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.