Brady Bunch Reunion Special

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 Brady Bunch reunion special on TV Land. Not for what was said, but because there was so much unsaid. Jan and Peter clearly hate everyone else. Peter clearly hated Jenny McCarthy (the host). Jenny McCarthy kept asking questions that all of the actors had discussed and answered years ago, like, the best way to deal with those issues would have been to show a clip package or something, because the actors just got annoyed. No one wanted to mention that Robert Reed was kind of a dick to work with, although he was allegedly a nice enough guy in his personal life. Alice only got to show up for five seconds at the end, and she barely spoke. Cindy brought the mood down when she talked about how she cared for her dying parents. Really, the only interesting part that wasn't just my interpretation of the undercurrent were the many clips, which revealed to me just how much of my younger life was shaped by The Brady Bunch. I learned so many life lessons from that crazy blended family. And I still knew all of the words to the Silver Platters' songs, all these years later. And the dance moves. Which is awesome.

The Babysitter

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 Lifetime Move Network film called The Babysitter. It starred Patty Duke Astin as the mom and William Shatner as the dad and some ugly girl as their kid and then Ms. Stephanie Zimbalist as...The Babysitter. So The Babysitter totally stalks the homely little girl, who is twelve, and still carries around a doll, so there might be something wrong with her, which would also explain why she needs a full-time baby sitter at age twelve. So anyway Shatner convinces Patty that, although she doesn't work outside the home, she needs to hire someone to clean, cook, and raise their daughter. Thus, the Babysitter joins their family, despite her mysterious past, and they don't even check her references or anything, but I guess this was before the era of the Amber Alert and people didn't think of such things. But they SHOULD HAVE! Because soon the Babysitter is convincing Patty, a recovering alcoholic, that she should start drinking again. And then she puts the moves on Shatner, which, ew. And then she throws a makeout party and totally does it with the neighbor kid and lets the homely girl drink a beer. Then she convinces Shatner to send Patty to rehab or something. And I have no idea why, but she takes the homely girl and the neighbor kid sailing and totally kills the neighbor kid by knocking him into the water with the boom. The cops apparently don't care about this at all, but the neighbor boy's grandpa won't let it go. I guess the kid didn't have any parents. So Gramps starts looking into the Babysitter's past and discovers the family she used to work for, dead in their bed, preserved under a plastic cover. Gross! And then Patty comes back, and the Babysitter drugs her or something, and then she tries to do it with Shatner, and he turns her down, so she clubs him with a vase or something and then goes after the homely girl, who hides in the basement. So the Babysitter gets a knife and is chasing the homely girl around and I was actually a little bit scared! And then Shatner comes to and subdues the Babysitter and Gramps shows up with the cops and she goes to jail. And 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 the premiere of the second season of Starting Over, or as New Orleans Melissa calls it, "Old Lady Real World." This season, they are in Los Angeles, and they have brought in Oprah's buddy Iyanla Vanzant as a life coach. And that's awesome because she totally has taken over and last season's crazy-ass life coach, Rhonda, is relegated to the sidelines. And I predict it's a matter of weeks before Rhonda totally loses it. Also, there's one roommate, Deborah (pronounced De-BORE-ah) who is batshit crazy. She started out seeming like she was just outspoken and maybe a little rude. But now it turns out that she is pregnant (despite being premenopausal) and scheming to have a secret abortion, and also is trying to bully her fifteen-year-old daughter into doing something (arranging the abortion? Getting medical records?) through threats and intimidation. And next week, it looks like the shit will hit the fan when the rest of the house finds out what's going on. Did I mention that Deborah has threatened to leave the house twice already? In the first week? And that Iyanla had to clap her hands and yell, "Deborah!" to get her to shut up in their group meeting? And that she works out on the treadmill while wearing a fanny pack and dancing and singing to herself? And that she uses a fork to eat cotton candy from a bag? There's so much more that I could tell you, and I haven't even gotten into the other roommates. Check your local listings and find out when it's on in your area, and then watch it. Because it is awesome.

Childhood Sweetheart?

And now it's time for the triumphant return of 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 on my beloved Lifetime Movie Network called Childhood Sweetheart?, and you know it's awesome because there is a punctuation mark in the title. Anyway, it starred Half Pint Ingalls (of course) as a woman who was kidnapped at the age of ten and presumed dead. So she shows back up as an adult and tries to reconcile with her boyfriend, like, who waits around fifteen years or whatever for their presumed dead ten-year-old girlfriend? Losers, that's who. Her mom is also psyched to see her, but her dad isn't buying it and starts investigating to make sure it's really her. I guess back then they didn't have Maury to do the DNA tests. So then Half Pint starts acting all fishy and steals money from her mother to get a passport, and as a viewer, you don't know if she's legit or not, but her story is that her kidnapper killed his daughter, so Half Pint killed her kidnapper and escaped. Five years ago. And no one (except the dad and the cops) cares what she was doing wandering around for five years. Anyway, as you might expect, the shit hits the fan and Half Pint's dad confronts her, and then suddenly her dad is dead and the viewer is supposed to wonder if she killed him, but I guess she didn't, although now that I think about it, they never really explained it. And then her boyfriend gets suspicious of her and finally has DNA testing done using a lock of hair he had from when Half Pint was a girl, and he also thinks to get the kidnapper's body exhumed, as well as that of the kidnapper's daughter, like, what is this, Days of Our Lives with all the exhumations? Well, it turns out that the body in the grave was the real Half Pint. So Fake Half Pint thinks that she's the kidnapper's daughter (apparently she has some memory loss and doesn't know, although the details were fuzzy) and she's all bummed out, but then she finds out that her DNA doesn't match the kidnapper's and so she's just another victim! And then she fights with her boyfriend, and stabs him, but then he forgives her even though she's totally not his childhood sweetheart and they decide to get married, even though they are complete strangers. And it was awesome.

