Little House: "Little Women"

So the Most Awesome Thing I saw on TV last week was an episode of Little House on the Prairie which, you know how on The Simpsons, the first few minutes of the episode are some random thing that has nothing to do with the main storyline? This was kind of like that because Willie Oleson and his two henchmen wouldn't let Mary and Laura and a redshirt named Ginny down the road to school because Willie was pretending to be Robin Hood. So then Laura beat Willie's ass (which is even funnier because in real life, Laura and Willie are brother and sister along with Darlene from Roseanne) and Miss Beadle told them not to act out the books they read in school unless everyone consents to play their roles ahead of time which is some weird Antioch College bullshit, so Mary the brown-noser suggests that they all do plays of their favorite books like how many books did they read per year in their one-room schoolhouse and how did they afford all the books anyway when Laura and Mary couldn't even afford a penny for a pad of paper on the first day of school?

So then Laura and Ginny and Mary are trying to decide what book to act out and Ginny suggests Little Women and Nellie is all lurking nearby because no one wants her to be in their group and Nellie jumps in and basically takes over the whole thing and Mary is about to tell her to bug off but Ginny is entranced by the idea of seeing Nellie's parlor (is that a double entendre?) so they agree to do it. So Harriet writes up the play and makes Nellie the star even though she's playing Meg who wasn't even the main character in the book, but that becomes clear later.

Meanwhile, Ginny's mom is a bitter widow who won't let any men come calling even though there's one dude, Mr. Wakefield, who's also a widower and trying to get up on Ginny's mom by hanging out with Ginny and calling her young 'un and whatnot but Ginny's mom is not having it. So Ginny begs her mom to come see their play at school but Ginny's mom claims she can't come because she doesn't have a nice enough dress like anyone cares but Harriet Oleson.

So then Harriet orders a wig for Nellie to wear during the play, and it costs about a million dollars (or, in pioneer dollars, $7) and Ginny is overly interested in the fact that the wig man buys hair and if you didn't see this plot twist coming a mile away, I don't know what to tell you. Also there's a scene where Laura steals Ma's mop and puts it on her head since they can't afford a wig and Ma and Pa totally laugh at her because she apparently caught Carrie's slowness that day, because seriously, a mop? So the day of the play, Ginny gives her mom a new dress and Ginny's mom thinks that Mr. Wakefield paid for it and refuses it like nice parenting, Ginny's mom, and way to not even notice that Ginny refuses to take off her bonnet. So Ginny's all crying and Mr. Wakefield comes upon her (doesn't he work?) and promises to get Ginny's mom to come to the play.

At the schoolhouse, Willie's group has to go first, and they're supposed to do Tom Sawyer but Willie couldn't steal any tobacco from the Mercantile to give his group members so they bail on him and dump paint on his head. Waa waaaaaaaaaah. Also, Willie comes into the school and totally drips paint all over the place and I don't know who had to clean that shit up but it better not have been Miss Beadle. Ginny's mom and Mr. Wakefield slip in after that. So then Laura's group goes and of course they are doing the scene where it's revealed that Jo sold her hair to help pay for Marmee's trip to see their father in the hospital and Laura was Beth and Mary was Marmee and Nellie was Meg and Ginny was Jo and no one was Amy so they couldn't even include the one good line where Amy tells Jo that her hair was her one beauty. So Ginny takes off her bonnet and she sold her hair to the wig man, surprise! And Mary and Laura are all breaking character and questioning her about her hair like nice professionalism there, Ingalls girls. And Nellie's the only one who's trying to keep the scene going but they tell her to stuff it and force Ginny to admit in front of the whole town that she sold her hair to pay for her mother's dress, like how is that good manners? Couldn't they have had that conversation privately? So Ginny's mother is all humbled and agrees to date Mr. Wakefield finally and everyone in town approves except probably Harriet who shelled out for Nellie's really expensive wig for no good reason and it doesn't even matter because Ginny is never seen nor heard from again so maybe Mr. Wakefield killed the whole family in their sleep or something. But it was awesome.

