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.