Lifetime Lessons

Over the Thanksgiving break, as I watched (or to put it more accurately: caught glimpses of) about five Lifetime movies, I realized I had been missing out. For although I love watching trashy television programs, my choices (so far) have been between a wide variety of increasingly odd reality shows about wedding gowns, lots and lots of children, or polygamy. Watching Lifetime opened my eyes to a whole new world. A world filled with beautiful, happy, married, decidedly heterosexual people who all love pets, America, and God. A world where you can sit outside in the Indiana winter without gloves, where Christmas lasts from October until February, and where someone is always right. Next to watching a bride pick between one $10k dress and the other, I couldn't think of a better form of media content to help you take your nap.

Watching bits and pieces of various Lifetime movies quickly made me realize, however, that Lifetime is not so much a movie channel, as it is an instruction manual on how Life Should Be Lived. All of the Christmas movies we (partially) watched over Thanksgiving break shared similar narratives, problems, and resolutions. The characters were eerily alike (and all seemed to come from the 90s hit show Bevery Hills 90210), both in looks, issues, and problem solving skills (or lack thereof).

So what did I learn from the Lifetime channel in the past few days?

Well, first of all, small towns are awesome. There's nothing better than a little bitty town, loved by its inhabitants, ignored by everyone else, and filled with quirky people and traditions. Even though one might not appreciate the small town at first, it won't take long (give it about 40 minutes, a little bit into the second act) for minds to change and the small town to take a firm spot on one's heart. Big cities are only good for going to college, starting a career (and then leaving it, but more on that later), and possibly finding a wife (never a husband), who will, after some adjustment problems (because the big city does that to people), love the small town as much as her Andy-Griffith-like husband.

Second, Christianity is still the way to go. I'm sorry, but according to Lifetime, this is the truth. Or perhaps The Truth. No one ever mentions Hannukah, Kwanzaa, or heaven forbid, another non-Judeo-Christian religion. Well, let me take that back, one particularly interesting movie did feature a Jewish couple and their daughter. Their daughter came from the big city discussed above, and had taken her parents to her fiance's small town (see above) to meet his very much small-town parents. It quickly became clear that although the Jewish parents were not "really" Jewish (Daughter to mom, "Why do we call ourselves Jewish anyway? We never go to church." - for the record, Jewish people don't go to church, they go to temple. Or shul. Not church. Sorry Lifetime writers, you need to do your homework), their inability to share the small town's mom insane enthusiasm for Christmas was quickly pointed to as the foundation to the problems between the two sets of parents (and not the fact that, say, the small-town parents had a back-up generator in case their five thousand Christmas lights went out, just to keep their fridge and said Christmas lights up and running). The conflict wasn't resolved until the Jewish parents were finally able to embrace the spirit of Christmas and helped the small-town parents win the annual Christmas lights decoration contest.

Also - women have issues. Lots of them. First of all, if they're not busy being total career-driven hyenas, they're overboard Christmas fanatics, or uppity Westcoast non-Christians.
Second, women tend to be the Grinch when it comes to Christmas. They're the ones who need convincing that Christmas really is awesome, not the guys. The guys love eating the tons of good food their wives baked for them, hunting, while their wives keep the mansion clean, and enjoying their children after they've been bathed and fed (by, I'm guessing, said wife).
Third, women suck at situational awareness. They never, ever recognize their knight in shining armor when they first see him (in fact, they'll be more likely to yell at him for parking in their driveway or splashing mud all over their dress with his $100k car). They also always tend to put their careers first, and believe they will do fine without a man. They don't recognize when their children are in need, their pets are sick, or the small town they just moved to is really the bomb.

Now, I have to admit, Lifetime did present one redeeming feature: Christmas sweaters are really only worn by dorks. Thank God for that.

In short, I decided that the tagline "The source for women's entertainment" just really didn't cover the essence of the Lifetime channel. In fact, I would propose changing it to either, "Lifetime: The way life should be if you're a WASP male", or "Lifetime: keeping our non-male-WASPS in place for over a decade".

So, will I be watching anymore Lifetime movies in the future?
...uhm...probably, yes.

I know, I'm a walking contradiction.