boyfriend starts making more and more demands on her and I'm not quite sure what she was doing with her baby while she was off getting naked on the beach with crazy greaser boyfriend but whatever. Jordan busts her with her boyfriend and leaves home. So then there's this whole subplot where Jordan hooks up with Mark Greene's ex-wife Jen, who is a beatnik. And Jordan starts hanging out at her apartment and then Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady come by (no, I'm not kidding) and do drugs and wave guns around. So Jordan gets scared because he's bourgeois at heart. And Alicia gets scared because of her crazy greaser boyfriend (oh, and did I mention that he's also married?) and breaks up with him and gets back together with Jordan. So one night, crazy greaser boyfriend kidnaps Alicia, and Jordan chases them down but the crazy greaser friends won't give her back, so Jordan goes to Jen Greene's place and gets Jack Kerouac's gun and then there's another car chase and then Jordan gets Alicia back. And then some drug dealers come and beat up crazy greaser boyfriend because he scammed them out of some money or something. And then Alicia and Jordan realize that they got married too young and decide to split up amicably. The end.

Jailbreakers

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. Merging recent themes, the most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was a movie called Jailbreakers starring Shannen Doherty (a.k.a. Brenda Walsh) and Antonio Sabato, Jr. (a.k.a. Jagger from General Hospital). Supposedly, this movie was set in the '50s, but I didn't figure that out until about halfway through because the theme was so half-assed, and Brenda's hair was totally '70s, and her outfits were all very contemporary. I like to think that Brenda refused to wear stupid poodle skirts and threw a hissy and got her way. Anyway, so Brenda is a good girl who falls for Jagger, the bad boy. And her parents don't approve, of course. And the part that made me laugh the hardest was when they were making out and Jagger tried to slide into third base and Brenda said she thought he promised to wait until she was sixteen. Meanwhile, in real life she was, like, thirty. So then they go out and Jagger steals a car, and robs a diner, and steals jewelry for Brenda, which she thinks is totally cool. Until they get pulled over by the cops and Jagger goes to jail. So the whole small town knows that Brenda is tainted so her parents have to move to a new town, like, whose parents would do that? So Brenda gets all new friends and a new boring boyfriend but then she can't take it anymore and she writes Jagger a letter in jail and he busts out of jail and comes to her house and she runs away with him. And meanwhile there's this whole subplot where Jagger and his best friend (played by, weirdly enough, Oscar nominee Adrien Brody) are trying to sell a stolen horse and split the money. So Jagger totally dicks Adrien Brody over and takes all of the money and he and Brenda head to Mexico. And Brenda still thinks it's all cool until they get pulled over by a cop and Jagger kills him with a knife. Like, it was all fine when it was larceny and shit, but murder is too far. So then she makes a few pathetic attempts to get away from him, but finally they end up at the border and they're surrounded by cops and snipers and even Brenda's dad is there with a shotgun, but Jagger is using Brenda as a human shield, but then Adrien Brody roars up on his motorcycle and saves Brenda and Jagger gets shot a million times. And then the absolute most awesome part was that, as Adrien Brody is arrested by the cops and Brenda is reunited with her parents, Brenda steals away and tells Adrien Brody that she'll wait for him until he gets out of jail. Because even though her last jailbird boyfriend turned into a murderer and kidnapper, and was shot down in front of her face, she just wants another bad boy. And meanwhile, Jagger's dead body was lying practically at Brenda's feet. Awesome.

90210

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week has already been written about by Sars, except where she thinks it was bad and yet she couldn't stop watching, I think it was awesome. Yes, I'm talking about the early seasons of 90210. I recently saw what is, to me, the single most awesome scene of the entire series: the one where Dylan and Kelly told Brenda that not only were they together, but they had hooked up over the summer while Brenda was in Paris. And then Brenda's response was to just walk away. Which then led to the ridiculous (and yet awesome) episode where Brenda had a daydream in which she tried to kill Dylan and Kelly with an ax, and one where she cut all of Kelly's hair off. Which then led to Dylan's dad being "killed" by a car bomb, which then led to Dylan finding out that his dad was really a government informant, which then led to Dylan living with the Walshes for a while, which then led to Kelly deciding she needed to start taking diet pills. All of which led to me wondering what the hell kind of drugs the writers were doing. And I'm not even getting into David's shitty recording contract or Brandon's laughable gambling addiction or Donna's complete lack of storyline or the fact that Andrea is clearly about fifteen years older than anyone else on the show including Dylan "Receding Hairline" McKay and Steve "Could My Pants Be Any Tighter?" Sanders and Brenda "Check Out My Crow's Feet" Walsh. All of which is to say, every Saturday and Sunday you will find me on the couch watching a few hours of 90210 reruns, at least until Brenda leaves the show, because then it all goes downhill.

