Visitors of the Night

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-TV movie called Visitors of the Night and starring Markie Post and Candace "D.J. Tanner" Cameron as Markie's daughter. So D.J. was in high school and she and her mom kept fighting all the time, and then mysterious crop circles started appearing in the fields outside town. And then Markie Post went to the dentist and flipped out, so the dentist sent her to a hypnotist. And while she was hypnotized, Markie Post started having visions of aliens and space ships and being abducted. And then D.J. started disappearing for hours at a time and blacking out, so Markie Post figured out that the aliens were abducting her too. But at first, you thought maybe D.J. was part alien or something and there was this scene in school where D.J. had to give a presentation in school on physics, and I thought maybe she would turn out to be a genius because of her alien DNA, but really she just started yelling about how we're ruining the planet so I don't know what that was about. And then Markie Post figures out that both she and D.J. have been regularly abducted by aliens their whole lives, and then the spaceship comes back and Markie Post yells at the aliens to take her instead of D.J., and they do, and she finds out that the aliens have been harvesting the women's eggs to try to make a human-alien hybrid baby, but they failed because the babies don't have emotions and they can't cry or some such horseshit. So Markie Post gives this passionate speech to the aliens about how you can't raise a baby without a mother and single fathers around the world flipped off their televisions and then the aliens let her go home and she promises D.J. that it's all over and the aliens won't come back, and then in the very last scene the aliens totally come back and take Markie Post and D.J., like what kind of ending was that? I'll tell you what kind. An awesome one.

Melrose Place

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 were old episodes of Melrose Place on E! I'm not going to list off all of the things about the episodes that were awesome, because the answer would be "Everything." But here are a few highlights: Allison's gigantic jaw and constant stuffy nose; Amanda's desperate need for a hot oil treatment; Billy's mouth-breathing; Jo and Jake's complete lack of storyline and yet the writers still finding time for them to roll around naked a few times; Matt's appearance in exactly two scenes in five episodes; and best of all was the close-up on Michael's butt-clenching while kissing Kimberly on the beach. I think the moment I realized how awesome this show was occurred when Jake and Jo's storyline consisted of Jake cheating on his taxes and then realizing that it was wrong so he and Jo went to the mailbox and convinced the mailman (who was picking up the mail at midnight, for some reason) to give them back the returns. Wasn't that a storyline on The Andy Griffith Show at one point? (Minus the cheating on the tax returns, because no one in Mayberry would cheat on their taxes.) And yet, genius. Plus, butt-clenching. And it's just starting to get good because next week is the episode when Amanda buys the apartment complex, and if I recall, that's when all hell broke loose.

Who is Julia?

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 Who is Julia? on the Lifetime Movie Network. Mare Winningham played a poor woman who was just trying to take her really ugly son to see Santa Claus. And then there was Julia, this blonde woman who was like a model and married to one of the Hardy Boys, but what she really wanted was to have a baby. So Julia's at a stoplight and she sees Mare and Mare's ugly kid standing on the street corner and she's all googly over the kid, which was ridiculous because the kid was like Mini-Jack Osbourne. And then the kid starts to run out into the street because he's not only ugly but also dumb, and there's a cement truck coming and Julia hops out of her car to save the ugly kid and she gets flattened by the cement truck. And at the exact same moment Mare Winningham has, like, a brain attack and collapses. So both women are taken into the hospital and of course, the surgeons decide they're going to transplant Julia's brain into Mare Winningham's body. And Mare's poor dumb husband agrees to it because Mare is brain-dead and the surgeons are pressuring him. So then Mare/Julia is in a coma for like a year or something and finally she wakes up and she's freaked out because, you know, she has a whole new body and she looks like white-trash Mare Winningham. But with her doctor's help, she starts to get better, and then there's this really creepy subplot where she's kind of in love with her doctor and he's really inappropriately touchy with her and the Hardy Boy Husband complains and the doctor says it's all Mare/Julia's fault when he was all touching her face and shit. So then Mare/Julia and Hardy Boy Husband aren't getting along so well, so Mare/Julia runs away and ends up getting kidnapped by Mare's poor dumb husband and taken to see the ugly kid and then the poor dumb husband tries to rape her, and then Mare/Julia is all understanding about it. So then Mare/Julia goes back to her Hardy Boy Husband and then the movie just kind of ends. So the ending wasn't that awesome, but all of the medical scenes were awesome because the hospital set was about as big as my living room and Joe Don Baker was one of the doctors and the "science" behind the brain transplant made no sense at all. But after seeing a movie like that you kind of understand why Mare Winningham has fallen off the face of the earth.

