Lifetime Network Bitterness

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lazyness7

Sunday afternoon.

We have a tradition on Sundays.  Most every Sunday we get home from Church at about 2 pm, we change quickly into our sweats/jammies, quickly eat everything in the house, and then settle into our spots in our family room(or the TV room).  There are 4 chairs and a couch in our living room.  The other three in our family configure into one of the 4 seats (including the chair for the computer.)  As you probably know, it is almost non negotiable that I lay on the couch, just as it is non negotiable for my wife to get the remote.  The tradition is that we watch a Lifetime Movie or 10.

I used to fight it, because why would I want to watch the disasters of lives of the people they portray so badly in these movies? Seriously, how bad can you act? But as I found out a few months ago, I only have maybe 2 or 3 shows that I like because they are good or funny.  The rest of the time I watch TV, I do so I can make fun of it.  And what network is an easier target for me than the Lifetime Network.

After all those years of making fun of it, I realized something on Friday.  For years, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with my poorly structured and less than ambitious writing skills (write a book, start a bitter blog, write for the onion.com, write movies, etc.). Well, I’ve decided that I am not going to do any of those.  Reason being: They are too hard.  You know me. Writing is what I do on this blog, but it takes a lot of effort.  Not so much the typing, though that is pretty hard, but the thinking and the grammar and logic involved with at least putting a sentence together that kind of makes sense.

Too many things to think.

Too many things to think.

It’s been backbreaking work that I do for free.  But then I thought, “Why? Why work so hard on writing blog posts for free when I could be so lazy and write Lifetime Movies for lots of money?”

I know that seems like a lofty goal for me, but it isn’t.  Writing for the LTN requires that you write unintentionally funny dialogue, come up with whacked out crazy characters (and sometimes they are based on real people, so the writing takes care of itself), and work with terrible F list actors and actresses.  When you have those F list actors to deal with, you could throw in a line like, “Banana facing is my jam” and they would still take it as seriously as an Oscar worthy monologue.

Say, "Bananaing is my jam."

Say, “Banana facing is my jam.”

Though Lifetime has taken the cheese factor to a level not seen on TV before, they haven’t gone far enough.  I can offer them a laziness in writing they have not seen before, while providing them just enough of a framework of a story that it almost makes sense.   Though my resume is not necessary because they only need to ask any of my readers, I offer up my blog as my resume. Not only does it show my consistently bad writing, but it also shows my ability to be an unoriginal hot mess of a writer that would be a great parallel to the hot mess of the network, the actors, musicians and other writers.  Not only will they want me, they will need me.

Run on sentences are specialty of mine.  Stilted dialogue, a given, cliches running all the way up and down the page, a plague of inconsistency, mixed metaphors like a trailer park in a zoo! I know the psyche of the messed up teen, as I lived it. I’m totally inside the brain of the hard working lawyer type that is the “cliched safe, comfortable choice for the romantic comedied girl”.  (Okay, I don’t really know anything about that guy.  Who works late for fun?) And as far as my experience with women, I’ve met a few before, but can hardly understand what they are talking about so I would be the perfect person to write the cliches of a women that Lifetime desperately seeks.

As a non classically trained writer (could barely stand English classes in college), I feel like the perfect person for the job.  Give me a call Lifetime, and I will be the writer for your scripts that you secretly knew you had to have, but didn’t know until I wrote this post.

ARRRGGGHHHHH

Bitter Lifetime of Screwups Ben

142 thoughts on “Lifetime Network Bitterness”

  1. Pingback: 42 things I’m Bitter About | Ben's Bitter Blog

  3. I had such a hard time concentrating after seeing that you weren’t going to do any of what you listed off that I honestly couldn’t take in much of this after that.
    . . .
    PLEASE TELL ME YOU ARE GOING TO CONTINUE TO WORK ON YOUR BOOK.
    I don’t know if you were just saying all that for this, or if you were being serious. You HAVE to work on that book. It’s just such a fantastic idea/concept that you can’t not. (I’m double-negativing here, and if you knew how many times I’ve corrected typos in this comment, you would understand how dfsdkjfksdfjskdfjdsk I am right now.) O.o

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  10. Your writing doesn’t suck (or were you fishing for that very compliment?), but I’m sure you can dumb it down to Lifetime movie levels. I love the cheesiness of Lifetime movies (I love writing about cheesy movies in my blog; must start doing that again), but I usually don’t watch them all the way through because the dog dies or Grandma dies, and I’ll just get mad when they’re all happy ever anyways. I grind my teeth too much as it is. You’re not going to kill any pooches are you?

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        • I have been to LA several times as well as being born there. I remember several times when I was 5 being asked if I had any scriptwriting experience but telling them that I was still learning how to draw with my crayons, but come back in a few years and I’ll be learning the alphabet and I’ll pound a script or two for you.

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  13. My favorite Lifetime show was “Unsolved Mysteries” for the longest time. The theme song scared the shit out of me. And I can’t help but giggle at the horrible early 90’s outfits. Definitely has to be the worst time for fashion…that awkward transition from the late eighties to early 90’s.

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  14. Ah, Lifetime. If you want to feel like maybe your life isn’t as much of a disaster as it actually is, Lifetime is there to help. Sure, I have problems, but I’m not a unlicensed doctor who knocked up my finance’s mom or something. Thank you, LTN, for making me feel like I have my ish together.

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  15. I feel this going the way of that Seinfeld episode where they try and pitch a show to a network and hilarity ensues and then the characters manage to show themselves as the insufferable humans they definitely are and it all falls apart. Are you sure you don’t want to show them B.E.N.?

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  18. Oh my god I was watching a terrible Lifetime movie last weekend and was thinking who in the hell is this interesting for? I had to turn because, though they are usually funny, this one was just painful. Good luck with your endeavors of writing about crazed caregivers, scorned lovers, obsessed mothers, prostitutes, and mothers fighting to get their children out of the system!

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