Shattered Innocence

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw On TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was a movie called Shattered Innocence, and just from the title, you can tell that it's going to be awesome. And it's based on a true story, which is another sign of awesomeness. So this girl lives in Kansas and she's the prettiest girl in her town, but it's Kansas, so that doesn't mean much. And she has, like, eight sisters and lives in a farmhouse with her parents and is really bored. So she decides to move to California with her boyfriend, Super Mullet. And she doesn't want to get a minimum-wage job, so she answers an ad in the paper to become a model. Well, everyone but this girl obviously knows what's going to happen next. It's semi-nude modeling, and then nude modeling, and then Super Mullet dumps her when he finds out about the nudity. And then the big photographer tells her she's too fat, so she starts doing cocaine, and she loses a whopping six pounds, like that would make that big a difference, although maybe it would since she was, like, a hundred pounds to start out with. And then she gets into Playboy and shit, but then the jobs dry up because she's overexposed. And then she goes home to Kansas for Christmas and buys everyone really expensive presents and shows off her nude modeling pictures to her preteen sisters and her mom gets all mad and her teenaged sister says that the whole family is ashamed of her. So then this cheesy manager convinces her to do hardcore porn to be shown in those little booths in porno shops, of course, and she needs the money to pay for drugs, of course, so she does it. And then -- in what seemed to me to be a backward move on the downward spiral -- she moves into regular porn and she wins a porn award and does a lot more coke. So then she gets recognized and realizes that people actually watch porn and might know she's a porn star, so she refuses to do another movie. So she hooks up with this coke dealer, who is actually a pretty nice guy and lets her move to his house in Palm Springs and work in his store, but she keeps doing coke and gets nosebleeds and shit and he tries to cut her off. But then he gets arrested and thrown in jail and she totally bails on him instead of staying in his house and paying his bills and running the store like he asked. So she has to do another porn movie to get some money and she goes back to the house in Palm Springs one last time to pack up her stuff and she finds a gun in the closet. But it's not even like a shotgun or a pistol. It's like an automatic weapon. And somehow she uses it to shoot herself, but she didn't even die instantly, and her parents had to come out from Kansas and take her off life support. So the moral of the story is, don't move away from Kansas. I guess.

Dying to Belong

And now it's time for The Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was a television movie on Lifetime Movie Network called Dying to Belong. The movie opens with a scene of some girls kidnapping this other girl and then taking her out in the woods and throwing her out of the car and then she maybe gets hit by a truck and then there is a shot of a white rose with blood dripping on it so right away you know it's going to be awesome. So then Hilary Swank goes to college and has a roommate with blue hair, who was actually the coolest person in the movie. But then Hilary meets Six from Blossom in line to register so they decide to be roommates, and they just kick Blue Hair out, which was kind of shitty but maybe I'm just sensitive because the same thing happened to me my freshman year. So then Hilary and Six decide to rush a sorority and Hilary is a legacy so all of the girls in the sorority (including Second Becky from Roseanne and Tracy Middendorf, who I know as Carrie Brady from Days) love Hilary and ignore Six, and Hilary just walks off with them and leaves Six to stand there awkwardly and think about how she's gained, like, twenty pounds since Blossom ended and is forced to wear overalls in every scene. So then Hilary meets Zach from Saved by the Bell while working on the college paper, like could this movie have a more awesome cast? And you know they love each other because in every scene they have, the soundtrack is this cheesy remake of "Damn! I Wish I Was Your Lover," like, they couldn't even spring for Sophie B. Hawkins so you know it was low-budget. So then Hilary and Six get into the sorority and then there is hazing, which is such bullshit because who would brush the bathroom floor with their toothbrush just to hang out with Second Becky? And then Hilary gets pissed and walks out and the other girls encourage Six to hang this banner from the clock tower and Six totally takes a header and dies! And the girls pretend they had nothing to do with it, so of course Hilary and Zach try to uncover the truth but no one believes it and in the end they find the girl from the opening scene who was paid off by the school not to reveal that she nearly died in a hazing incident the year before and then Hilary tricks the sorority girls into confessing and the sorority is shut down. Rest assured that if you see this movie in the listings, it's worth watching because it is awesome.

