 
Copyright 2012 Liz Shannon Miller

Cover Art by Asa Shumskas-Tait

Copy Edit by Cyndy Aleo

Ebook Edition, version 1

ISBN 978-0-9859994-4-5

All entries, with the exception of _Bones Since Season 1, Dollhouse, The Help, Rollerball_ and _Sex and the City 2_ , originated on liztellsfrank.com, and may still be enjoyed there, in a less copy-edited format -- but with plenty of pretty pictures! You should drop by the site! And add liztellsfrank.com to your RSS reader! New entries occur every week.

Version 1 electronic book publication September 2012

Electronic Book Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. And/or tell them to visit Liz Tells Frank! We have a lot of fun there.

Liz Tells Frank What Happened In...

_25 Trips Through the Best and Worst of Books, Film and Television, compiled from_ LizTellsFrank.com

By Liz Shannon Miller

Table of Contents

Copyright  
Title Page  
Table of Contents  
Foreword  
Introduction  
Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret  
Babylon 5  
Batman and Robin  
Battlefield Earth  
Bones Since Season 1*  
Dollhouse*  
Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas  
Flowers In the Attic  
Gargoyles  
The Help*  
Ladyhawke  
Left Behind  
Madea's Family Reunion  
Millionaire Matchmaker  
Night of the Living Dead  
Rollerball*  
Sex and the City 2*  
Showgirls  
Sliders  
Sucker Punch  
Sweet Valley High  
Terra Nova  
Tron  
Wall Street  
Zardoz  
About the Author  
_  
*The asterisks on these entries indicate the fact that the author, at great risk to life and limb, told Frank about these media properties exclusively for this book. Perhaps one day, they will appear on the website, but not anytime soon. Especially "Rollerball." Fuck "Rollerball."_

**Foreword**

By Frank Smith

"Oh, hey! You're real."

This greeting, directed to me by an affable young man to whom I'd just been introduced at a recent Liz Miller social gathering, is the kind of thing I've grown a lot more used to in the time that Liz has been writing Liz Tells Frank. Like a lot of people, I've spent most of life relatively confident in my own existence, so it's come as something of a culture shock to regularly encounter people who have doubted that I am, in fact, a real person. But I suppose it's the sort of thing you have to get used to when your name is in a blog title.

How did this all come to pass? Liz and I met shortly after college, two writers with a shared love of loud conversation, karaoke, dive bars, and thoughtful academic analysis of popular culture. (Liz took me to my first Henry Jenkins lecture, for which I will remain forever grateful.) Our friendship was inevitable. A few years in, we happened to watch the pilot of _Bones_ together, and afterward I told her, "I don't think I'm going to watch this show. But if you do, could you, you know, tell me what happens in it?" She said yes, and before long that telling me had become a series of hilarious online posts, and those posts became a blog, and telling me about Bones snowballed into telling me about _everything_ , and Liz Tells Frank was born.

The first other people I knew were reading Liz Tells Frank were our mutual friends, but it wasn't long before lots of other people got in on the action. And it was that widening readership that inevitably resulted in situations like the one above, where strangers assume I am some kind of literary device, invented to spice up the anecdotes and monologues, like Mark Twain's Mr. Brown or Agent Dale Cooper's Diane or (depending on how radical your interpretation of the novel) Beverly Cleary's Mr. Henshaw. In any case, I'm not surprised that so many people enjoy reading Liz Tells Frank.

There's a scene in _Metropolitan_ , my favorite ultra-low-budget comedy of manners, in which the main character is authoritatively discussing a Jane Austen novel, and halfway through the conversation it becomes clear that he's never actually _read_ the novel, and when another character confronts him about the apparent oversight, he says, "I don't read novels. I prefer good literary criticism. That way you get both the novelists' ideas as well as the critics' thinking."

This quote is wonderful because a) it's absurd and b) it's totally true. I love reading more than anything, but even if I never worked another day in my life and learned to sleep for just four hours every night, I'd never have time to read all the books I want. And the same is true of movies and TV and theater and prog rock albums. Firsthand experience of a work of art or entertainment is wonderful, but so is just knowing a little about it.

I don't regret the fact that I've saved roughly 120 hours of my life by not watching _Bones_. At the same time, I'm certain that my life has been – thanks to Liz – enriched by knowing what's happened in all those seasons of holographic-skeleton-assisted criminology and will-they-or-won't-they romance (just as it's been enlivened by knowing what happened in _Ladyhawke, Gargoyles, Flowers in the Attic_ , and _Left Behind_ ). Maybe we're entering an era where we reserve direct experience for the things that inspire our most passionate interest, but where there's a second tier of stuff that we don't need to know, we just want to know _about_. And what better way to hear about that stuff than from someone as phenomenally witty and talented as Liz?

If all this means that sometimes I'm assumed to be a fake person, it's worth it. But thank god I am real, because I get to read Liz Tells Frank.

_Frank Smith is a writer and actor. He is one of the creators of "_Lost Moon Radio _," a comedy and music collective performing regularly around Los Angeles and soon debuting a podcast online._

**Introduction**

Dear Readers,

In 2005, when my friend Frank asked me to keep him posted on what was happening on the Fox procedural _Bones_ , I didn't anticipate that seven years later, I'd have written approximately 120,000 words catching him up on stuff he hadn't seen or read (and/or stuff he should never ever see or read). In fact, if I had told 2005 Me this would happen, 2005 Me would have said "Really? A recap blog? Liz, that's so dumb."

Fortunately, the words "That's so dumb" have followed nearly every funny idea I've ever had. I think that's because the stuff I find funniest is the stuff that undercuts all higher brain function and just punches you in the gut with the insane truth of the moment. Especially when the comedy comes from unexpected places: Like a trashy novel about child incest, or a '90s kids show about talking gargoyles, or however the hell you'd describe _Battlefield Earth_.

Making fun of the work of others is, I suspect, a karmically losing proposition, so I try not to pick on anyone who doesn't deserve it. Fortunately, they still let Tyler Perry make movies, and studios keep turning out shitty remakes of classic films, and SO MANY PEOPLE still don't know about the Bechdel Test. Every once in a while, I worry I'm going to run out of stuff to tell Frank about... and then some ridiculous romantic comedy or genre-bending horror film will come out, and everything's copacetic.

None of this would be possible without the support of friends and family -- those who have loyally waited each week for a new entry, those who have commented, and those who have sat through some truly terrible films with me.

Contributors Laurel Vail, Ben Waters, Katherine Cox, Andreanna Ditton, Lauren Ludwig and Jeff Stone have been super important to the Liz TelIs Frank endeavor (especially when it comes to Jeff's sweet-ass _Top Model_ recaps). In addition, I am hugely grateful to Cyndy Aleo for copy-editing assistance, Janet Miller for guiding me through the wonderful world of e-publication and Asa Shumskas-Tait for the sexy-as-fuck cover design. And Laurel Vail also came up with the tagline! Y'all, I have awesome friends.

