Must Lifetime Network movies suck quite so hard?

The BBQ Pit
1

I had to vacate the room.

My wife’s vegging out as I post this to another Lifetime made-for-TV movie. It appears to star Beau Bridges and…Pam-frickin-Dawber! Beau and Mindy! Holy crap! Is poor Beau slumming it hard these days or what? Apparently it’s about a guy who’s lost his memory (that would be Beau), and has since shacked up with some hot mamma in the desert someplace (that would be Min…er, Pam), and ollah sudden he’s gotta go find his real life. And wife. You see the coming tragedy a fucking light-year away. Some poor woman (the lady playing the wife is someone I’m convinced I’ve seen in a number of commercials) gets a letter in the mail, and…GASP…finds her long-lost husband is…is…ALIVE! Or something. I don’t know. I don’t want to know. I couldn’t stand it. The whole miserable mess was just oozing so much cheeze I felt the need to flee.

Look, I’ve got nothing against “chick flicks”. Really. I’ll grab the kleenex and the bon-bons and bawl my eyes out to Steel Magnolias with the best of them.

But these Lifetime attrocities. I mean, what the fuck? If it isn’t some totally goofy amnesia story, it’s crazed obsessed woman who wants to steel your husband and his sperm, or husband is a slippery, domineering psycho who poisons his wives and gets away with it, or he’s a pilot and keeps four wives scattered throught the country, and every fucking plot is so paint-by-the-numbers predictable, every script to attrociously hackneyed and ham-fisted, every character so cardboard-thin! Gaaah! Why does this have to be my wife’s (who I truly love dearly, don’t get me wrong) guilty pleasure? You know what my guilty pleasure is? Really obnoxious heavy metal hair-band crap I can make the Devil’s sign to and do lewd things with my tongue. Now that’s a good vice, right there. That’s got some balls, some character. You got all your filthy, dirty, campy goodness you can handle right there in that little embarassing passtime, and it’s without a doubt got some redeeming aspects to it. Like a rockin’ chorus and a kick-ass guitar solo on occasion.

Yeah, so my wife can talk about how I’m teaching myself to play “Dr. Feelgood” and roll her eyes, but at least she doesn’t have to cringe (too hard) or hang her head in shame. But this Lifetime crap is just…CRAP! I’m like “Oh freakin’ GAWD, honey, how can you stand this??” “Come snuggle with me and my movie!” “Aaaaiiieee! Gaaaaah! No, I cannot! The pain!” “Pleeeeease? Don’t you wanna cuddle?”

It’s killing me. I…must get out of here…I must…get…free! Lifetime fucking blows! FUCK! It sucks so hard I want to fucking yell “FUCK” and take pneumatic hammer to the set. Did I mention Lifetime sucks like explosive decompression? I did? Oh good! It sucks hairy gorilla balls too!

::pant:: ::pant::

If I don’t go back, I’m a bad husband. I’m anti-cuddle or something. I tried, I really tried hard to get her to change the channel. But no. She wants to see the ending (that part of the movie we all could predict with near instant-replay accuracy roughly 37 seconds after the opening credits). So back I go. I swear to god it’s worse than killing brain cells with cheap gin. Anyway, bye.

See ya.

I’m going now.

Be back. I’m pretty sure.

Hope you’re not watching some TOTAL ASS-STINKING CRAP tonight. Bye.

2

How’s Pam Dawber looking nowadays? I had a big crush on her in the Mork & Mindy days.

3

“Lifetime. Television for idiots.”

-Family Guy
Not to imply that your wife is dumb, but this channel really puts out crap. I mean, it’s bad. Lifetime is the greatest proof that women must be wired differently than men up there.

4

She looks almost exactly the same. It’s freaky.

5

So, not to say that the Lifetime movie wasn’t crap, but don’t get too holier-than-thou with your hobby - I’d watch crappy, sappy movies any day of the week before I’d listen to obnoxious, heavy-metal hair-band crap. To each their own, and all that.

My guilty pleasure? Disco music. I love the BeeGees, and I don’t care who knows it.

6

Maybe she’s got the same condition as Abe Vigoda. He hasn’t aged since the 1970’s…

7

Blame it on the popularity of Danielle Steel. Really. I blame all sorts of things on Danielle Steel and I feel much better about the universe. I like sappy novels, but only so I can laugh at them. Steel is so bad I just can’t laugh at it. It dismays me. Lifetime movies I can laugh at, even more so when I put the TV on mute and make up my own dialogue.

8

Wasn’t there a website called the Lifetime Movie Name Generator or something?

9

There’s something wrong with a network when it’s best quality show is re-runs of the Golden Girls. As mentioned though, there are other networks that seem as dreck-filled to non-admirers. I’m not convinced the SciFi channel is all that good, for example. If it weren’t for Twilight Zone marathons, I wouldn’t know it existed.

Well, that was when he was embalmed. To be embalmed is a condition, right? I notice Dick Clark’s condition is worsening, or improving. Not sure how that works. In other words, at the age of 143, he’s looks at least fifty now.

10

Yep.

11

I got Danielle Steele’s Secret Fetus.

For the record, Lifetime does, in fact, suck. Hard. Nasty. Goat. Teat.

And you’ve got the double-whammy of the wife who just wants to cuddle but is incapable of understanding your need to NOT WATCH GIRLY CRAP.

I don’t subject my SO to Bruce Lee and Jean Claude Van Damme because she doesn’t want to experience testosterone seething through the set. I don’t want to watch Sally Field overcoming breast cancer and escaping with her autistic child from her abusive/alcoholic/fundamentalist husband.

12

Well, you missed out there. That one was actually great, especially the scene where Sally’s cancer and her autistic child doubled up on the abusive husband. I swear Ang Li must have been the director the way they got all Crouching Tiger on his ass.

13

Yeah. They’re recycling “Movies of the Week”–the one you saw was on CBS in '93, I looked it up.

14

Whoops, wrong movie. Yours is from '96.

15

In defense of my gender here, I don’t know any women who actually watch those movies. I’ve always figured Lifetime’s demographics were the 75-110 yo crowd who couldn’t remember where they put the remote after Unsolved Mysteries was over. To hear that someone watches them intentionally? You can’t see me, but I’m sadly shaking my head…

16

We call it Lifetime: The Victims’ Channel. If you want to see B-list actresses from the 80’s* in peril, tune in.

I’m also a bit peeved that Lifetime has the audacity to call themselves “The channel for women.” Puh-leeze. That’s akin to have a 24/7 WWF station and calling it “The channel for athletes.”

*Pam Dawber, Donna Mills, Melissa Gilbert, Jacqueline Smith, Judith Light, Meredith Baxter, the list goes on and on…

17

I actually flipped back and forth between a movie on Lifetime and CSI, because the description of the movie on Lifetime was so bizarre I had to slow down and see it up close.

The title?

The Invisible Child starring none other than Tom Hanks’ wife.

That’s when I knew that Lifetime had hit rock bottom, jumped the shark, reached the end of the rope, whatever you want to call it.

18

I got The Disappearance that Love Made.

Sarah MacKenzie, a lawyer in London, a baby, and a kidnapping. Stir well, serve with tissues.

19

It’s so bad that it couldn’t even get “Movie of the Week” status!

20

You Lifetime-haters must be against the idea of Women Made Strong By Circumstances Taking Charge Of Their Lives and Vanquishing Evil Men And Slutty Women, Sometimes With The Aid Of Sensitive And Caring Men.

Seduced By A Serial Seductress is on tonight.