Lifetime, wow!
July 22, 2008 2:52 PM   Subscribe

Lifetime, Wow! A blog devoted to watching, reviewing, and ranking Lifetime movies, including such classics as Fifteen and Pregnant, Fatal Trust, and Love Sick: Secrets of a Sex Addict.
posted by XQUZYPHYR (61 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's Request -- Brandon Blatcher



 
Lifetime, television for women... and gay men”.

Just take note of the love and admiration expressed by many of MeFi's Gay Squad for Sophia/Estelle in today's obit thread-- six threads down.
posted by ericb at 3:02 PM on July 22, 2008


Lifetime Movie Title Generator.

"The Debbie Johnson Story: Cry for My Paranoid Husband"
posted by ninjew at 3:11 PM on July 22, 2008 [6 favorites]


Tori Spelling stars in ..... Mother, May I Sleep with Danger?
posted by mattbucher at 3:13 PM on July 22, 2008


Lifetime is following me on Twitter. I didn't have the heart to block them.
posted by katillathehun at 3:14 PM on July 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


I was wondering how long it would take for a Tori comment to appear. Ha!
posted by gummi at 3:19 PM on July 22, 2008


They don't mention my favorite Lifetime movie, Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life
posted by Tenuki at 3:29 PM on July 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


Wasn't there a Lifetime movie that starred the chipper DA from "Night Court" as a heroin addict?

Don't remember her playing a heroin addict, but I remember her playing a hooker opposite Shirley from Laverne & Shirley.
posted by freakinloon at 3:31 PM on July 22, 2008


Lifetime is following me on Twitter. I didn't have the heart to block them.

Pregnant and Blocked on Twitter: The Jane Doe Story?
posted by drjimmy11 at 3:37 PM on July 22, 2008 [4 favorites]


The Perversion That Love Made: The Untold Story of Meta Filter
posted by xod at 3:42 PM on July 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


I like that title generator.
posted by xod at 3:43 PM on July 22, 2008


Leave My Vitamin-Poor Brother Alone: Bobby's Nightmare
posted by goatdog at 3:46 PM on July 22, 2008 [2 favorites]


I've long considered the archetypical Lifetime movie title to be along the lines of "She Fought and Fought and Fought for Her Baby Against the Bad Men"
posted by longsleeves at 3:46 PM on July 22, 2008 [4 favorites]


Not Without My Daughter
posted by Flashman at 3:48 PM on July 22, 2008 [4 favorites]


Nurse With Wound
posted by Flashman at 3:48 PM on July 22, 2008 [3 favorites]


Lifetime Movie Title Generator

I call all Lifetime Movies "Not Without My Ovaries: The Ann Jillian Story (starring Markie Post)" and it ends up being mostly appropriate.

Also, any Lifetime Movie blog should be a lot cattier and more focused on the terrible fashion and over-the-top facial expressions and general biblical abuse all women in Lifetime Movies suffer. This thing's just too damn straight.
posted by melissa may at 3:50 PM on July 22, 2008 [2 favorites]


They don't mention my favorite Lifetime movie, Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life

Three pages of synopsis?! Someone's overthinking a 'bate of peens.
posted by fleetmouse at 3:52 PM on July 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


"Jane's Story: It's My Scurvy, Damn It"

I peed a little.
posted by The Power Nap at 3:55 PM on July 22, 2008


"My Daughter or My Purging"
posted by katillathehun at 4:01 PM on July 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


To be fair, the History, Discovery and SciFi channels don't have much more variation than Lifetime.

The Left Front Tire Treads of Hitler's Tanks: Behind the Scenes

Shark Week Presents: Shark Attack (Presented by Sharky Sharkington)

The Time Travelling Scientist, His Inexplicably Hot Girlfriend and Their Rocket Dog Save the World
posted by DU at 4:03 PM on July 22, 2008 [19 favorites]


Lifetime needs to end its long and harrowing career. Maybe it could go out with a movie about its rocky marriage to SpikeTV (an internet porn addict and drug-dealer who cheated on her with MTV2). Lifetime could bundle up her little daughters, Noggin and The Disney Channel and hurry off in the middle of the night. Safely resettled in an idyllic HGTVborhood, Lifetime and her little ones would slowly relax, losing their fear that Spike would come after them. Shortly after Lifetime and her new love interest, The Home Shopping Network begin making plans to move in together, Spike would make an appearance. There'd be a chase scene, then a fight scene/dramatic thunderstorm. Finish with a wedding on a cider-colored autumn afternoon in a beautiful suburb, working in a shot of a home-office-turned-nursery that's almost done being painted.