But none of this would be possible without Frank Smith, who has done me the greatest of favors by continuing to associate with this ridiculous exercise and is a talented, brilliant and above all else, REAL person.

Here's to two more years, at least.

Love,  
Liz

**Liz Tells Frank What Happened In** _Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret_

Dear Frank,

So it doesn't surprise me at all that you've never enjoyed the sublime pleasures of this particular novel, given that you are a boy, and thus you probably spent your tween years reading boy books and not worrying about when you were going to get your period. But now that you are a man, I think you are exceptionally clever for wanting to discover what you missed. After all, Judy Blume novels were downright formative for young ladies of our generation. I can only imagine that knowing what happens in _Are You There God? It's Me Margaret_ is part of some Machiavellian tactic for understanding and thus wooing women, and a brilliant one, at that.

The titular Margaret is 11 years old, and has just moved from New York to the New Jersey suburbs because her parents wanted fresh air and a decrease in visits from Margaret's overbearing Jewish grandmother. I wouldn't mention the Jew thing except that religion dominates nearly every page of this book -- see, Margaret's dad is Jewish and her mother is Christian, which means that her mother's family disowned her for marrying a Jew and Grandma keeps coming by the house with deli food. Oh, and also it means that Margaret has no religion. Which was apparently a big fucking deal in the 1970s. Wow am I glad to have been born a decade later. (I have nothing against religion, but plenty against being mocked for not having one.)

Before school starts, Margaret falls in with this girl Nancy, who's like a crazy general of girl-dom, organizing a secret club that requires its members to wear bras they don't need and loafers with no socks. She's like the Saddam Hussein of the sixth grade, but more intense.

But Margaret wants to fit in, so she does whatever Nancy says -- I kinda want to write an unauthorized sequel to this book where an adult Margaret joins Scientology, perhaps to squash some unwanted lesbian tendencies. (A LOT of this book revolves around Margaret's obsession with other girls' boobs. I'm just saying.)

The book's most iconic moment happens about here, by the way. Homework assignment for you, Frank: walk up to any girl between the ages of 25 and 40 and chant "I must - I must -". There's a very strong chance that girl replies with "I must increase my bust." That's right, Nancy has a chant to magically will boobs to get bigger. Maybe Saddam was the wrong comparison. Does the Reverend Moon have catchphrases?

Margaret's other obsession, the religion thing, flares up when her teacher assigns the class to do a report on something personal for them, and she figures that because she's in between two religions, she can use this assignment as motivation to figure out which religion she wants to belong to. Not because she wants to further her spiritual growth, but because that way she'll know if she should join the YMCA or the Jewish Community Center (Nancy and her underlings are very big on this issue).

Also, because she's always talking to God, it's a good fit. Yeah, the title of this book isn't exactly figurative; it's written in the first person, often framed as letters from Margaret to an unanswering God.

(And it JUST occurred to me why using the Liz Tells Frank format to discuss this book is post-modern and ironic. Frank, I'm usually much faster than this. Apologies. On the plus side, while Margaret's faith in God is often tenuous, I do completely believe that you exist.)

So Margaret isn't too impressed by her trips to a Jewish temple, a Presbyterian church, and a Methodist church, though she does like the music at the latter. She isn't too impressed by her first kiss with a boy during a game of Two Minutes In Heaven, even though the boy in question is #1 Class Heartthrob Philip Leroy. And she also isn't too impressed with the official film strip they watch in school that explains "that time of the month when a girl isn't at her best because she's bleeding from her vagina." Man, I'd forgotten how Always or some other company always sponsored those videos. Talk about pervasive product placement.

Conveniently enough, this is when one of Nancy's bitches gets her period, and soon Nancy is claiming to have gotten it -- though Margaret discovers this to be a lie when Nancy really gets it for the first time a few weeks later. Nancy is a manipulative genius but a poor liar.

All this excitement over getting their periods comes in direct contradiction to the girls' ostracizing of Laura Danker, The Girl Who Got Her Boobs First, and is thus considered a slut as a result -- which was often a self-fulfilling prophecy, at least at my elementary school. Part of me sometimes wishes I'd been that girl, as being ostracized for having big tits sounds like a lot more fun than being ostracized because you can recite the names of _Star Trek_ episodes.

Anyways, Margaret treats Laura like shit, just because Nancy does it, but between realizing what an asshole that makes her and the whole Nancy-lied-about-her-period thing, it seems like Nancy's hold over Margaret is lessening. Not that it makes Margaret be less of a bitch to Laura or anything, but whatever.

Oh, and then there's dramarama because Margaret's grandparents -- the ones who disowned Margaret's mom -- decide to visit and after like five whole minutes of trying to play nice throw a shitstorm over Margaret not having religion. This makes Margaret want to break up with her BFF penpal God, but it doesn't take. She turns in a letter to her teacher saying that religion is something you can't pick super-easily, and then she gets her period and becomes a woman. THE END.

For the record, when I first read this book as a wee lass, it was the original edition where the girls had to wear the ultra-complicated belts that attached to their pads (a concept which terrified me to my core). But in the edition I read to write this for you, Frank, the book has been updated to modern menstrual pad technology -- which boils down to "sticky stuff," if you really wish to know.

And that's a fitting note to end this TMI exposé into the pre-adolescence of the human female. You now know everything you ever needed to know about women. Because like Margaret, most girls of a young age are struggling to define themselves amid the many confusing images and social tropes thrown their way. These days, though, I suspect they're a lot less worried about Jesus -- or the YMCA, at least.

Love,  
Liz

**Liz Tells Frank What Happened In** _Babylon 5_

Dear Frank,

So I don't think it's any secret that I pretty much spent the 1990s watching whatever sci-fi television was readily available to me. But one I've never given much thought to was _Babylon 5_ , J. Michael Straczynski's five-year tale of a space station caught in the middle of intergalactic war. Maybe a part of it was the fact that my heart at that point belonged to _Star Trek: Deep Space Nine_ , and there were only so many space station shows to which I could pledge eternal fealty? I dunno, to be honest. I just know that it's weird, because I've been re-watching _Babylon 5_ this week, Frank, and _Babylon 5_? Actually kind of awesome.

The basic deal was this: Babylon 5 was a space station created as a port of call for a Mos Eisley cantina's worth of alien races as well as a neutral seat of politics for various planetary federations -- ostensibly doing what the United Nations did after World War II to prevent another interstellar war.