Little House: "The Love of Johnny Johnson"

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 an early episode of Little House where a new boy named Johnny Johnson moved to Walnut Grove. He was ugly and had a head like Frankenstein, so I immediately assumed that he was a nephew or illegitimate son of Doc Baker, but he wasn't. He also wore the tightest overalls this side of Studio 54 or some roller boogie movie. Anyway, even though he was super-old, Laura fell in love with him and started plotting to get him to fall in love with her, and for a second I thought it was going to be the episode where Laura puts apples down the front of her dresses to simulate big boobs and then goes up to write on the board and one of the apples falls out, which was awesome, but it wasn't that episode. Instead, Laura just stared at Johnny Johnson like a creepy stalker, but Johnny had the hots for Mary, which makes sense, because Mary was a hottie back in the day, even if she was kind of a prude and no fun besides. So Laura asked Ma how she snared Pa, and Ma spun some bullshit about kindred spirits, and so Laura asked Johnny on a picnic, and he agreed to go, but then spent the whole time pumping Laura for information about Mary. So Laura got pissed at Mary, because it was somehow Mary's fault that Johnny didn't want to date someone like seven years younger than he was who hadn't hit puberty yet. So Johnny carves Mary's initials into the Sweetheart Tree, and Laura gets pissed at Mary yet again, and Mary gets pissed at Johnny because she doesn't even like him, and Pa gets pissed at Johnny for daring to be sweet on one of his girls, and Ma gets pissed at Pa for being such a buffoon, and Carrie pisses herself, because she's kind of slow, and in the end Pa has a gentle talk with Laura down by the creek and spins another bullshit story about how Ma was an awkward little girl who blossomed into a beautiful woman and he fell in love with her when what he should have said was that Laura shouldn't waste her time with boys who just aren't into her, but then we would have never had the Manly saga, so I guess it all worked out in the end. And it was awesome.

Maximum Exposure

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. You know how sometimes you're just flipping through the channels, and you find one of those home video shows, and you know it's going to be really dumb and/or anticlimactic, but you watch it anyway, because there's nothing else on? So that's sort of how I came to watch Maximum Exposure last week. Apparently, each episode has a theme, and the theme of this episode was drunk people. Given the show I recap, I figured there wouldn't be anything on there I haven't seen, and I was mostly right, but there were a few clips that were awesome. In the first, a really drunk guy gets pursued by a police car – while driving a lawnmower. And he fell off the lawnmower in super-slow motion, and the cops chasing him were just giggling their asses off. So that was awesome. And the second clip was a drunk guy who had been pulled over and he was wearing cutoff jean shorts and no shirt with work boots, just to give you the visual, and the cop must have asked him to perform some part of the sobriety test, and drunk guy picked up a GIANT orange traffic cone, and held it up like a megaphone and just yelled at the cop, "NOOOO!" Come on. Picture a guy using a giant traffic cone as a megaphone. It's funny. But it gets better. The next guy in a similar situation took a giant traffic cone and put it on his head. So it came down to, like, his elbows. And then he started doing the field sobriety test as though he totally didn't have a cone on his head. So he was touching his nose and walking a straight line. With a giant cone on his head. So he was really just touching the cone where his nose would be. And he concluded his performance by doing a little dance, and I wish I could demonstrate the dance for you, but just imagine someone who can't lift his arms up much due to having a giant traffic cone on his head shaking his arms about and kind of doing the Twist. Because it was awesome.

Little House: "Goodbye Mrs. Wilder"