Lifetime's vacated channel could then be occupied by a glorious SuperAwesomeEverything channel with a lineup containing everything from car-chase videos to documentaries about the creation of the atomic bomb. There would be live N.A.S.A. mission footage, The Daily Show, The Oblongs and an entire hour devoted to pancakes and bacon.
posted by Flipping_Hades_Terwilliger at 4:04 PM on July 22, 2008 [5 favorites]


DU, I take umbrage with that. SciFi channel's movies are almost always single-word imperative exclamations, or portmanteaus like: Swarmed! or Volcanosaur! or Meteorsaurusswarm!.
posted by steef at 4:13 PM on July 22, 2008 [9 favorites]


My favorite (aside from "Mother, May I Sleep With Danger?" just for the title alone) was Meredith Baxter-Birney in "A Woman Scorned: The Betty Broderick Story." (Which may have not actually aired first on Lifetime, but I definitely saw it on Lifetime as part of some kind of "The Woman in Every Lifetime Movie: The Meredith Baxter-Birney Story" marathon.) Friends and I still say "It's not what I wanted, so it's CRAP!!!!" when opening gifts, a la Meredith's Betty-Broderick-at-Christmas-time scene.
posted by mothershock at 4:14 PM on July 22, 2008


From the Lifetime Movie Generator:

"My Ex-Husband Won't Stop Kidnapping my child: Sarah's Struggle"

To flesh things out: Sarah Scott's Idyllic new life in the Pacific Northwest where she has become an award-winning photographer of the rugged coastline and scenic fishing villages keeps keeps being interrupted by her evil lawyer ex-husband snatching her adorable young son. With her longish-haired leather-jacket-wearing charter-fishing-boat owning new
man, whom she is hesitating to accept a ring from, she finds her child, who has been kept in a secret bunker on an Idaho hunting camp for rich men who trophy-shoot captive big game animals. In the end, her lawyer ex drowns in a vat of formaldehyde and she tearfully accepts the engagement ring in a group hug with her son and new man.
posted by longsleeves at 4:16 PM on July 22, 2008


I've long considered the archetypical Lifetime movie title to be along the lines of "She Fought and Fought and Fought for Her Baby Against the Bad Men"

I've always maintained that Lifetime movies fall into 3 categories: "You should have listened to your mother, but you didn't and now your dead," the already awesomely named title quoted above: "She Fought and Fought and Fought for Her Baby Against the Bad Men", and "You didn't listen to your female intuition, the guy's a psycho and now you're in big trouble/dead."
posted by The Light Fantastic at 4:19 PM on July 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


I love how all the men in these movies are either emasculated ninnies that would cry at the thought of having to choose either paper or plastic, or emotionally granite delinquents whose only guidance in life is where their man-bone is pointing at the moment with a 'fuck ya'll or suck my dick' attitude.
posted by ZaneJ. at 4:21 PM on July 22, 2008


Where are all the tumours? It's not a Hallmark movie unless there's a whole lot of cancer going on.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:23 PM on July 22, 2008


The nice guy isn't a nice guy but everyone thought he was so you can't blame her that he isn't a nice guy but when she realizes it she has to find inner strength to overcome the bad guy and in the end she is a wiser, more liberated woman who now knows there are no good guys.
posted by Senator at 4:23 PM on July 22, 2008


"Alex's Story: Confessions of a Hooker"
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 4:24 PM on July 22, 2008


SciFi channel's movies are almost always single-word imperative exclamations, or portmanteaus like: Swarmed! or Volcanosaur! or Meteorsaurusswarm!.

Yeah, I knew mine wasn't right. I haven't even received SciFi for over ten years, let alone watched it. But I needed to list the channel for the MeFi demographic. You can see the bind I was in.
posted by DU at 4:25 PM on July 22, 2008


SciFi channel's movies are almost always single-word imperative exclamations, or portmanteaus like: Swarmed! or Volcanosaur! or Meteorsaurusswarm!.

That's because Sci-Fi has very specific rules for their filmmakers.