Instead, though, it ended up becoming an independent political force that led a war against a totally ancient first evil called the Shadows (you know they were evil because their spaceships looked like giant spiders, and yes, it's a first evil with spaceships, just go with it), not to mention an Earth gone completely fascist and no shortage of inter-species fighting. It's an incredibly dense four seasons of narrative, covering the political situations on at least four different planets simultaneously with the on-station intrigue, while also managing to find time for some incredibly endearing characters, romance, time travel, religious symbolism, telepaths and the occasional Looney Tunes clip.

Perhaps it's unfair to describe this show as a space show about a magic space station with terrible CGI, except of course for the angels and the ghosts and the souls and Ambassador Delenn going into a cocoon and coming out half-human. And the CGI... Well, okay, if you pretend you're playing a video game on your old Sega Genesis, it doesn't look so bad.

But while lot of the dialogue was kind of terribly ham-fisted, delivered by a cast of actors who are constantly picking bits of scenery out of their teeth, some of the characters were truly kick-ass.

Not necessarily folk like Captain Sheridan, who was pretty much Military Guy With A Wry Sense of Humor. I mean, Sheridan was fine. But Garibaldi! Hard-boiled Garibaldi, who was pretty much just an old-timey detective with a strong moral compass.

And tough as hell Delenn, who didn't let falling in love with Sheridan keep her from being a ruthless politician and military leader of her people (while also still being kind of adorably naive). G'kar, noble leader of the Narn people! The conniving Londo, and his deceptively sweet and savvy assistant Vir!

And fuck me freddy, IVANOVA. Frank, if you're wondering how I managed to become so awesome as an adult, having role models like Ivanova around during my adolescence was probably a big help; second-in-command Ivanova showed me that being smart and strong and funny were totally normal things for a girl to be.

Fun fact: Ivanova was also gayer than an entire season of _Xena: Warrior Princess_ \-- she actually had a lady-on-lady romance that is historically overlooked in studies of gay people on TV, possibly because it suffered from a fade-to-black treatment so extreme that most people don't actually remember it happened.

But that didn't keep the totally hunky Marcus from having a crush on her! Marcus was great. He had a British accent and a hot beard and a quarterstaff like Donatello, and while he was an awesome mystical warrior, he seemed totally content to just follow Ivanova around like a puppy.

Ivanova never loved him back, though (see second-to-last paragraph) and when he met a tragic end, she said one of those lines that shook me to my teenybopper core: "All love is unrequited." FRANK, IT WAS SO SAD. Who needs shit like _Twilight_ when you have _Babylon 5_?

I'm totally doing a disservice to this show by focusing on Ivanova and how awesome she was, but the beauty of the show is how many facets there were to it. Interested in Shakespearean histories? Then the story of Londo's rise to power on Centauri, and the ruin that came with it, is for you. Enjoy post-modern media satire? There are not one but TWO episodes shot as news reports for the Earth network ISN, the second showing how corrupted Earth has become. Like yourself a Jesus allegory? Fuck, man, Sheridan _dies and then comes back from the dead_.

_Babylon 5_ , in short, has no shortage of flaws, but was all in all a great four seasons of television. I keep saying four seasons, Frank, because Straczynski was kind of a crazy person when he set out to do this show, demanding a commitment of five seasons from whoever agreed to make it because he had the whole thing all mapped out. Then the show nearly didn't get a fifth season and so the important aspects of the _Babylon 5_ storyline were compressed into season 4, capped off with an insanely cool season finale that covered _the next thousand years of history_ , showing how our pals Sheridan and Delenn changed the course of human events.

The only problem? TNT stepped up at like the last minute to say, oh, hey, we'll totally fund a fifth season. Thus, yes, technically there was a fifth season, despite the fact that there was no plot for it. So we don't talk about the fifth season. No one talks about it. It was a terribly disappointing waste of time. Forget I even mentioned it.

But maybe check out the other seasons of this show, Frank! Because perhaps you won't worship Ivanova the same way I do, or have any patience with the visual effects, or enjoy its more flowery touches. But it was bold, interesting, moved like lightning and made you think. In short, it deserves to be remembered.

Love,  
Liz

**Liz Tells Frank What Happened In** _Batman and Robin_

Dear Frank,

So as you know, I'm a very big fan of performance artist Lady Gaga, primarily because in the world of pop music, she's the rare person unafraid to truly experiment. Like, I know there are plenty of people who gave her shit over coming to the 2011 Grammys ensconced inside a translucent egg, but frankly, I kinda loved it. Especially because she also came on stage inside said egg, basically making the red carpet a dramatic lead-up to her onstage performance, which is such a bold and interesting way of approaching the conceit of an awards show! Lady Gaga is so great.

Why am I talking about Lady Gaga, Frank, when (as the subject of this post clearly states) I'm here to tell you what happens in the 1997 film _Batman and Robin_? Here's the deal. We all know this is a terrible movie. But while other cinematic disasters I've told you about were failures because of a lack of talent or inspiration, that's not where _Batman and Robin_ falls apart. _Batman and Robin_ is fucking terrible, but it's fucking terrible because it was a bold attempt at capturing a certain spirit in film format -- specifically, being a live-action comic book.

The primary problem, of course, is that the people involved have this completely childish idea of what comic books are -- probably because the last time they read a piece of sequential art, they were actually children -- and the entire movie is a fucking mess. But there is a part of me that admires the amount of risk taken here, the flat-out balls of trying something new with what was previously such a profitable franchise. The visual extravagance of this film alone could inspire an entire concert's worth of Lady Gaga ensembles. In short: This is probably why I'm not in charge of a major motion picture studio, but there's a part of me that would rather Hollywood make five flat-out insane _Batman and Robins_ than one generic and blah _Transformers_.

Thus ends my defense of _Batman and Robin_. Let's begin making fun of it, shall we?

The problem with watching this even vaguely sober is that you start asking yourself questions. Like, why is the very first thing that happens in this movie a tight closeup on Batman's ass and codpiece? Why are there nipples on the Batsuit? Why is Chris O'Donnell shouting every line of dialogue? Why do I keep stabbing myself? Suffice it to say, I paused the movie to pour myself a drink after about five minutes.

The plot, in a nutshell, is this: Mr. Freeze, played with all the subtlety you'd expect from Arnold Schwarzenegger, wants diamonds to power his cold suit, which he needs to survive after falling into a vat of coolant. I have no idea why diamonds power the freezing suit -- because they look like ice? That's science for you.

Batman and Robin fail to stop Mr. Freeze from stealing a massive diamond from a natural history museum, because Robin gets frozen by Freeze, and Batman has to save him. The emotional storyline of this film consists of Batman not trusting Robin to avoid death (a totally fair concern, as Robin is kind of stupid) and Robin resenting that, and a lot of talk about how family means trust and whatever, whatever, no one in this movie actually has a conversation, they just shout one-liners at each other.

At one point, Robin says "Cowabunga!" He can't even remember what comic book he's in.