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 one of the later episodes of Little House, after Laura got married but before James (Jason Bateman! My crush begins!) and Cassandra showed up. So anyway, Laura was teaching the students about something stupid, and none of them knew the answers, and she was, like, the worst teacher ever with her leading questions and inappropriate anger, and of course Harriet Olson picked that moment to show up because some guy from the state board was coming, and his visit would determine whether the school got additional funding. So Harriet called a meeting of the school board (Pa, of course, Doc Baker, the Olsons, and two randoms) and argued that they needed to upgrade the curriculum and include French and art appreciation and Pa was like, "Why do farmers need art appreciation?" which, way to encourage education just for bettering yourself, Pa, and Laura said she couldn't really teach those subjects because apparently she was incapable of having the Pony Express or whatever deliver a book on those subjects, reading it herself, and then teaching the students, so of course Harriet stepped up and said she'd do it and then Laura got pissy and quit on the spot, and I really thought this was going to be the episode that Laura revealed she was pregnant because she was being such a bitch. And then I remembered that Laura's pregnancy was revealed in the same episode where Ma thought she was pregnant, but it was really "the change," thus leading to (on my initial viewing at like eight years old) an awkward conversation between me and my mother about the facts of life, and particularly, menopause. So Harriet took over the school and made the kids dress in uniforms, and Albert outsmarted her by putting coal dust on his ankles to simulate black stockings, like, wouldn't the fact that his leg hair was totally poking out be her first clue? Meanwhile, Laura was using her newfound free time to cook elaborate meals for Almanzo, who kind of hated them, but tried to be nice, but Bitch On Wheels Laura must have been taking lessons from Old School Nellie because she got pissy and flounced out, and Almanzo had a hilarious callback joke to the cinnamon chicken incident. And then Albert found out that some other kids were planning to screw up Harriet's big day in front of the guy from the state, so he ratted them out to Laura and she went into the school and took over to help Harriet out, and they got their funding, and no one cared about French anymore, or art, because they were just poor farmers who were never going to leave the town limits, or have to talk to anyone from Canada or whatever, and it was awesome.

Mother Knows Best

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 Mother Knows Best. It starred Maggie Seaver from Growing Pains as the mother of Emily Valentine from 90210. And Maggie was all rich and snooty and stuff and was always bugging Emily to find a good man and get married. And Emily worked as a nurse so Maggie was always telling her to marry a doctor, although it does seem kind of weird that the family was so rich and lived in a mansion and then Emily worked as a hospital nurse. It just doesn't seem like a profession that someone from a wealthy family would have, but maybe she had a calling or something. So anyway, Maggie totally responds to a personal ad in the paper and sets Emily up on a date with Jake from Melrose Place, and of course Emily is all annoyed at first but she ends up falling in love with Jake, who is a mechanic who owns his own shop. And Maggie is all pissed off because she doesn't want her daughter dating some dude who works with his hands, even though Maggie set it up in the first place. So Maggie does various things to try to get Emily to break it off with Jake, but they don't work, and Emily and Jake end up getting married and having a baby and cutting all ties with Maggie, who gets really nutty and decides to hire a hit man to kill Jake. And the whole time all this is going on, there's this really bloopy music in the background, like it's a slapstick comedy or something, and I think they were going for a To Die For vibe, but it just didn't work out. So the hit man Maggie hires turns out to be a cop, but they need to pretend Jake was killed so that Maggie will pay the money and they can arrest her, so Emily has to call Jake's mom and say that Jake is dead to keep the charade going, which seemed kind of mean and unnecessary. But then Maggie gets arrested and Jake and Emily live happily ever after and it was all based on a true story, and it was awesome.

90210

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 every episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 on Soapnet. I watch it every weekday! Right now, they are in the episodes just before Brenda leaves the show. So Andrea is totally having a premature baby, which I think they had to do because they didn't make Andrea pregnant on the show until Gabrielle Carteris was about twenty months pregnant already, so they had to have Andrea give birth prematurely or else it would be really obvious. And my favorite thing to do after every one of Andrea's lines is yell, "Because you're forty!" I can't believe she got hired for the role. And then Steve was dating crazy Laura, the actress who tried to commit suicide in the theater. And Brandon and Kelly are totally cuckolding Dylan, and Dylan's fake stepmother is scamming him, and every day Brenda has a different hairstyle and hair color, and David is singing with Babyface and making out with Ariel in a limo, and Steve is wearing hightops everywhere in case a basketball game breaks out, and Nat is whatever and Jim and Cindy are whatever and I know that pretty soon, Val shows up and I can't wait for her first episode where you think she's all nice and sweet and then at the end she SMOKES POT! I was so scandalized the first time I saw that episode. And it was awesome.