Too Close to Home

And now it's time for The Most Awesome Thing I Saw on Television Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on television last week was a television movie (of course) on the Lifetime Move Network (of course) starring Angela from Who's The Boss as Ricky "The Ricker" Schroeder's mother and it was called Too Close to Home. So Angela is all obsessed with her son, The Ricker is a twenty-nine-year-old lawyer who still lives at home. And just to give you a sense of how messed up things are, the movie starts with Angela bringing The Ricker a birthday cake in bed, and then totally watching as he goes into the bathroom (leaving the door open) and gets in the shower. Gross! So The Ricker drops the bomb that he's going to move out on his own and Angela goes to the apartment he wants and seduces the landlord to keep The Ricker from getting the apartment. So then The Ricker says he's going to move in with a friend and Angela tries to kill herself by downing some pills and vodka. And then while she's in the hospital, The Ricker meets up with her nurse, Abby, and starts dating her. So Angela is obviously not happy about this and digs up some fake arrest reports that say how Abby committed fraud and tricked some dude into marrying her. The Ricker tells Abby and then proposes (huh? I know!) and then Abby admits that she's pregnant. Wuh? So they run off and get married and then The Ricker calls Angela who pretends she's all happy but secretly pays off a homeless man to pose as The Ricker so they can go to the courthouse and get the marriage annulled. I don't know what the point of the annulment was, because when Angela finds out that Abby is preggo, she manufactures a ruse to get The Ricker out of the house and then hires two men to kidnap Abby but they accidentally kill Abby instead. Oops! So then there must be a law that all Lifetime movies need a courtroom scene in the second hour, and Angela is arrested for the crime, and The Ricker is going to be her lawyer. And then on cross-examination, all of Angela's misdeeds come out, plus some other stuff about how The Ricker had an older sister who died at the age of three months, and Angela's been married seven times, and arrested numerous times and blah blah blah and The Ricker knew none of this. So then his mother is on Death Row and he goes to visit her and he keeps pressing her to admit something and I thought it was going to be a big surprise like that she slept with her own father and that's how The Ricker came to be or something, but really she just admits that she had Abby killed, like duh! We already knew that. And then Angela goes to the gas chamber. Awesome.

Wildflower

And now it's time for our weekly installment of "The Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week." Once again, this week's selection was courtesy of the greatest channel ever, Lifetime Movie Network. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was a movie called Wildflower starring a young Reese Witherspoon as a Southern tomboy who lives with her older brother and drunken father (played by a slovenly Beau Bridges). Reese's mom is dead and one day Reese is out looking for a flower to put on her dead mom's grave, which is conveniently located in their front yard, which is creepy as hell. She comes across a dilapidated shed, and inside is a slightly feral girl who keeps a possum as a pet. Awesome. This feral girl, Alice, is played by Patricia Arquette, who totally out-Nells Jodie Foster. Anyway, Reese befriends Alice, and brings her older brother around too. Together, they teach Alice how to talk and shit, and it turns out that Alice is deaf and epileptic, so her stepfather thinks she is possessed by the devil and keeps her locked in the shed. And of course the brother falls in love with Alice but their love is forbidden except one night when he comes upon her bathing in the river and they totally almost do it but then don't. And the stepfather nearly catches Reese and her brother locking Alice back into her shed one night and they all run away and then Alice has an epileptic seizure in a cornfield and the doctor comes and isn't at all concerned that Alice lives in a shed but tells Reese about hearing aids, which are expensive. So Reese hocks her dead mother's locket to get Alice a hearing aid. Then the brother is supposed to go to college but Drunken Beau doesn't think his son needs any more book learning, but then he relents and Alice is all sad. So the stepfather nearly kills Alice and her mother one night and then falls off the porch and injures himself and can't walk and Alice's mom says that Alice can go live with Drunken Beau and Reese, which gives Drunken Beau a Reason to Live so he cleans up. The awesome part was when Drunken Beau and Reese came to take Alice away and the stepfather totally shot Alice's pet possum with a shotgun from his bedroom window. And then Reese's grandma teaches Alice to read and write but the older brother is all citified so he ignores Alice's letters and when he comes home, he blows her off. Meanwhile, Alice's mom is totally still living with the abusive murderous stepfather but no one really cares about her. And then there's a big town dance so Reese writes letters to her brother about how Alice has a new dress and her bosoms show and all the boys are courting her so the brother gets all jealous and hitches a ride home. But before he arrives at the dance, Alice's mother is there watching from the outside because no one cares about her and then the stepfather has miraculously recovered and shows up to take Alice and her mom back home, and then No-Longer-Drunken Beau yells, "We's her family now!" Which was awesome. And then the brother shows up and dances with Alice and they make out. The end.

