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.