Meanwhile, Uma Thurman is a nerdy girl scientist, obsessed with plants, who catches her boss creating a super-soldier. That super-soldier is Bane, one of the most bad-ass members of Batman's Rogues Gallery. Unfortunately, in this movie he's reduced to the role of a henchmen, which is so painful to any true Batman fan that I'm going to leave him out of this entry as much as possible. You can thank me later, Bane. In a non-murderous way, of course.

Uma's boss tries to kill her, but because he pushes her into a tableful of plant venom, he just ends up turning Uma into Poison Ivy, who can kill with a kiss -- and he becomes her first victim. (Please note that plants do not actually have venom; they have toxins. Venom is purely an animal thing, but whatever.)

From my notes while watching the film:

I actually kind of like Uma Thurman's performance so far. Holy shit. How drunk am I? Not that drunk! Maybe this movie is making me dumber.

Poison Ivy's got a grudge against Bruce Wayne, because he was funding some research or something (I could go double-check what exactly Wayne Enterprises was doing, but honestly, who gives a shit?) so she goes and confronts him at the opening ceremony for his new observatory, but he ignores her.

Here, by the way, is where I figured out why I was liking Uma Thurman's performance: In nerdy scientist mode, she reminds me of Kitty from _Arrested Development_. Which is _never_ a bad thing.

Batman and Robin want to lure Mr. Freeze into the open, so they decide to host a big gala to celebrate donating a big diamond from the Wayne collection to... the observatory maybe? I don't remember and don't care enough to check, especially because my brain can hardly handle the fact that it's not Bruce Wayne and his plucky ward, but Batman and Robin, who are hosting this fabulous gala. TOTALLY SMART MOVE TO KEEP FROM BLOWING YOUR COVER, SUPERHEROES.

Poison Ivy crashes the gala pretty spectacularly; when you write the line "Uma Thurman strip teases her way out of a purple gorilla suit," and that's not the stupidest thing to happen in the movie, BY FAR, you know you are in the middle of something special. (Also, Poison Ivy brought her own back-up dancers. The Lady Gaga comparisons continue to mount up.)

Because of Poison Ivy's magic plant pheromone dust, Batman and Robin both want to fuck win a date with her, which creates more conflict between them that will ultimately not matter. And when Mr. Freeze falls for Batman's bait, Ivy decides she should team up with him to... Do evil, I guess.

Meanwhile, let's not forget there's a whole other fucking thing! The Batgirl thing! That's right: Alicia Silverstone, still as fresh-faced and adorable as she was in _Clueless_ , pops by the mansion to help take care of Alfred, who's sick with a terminal illness he's been hiding and Batman's been pretending to ignore.

And this means what? Um, well, Robin wants to bang her (when he doesn't want to bang Poison Ivy, you ask? It never comes up, because neither storyline intersects, because movies are constructed of scenes that have nothing to do with each other if you ask screenwriter Akiva Goldsman).

But Alicia's not interested, because she's busy winning motorcycle races and doing judo and computer science and basically everything that proves she should be Batgirl once the movie gets around to getting her a costume. Which it does. And because this movie is equal opportunity, we also get a close-up on HER ass. Thanks, movie.

Anyways. The disease Alfred's sick with is the same that Mr. Freeze's wife (sealed up in a cryo-snow globe) suffers from, and apparently Mr. Freeze (who in a previous life was a doctor, but apparently doesn't mind the Mr. designation) did some groundbreaking research that could cure Alfred. But Mr. Freeze has also teamed up with Poison Ivy to freeze the planet and eliminate all the humans, leaving it safe for Ivy's precious plants. (There's no explanation of how that's possible, or if there was I wasn't paying attention because c'mon).

Around now, by the way, Uma Thurman switches from imitating Judy Greer to imitating the dearly departed Mae West, which is equally enjoyable, because Mae West was the fucking shit. Uma Thurman is kind of saving this movie for me! I certainly feel less like stabbing anytime she's on screen.

But the thing with this movie is that you just kind of stop caring what's going on. You're like, of course Batgirl's motorcycle stays upright without her riding it, so that she can jump back on it after flipping off. Of course. Totally rational thing that happens all the time. This is because at a certain point, a bad movie is like freezing to death. To quote _30 Rock_ : "If you give into it, you start to feel kind of numb and warm. And then you just get sleepy."

And yes, I hate myself for mentioning freezing right now. Because here's the rest of the movie: Lots of people say terrible puns. (There are so many terrible puns in this movie.) Mr. Freeze tries to freeze Gotham. Batman, Robin and Batgirl stop him. More puns. Mr. Freeze is pissed at them because he thinks they killed his wife, but then Batman tells him that no, Ivy did unplug his wife's snow globe, but Batman saved her, and she's safe. More puns. Mr. Freeze gives Batman the cure for the disease Alfred has; Alfred gets cured; Ivy gets captured somehow; and Freeze comes to her jail cell and beats her up. More puns. And stabbing (on my part).

Ultimately, what this movie proves is that there are some actors who can withstand a disaster like this: George Clooney, Batman just this once, has of course gone on to blockbuster stardom. And there are some actors who can't: Chris O'Donnell, meanwhile, is fucking lucky to have work on _NCIS:L.A._ Risks are vital for a vibrant creative culture, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't think twice about wearing a rubber suit with nipples on it.

_Batman and Robin_ is a tough nut, but I still do admire it for existing. I mean, I never ever want to watch it again. But part of me has to admit that you need talent to be that terrible.

Love,  
Liz

**Liz Tells Frank What Happened In** _Battlefield Earth_

Dear Frank,

Sometimes, to cope with the stuff I watch for you, I drink. Sometimes, I try not to, but knowing that things like _Battlefield Earth_ are on the horizon makes for a shift in opinion.

However, you might be surprised to learn that I didn't drink a lot while watching this film. That was due to some innate sense of self-preservation, knowing that if I did drink too much, I'd black out and forget what had happened, which would be a good thing in the long term but bad in the short term, as I'd then have to watch it AGAIN. Because OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD, Frank, I know that saying _Battlefield Earth_ is a bad movie is hardly a revolutionary concept, but I don't know if I can fully describe how fucking terrible this film is. It's really truly amazingly the worst.

When I say that _Battlefield Earth_ is the worst, I mean that it is lifeless and depressing and completely devoid of any genuine emotion. It lacks any pretense of humor, humanity and wit; no one, not even the usually awesome Forest Whitaker, escapes with any dignity. I feel truly lessened for having sat in a room while it played on a TV. The only one who seems to be having a good time is John Travolta, which is good, given that he invested millions of his own dollars into the production, but sad for everyone else involved. This includes Friends of LTF Megan, Nayla and Drew, who helped mitigate the pain of watching this movie with wry comments and explanations of plot points that my brain kept actively rejecting.