She Fought Alone

And now it's time for our next installment of The Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was a made-for-television movie called She Fought Alone. It starred Tiffani-Amber Theissen (Val from 90210) and Brian Austin Green (David Silver from 90210). Val played this unpopular girl in small-town Nebraska or Montana or Ohio or something who suddenly gets boobs, I guess, so the popular crowd wants to include her all of a sudden. David Silver is the quarterback of the football team, so he mostly drives around in cars that he restored himself and wears tank tops and shit. So the initiation ceremony to be in the popular crowd is to go to this fake prom that they hold in an abandoned barn, where they all dress up in old dresses, and then they make Val the prom queen and then they totally pour blood on her like Carrie and Val puts her finger in the blood and licks it and goes, "Mmm, raspberry" like what the hell? So now she's cool and she totally wants to do it with David Silver. But David Silver's friend Horndog likes Val and he totally comes over to her house and rapes her when no one is home. So Val wants to rat him out, but no one believes her because she's nobody and the guy is a football player. And the popular crowd is all sexually harassing her and setting things up so that she thinks they are going to forgive her, but really they are just going to wave flashlights in her face and grope her and cut all her hair off. I know. Awesome. So then she gets a lawyer and shit and eventually Horndog admits to David Silver that he totally did rape her but whatever. So then David Silver decides that he really loves Val! And he tells her! And she runs away with him! After he sexually harassed her and cut all her hair off! So that was awesome. Then there was a showdown in the weirdly deserted town square where David Silver tries to defend Val's honor and he ends up stabbing Horndog in the leg with Horndog's own knife. Then David Silver and Val decide to run away together but David Silver's mom is, like, an invalid so he can't really leave. So then Val goes to college and she comes home to visit David Silver who is living a pathetic existence working on cars and caring for his invalid mother and still wearing tank tops and then the movie just kind of ends. But it was the most awesome thing I saw last week. I have high hopes for next week because I recorded movies with the following descriptions: "A teenager may be the reincarnation of a long-dead witch," "An Idaho woman is attacked by an acquaintance in Hollywood," and "Two women break out of rehab for a motorcycle road trip." So I know at least one of those will be awesome.

Little House: "Home Again"

Anyway, the most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was the episode of Little House where Albert gets addicted to morphine. So Pa brings Albert back to Walnut Grove, not knowing that Albert was on the smack, and then Albert sneaks into Doc Baker's office and steals morphine and replaces it with powdered sugar and then some old dude is, like, dying and Doc gives him powdered sugar and when the dude is all, "It still hurts!" Doc totally figures it out because he's super-smart (even though he kind of looks like Frankenstein's monster) and then he tells Pa and they search Albert's stuff and find the smack. So then Albert promises to quit but he goes to school and starts tweaking out and he punches some kid and then backhands the teacher and runs out! And that's not even the awesome part. So then Pa decides that he and Albert need to go to a cabin in the middle of the woods so that Albert can detox and at one point Albert wakes up and says he can't breathe so Pa takes him outside and Albert knocks Pa down! And starts running through the woods and the music is all like an organ grinder like "Ooh, look at Albert running through the woods! Isn't that hilarious? Whee!" So he trips on a root or something and Pa catches him and takes him back to the cabin. And then Albert wakes up again later on and his legs are twitching uncontrollably and he begs Pa to make it stop so Pa is, like, holding him down and then Albert goes, "Bleeeaargh!" and pukes up this white stuff everywhere! And Pa's like, "Let it out, son!" And then Albert pukes up the white stuff like four more times. And there is a ton of it everywhere. And that was the most awesome thing I saw on TV last week. Oh, so then Albert goes back to school and gives a "Just Say No" speech to the kids, like was there really danger of a drug problem in Walnut Grove? I don't think so.