Talk to Me

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 Talk to Me starring Ms. Yasmine Bleeth as a naïve talk-show producer who joins the production staff for a Jerry Springer-esque talk show. The Jerry Springer character was played, of course, by Peter Scolari. Because, why not? So anyway, Ms. Yasmine Bleeth got taken under the wing of the senior producer, played by Veronica Hamel with an awesome '80s permed bob. I totally had that hairstyle in eighth grade! So Ms. Yasmine Bleeth needs to come up with her own episode idea, and she decides to follow up on a previous episode they had done on prostitutes, and investigate the prostitutes' families and find out how they became whores and shit. So the one whore she decides to investigate further is played by Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley fame! And she's all addicted to heroin and has a scuzzy pimp boyfriend and her mom and grandmother want her to get help, but she won't. And Ms. Yasmine Bleeth keeps compromising her principles more and more and finally Jenny Lewis commits suicide and Ms. Yasmine Bleeth blames herself, which she should because it was totally her fault. So Ms. Yasmine Bleeth quits the show, and in the end, she finds out that Peter Scolari has already contacted the mother and grandmother to do a follow-up show, and Ms. Yasmine Bleeth is all disenchanted, like, you work in the entertainment industry, so just give up your ideals and youthful enthusiasm and start smoking a pack a day and become cynical like the rest of us. Which is awesome.

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.

My Super Sweet 16

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 show on MTV called My Super Sweet 16, which chronicles some ridiculously oversized party given by teenage girls. So there have been two episodes so far, but the most awesome one was definitely the "coming-out party" given by two girls named Jacqueline and Lauren. So Jacqueline, a Kristin Davis lookalike, is both beautiful and sweet, if a bit spoiled. And Lauren is a total diva and bitch. And clearly completely jealous of her friend. This was best exemplified by a sequence where Saks Fifth Avenue shut down an entire floor to accommodate their dress-shopping trip, and Jacqueline tried on dress after dress and looked awesome in all of them, while Lauren just creepily stared at her and looked pissed off. So finally Jacqueline settles on this black BCBG minidress, and Lauren goes and finds almost the same dress and announces that she's going to buy it. The fuck? Bitch is crazy. And they were getting way too much enjoyment out of handing out their invitations to an exclusive seven-hundred-person list, and apparently people ended up scalping invitations and trying to forge VIP passes. And these ballsy twelve-year-old girls tried to bluff their way in, which was pretty awesome. Oh! And I forgot to mention that they charged money to get in! How fucking tacky is that! They claimed they were giving the money "to breast cancer" (Breast Cancer says thanks!), but that's like charging a cover at your wedding or something. And the editors made sure we understood the disparity between Lauren and Jacqueline by showing their preparations for the party; Lauren bitched at her father (who was paying for the party) and took cell-phone calls while getting her makeup done and hair extensions put in, while Jacqueline went for a jog with her cousins and practiced the piano. So the night of the party, Pauly Shore showed up. Of course he did! What else does he have to do? And he totally hit on the birthday girls. And then the band started playing and people started moshing, and Jacqueline got dragged into it and got punched in the face. At the end of the night, Jacqueline was happy and walked around and thanked everyone, including the cops, while Lauren just bitched that it was nothing special and her feet hurt. And it was awesome.

The Surreal Life

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 premiere episode of the new season of The Surreal Life. I'm somewhat ashamed to say that I think I've seen every episode of that show, not because I'm all that interested, but because I somehow always end up watching it at, like, 3:00 AM. So I watched the premiere, and I am so glad that I did. First to show up was the wrestler formerly known as Chyna, and I don't know if you have seen the pictures circulating on the internet of her private parts, but if you haven't, avoid them at all costs, because I am scarred for life. For life! So Chyna immediately grabbed the one single room, ignoring the fact that everything in the room (closet, bed, toilet, chairs) were all really scaled down. And then she got drunk. So the others (Peter Brady, Da Brat, Jane Wiedlin, Adrienne Curry, Marcus Schenkenburg, and Mini-Me) all showed up. And I knew it was going to be awesome because Mini-Me drives one of those little motorized scooters everywhere. So obviously, the room with the scaled-down furniture was supposed to be for Mini-Me, and he got pissed, but Chyna wouldn't give it up. And she was standing in there next to this miniature closet, going, "What? Why are you guys saying this room is for [Mini-Me]? Why can't it be my room?" She finally agreed to give it up. So then for dinner, Adrienne Curry served sushi off her naked body and Mini-Me was totally wasted and like, rubbing her nipple, which was creepy. So he passed out in his bed, and Adrienne and Jane decided to go naked in the hot tub. Peter Brady told Mini-Me that the girls were naked, and Mini-Me came back out. So then they're all sitting around (fully clothed) and Mini-Me is totally rubbing up on Peter Brady's thigh and patting him and loving him up as they sit together on this bench. And then Mini-Me totally passes out and nearly falls off the bench. So Peter Brady sets him back up, and he passes out a few more times, so Peter Brady ends up carrying him like a baby back into the house, which was hilarious. So then later, Da Brat gets up to sleep on the couch, because her roommate Chyna is snoring. On the way, she sees Mini-Me, stark naked, sitting on his scooter in the exercise room. So she asks if he's okay, and she notices that he's taking a whiz in the corner. You haven't lived until you've seen Mini-Me, naked, peeing in the corner while sitting on his scooter. I hope he didn't mess up the electrical system. So Da Brat gets Peter Brady, but what do you do in that situation? Laugh. Which is what everyone did. And it was awesome.

