A Face to Kill For

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 A Face to Kill For starring Miss Crystal Bernard and Mr. Doug "Matt on Melrose Place" Savant. Crystal Bernard was the daughter of a horse rancher, and she was in a car accident as a teen, which left her disfigured, and also apparently unable to say the word "Daddy," because she kept pronouncing it "Diddy" and then I kept picturing her father being played by P. Diddy and it cracked me up. Anyway, Crystal was married to Matt from Melrose Place, except he was straight, and he was actually pretty good in the role, which just makes it sadder that he was never given a plot line on Melrose Place. So Matt is just married to Crystal in the hopes that he will inherit the horse ranch, and then he dopes up the horses and frames Crystal and Diddy for it. So Crystal goes to jail and Matt tampers with Diddy's car so that he dies in an accident and Matt takes over the ranch, and then he tricks Crystal into signing divorce papers while she's in jail. So then Crystal meets a sassy black lady in prison who teaches her self-esteem and then Crystal gets beat up in a fight and the doctor somehow does some experimental surgery that gets rid of the scar. Cut to Crystal post-Extreme Makeover, and she's taken on a new identity, and she's going to stick it to evil Matt. So she makes a bunch of money through investments, which she learned in prison of course, and she tries to buy back Diddy's horse farm, but Matt isn't having it, so she resorts to trickery and chicanery and exposes Matt for the sleaze that he is and he goes to jail, and Crystal ends up looking hot and hooking back up with her high-school boyfriend, who wasn't all that cute, but they seemed happy together. Which is awesome.

Mommie Dearest

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. I watched one of my favorite movies. When did I decide that Mommie Dearest might be the most awesome movie ever made? Was it during the opening scene when Joan Crawford plunges her face into a bowl of ice? Was it in the aftermath of the infamous "wire hanger" scene when Joan forces little Christina to scrub the bathroom floor in the middle of the night? Was it right after that, when Christina's brother Christopher offers to help her clean up and she tells him to strap himself back into bed? Was it the strangely titillating scene when Christina makes out with a boy in a stable? Was it when Christina yells, "Because I am NOT one of your FANS!" and then Joan tries to strangle her and the magazine reporter discovers them? Was it when I was wondering what exactly was the deal between Joan and her assistant, Carol Ann, who totally had battered-wife syndrome? Was it when Joan told the Pepsi Board of Directors, "Don't fuck with me, fellas! It's not my first time at the rodeo," which I am totally making into my new catchphrase? Although all of those moments (and more) were awesome, I think I realized it in the closing moments of the film, after Joan Crawford has died, and Christina and Christopher gather for the reading of her will. Joan leaves her two children nothing, and says that they know why she did it. Grown-up Christopher (played by a really young Xander Berkeley!) chuckles ruefully and says that Joan always has the last word. And Christina turns to the camera and dramatically says, "Does she? [twenty minute pause] Does she?" Because then Christina went on to write the tell-all book upon which the film was based. And it was awesome.

Cover Story

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 Cover Story. It starred Elizabeth "Jessie Spano" Berkley as a magazine editor. Go ahead and laugh. I did. Anyway, Jessie Spano is the editor of some magazine that I guess was supposed to be like Vanity Fair, in that it covered celebrities and scandal, but wasn't a tabloid. Their newsstands sales were down, so they needed a big cover story -- hencethe title of the movie. I also learned what a magazine editor does. She circles some things with a red marker, and then crosses out others. She stands in front of a bunch of cover mock-ups and talks to her staff. And she wears really slutty clothes, but offsets the skank factor by wearing glasses. All of this is done in a montage fashion. Anyway, the actual plot was confusing, but it involved an anonymous informant sending journal pages to the magazine that implicated some sort of crime and a love affair or something. And Jessie Spano figured out that it involved Jason "Brandon Walsh" Priestley and his brother, who were financing a new dam with their mob connections. Like, who pitched this movie, and then got to that part of the plot, without making anyone laugh? A dam? Financed by the mob? And this is the heart of the movie? So Jessie wants an interview with Brandon, but he's a recluse, so she works on his brother. And she goes back to Brandon and his brother's house (they live together?), and the brother starts hitting on her, and Jessie flirts back, and then he tells her that they are going to make love together, and instead of bursting out laughing, she gets pissed off and clocks him with a statue of Don Quixote (could I make that up?), and he ends up dead. So in most movies, the trial would be the rest of the film, but this one went on and on and it was totally unclear why Jessie would be acquitted of the murder charges, and why she would then start an affair with Brandon, and why her gay sidekick kept letting you know he was gay in every scene by talking about how he doesn't like women and he loves fashion. And then somehow Costas Mandylor got involved, and he was a cop and also Jessie's ex-boyfriend. And then just about everyone died, including Brandon Walsh, and Jessie quit the magazine and her sidekick got the editor position, and Jessie and Costas Mandylor ran off together and lived happily ever after. And I'm still not quite sure how we got from point A to point B, but it was awesome.