The Edge of Innocence

So 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 (what else?) the Lifetime Movie Network called The Edge of Innocence starring Kellie "Becca Thatcher" Martin and James "Cyclops" Marsden.First of all, I loved this movie because every time I saw it on my list of recorded shows on my Tivo (or Ti-faux, because it's not actually a Tivo), I started singing, "I've been living on the edge of a broken heart! I don't wanna cry!" which is a song from the '80s by some chick rock band that I had all but forgotten. But anyway. In this movie, Becca was totally crazy and manic-depressive, except not really depressive but just manic, and really only manic in that she talked really fast and didn't wait for people to answer one question before she asked another. So she ran away from home and went to a carnival and rode the roller coaster because do you get it that the ups and downs of the roller coaster were like the ups and downs of her moods? So then she went on the Ferris Wheel and started hallucinating and climbed out of the car and then almost fell, so her mom sent her to the loony bin. And she met an anorexic girl named Ally, like this must be the general loony bin, because don't anorexics usually get put in a special eating disorder clinic? Or have my Lifetime movies led me astray? And there were other crazy kids there including Jamie Kennedy, who was gay, and Joshua Jackson, who had an imaginary friend, which was hilarious. But I don't think it was supposed to be. So Becca meets Cyclops, who isn't really crazy, but just bad and went to the loony bin to avoid juvie. So they fall in love and do it and then the authorities say that they can't be together until they leave the loony bin, and then they are both supposed to be released on the same day, like, what are the chances, and Cyclops gets into a fight with his hypocritical dad and doesn't get to leave. So then Cyclops pulls a knife and a bunch of the kids bust out together but two of them accidentally shoot a security guard so they go back and then Ally Anorexic gets caught when they are all running away, so she goes back. So Becca and Cyclops decide to go to Mexico, but Becca is now, like, ten days off her meds so she starts to get all crazy again, like, this movie wasn't that good when it was called Mad Love, so why make it again? So then I honestly don't remember how it ended but I think Becca threatened to kill herself again on the Ferris Wheel and Cyclops saved her and realized how sick she was, so he made her go back to the loony bin and promised to wait. Or possibly one of them died. I think I fell asleep after Josh Jackson wasn't on anymore. But the first hour was awesome. And another awesome thing you should watch is Made on MTV, because a new season just started and it is a great show.

90210/Endurance

And now it's time for The Most Awesome Thing I Saw On TV Last Week. It's actually a tie. The first most awesome thing was the episode of Beverly Hills 90210 where Kelly takes in Tara, the crazy psycho. So Tara becomes obsessed with Kelly, and the writers basically rip off Single White Female right down to the matching haircuts, boyfriend-stealing, and pet-killing, although in Kelly's case, Tara killed her goldfish, like, who cares about their goldfish that much? Anyway, Kelly tells Tara to move out, and the actress playing Tara (who also played stupid she-wolf Veruca on Buffy) looks so much like Cheri Oteri that I kept expecting the whole storyline to be a skit on SNL. So Tara pulls a gun and forces Kelly to drive to some cliff, where they were going to kill themselves via carbon monoxide poisoning. I think was the same cliff that Val threatened to jump from at one point, so they should just go ahead and name it Suicide Leap or whatever. So Kelly pretends like she really wants to die so that Tara unties her, and then Kelly grabs the gun and rolls out of the car, and then Tara goes to the nuthouse and is never, ever mentioned again like every other storyline on 90210 that was quickly forgotten, even though for most people it would be the most dramatic and unforgettable moment in their lives. But when shit like that happens every day, I guess it's not as memorable. And the second most awesome thing was this show that has been on for a few years on Saturday mornings called Endurance. It's basically a teenage version of Survivor, but better, because in addition to all of the inherent drama of the competition and the voting off and stuff, you have the inherent drama of junior high school with the crushes and the cattiness. And there is this one girl who is the most popular and everyone loves her, and she totally knows it and lords it over the others. So of course her name is Ashley. And she has a henchman in the second most popular girl. Whose name is, of course, Sabrina. And in the episode I saw, they were going to vote off the sort of awkward frizzy-haired girl. So Frizzy begged not to go, and on this show, two teams are marked for elimination and then they compete to stay by playing a hilarious version of Rock Paper Scissors. So Frizzy's team ended up winning and staying, and then Frizzy was all hugging the other girls when she got back to camp, like, those bitches tried to get rid of you and now you are hugging them? So it serves the dual purpose of being really juicy and backstabby as well as reminding me how fucking glad I am that I'm not thirteen years old anymore. Plus they have super-complicated names for everything like (I'm making these up) the Tree of Survival and the Temple of Backstabbing Bitches and stuff. It's awesome.

The Killing Secret

And now it's time for the Return of the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was a movie on (where else?) Lifetime Movie Network called The Killing Secret. It starred Emma from Kate & Allie as a cheerleader with a quarterback boyfriend. I don't really remember the boyfriend's name, so I'm just going to call him Todd, because he was such a Todd. Anyway, Todd was (unbeknownst to Emma) having an affair with Punky Brewster, who was from the wrong side of the tracks and had to sew her own clothes with special fancy buttons that she found on discount at the thrift store. So I guess because Punky was poor, Todd knocked her up, and she said she wanted to keep the baby, but Todd was all rich and shit, so he wasn't having it, so he killed her at this warehouse owned by his rich dad and dumped her body in the lake. As you do. So Punky is reported as missing and Emma joins this stupid search party for her in the woods at, like, midnight! Why wouldn't they search during the day? I don't know. So then for really contrived reasons, Emma befriended Punky's mom, and then all of Emma's friends were pissed because she was friends with a middle-aged poor woman, I guess. And then Punky's body washes ashore during a beach graduation party attended by Emma and Todd and all of their rich friends. So Todd is the main suspect but the cops can't really arrest him because while they know he was doing it with Punky, and that she was pregnant when she died, they don't have any other physical evidence. And then some crazy street guy gets arrested for the crime and everything settles down. But then Emma sees a picture of Punky wearing a shirt with fancy buttons on it and she remembers that she found a fancy button on the floor of Todd's dad's warehouse one time right after Punky went missing, so she goes to the cops, but they won't listen to her. So she decides that she needs to go to the warehouse and C.S.I. the place herself, so of course Todd shows up and tries to kill her, but then Punky's mom shows up with the cops and saves Emma and Todd gets arrested. Oh, and I forgot to mention that Todd's dad was J. Peterman from Seinfeld, which only added to the awesome-osity.