Red Wind

And now it's time for the final Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week of the season. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was a made-for-television movie called Red Wind starring Miss Lisa Hartman (before she married Clint Black). So anyway, Lisa plays a psychologist who is also an expert in sexuality and S&M relationships. Of course. There are a lot of hints in the beginning that the reason she's an expert is because she has been in such a relationship herself. Anyway, Lisa gets a new client -- a woman who is always shown in shadows -- who is being abused and sexually humiliated by her husband. So after they show shady woman for about one minute, I call my husband into the room and say, "That's a dude, right?" And he watches for five seconds and goes, "Yeah, obviously." So I spent the rest of the movie wondering how dumb Lisa was that she didn't know her client was a dude. So anyway, the client tells Lisa how she's going to kill her husband and put him in the wood chipper in her back yard. As you do. And the title is from when the woman described how she would turn her husband into a red wind. Ew. So then Lisa goes to the client's house, and there's blood all over the wood chipper. So instead of calling the cops, Lisa runs around and screams and messes up the evidence and then goes home. So the cops come sniffing around, and Lisa denies involvement. And then Lisa mysteriously has a new client -- a man -- who knows a lot about the wood chipper lady's life. Wow, I wonder how that guy knew so much? So Lisa falls into an abusive relationship with this guy, totally ditching her nice, normal boyfriend, played by Christopher "Shooter McGavin" McDonald. And then, there's supposed to be this big reveal where you find out that the male client and the female client are the same person, but anyone with eyes figured that out about ten minutes into the movie. And I haven't even mentioned the cigarette-smoking parking-lot attendant who helps the police and is the true star of the film. Which was awesome.

Blow Out/Cheap Seats

And now it's time for the first Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. Since I'm doing two this week, I thought I would use the first to mention a few awesome things I've seen on TV lately that you could watch now that you will have a half-hour hole in your schedule every week. The first awesome show that you should totally be watching is Blow Out on Bravo. It's supposed to be the story of what happened when celebrity hairstylist Jonathan Antin decided to open a second salon in Beverly Hills. In the first episode, they tried to set up a Puck-like hairdresser named Brandon as Jonathan's nemesis, in order to introduce some conflict to the situation, but then Jonathan fired Brandon, and not a moment too soon, because the true conflict lies in watching what a douchebag Jonathan is, and how horribly he treats his staff, and his general clueless tool behavior. Each week, people cringe when they deal with him, and he has no idea. He throws temper tantrums and hissyfits, and expects everyone on his staff to kiss his ass at all times, and as long as you don't have to work for him, it's awesome. The other show that you should be watching is Cheap Seats on ESPN Classic. ESPN? But I"m not a sports fan! Don't worry. This show basically features comedians the Sklar Brothers giving the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment to ludicrous faux-sporting events from the past, like roller derby. At times, the Sklars' pre-filmed bits go on a bit long -- they should really stick to showing silly footage and making fun of it. But each episode features at least two or three jokes that make me laugh out loud, because I can't resist a smart-ass snarking on bad television. It also makes me jealous that I don't have their jobs.

Days of Our Lives

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. In college, I used to watch Days of Our Lives because my roommate did, and I was in the room at the time, but then I was hooked. And when my husband and I first started dating in college, he would come over for lunch and watch the show with us. But then we both graduated and stopped watching. But I heard that James E. Reilly was returning as head writer, and he created the "Marlena is possessed" storyline, which was so ridiculously awesome that it frightened me, so I had to start watching again. Plus, the summer is always the best time to watch soaps because they focus on the teen storylines to attract the kids who are out of school. So right now, Marlena and a bunch of other boring people (like Roman and Abe) are presumed dead, but really they are on an island somewhere, and on the island is an exact replica of Salem. Which is genius, because they didn't have to build a whole new set -- they just stuck some palm trees in the regular set, which was awesome. And the other thing that my husband and I enjoy looking for is how any male will find any excuse to remove his shirt. Seriously, each day at least half of the male cast members are running around without their shirts on. Sometimes they just got out of the shower, or sometimes they are being held captive in a cage by an insane chick dressed as an old lady, but sometimes they just don't have shirts on for no apparent reason. But truly the most awesome thing happened on Friday. Bonnie opened this honkeytonk bar, and Rex and Philip (played by Kyle from the Chicago season of The Real World) were bartending. And suddenly this musical montage started where Rex and Philip went all Cocktail and started flipping bottles around, and people were line dancing, and the camera was zooming in on a neon sign, and then Belle and Philip were riding the mechanical bull together, and then there was more bottle flipping and everyone was cheering and I kept saying, "This is NOT happening." But it was, and it was awesome.