The Beauty of the CMTVM

My friend Regular Tim recently sent Mindy June and me a link to a website that discusses and displays the bodily blemishes of various celebrities, e.g. Leo DeCaprio's facial chicken pox scars and that sort of thing.

While I thought it was a perfectly natural website link to forward to one's friends, Mindy June took it upon herself to ask Tim where he'd come across this jewel. His reply? He'd simply run across it by accident while he was searching for a list of tv actresses that have appeared in the most made-for-tv-movies. Again, a perfectly normal Internet query, if you ask me.

Tim's quest reminded me that I need to start blogging more about my fascination with the CMTVM (cheesy-made-for-tv-movie.) My preferred flavor of CMTVM plays on Lifetime Television for Women and features an abused woman who finally snaps & blows her filthy stinking husband's head off or burns him alive. (see "The Burning Bed" or "Extremities" - both starring Farrah Fawcett.)

Another good one has Josie Bisset (of "Melrose Place" fame) unknowingly married to a serial rapist. But I gotta tell ya - the sine qua non of CMTVM's would have to be "A Woman Scorned: The Betty Broderick Story" starring Meredith Baxter. This CMTVM, along with its sequel, "Her Final Fury," was so unabashedly fabulous that it founded a whole new genre of CMTVM in my mind: the CMTVMMB (cheesy-made-for-tv-movie starring Meredith Baxter.)

Meredith Baxter rocks my world. Something about watching Elise Keaton act like a total crazy bitch for two hours before finally blowing away her ex-husband and his boneheaded fiancee in their sleep just made my day. And then the call she made from the phone booth to her friend right after it happened - "I finally did it, I killed the bastard...." I'd never seen anything like it. Outstanding.

I think a close second would have to be that Mary Tyler Moore vehicle "Like Mother Like Son" where she plays this crazy bitch mother who teaches her sons to shoplift as young boys, and then eventually teams up with one of them to kill Edith Bunker in order to take title to her apartment building. Included are several great scenes where Mary displays some revolting incestuous tendencies toward her boy. If you ask me, all Mary has to do is participate in a few more of those gems for me to create a new category in her honor: the CMTVMMTM.

It's always the fomer sitcom adorable-stable-mother-type actresses who make the best CMTVM's. See Elizabeth Montgomery in "Sins of the Mother" where she plays this quasi-sadistic crazy ass bitch mother who turns her son into a serial rapist. I think that one had some incest themes as well.

Not that I approve of any of this. Trust me, I am plenty filthy in my own right, but I do not in any way condone serial rape or incest. But that's what is so great about watching these tv uber-mommies just lose it and go all the way to the dark side. Maybe I should explore this fascination of mine in therapy. Nah, I don't really want to ruin it. It's just too much damn fun.

One of the best things that has ever happened to me was when I was in St. Paul, Minnesota recently. I went out for dinner with my friend Kapooch and her husband, Special Tim. I've been coming out of the closet recently about my CMTVM fetish, and I decided to share this news with Kapooch & Special Tim.

Little did I know that Kapooch, who is married to a real GUY's guy, is also married to her very own CMTVM fetishist. That's right: Special Tim watches Lifetime!

My favorite part of the whole evening was learning that he and Kapooch got so hooked by a certain CMTVM one day that they refused to answer the doorbell when their friends showed up to watch the final game of the World Series. Just couldn't get up out of their chairs because some crazy ass bitch was busy gunning down an entire convenience store while her daughter binged & purged in the backseat of the family SUV or something like that. Just couldn't do it. Had to keep watching. I love my friends.

I should note that while I'm becoming more open about my CMTVM fetish, an openness that is only more strongly encouraged by the deliberate self-outing of Special Tim, I am nevertheless still afraid to get TIVO for fear of what that little machine might say about me. I'd probably watch TV for a week, and then TIVO would start suggesting some Danielle Steele miniseries for me. Can't have that. I don't know if TIVO is sophisticated enough to differentiate between a truly great CMTVM and some schmaltzy love story that could possibly induce self-mutilation on the part of the viewer. Then again, maybe that in itself could be the subject of a new kind of CMTVM.

I want Mindy June to quit her fancy London job, come back to the states and start producing some fine CMTVM's with me. I hear Patty Duke & Shannen Doherty may be looking for work, and I have just the vehicle for them churning in my brain.