Law & Order

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. This week, I have been watching a lot (and I do mean a lot) of Law & Order in my own little memorial tribute to Jerry Orbach. And besides Briscoe, my favorite character on the show is Adam Schiff, as portrayed by Steven Hill. I mostly like Hill because his predominant character attribute is that he's constantly eating, and always appears constipated. One of my favorite games to play while watching (besides yelling out, "Objection, your honor! He's leading the witness!" during the courtroom scenes) is, after every one of Schiff's lines, adding something like, "Boy, I'm so backed up. Do you have any Metamucil?" So you can imagine why I end up watching the show alone. Anyway, out of the many, many episodes that I watched this week, I think my favorite one was the one where these people adopt a baby and they claim it died when it fell out of its crib, but then it turns out that they have a creepy, crazy older adopted son who punched the baby in the head. And they keep the kid locked up in a room where the walls are smeared with poop and then they bring him in for a session with Skoda, the psychiatrist, who is probably my second-favorite character on the show. But then it turns out that the baby was already dead when the crazy kid punched him, so then the prosecutors go after the adoption broker and the rest of the episode is pretty traditional. But there were three things that made this episode awesome. One was the crazy kid that they kept locked in his shit room. Two was Skoda, who I sort of have a crush on, even though he played racist evil Schillinger on Oz. And three was that, at one point, Schiff was having an outdoor conference and, for no known reason, he was wearing a white fedora. Why? Why a fedora, and why was it white? Did he think he was going to wander into an episode of Miami Vice? That hat was awesome, and so was the episode. I'll miss you, Jerry Orbach, but you will live on forever in reruns on TNT. And this is where Wing can tell you about her favorite episode.

Little House: "Mortal Mission"

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. I'll tell you, between the holidays and all of the repeats for the last few weeks, television has not been all that awesome. But I did see an episode of Little House that I had actually never seen before, so that was pretty awesome. See, this rancher had some sick sheep, but he still needed to sell them for slaughter or his farm would go under. And the sheep totally had the ANTHRAX! And every time they said ANTHRAX it was in all-caps and then there would be a portentous musical cue. So of course, Ma and Mrs. Garvey both buy some of this cheap lamb for dinner, because they are poor, as does pretty much everyone else in town. And then they all start coming down with ANTHRAX! So Laura and Albert get it, and Nellie, Willie, and Nels Olsen, and Adam and various blind school students, and Andrew and Alice Garvey. They bring all the sick people to the blind school to use as a temporary hospital. So then Pa and Jonathan Garvey get home from wherever the hell they were and Doc Baker gets them to head to Springfield and get the medicine that's coming on the train. Meanwhile, Really Angry Dad gets all upset that his son is dead and tries to kill the rancher, who has also come down with the ANTHRAX, and really, how dumb was he to eat his own tainted lamb? But the rancher is already dead, because he was a bad person. So then Pa and Jonathan are coming home with the medicine, and they get hijacked by a wild-eyed homesteader who wants all the medicine for himself and his family, and takes Pa and Jonathan hostage. So finally the homesteader's wife betrays him, because he's crazy, and Pa and Jonathan take the medicine to the blind school. So a few people died, but none of the main characters. And then, once the worst was over, Hester Sue started singing about Jesus, because she's black. And it was awesome.

