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.