Here is a new feature I recently came up with: Cheesy TV. Regular readers know how I love to write about cheesy movies. Well, they are not always easy to come by. However, I am discovering a whole world of cheese on cable television.
I have a long-standing addiction to true crime shows. I prefer a real documentary where they cover the facts of the case. I despise re-enactments. I find they are always cheesy and usually unnecessary. However, as re-enactment fests take over my true crime channels, I occasionally tune in to one. And I find they sometimes have a charm all their own. The dialogue in the re-enactments, which is often supposed to play like they’re being overheard, is laughable. The acting is of the scenery chewing variety. And when they show a photo of the actual people, you see the casting director had a very flattering idea of their attractiveness.
I almost feel I should include a spoiler alert, because this episode did not turn out as I expected. However, I also feel I can treat a true crime show, however cheesy, differently from now I treat a cheesy movie. I will also point out that I was paying my usual desultory attention to this one. They may actually have said who was going to end up dead and I missed it.
I will preface this essay by saying: Nobody deserves to be murdered. I suppose there are those who will dispute that statement, but I am not going there today. I would like to talk about a murder victim who, I feel, could have avoided the situation in which the murder took place. I intend to comment on this, and on the cheesy nature of the program which presented the case. I fear sounding insensitive, since an actual person did, in fact, die. Sorry about that.
OK, on with the write-up. Steven and I watched one of the cheesier crime shows on Investigation Discovery: Deadly Affairs. This one is narrated by the divine Susan Lucci, which I feel make it a cut above the rest.
Lucci presents to us a guy who has a girlfriend who is really a guy. They are off again/on again, because the guy is a serial cheater. Then they go on again and move to this cowboy town where the guy insists his lover live as a man and they keep their love affair a secret.
Soon the Guy is having an affair with a hot single mother. At first she doesn’t mind that he has a boyfriend, then she does, so he sends the boyfriend packing.
As soon as the Girl moves in, she discovers the Guy is a control freak. After many public screaming matches (all we see is a fairly hilarious fight about him telling her what order to hang her clothes in), they break up. The Guy can’t stand being alone, so he gets the Boyfriend back by telling him he can live as a woman and they can get married.
However, the Girl did not think they were permanently broken up, and she is not happy with this development. She follows them around, announcing in a loud voice that the fiance is really a man. She even has the nerve to crash their wedding. Naturally the Guy starts having sex with her again. Any slimy hound dog serial cheater would. But he makes no move to get rid of his new wife. Tensions escalate.
Of course I’ve been thinking all this time that Boyfriend/Wife is going to get it, probably from the Girl, because the narration keeps talking about jealousy. Imagine my surprise.
The Girl is out drinking one night and gets all maudlin talking about how she wants to “make amends.” Those are the exact words, used several times. If only she can see the Guy without his Boyfriend/Wife, she can “make amends.” So she goes over to their house at two in the morning.
Hello! Who goes over to somebody’s house at two in the morning and expects the wife NOT to be there? And if you really want to “make amends,” it is a better plan to wait till a decent hour of broad daylight and, for example, SEND FLOWERS! Maybe write a nice note. A conciliatory phone call.
The story is that the Boyfriend/Wife beats the poor Girl to death while the husband is sound asleep upstairs. Did you buy that? I didn’t. I don’t know what went down, and I don’t think the producers of this show did, either. I think they picked the version they liked best, and I’m kind of glad they did, because it certainly gave me something to write about.
I can believe the Girl SAID she wanted to make amends, but I don’t believe that is really what she had in mind. And I sure as hell don’t believe that the horn dog that started it all slept through a beat-down of that magnitude.
Really, when I think about it, it is a very sad story. That Girl did not deserve to be murdered and buried in the desert (oh yeah, I left that part out) (the post is getting a little long). I think what she needed to do to begin with was to find a classier guy to set her sights on. Same goes for the Boyfriend/Wife, although I lost a whole lot of sympathy for him when I found out he was a murderer.
But it is a fun show to watch. Susan Lucci pops up a couple of times looking delicious in an evening gown, about to go out on the town with a hottie who, presumably, does not plan to murder her. Lacking cheesy movies and sometimes time to watch a whole movie, I will continue to embrace cheesy television.
Mohawk Valley Girl 