Little House: "Rage"

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 an episode of Little House that I had actually never seen before, probably because it was one of the later ones with Shannen Doherty, which are usually crap. Anyway, Shannen Doherty's friend is sweet on a boy, but her pa, Robert Loggia, doesn't approve. And then Robert Loggia has to go to Sleepy Eye to get a bank loan so he didn't lose his farm (which would be like the third business he's lost), and the bank totally turns him down. So Robert Loggia loses it and comes home and shoots his wife and daughter, which was kind of a gritty storyline for Little House, but his family doesn't die. So of course, they have to involve Laura somehow. So all the town men (like Almanzo and Mr. Edwards and Nels Olsen) go out looking for Robert Loggia, but Robert Loggia goes to Laura's house. And he thinks Laura is his wife, and Shannen Doherty is his daughter. So Laura plays along until she can figure out what to do, but then Robert Loggia finds Laura's baby, and he thinks his daughter had a secret baby with the boy she liked, and he gets all pissed that everyone lied to him. So somehow, Laura convinces him to go with her to the boy's house and confront him, and while they go out to the barn, Shannen Doherty hides in the storm cellar with the baby. But then Laura clocks Robert Loggia with a piece of wood and makes a run for it. So of course, Robert Loggia pops back up because she didn't shoot him or anything, and now he's really mad. And that part was actually kind of scary. So they go back in the house and he can't find Shannen Doherty and the baby, and Robert Loggia and Laura get in a big fight and he knocks over a lantern and starts a fire. So Laura totally panics and yells out that Shannen Doherty and the baby are in the storm cellar, because she's afraid the fire will trap them. Meanwhile, it was like the smallest fire ever, and Robert Loggia put it out by stomping on it, so good one, Laura. Finally, Laura convinces Robert Loggia to let Shannen Doherty go get some water from the well, and Shannen starts running around looking for help. And Robert Loggia has a moment of lucidity where he realizes that Laura isn't his wife. But then the men of town show up and shoot Robert Loggia dead. All in all, it was pretty dark for Little House, which was awesome.

Moment of Truth: A Mother's Deception

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 made-for-television movie called Moment of Truth: A Mother's Deception starring Joan Van Ark. She played a wife and mother who tried to get a promotion at the bank where she worked, but got turned down because she didn't ask for it quickly enough and they didn't know she was interested. So for some reason, this sends her into a downward spiral. Plus, her husband is kind of a dick and her daughter is leaving for college. So she starts having back pain and her doctor refers her to a pain specialist, which is a nice way of saying that he thinks she's loony. So the pain specialist is clearly a cult leader, and here's how you know. First, he works at a place called The Institute. How would she not know that was a cult? And also, he has wind chimes. Come on. Cult. And also he's constantly giving her back rubs and whispering to her and shit. So he convinces Joan Van Ark to go to The Institute, and he implants the suggestion that her husband used to beat her, even though he didn't, so she leaves home for good. So then her daughter and her husband contact a cult expert and they kidnap Joan and take her to a remote cabin in the woods (as you do) and try to deprogram her. And the cult leader finds the cabin and there's a big confrontation and of course, her family wins out and they live happily ever after. Can you imagine their dinner conversation in the following year? "Hey, Mom. Remember when you were in that creepy cult and accused Dad of beating you? Good times. That was hilarious." So that was awesome.

Oprah: "How Clean is Your House?"

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 an episode of Oprah that aired on Thursday. Ostensibly, it was promoting the show How Clean Is Your House?, which I've watched before, so I was familiar with the two British ladies who go into disgusting houses and show a nationwide audience how filthy people can be. So Oprah had it set up for the ladies to go into this woman's apartment and clean it up. But, oh my Lord. Okay, to set it up, this lady looked like a totally average member of Oprah's audience -- well-dressed, nice jewelry, expensive haircut. But her house was...well, let me describe it. First, there was dog poop all over the place, and I do mean all over the place, including in her bed. Like tons of it. Like, weeks' worth. Plus, she had two birds who had escaped their cage and she couldn't get them back in, so they were also just freely pooping wherever the mood struck. And then there was a flat of strawberries sitting on the dining-room table. Where it had been for two years. The cleaning ladies thought it was a box of dead mice. Plus, there was the usual crap strewn all over the place, and boxes, and whatnot. In her kitchen, she had a loaf of bread that was so old it had liquefied, and a dirty pot that contained maggots. It was about at this point that I realized the woman was not just your garden-variety slob. She was clearly mentally ill in some way, and it started to be kind of sad. She had putrefying meat in her refrigerator, and the toilet was so dirty that it was black. I'm just describing the tip of the iceberg, but I have seriously never seen a filthier place, and I once visited an old bachelor farmer who owned like thirty-seven cats. So then Oprah pretty much derailed the show to tell the woman that she clearly had mental problems and needed to get serious help, and the woman was all in denial about it, and Oprah was like, "No, for real. Get help." ["Kim, you forgot the part where she had been married and divorced six times, so clearly, her problems extended to many areas of her life. And how she kept standing up and asking the audience for 'peace and blessings' and they were like hissing at her because they hated her so much." -- Wing Chun] All I can say is that if you didn't see it, you should watch for a repeat because it was awesome.