The name of the monster must be in the title,
The creature must appear in the first 15 min. of the movie,
there must be a death every 8 minutes.
posted by Tenuki at 4:28 PM on July 22, 2008




5 Horrific Murders (and the TV Movies made from them)

I think my favorite of this genre will always be Susan Lucci as the Mafia princess, though. Pure gold! (Yeah, as in Tracey!) I just never could buy Kevin Arnold killing one of the Full House Girls, though.
posted by miss lynnster at 4:31 PM on July 22, 2008


My girlfriend (who is a hardcore Lifetime fiend) and I play a game called "Green Light" where we have to cast, plot and name a Lifetime movie. Actors cannot be too A or B list and everyone playing has to agree before the game is won.
posted by black8 at 4:41 PM on July 22, 2008


From Bob and Dave of Mr. Show fame - "Boo Hoo - The Story of Some Woman"
posted by Arch_Stanton at 4:47 PM on July 22, 2008


(I kind of want to see what the costume on Volcanosaur! would look like.)
posted by DU at 4:49 PM on July 22, 2008


Wasn't there a Lifetime movie that starred the chipper DA from "Night Court" as a heroin addict?

Don't remember her playing a heroin addict, but I remember her playing a hooker opposite Shirley from Laverne & Shirley.


I remember seeing a picture of her in a string bikini. That made up for a lot of the rest.
posted by jonmc at 4:49 PM on July 22, 2008


Love Me, Love My Sore: Milton Rand's Story

This is fantastic, it almost makes me want to be an under-loved 40-year-old woman watching Lifetime while scarfing down a rotisserie chicken.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 4:56 PM on July 22, 2008


After watching the movie Saved! I chuckle every time I see an ad for a Lifetime movie. All I can think of is the pregnant teen watching Lifetime and drawing parallels between morning sickness and the cancerous woman in the Lifetime movie and chanting "Please let it be cancer" over and over.
posted by BrotherCaine at 4:58 PM on July 22, 2008


I smell addiction/withdrawal/addiction.

8/20/07: Beautiful was on last Thursday night. I had spent the last two days watching this made-for-TV crap. Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoy Lifetime movies. It's just...three days in a row is an awful lot to ask of someone.

...

4/7/08: What, you're too good to watch a Lifetime movie on a Friday night? Well, lucky for you, my ideal Friday night is in front of the tube watching has-beens and never-weres chew the scenery. You're welcome.

...

4/24/08: I am having a crisis of faith. I love Lifetime movies. Even a lot of the movies that get bad reviews on this site. They're still a good way to kill two hours. But the last few movies haven't even qualified as "good bad" or "tolerable bad." They're just "bad bad." Like, uncomfortably "bad bad."

..

7/22/08: ... But now I'm unemployed and have a DVR. The sky's the limit, baby.

The content is moderately amusing (if basically synopses), but there's something a little depressing about the site. Perhaps it will inspire a Lifetime movie ...

Lifetime Obsession: The Dark Side of TV Addiction.
posted by mrgrimm at 5:03 PM on July 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


Just Sunday I started on a 5ives of "5 Terrible Lifetime Movie Names." And here I was, thinking this was an original idea.
posted by waldo at 5:39 PM on July 22, 2008


Little known secret: I wrote promo blurbs for Lifetime movies for a few years. Three paragraph teasers that would be put on one sheets for distribution at the annual sales trade shows in Vegas and such. One of the movies I wrote the promo for was Love Sick. I never saw the final product, but the script was pretty damn atrocious. There was another one about a teen girl who discovers she's a lesbian and wants to come out to her parents. I might have some of the scripts still around in a drawer somewhere...not sure.
posted by spicynuts at 5:59 PM on July 22, 2008


Overcoming My Scurvy: A Promise to My Cousin
posted by thegreatfleecircus at 6:00 PM on July 22, 2008


The next Lifetime / SciFi Channel collaboration:

Crocoraptor: Her Mother's Secret
posted by dirigibleman at 6:13 PM on July 22, 2008 [3 favorites]


The one thing I never got about that channel was why my (bud-drinking, ups truck driving) dad liked it so much.
posted by drezdn at 6:28 PM on July 22, 2008


There was a quite funny parody on SNL a while back starring none other than John McCain (he was the host). Here's a partial clip; the full skit is much funnier but I can't seem to find it.
posted by zardoz at 6:43 PM on July 22, 2008


I don't watch it, but I'm glad Lifetime is there; at long last, there is finally something on television aimed at women.
posted by kurumi at 7:20 PM on July 22, 2008


My Cousin's Lesbian Melanoma: A Forbidden Love Story.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 7:23 PM on July 22, 2008 [2 favorites]


A while ago, my mom and aunt and I decided the best Lifetime title ever would be, "My Brother, My Lover, My Dealer." We considered appending "My Donor" at the end too, but it was just too long a title. But of course the main character needs an organ donation from her husband, who she thought was dead, but actually he tried to kill her when they were high and she had forgotten. And also, he is her brother.

