Mother May I Sleep With Danger

Murder, mayhem and the modern woman.  

Even though she almost always falls for the suspiciously perfect boyfriend, knows nothing of his past and yet moves in with him, though eventually catches on to his obsessive outbursts... or feels like she's being watched or followed... or thinks she's being framed for the violent crimes happening around her, even though she's woken at night by the sound of someone breaking her kitchen window... Even though she's having nightmares of having her face burned by the long-haired hit man... or she's feeling weak and thinks the nanny is slipping something into the teacups she keeps bringing to her bedside-- despite all of these things, this woman still finds romance, still has a great career, still has one final, drawn-out death match in the steaming boiler room or in the dark parking garage, and blow after blow, crushes the stalker neighbor, or the jealous friend, or the woman who thinks she's the real daughter of her father--  she always survives and dammit, she always looks great.

I'm talking about the Lifetime Original Movie woman. I've never seen her sweat.  I've never seen caught in-between careers, or unsure of her passions. I've never seen her without makeup. Oh, and she solves crimes and kicks butt.  

She's everything I've always wanted to be.

Don't roll your eyes, Mr. Boyfriend.  Lifetime Original Movies make my lazy Sundays even lazier and juicier and frankly, better.  And sometimes- OK, a lot of the time- all I can think of at the end of a hectic day at work, or a bad hair day, or the long Sunday after too much sleeplessness-- is a bag of corn chips and a so-bad-it's-good, made-for-TV movie.

I love the varying tones- how some of these movies are dark and of bad quality, while some are perky and colorful and silly.  I love how you can almost never identify the city in which the movie takes place, and how the supporting characters all have Canadian accents.  I love-- I LOVE-- the titles (see title of this post. All I can say is, I wish I'd come up with it myself):  Blind Trust, Passion's Web, Abducted: Fugitive for Love.  I want to be a fugitive for love.  What does that even mean?

I love the bad music and the bad dialogue and the way these women lead awesomely clean, neat lives- with manicures and walk-in closets-- all minus the toil (we see her leaving the gym with her towel and little gym outfit, but do we ever actually see her working out?).  

I love how some of them are based on true stories (the one about the first victim of identity theft- the young, beautiful woman with the cute husband, who lost everything because some crazy drug fiend woman wanted her life- that was a good one) and some are so far-fetched, you actually start to wonder if maybe it could happen to you (the one where the obsessed paralegal puts shards of glass in the new wife's pasta alfredo).      

I love how the movies take us from gangster underworld to remote log cabin in the mountains all in one story.  We go from generic fancy Italian restaurant to deserted gas station.  And there's always a big house with lots of scary places through which a very bad, but determined, person could enter and set off the alarm.  

And I love how the bad guy is a terrible marksman and the heroine always gets one, seemingly karma-inspired bull's eye.

And I 

love

Delta Burke.  

I love her pant suits.  I love how she conveys desperation and revenge so well.  I can see it in her eyes... and her one, cocked eyebrow.

I love the lessons learned from these movies: don't be a stripper, don't keep a box in your closet with secret letters, don't fall in love with your dying neighbor's husband, don't fall in love with your stepson; always carry a giant metal object (giant crowbar, giant shard of broken mirror) in the trunk of your car, in addition to the gun, which you will inevitably have to hand over once the bad guy has you right where he wants you; always check your shower for hidden cameras; always have a security guard outside your hospital room; if you're pregnant and you meet a creepy woman in the grocery parking lot, do not go back to her house with her- she's only going to cut you open and steal your baby and pretend it's hers.  If you meet a dreamy guy (a plumber, or a lumberjack, or an ad exec) and you share a night of passion with him (perhaps too soon after meeting him?), he will probably become obsessed with you and make you turn the cans of soup in the same direction so all the labels face forward; or he'll wind up being really perfect until you discover that he killed your husband, your dog and your best friend and your mother and your old boss from the life you had before you moved to the new town.

Gosh, all this drama is exhausting.  But it's all in a days' work.  Modern Lifetime TV movie woman always moves on- she packs up the last cardboard box into her hatchback, looks up to the sky for a moment, pulls her fabulous wrap sweater even tighter around her, smiles knowingly and then drives down the once seemingly quiet, tree-lined street to yet another new town, where she'll undoubtedly find romance and start all over again.  Hopefully she won't be haunted by the past two hours of her life that were filled with unimaginable violence, torture, lies, poison, suspicious glares in the beauty salon, flying accusations, confrontations, dead relatives, dead pets, brushes with unwavering detectives who think they have it all figured out...  Because clearly, those two hours of sheer hell are enough for any woman's lifetime.