So, Frank, let me tell you what happens so you never have to make my mistakes. I'll begin by saying the only nice thing I will say about this movie: I actually kind of respect the way it immediately throws us into the barren post-apocalyptic landscape of Colorado in the year 3000, where a bunch of now-primitive humans live in tribes and have terrible hair. However, it quickly becomes clear that the choice to begin the movie this way has nothing to do with artistic intention, and everything to do with the fact that the director clearly didn't give a shit. (Roger Christian, by the way, also directed _Masterminds_ , aka The Only Bad Performance Patrick Stewart Has Ever Given.)

Here comes Barry Pepper! Poor Barry Pepper. He totally had a promising career before he made this movie. Sorry about that, Barry.

After his dad dies in the first five minutes of the movie, Barry decides to go wandering around through the ruin of human civilization. But while Barry's hanging out with these two other guys in a mall, for like no reason whatsoever, an alien attacks them with a laser gun. Despite the fact that the alien duder is physically bigger and stronger and has a fucking LASER GUN, it takes an alarmingly long time for him to capture them.

And then we're at the human processing center of Denver -- what the fuck that means, I got no clue, but that's what the on-screen text tells us...

To hell with it. Here's the deal Frank: I seriously can't tell you what happens in this movie with any great detail or coherency, because the movie itself lacks those things. So here's the vaguest of gists: Barry Pepper ends up in human prison, and while attempting to escape, he impresses John Travolta (who spent his own money to make this movie), who is playing one of the totally bizarre-looking aliens (they're called Psychlos, but that's too stupid for me to type more than once, so I'm just going to call them aliens) who brought about the ruin of human civilization all those years ago.

John Travolta (who spent his own money to make this movie), assisted by the unrecognizable alien Forest Whitaker, wants Earth gold -- why, I have no fucking clue, because there's no indication that the aliens have anything resembling currency or the gold standard -- and he wants it without having to deal with the bureaucracy of his stupidly-named alien organization. There's so much fucking screen time devoted to fucking alien paperwork and fucking alien middle management that I am actually angry thinking about it.

There is some reason why the stupidly-named aliens cannot mine the gold themselves, either because they cannot go below a certain altitude (hence their colonization of Denver, the mile-high city) or because of some sort of radiation. Maybe both things? I seriously have no clue. I dunno. I'm just going to sit here and feel sad.

Especially because apparently the plan is that John Travolta (who spent his own money to make this movie) will teach Barry Pepper how to speak the stupidly named alien language and fly the stupidly named alien spaceships and all sorts of other skills that will prove to be very handy when Barry Pepper decides to unite his fellow humans in revolution. GOOD PLANNING, JOHN TRAVOLTA (who spent his own money to make this movie). GOOD PLANNING.

I mean, the plan kind of works for John Travolta (who spent his own money to make this movie), because Barry and some of his fellow humans do fly a stupidly named alien ship to Fort Knox and pick up a whole bunch of gold bars for him. But then, OMGWHODATHUNK, Barry Pepper leads the humans in revolt thanks to all the knowledge and skills he's gained thanks to John "spent his own money to make this movie" Travolta's TOTALLY FLAWLESS PLAN.

Thus, Barry Pepper and his ragtag human buddies successfully defeat the stupidly named aliens, even blowing up _their entire planet_ thanks to some science bullshit about their atmosphere. They lock John Travolta (who spent his own money to make this movie) up in Fort Knox because of irony. Fuck this movie. Fuck it. THE END.

Frank, you might have noticed a pretty obvious omission in this summary: namely, that _Battlefield Earth_ is based on a science-fiction novel by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, and contains parallels to many of Scientology's teachings. Honestly, that was kind of deliberate. Certainly, Scientology is, according to way too many reports, a clandestine cult that destroys lives, and _Battlefield Earth_ is not the worst of its sins (if you like ultimate sadness, try Googling "Scientology" and "forced abortions") -- but even disentangled from Scientology and all of its wrongs, _Battlefield Earth_ is still the fucking worst.

Love,  
Liz

**Liz Tells Frank What Happened In** _Bones_ **Since Season 1**

Dear Frank,

As you remember, the first thing I ever told you about was an episode of the now-long-running crime drama _Bones_ in 2006 -- in fact, I told you about a large percentage of the first season of _Bones_ , because you asked nicely.

But at the end of the first season, I became convinced the show was too wary of the _Moonlighting_ curse (AKA "They can't get together -- it'll ruin the show!"), and stopped watching it. I did, however, pledge to pick it up once again if its main characters started banging.

Since that day, the people I appointed to tell me if I should re-add it to my DVR never alerted me to a change in this circumstance. So today, I delve into the bowels of Wikipedia summaries and episode guides to see what we've missed since I stopped telling you what happened.

To remind you, Frank, _Bones_ is about a forensic anthropologist (nicknamed Bones) who, with her team of lab techs, helps solve gross murder crimes with Angel from _Angel_ (nicknamed Beau in my original retellings, because apparently that's David Boreanaz's real-life nickname and it made me laugh).

To make things easier, let's take this season by season, starting with Season 2, where these appear to be the big things that happened:

  * Bones's original boss got replaced by a younger hotter lady boss, who apparently used to hook up with Beau.

  * Hot Half-Asian Lab Tech hooks up with Conspiracy Freak Lab Tech.

  * Drama-rama with Beau's ex-ladyfriend/baby momma. (Beau has a young son. He's cute.)

  * The obligatory "our hero gets buried alive!" episode happens (like two seasons earlier than it usually does in network dramas), and introduces a serial killer nicknamed the "Grave Digger" because he kills his victims by DIGGING GRAVES oh good lord.

  * David Duchovny (!) directs an episode where "a man's body was found gutted, burned and hung like a scarecrow on the roof of a hotel that housed Federal witnesses" (jeez louise).

  * Stephen Fry shows up!

  * Bones gets a boyfriend, but then he literally SAILS AWAY ON A BOAT.

  * There's an episode where they use MySpace pages to solve crimes. (It was 2007, so I guess that's acceptable.)

  * Bones' dad and brother show up a bunch and there's some stuff where apparently she learns that the reason she grew up an orphan is that her parents abandoned her because they loved her. Okay.

  * Hot Tech and Conspiracy Freak nearly get married but turns out she was already married so they don't get married. END OF SEASON.

And then, in Season 3:

  * The nerdy lab tech goes to Iraq to be a soldier! Okay. Sure.

  * There's a serial killer who's a cannibal which GROSS and also comes off (from this Wikipedia entry, anyway) as very _Silence of the Lambs_ -y. There is SO MUCH of him in this season, it's like every other episode they're like "oh, remember that cannibal guy? I bet he did this cannibal murder!" Bold stuff, _Bones._

  * Hot Tech is still married to some guy she doesn't remember, so she tries to track him down for divorcin'.