Little House: "A Matter of Faith"

Note: I did a full recap of this episode for charity here.

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw On TV This Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV this week was another episode of Little House on the Prairie, just like the first one I did. In this episode, Ma scratches her leg on a piece of wire while she's getting out of the wagon, and then Reverend Alden stops by and asks Ma to bake some pies to help raise money for a church, but the Ingalls family was supposed to go on a little overnight trip. So then Charles totally volunteers Ma to stay home and bake the pies while he takes the girls on the trip, like, maybe Ma doesn't want to bake some damn pies, Pa! So the plan is that Ma will bake pies on Saturday and then Reverend Alden will drop her off at the meadow for a family picnic on Sunday. So the whole family leaves and Ma gets to baking but the scratch on her leg is bothering her so she slaps some bread and milk on it, like, I don't know what in the hell that was supposed to do, but this was the olden days when they didn't have hydrogen peroxide at Oleson's Mercantile. And Ma is getting all sweaty and stuff, but she manages to get, like, twenty pies baked, and sets them on some shelves outside the door to cool. So Doc Baker stops by and Ma tells him about her leg and he's about to step inside and have some pie and check out the cut when a neighbor rolls up and says his son fell out of the loft, so Doc Baker takes off. And Ma, of course, volunteers to help out, but they're like, "Just bake your pies," so she does. So that night, Ma's leg is getting worse and she takes down her hair, which was kind of when you knew something was wrong, because Ma's hair was always up except for a couple of times when she was eating popcorn in bed and reading her Bible. And then there's a huge thunderstorm, so Doc Baker has to stay over at the neighbor's and never gets back to check on Ma's leg. And then the Ingalls's cow gets out of the barn and maybe if they ever fed that cow it would stay in the barn but I think it was out foraging for hay or something in the wild because I could see the cow's ribcage, it was so skinny. So Ma heads out into the storm, but the cow won't budge, and then Ma faints and lands right in a mud puddle! So she wakes up and crawls back inside. And then she's trying to make a fire to warm up and she lights some newspaper and notices a story in the paper about a family's house being robbed so she goes over and locks the door and then I think Brian DePalma directed this segment because there's lightning flashes and close-ups on Ma's eyes and all I know is when I saw it when I was, like, eight years old it was pretty fucking scary. So Ma tries to settle her nerves by reading the Bible, but she passes out on the floor.

The next morning, Reverend Alden and Mrs. Foster come by to pick Ma up, but since Ma locked the door to prevent robbery, they can't get in, and Ma is still passed out on the floor, so they assume she isn't home and take the pies and leave. And Ma wakes up and throws a rolling pin at the window and breaks it, but it's too late and they are gone, so she manages to unlock the door before passing out again. Meanwhile, the cow has wandered over to the neighbor's house (the one with the injured son), and the son offers to take the cow home, but the neighbor is all, "Let Ingalls come and get his cow if he wants it so bad!" And after Ma was so nice to him! Bastard. So then the infection in Ma's leg is really, really bad and gross and, like, blackened and stuff, so Ma starts reading the Bible for comfort or something and she reads this part about "If thine hand offend thee, cut if off" and then she goes and gets a butcher knife out of the drawer and starts boiling water and reading the Bible and then she puts the knife in the fire to sterilize it or something and then puts a tourniquet on her leg and then passes out again and I'm just thinking that the knife would in no way be able to hack through her bone, but whatever. So then Reverend Alden and Mrs. Foster find Pa and the girls at the meadow and Pa is shocked that Ma isn't with them and he gets all worried so he leaves the girls with Reverend Alden and takes off like a bat out of hell in the buckboard. And his route just happens to take him by Bastard Neighbor's house, and Bastard Neighbor is all complaining about the cow and Pa realizes that if Ma let the cow wander about the countryside, she must be in deep shit, so he goes like an even faster bat out of hell and gets home and Ma is passed out on the floor, so I guess she never got the chance to hack her own leg off, thank God. So then everyone comes home and prays real hard and Pa cries with Laura because Ma might die, but then they pray some more and then the fever lifts and everyone is happy. All I know is that after I saw this episode, I poured like two bottles of peroxide over every cut and scratch I got because I did not want to be in a position where I had to hack off my own leg. But that episode was awesome.