Dying to Dance

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 TV movie on the Lifetime Movie Network called Dying to Dance. First of all, the title is awesome, and I bet you could figure out the whole plot just from the title. Take a second. I'll wait. Okay, it starred Robin Scorpio as a young dancer, and her parents were Gale Leery and (wait for it!) Rick Springfield. How awesome is that! So Robin Scorpio gets into some prestigious ballet company, even though her boobs were way too big for that to happen, not to mention that she's way too short. Oh, and she's also not a good dancer. So then there are the obligatory scenes where there's a mean guy in charge and a stern but kind ballet teacher, and bitchy girls in the locker room, and the sassy black best friend, and the straight male dancer, and you're like, "Wait, is this Center Stage?" and then you realize it's not, because it's not that good. And then Robin Scorpio's mentor drops dead during rehearsal from anorexia or something related to diet pills. So then you'd think Robin Scorpio would realize that the ballet company was bullshit, but instead she keeps getting crap about her "line," which is code for "fat ass." So she stops eating and starts taking "herbals" and Gale Leery is all worried about her and Rick Springfield is a workaholic so he really doesn't care and there's an awesome scene where Robin Scorpio decides that she needs to do a thousand stomach crunches, and they show the clock ticking and it's an hour and forty-five minutes later and she's STILL DOING CRUNCHES, like, is that even possible? Then Robin passes out and has to go to the hospital, but she manages to convince everyone that it was a momentary lapse, and she goes back to dancing because she's...wait for it...dying to dance. So then Gale Leery starts snooping around Robin's room and finds a shrine to anorexia which features photos of Robin Scorpio with "Fat Pig" written on them and shit like that, so she pulls Robin Scorpio out of the company and threatens the mean head guy with a lawsuit because he sent Robin Scorpio a letter telling her to lose weight and then there's a big benefit for the dead mentor and Mrs. Dead Mentor gets up and gives a big speech about how terrible eating disorders are and then they do a dance from The Lion King or something similarly ethnic and Robin Scorpio is cured! Which was awesome.

The Mansion

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 is a reality show on TBS called The Mansion. I don't know why I have such a love for off-brand reality shows, but I really enjoy them. Maybe it's because there's no hype, or maybe it's because I often feel that I am the only person in the world watching them, but I can't get enough. Anyway, in this particular show, eight people moved into a mansion in Ohio (Ohio!), and each week they elect a foreman and renovate one room in the mansion, with time and budget constraints. Any money saved on budget goes to the foreman. Then some judges come through and decide how good it is, and reward the team with a paycheck of up to $10,000. They divide the paycheck into eight unequal amounts, and the foreman has to hand out the checks. There are no eliminations, which I also enjoy. And it's hosted by Mark L. Walberg, which is always fun. Anyway, the best episode so far featured the tough-talking New York native as foreman, and she was kind of incompetent, but not as incompetent as most of the others. And one of the guys was told that if he would just disappear from the job for, like, twelve hours, the whole team would get bonus money, so he did. And then at the end, when everyone found out why he disappeared (he claimed he was injured and went to the hospital), no one was even happy about it! They were all still pissed off. And then the team got their payday, and the foreman decided to keep all the money for herself, so no one got any money that week! The balls on her! And the weirdest part is that no one seems to care about it or even bring it up in future episodes. Since that happened, we've had a couple hooking up and breaking up, many fights, and lots of drama. Check it out on Saturday mornings (no, seriously) on TBS, because it is awesome.