  * From the Wikipedia summary: A victim is "discovered to have stayed at a pony play retreat and was killed with a hoof knife."

  * The nerdy lab tech comes back from army and it's fucked him up quite a bit.

  * Stephen Fry shows up!

  * There's this other psychologist guy played by one of the freaks from _Freaks and Geeks_ who's hanging around \-- I don't really get why -- but he's a permanent part of the show going forward.

  * Beau gets shot! There's a funeral! But the funeral is a lie! I don't know why they faked Booth's death, but that seems like a big deal.

  * They catch the gross cannibal serial killer guy, but remember when I said the nerdy lab tech got fucked up by Army? He apparently got so fucked up by the Army that he BECAME THE CANNIBAL SERIAL KILLER'S APPRENTICE. Holy SHIT, that's a plot twist. A plot twist any rational human being might buy? I dunno, but DAMN, that's fucked up.

Okay, let's see if Season 4 can top that...

  * Bones and Beau go to London! That's fun.

  * Hot Tech finally tracks down her mystery husband! But he won't divorce her. Dick.

  * I guess that leads to Hot Tech and Conspiracy Freak breaking up? Sad.

  * And Hot Tech is also bi and one of her ex-girlfriends stops by and they end up getting together?

  * Why are the only interesting things in this season happening to Hot Tech?

  * That gravedigger guy comes up again briefly...

  * They solve a crime at a circus. Beau is afraid of clowns.

  * Hot New Boss's ex-fiance is found half-eaten in a tiger cage.

  * Hot Tech's ladyfriend dumps her and Hot Tech sleeps with Conspiracy Freak again.

  * Stephen Fry shows up!

  * Bones wants a baby, and asks Beau to be her baby daddy! Just like Mulder and Scully! But then Beau has a brain tumor! (WHAT?!?!) So he has to go into surgery...

  * ...where he has some crazy hallucination where he and Bones are married and own a nightclub together and everything is upside-down and backwards...

  * ...and then Beau wakes up from the surgery not remembering Bones at all! Because that's medically possible!

Okay, Season 5, bring it on:

  * I guess Beau gets around to remembering who Bones is, though he's not sure his feelings for her are real? I guess he has feelings he doesn't understand? Okay. Practically every episode summary includes the line "Beau deals with the effects of his tumor," so at least there's continuity.

  * Hot Tech starts hooking up with one of the interns. Man, Hot Tech is really the show bicycle at this point.

  * Beau's grandfather gives Beau and Bones relationship advice.

  * AN EPISODE THAT TAKES PLACE IN ROSWELL, NEW MEXICO IS CALLED "THE X IN THE FILE" I SHIT YOU NOT.

  * Stephen Fry shows up!

  * Hot Tech has a pregnancy scare.

  * They maybe investigate JFK's assassination? RESULTS: INCONCLUSIVE.

  * The 100th episode (that's a lot of episodes!) is all about how Beau and Bones first met and the flashbacks include Nerdy Lab Tech before HE WENT CRAZY AND BECAME A SERIAL KILLER.

  * Also, apparently Beau and Bones nearly boned (heh) during their first case, but they didn't because they were drunk (maybe I should watch this episode?) and in the present, Beau confesses his lurrrrrve for her. But Bones is like "I don't know how to love!" and Beau is like "well, I need to get over you then" and it is SAD! I just went on YouTube to watch it, and it is sad!

  * Hot Tech dumps the intern.

  * Bones and Beau start dating other people: saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.

  * From the Wikipedia summary: Hot Boss "looks for a gynecologist for her stepdaughter Michelle." (Hot Boss later dates said gyno.)

  * Hot Tech and Conspiracy Freak get married after remembering in a jail cell that they love each other. (Sure.)

  * That Grave Digger murderer is a lady! Who's on trial! And she goes to jail but "it's not over!"

  * Everyone splits up at the end of the season to travel or go to Army or investigate really weird bones, which I'm sure was very heartfelt on screen.

And then there's a TIME JUMP! Very exciting. The show now takes place in the future! Maybe. I don't know. I just know it's Season 6!

  * The gang gets back together, but Beau found a girlfriend in Afghanistan. Booooooooooooooo.

  * Bones watches _Jersey Shore_.

  * Hot Tech is pregnant for reals this time!

  * Beau's girlfriend got shot! I shouldn't be happy about that. She's okay. I mean, she doesn't die. I don't know if she's a decent person or not.

  * Stephen Fry DOES NOT show up! Boooooooooooooooooo part deux.

  * From the Wikipedia summary: "A case involving a liquid explosion of human remains causes [Bones], [Beau] and [Hot Boss] to become covered in evidence." EW.

  * That Grave Digger lady shows up again! But then she gets sniped by a sniper! Frank, in case you forgot, Beau was a sniper in Army and was really sad because of all those people he killed that one time. So he's a suspect in the sniping!

  * But then it turns out the sniper is the mummy from _The Mummy_. He shows up later to snipe more things.

  * Beau proposes to his girlfriend, but she can't commit.

  * There's all this stuff with a guy who's good at finding things because he's the Finder, the spin-off show that did not "find" an audience the following season. BOOM I'LL BE HERE ALL WEEK TRY THE VEAL.

  * The sniper guy gets caught, but not before killing the British intern! Sad for him. (But he got killed because he's a series regular on _Alphas_ now, so really, good for him!)

  * Hot Tech gives birth! Good for her.

  * And the season ends with Bones telling Beau that she's pregnant and he's the daddy and WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?

Seriously, this show does love its finale cliffhangers. Onto Season 7!

  * Wait, no, I just had to ditch Wikipedia for a little while because Season 7 opens with Bones and Beau happily living together and kissing and pregnant and I am SO FUCKING CONFUSED what is happening?!??

  * Okay. Okay. I dug deep into the Internet and I think I got this now. After the British intern died last season, Bones and Beau had a sleepover where they may or may not have had grief sex, so that finale ending last season was confirmation that they did bone. So now, here at the top of season 7, Bones and Beau have skipped all that dating stuff and are now just preparing to be parents.

  * So TECHNICALLY, per my vow to start watching when they started doing it, I should have started watching with the second-to-last episode of Season 6. But I've been busy, okay?

  * Beau's father dies? I don't think we ever met him. But apparently he was a dick.

  * Hot Tech and Conspiracy Freak, the first new parents of the show, don't sleep much because of baby. NO SHIT.

  * Bones has her baby! Good for her.

  * She LITERALLY, by the way, gives birth in a MANGER. This show gets very, very weird sometimes.

  * Someone makes a movie out of one of Bones's books (remember, Frank, how she not only investigates crime, she writes crime fiction?) and Bones and Beau go to visit the set and solve murders there. If you're playing the "I remember that happening on _X-Files_!" drinking game, you are now drunk.