The plot: A woman loses her memory after her husband mysteriously ends up missing, assumed dead after they both were presumably assaulted. She suffered a concussion and the police have no leads on who attacked them. To make things worse, one of her kidneys is failing -- a result of of her hard partying lifestyle. Her doctors ask if her brother could donate one of his, but wait! She never had a brother... or did she?

She investigates, and uncovers dark secrets she wished she had never known. She did have a brother, who disappeared when she was a child. It was the man she had married.

Bits of her memory start returning, and she knows there was no assailant. All she can remember is attacking him while they were both high. Did she really kill her own husband, and brother?

Overcome by guilt, she searches more and more. But she doesn't find a body. She finds him. And as the memories flood back, she realizes that it was he who tried to kill her...
posted by Nattie at 7:43 PM on July 22, 2008


I cannot put into words how much I love Meredith Baxter Birney as Betty Broderick. It's up there with Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford. Just a fabulous big, greasy cheeseburger of a performance.
posted by jrossi4r at 8:50 PM on July 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


Whoa, wait.. now that i've actually read the site..:

Jay kay! Her dad had been fucking her on the regular for her entire childhood and adolescence. He even called Sue his "real wife." And they say romance is dead. Sue tells her shrink that she would be naked during these molestations save for a scarf that her dad bought her. The worst part? She still has the fucking scarf (and I do mean that...it is a scarf that was used during fucking). And she smells it when she is feeling depressed! Gak!
posted by ninjew at 9:14 PM on July 22, 2008


From Child of Rage: a girl who's like five years old comes onto her grandpa. Probably shouldn't watch it at work, but nothing all that explicit.
posted by Nattie at 10:41 PM on July 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


From Child of Rage: a girl who's like five years old comes onto her grandpa. Probably shouldn't watch it at work, but nothing all that explicit.

Oh, how I wish I could unwatch that clip.
posted by miss lynnster at 11:22 PM on July 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


A Dog Took My Face And Gave Me A Better Face To Change The World: The Celeste Cunningham Story
posted by arruns at 11:24 PM on July 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


WOULD YOU LIKE A COOKIE? CHOCOLATE FLAVOR VERY NUTRITIOUS!

It wasn't on Lifetime, but really it should've been.
posted by miss lynnster at 11:28 PM on July 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


Ah, Lifetime. Named for the two things its viewers waste. But that title generator is pure gold.

Jane's Story: My Husband Won't Stop Seducing Me

Magnificent.
posted by Mayor West at 6:16 AM on July 23, 2008


Volcanosaur!

Dude, YES.

I seriously don't get Sci Fi, to be honest. How they can only afford to make like ten episodes of BSG every two years, but they totally have the money to make sequels to Bloodrayne (!)...no, for real, there's no joke there: They made a sequel to Bloodrayne.

You guys.

Bloodrayne.

That is to say...

...Bloodrayne II
posted by kittens for breakfast at 9:14 AM on July 23, 2008


Awesome quote from the site: "Also, Clayton is so obviously gay that my living room just interior decorated itself. The idea that this guy would have a girlfriend....no."
posted by dammitjim at 9:33 AM on July 23, 2008


Oh My God, The Baby!
posted by Parasite Unseen at 10:25 AM on July 23, 2008


I Loved My Fetus Too Much: Cereselle 's Story

I am boggled. And I don't want to know what happens when you love a fetus too much. I just don't.
posted by cereselle at 11:31 AM on July 23, 2008


I can't stop myself from mentioning that I was an extra in the Lifetime movie Take My Advice: The Ann and Abby Story, which the NYT review charitably describes as "slightly campy".
posted by turbodog at 3:02 PM on July 23, 2008


Lifetime is magical. The writing (in the finished product) is amazing. Really.
I just got cable again... just assumed Lifetime was now, like every other channel, showing those hateful "home" shows.

Turbodog, what is Tim Matheson really like?
posted by Lesser Shrew at 9:33 PM on July 23, 2008


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