The Blue Lagoon

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 airing of The Blue Lagoon on TBS. I remember watching this movie as a kid, and being kind of thrilled because it seemed dirty, even though I was watching it on network television so all the dirty parts were cut out. Now that I think about it, I don't know if I've ever seen the uncut version. I'll have to remedy that. Anyway, in case you haven't seen it, it's the story of two kids, Richard and Emmeline, who are shipwrecked on a desert island with a crusty old dude named Paddy. See, they had to have the old dude along so it would be plausible that these kids could even remotely survive into their teens, and once they become teens...look out! Richard is constantly playing with himself, and Emmeline just thinks about God. But then they totally do it, although I was kind of wondering how they figured that one out. I mean, I know it's natural and all, but if you had no idea what sex was, or what was going on, and yet you had some sense of morality from being a child in the Victorian era, the whole sex thing just seemed implausible to me. And yet, Emmeline gets pregnant, even though she has no idea that she's pregnant. And they are remarkably not freaked out when the baby starts moving. I would think I ate a bug or something and it was growing inside me. So Emmeline gives birth and there's this mysterious tribe on the other side of the island, but that never really amounts to anything, which is pretty lame, because I assume they were cannibals. And then they go to a nearby island to get food or something and Emmeline just lets the baby wander into the boat and they drift out to sea together, and Richard tries to rescue them, but he loses the oars in the process because he's being chased by a shark. It was totally Emmeline's fault, and she was pretty whiny the whole time anyway. So then the baby eats these poison berries, and then Richard and Emmeline decide to kill themselves since they're lost at sea anyway and now their baby is dead. And then they get rescued by Albert Einstein (or someone who looked just like him) and they're not dead, just sleeping. Which seems like a huge cop-out and made me wonder if they added that ending after test audiences thought it was too depressing. Because just having them die would have been awesome.

Clean House

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 an episode of Clean House, which is the Style Network equivalent of TLC's "clear out the clutter show" Clean Sweep. First of all, Clean House is awesome because it's hosted by Niecy Nash, who rules. And they go in and help some homeowners clear out their house and set up a garage sale. The reason this show is better than Clean Sweep (besides Niecy) is because the homeowners can only use the proceeds of their garage sale to pay for improvements to their home by an organizer and designer, so there's a built-in incentive.

This week, the team went to help a mother and a daughter. Excuse me, a horrible awful shrew of a woman, and her emotionally abused daughter. This woman, from the moment the show began, blamed her college-aged daughter for their clutter, and refused to accept even one iota of blame, not even for teaching or allowing her daughter to let things get so bad. ["She also had nasty turkey wattles on her neck and a terrible haircut that looked like she had never rinsed any conditioner out of her hair, like, ever, it was so flat. Not to focus on her appearance, but she was hateful, and she deserves it." -- Wing Chun] So while they were cleaning out, the daughter was somewhat reluctant to let things go, but the mother would just out-and-out refuse. Finally, after much cajoling, she gave some items up for the garage sale, but then she kept sneaking out and taking things back into the house when she thought no one was looking. It was at this point that I began actively rooting for this woman to get a room that she hated, because she did not deserve a good room. She was horrible to her daughter, repeatedly telling the daughter that she was entirely to blame, and yelling at her, pouting, stomping off, and just being a completely negative person. So they didn't make a whole lot of money at the garage sale, partly because the mother refused to give up anything that they might actually be able to sell for a decent profit. So then, the designer and organizer got to work on the living room and daughter's bedroom, which I thought both turned out very nice. And of course, the mom hated the daughter's bedroom, even though the daughter liked it. The mom kept pointing out more things for the daughter to hate, and the only thing she would admit that she liked was the closet, which had been organized, but even then, she was like, "Well, it won't stay that way." So then they went to the living room, and the mom just FLIPPED OUT and hated everything about it. Niecy tried to get the mom to admit that the only way that she would have been happy was if they had left the room exactly as it was before, and she wouldn't even admit that. So then, the show people left and clearly looked like they needed a stiff drink after dealing with that harridan for two days. What I wouldn't give to see the outtakes from that episode, where they were all like, "Seriously. I'm quitting. I can't take this bitch." That would be awesome.