Seduction in a Small Town

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 called Seduction in a Small Town, although the title isn't really appropriate because it wasn't really about a seduction, although it was set in a small town, so they get it half right. Anyway, Half-Pint Ingalls, her husband, and their two kids move from the big city back to the husband's hometown, and start farming. There's a lucrative venture. And Half-Pint has a heart condition and one kid has asthma, so for a while I thought it was going to be a movie about how farmers don't have health insurance, but apparently they were able to pay for doctor visits out of pocket or something. So Half-Pint feels like an outsider, because it's a small town, so the residents are judgmental and gossipy, like people in big cities aren't also judgmental and gossipy. But Half-Pint was kind of a bitch, not to be judgmental and gossipy or anything. Although I am from a small town, so it's probably in my nature. But then a new woman moves to town, played by Joely Fisher, using a horrible Southern accent for no apparent reason, and Half-Pint befriends her because they are both outsiders. So Joely Fisher has some sort of secret shady past, as you do, and she tries to seduce Half-Pint's husband, which I guess is the seduction of the title, but it's like five minutes out of the whole movie, and it doesn't work, so it's really more like character-building than a plot point. She is also creepily overly involved with Half-Pint's kids. The final straw comes when Joely asks Half-Pint and her hubby (let's just call him Manly) for some money, which they don't have to give, because Half-Pint claims that they have six mortgages on their home, like, what bank would approve mortgages #5 and #6? On a farm, where only Manly worked, as far as I could tell, so it clearly wasn't a big-time operation. Anyway, Joely gets pissed off and reports Half-Pint to Social Services for child abuse, and she manages to talk the local harpies into swearing statements as well, because one time Half-Pint grabbed her son's arm outside the Piggly Wiggly to keep him from running into traffic. The Social Services woman is new to the job, and goes way overboard in trying to make the case, especially the scene where they totally botch confiscating the children and placing them in foster homes. It was like the FBI at Waco, and the Social Services lady was Janet Reno. Anyway, if the director knew anything about pacing, that would have been the big conflict, and the movie would have been resolved about half an hour later, but instead there was all this crap where the kids came back, and then were confiscated again, and Half-Pint had to take two psych exams, and there was a lightning storm and Half-Pint's barn burned down, and whatever! Just get to the part where Joely Fisher is revealed to be a lunatic, people! So then Half-Pint goes to Joely's hometown and finds out that she's a lunatic, and exposes her as such to the local harpies. And then the movie is STILL not over, because there's some rigmarole where Half-Pint can't get her kids back right away due to bureaucracy (always an exciting plot twist! Ooh, the tape, it is so red!) but she does get her kids back, and then the locals help her to rebuild her barn to make up for falsely accusing her of child abuse, and Half-Pint was still kind of a bitch about it, like, didn't Reverend Alden teach her about forgiveness between endless repetitions of "Bringing in the Sheaves"? So it was awesome.

Starting Over

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 the Puppy Bowl on Animal Planet, but there's not much to say about that, except that puppies are cute. So instead, I'll tell you about the most awesome non-puppy-related thing I saw on TV last week, which was an episode of Starting Over. The show was losing me for a while, but this week totally sucked me back in. First, there is a woman who has amnesia, like, who knew that really existed outside of soap operas? And while she thinks she got it due to encephalitis or something, the doctors are starting to suspect that she got it due to a traumatic incident that she doesn't want to recall. And now she's trying to figure out what that traumatic incident might be. Dramatic! And there's also a woman who is the butchiest butch that ever butched (she's a prison guard, okay?) who is divorced (from a man) with eight kids and wants to learn to be more feminine or something. Her whole situation is just weird, and I suspect that more and more interesting details are going to leak out, like how last week she admitted that she doesn't wear makeup because her father told her that only whores do. But the most awesome episode last week involved Cassie, a high-school dropout and recovering alcoholic who gave up a baby for adoption and is now trying to find him. A few weeks back, the women in the house were all talking about people they admire, and for some reason, Cassie is a huge John Davidson fan. Who? Yeah. John Davidson, former host of That's Incredible. Cassie finds him inspiring. So, the night before she had to take the GED, the life coaches arranged for Cassie to get a visit from John Davidson. And she freaked out! And even John Davidson was kind of like, "Really? Me?" And Cassie explained how, in a dark period of her life (which means all of it), she saw him on TV and decided to write him a letter, and he sent her an autographed picture that said, "You're Incredible." And you could see John Davidson thinking, "Okay, we sent those out to everyone, and I never actually signed them, you FREAK!" But he had to be nice. So then, he sang a song to her, about how she was a ship and she would determine her own course, and he was like talk-singing at the end, and it was hilarious. And then he left, but it was awesome that (a) someone is that big of a freak over John Davidson of all people, and (b) that even John Davidson was confused as to why she loved him so much. So that was awesome.