  * And then the season ends with Bones getting framed for murder and having to go on the run with her baby daughter! Very dramatic conclusion to what otherwise seemed like a pretty dull season.

  * I mean, Hot Tech didn't break up with anybody ONCE!

  * Also, no Stephen Fry.

Maybe I'll try watching Season 8, to see what happens? Maybe.

For, ever since _The X-Files_ carved a fondness for professional-turned-romantic partnerships into my heart, I have gone seeking that same high from other TV shows. But I rarely get what I want, because so many show creators worry about the _Moonlighting_ curse -- forgetting that what ruined _Moonlighting_ was behind-the-scenes in-fighting and back-and-forth narrative stalling, and that it's possible to tell a compelling love story that doesn't sacrifice sexual tension. The most exciting moment of a romance doesn't have to be the final seconds before the first kiss.

_Bones_ dodged these issues pretty effectively in the long run, but MAN some of these cliffhangers would have pissed me off were I watching in real time and not skimming plot summaries. However, Season 8 beckons -- if only because Liz Tells Frank was founded on one central principle, Frank: Making sure you don't have to watch _Bones_.

I remain ever vigilant, Frank. I shall never waver.

Love,  
Liz

**Liz Tells Frank What Happened In** _Dollhouse_

Dear Frank,

If Joss Whedon's _Dollhouse_ doesn't go down in history as one of television's weirdest ever shows, it'll only be because it was so weird history won't believe it existed.

I mean, imagine going into a major network and basically pitching this: "It's about a bunch of super-hot people who get turned into zombies so they can be reprogrammed as the perfect whores for this whorehouse run by an evil corporation \-- I mean, sometimes they aren't just whores; sometimes they do nice things for people, but you can totes program a person to just be your fucktoy, and that's a real part of the show, because the whole point is that this evil corporation is selling rich people their fantasies. Also, it stars the hot evil chick from _Buffy_. I'll take my duffle bag of cash now, thanks."

Thing is, THAT IS TOTALLY WHAT JOSS WHEDON DID AND THAT IS TOTALLY THE SHOW THAT GOT MADE. The tale of Echo and her fellow "dolls" – extremely hot humans who could be programmed with any personality – faltered and accelerated like a teenager trying to learn stick. Between clumsy metaphors, clunky exposition, and not nearly enough Alan Tudyk, some parts of the show could be considered a mess.

The rest of it, though? Kind of insanely brilliant. Especially because _Dollhouse_ is the best working example of why giving a show an end date is the best thing you can do for it; some shows only perform when they know exactly how much time they have left.

See, Frank, the first half of the first season attempts to be a procedural (which is clearly how Whedon and his team spun the show's concept to Fox executives). This means that each week, Echo goes and saves the day, using the special skills downloaded into her brain by the brilliant, yet slightly sociopathic, lab tech Topher, before returning to the very fancy whorehouse for bedtime.

These first few episodes, as you might expect, are a bit of a slog. Which is why, starting with "Man on the Street," there's a shift to a less stand-alone structure, and the mysteries of the Dollhouse begin to take precedence over Echo robbing a bank or pretending to join a cult. There's also some nice work developing the backstory of Echo's fellow brain-wash-ees -- most especially Sierra and Victor, who, despite being kept in a childlike state inside the Dollhouse, become the center of a very sweet love story.

And then, by the end of the first season, things become poised for crazypants.

When you talk about _Dollhouse_ , Frank, there are two things you talk about: the acting, and the apocalypse. I'll start with the acting: The biggest challenge of this series was clearly finding actors who could pull off a wide variety of roles, as befitting their multiple personalities. And Dichen Lachman and Enver Gjokaj, who play Sierra and Victor respectively, KILL IT. Just crazy amounts of talent there. Every time I see they've been cast in something new, I get psyched.

However, because this was meant to be a star vehicle for Eliza Dushku, this same attention was not paid to her own casting. Overall, she's as fun in this show as she was breaking bad in _Buffy_ \-- but every once in a while, she has to do accents. Let us never speak of this again.

And Helo from _Battlestar_ is also here! Tellingly, they never asked Tahmoh Penikett to play anyone other than Ballard -- which is probably for the best for everyone.

The rest of the regular cast -- from Olivia Williams to Fran Kranz to that guy from _Matrix Reloaded_ who was mad at Morpheus all the time -- is solid, and people like Jamie Bamber and Alexis Denisof and Patton Oswald and Summer Glau and Felicia Day stop by as well, which is a delight.

Why, you ask, does Felicia Day stop by? Oh, just to SURVIVE THE APOCALYPSE. Here's the deal: _Dollhouse_ , due to some episode-order SNAFU, had to pull an extra episode for Season 1 out of its ass. Its (frankly brilliant) solution: A time jump to the year 2019, at which point the technology which created the dolls has gone completely rogue and LITERALLY ENDED THE WORLD, thanks to the vast majority of the planet turning into brain-dead drones or mindless murdering zombies.

When _Dollhouse_ got picked up for a very tentative Season 2, there were one or two stand-alone-ish episodes near the beginning; then, they got a cancellation heads-up. Remember when I said _Dollhouse_ is why you give some shows an end date? Here is what I meant to say: Here is why you give shows an end date IN ADVANCE.

With at least half a season's worth of plotting left to them, _Dollhouse_ went BALLS TO THE WALL, accelerating the mysterious Rossom Corporation's evil plans and setting up an epic apocalypse narrative unlike any before seen on network television.

Your premium _Dollhouse_ viewing experience, Frank, would involve watching the following episodes from Season 1:

"Ghost: Because you always have to watch the pilot.  
"Man on the Street": Because Patton Oswalt.  
"Haunted": Because I really like Dichen Lachman's Fran Kranz impression.  
"Needs": Because backstory.  
"Briar Rose": Because Alan Tudyk.  
"Omega": Because Alan Tudyk.  
"Epitaph One": Because apocalypse, part one.

And then watch Season 2, because it's not perfect, but it holds up pretty well as a full narrative. You could maybe skip "Instinct," as it's the episode where Topher programs Echo to lactate -- because it's the episode where Topher programs Echo to lactate. (I mean, seriously.)

But otherwise, the story goes places you wouldn't expect, from D.C. political drama to a unique take on post-military service PTSD to a nightmare jail for the mind. And that's all BEFORE the apocalypse gets going. It's a helluva ride.

When I say that Season 2 is not perfect, I mean that parts of it may make you angry. Parts of it might make you sad. Its over-reliance on shooting people in the head to make the drama go might make you angry and sad all at once.

But whether you love it or hate it, the show was one hundred percent itself, the whole time. And for a series airing on a major network during primetime, that is an incredible accomplishment.

