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.