Love,  
Liz

**Liz Tells Frank What Happened In** _Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas_

Dear Frank,

So I've been trying like crazy to get into the Christmas spirit, and that's meant watching a lot of holiday specials and so forth. Thus, I attempt to retreat to a pure state of childhood, by watching a Muppets Christmas adventure that neither you or I have seen before -- in fact, I had never heard of it until a week ago. Turns out, though, that the 1977 TV special _Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas_ is beloved by many, so that is what you are getting told about today.

First off: I borrowed my friend Mike's tape of this to watch, and VHS is weird, man. It's been so long since I used the remote for the VCR that the batteries had exploded, and I had to use it because the alternative is watching commercials for Columbia children's classics from the 1990s. We're talking direct-to-video sequels to _The Swan Princess_ here.

But then, _Emmet Otter_ finally begins and OHMIGOD I LOVE KERMIT THE FROG SO MUCH! SO FREAKING MUCH. He's just riding around on his bike and saying "Hi ho!" to us and I'm grinning so big...

Oh no! Some assholes called the Riverbottom Gang just drove by and stole Kermit's scarf! ASSHOLES.

Kermit's appearance at the beginning of this is brief, apparently, because while originally he was featured much more prominently during the special, every publicly available version of _Emmet Otter_ has had those bits cut out due to the fact that the Henson Company no longer owns Kermit. I don't understand why Kermit can still be in a little of it -- maybe it only counts as a cameo now? I dunno.

Anyways, now we're really getting down to business as we watch Emmet Otter and his Ma row down a marshy river and sing a song about some fat lady's giant swimsuit... wait, it's their grandmother's swimsuit? Weird. But I like otters. Otters? Super-cute.

Hmmmm. In the first five minutes of _Emmet Otter_ , I can't help but point out, there are already more female characters than most Muppet productions ever. Of course, one of them is a sneaky fox bitch who cons her way out of having to pay for the laundry Ma did for him, so it might not be a victory for the sisterhood in the long run.

What we quickly learn (and if we don't quickly learn it, we sure have future opportunities to be informed) is that Emmet and his mother are extraordinarily poor, and have been ever since the death of Emmet's dad -- who was a snake oil salesman, "but there are only so many people who want to oil a snake!" Bah-duh-ching! (Also, if you think about it: Ew.)

Emmet's mom seems a lot more bothered by their lack of money, but maybe that's because she's more of a realist -- Emmet, meanwhile, asks for a $40 guitar for Christmas. Nice, kid. Real nice. The other thing that quickly becomes apparent is that while Emmet and his mom definitely come from tough circumstances, their lack of financial savvy may have contributed to their current dilemma.

I'm not just talking about their inability to collect money owed to them by sneaky fox bitches and how Emmet is constantly doing odd jobs for free, either. See, Frank, all of a sudden everyone's talking about the annual Christmas Eve talent competition, and Emmet and his porcupine buddy Wendell get asked to join a jug band. (Happens to me all the time.)

Emmet wants to join, but unfortunately, in order to play washtub bass, he'd have to drill a hole in his mother's washtub. Which is kind of a big deal, since there was just an entire song about how the only thing the Otters have going for them these days is that their washtub has no hole in it.

However, now Emmet and his mom are both musing separately about how if they won the talent competition they'd be able to buy each other nice presents (for mom, a piano, for Emmet, that guitar). I sense some O. Henry-style shenanigans on the horizon.

Technical note: There are a lot of songs in this, which aside from being nice little tunes (written by Paul Williams! He collaborated with Barbra Streisand and the Scissor Sisters!), also make for nice stalls in the action which allow me to flesh out my notes.

Anyways, so Emmet's made off with Momma's washtub to go to band rehearsal, while Momma is hocking Emmet's dad's tool chest to buy a costume to wear as she sings in the talent show. Way to compromise your only reliable sources of income for a chance at giving each other fancy store-bought presents, guys! The Otters are adorable, but lack good money management skills.

When the talent competition initially starts, most of the acts seem pretty weaksauce, but the jug band's freaking out, though, because someone ahead of them played their song, and apparently they only know one song? Sigh.

Aw, so somehow I never caught Momma Otter's name until now. It's Alice. That's nice. Alice sings a song that is not about being poor on the river, and the crowd goes wild.

And then the jug band figures out another song to sing (not a lot of drama there) and it's a nice song about being brothers and love and stuff. The crowd again goes wild!

But OH NO, FRANK! The '70s invade the talent competition -- when I say the '70s, I'm referring to the assholes who stole Kermit's scarf, who take the stage and start rocking out Yes-style. it's total hard rock and it's like, WTF what are electric guitars doing in the humble hamlet of Riverbottom? And why is the audience TOTALLY FUCKING INTO IT? In my experience, the same crowd that would get excited about a psychedelic rock band would not also hoot and holler over Momma Otter's song about peace and love. But whatever.

Anyway, the assholes win (look, I'm sorry, but you do NOT fuck around with Kermit if you wanna get on my good side), and afterwards, Emmet and his momma figure out that they've just O. Henry'ed each other and in the process, managed to completely compromise their only reliable means of income. GOOD JOB, GUYS.

But then -- holy shit, Momma Otter invents the mashup? MOMMA OTTER INVENTS THE MASHUP. I mean, seriously, Momma tells the boys to start singing the song they did for the competition, and she sings her song so that the two blend together, and it's like they've created a whole new song!

Doc Bullfrog, who I think is the mayor or something because he's wearing a top hat and glasses, just so happens to be passing by during this moment of forward thinking and digs this fresh new sound so much that he books Momma and the jug band for a regular gig down at this restaurant he owns. Regular pay and free meals! Hooray! And then they sing some more and... The end.

Gotta say, I'm forever charmed by this old-school puppetry -- I even get a kick out of seeing the strings. But while this was adorable, I couldn't find much Christmas to it. Maybe I'm doomed to Grinch-dom this year -- or maybe that just means it's time to watch the _Muppets Christmas Carol._ Because Muppets are always good for what ails you.

Happy Holidays,  
Liz

**Liz Tells Frank What Happened In** _Flowers In the Attic_

Dear Frank,

So I can understand why you wanted me to tell you about V.C. Andrews' _Flowers in the Attic_ , because you probably have the same memories I do of seeing other girls read that book in elementary school and talk about how it was sooooo sexy but they wouldn't tell you what it was about when you asked them at lunch because they were stupid bitches who can suck it. I mean, I'm assuming that's what it was like for you. But now, having read the damn thing, I wish I could travel back in time and tell little Liz that she really wasn't missing out on anything. Because, ugh. Ugh, this book. Ugh.

Let's do this quick so the dirt sticks to us less. _Flowers in the Attic_ is about this 12-year-old girl named Cathy whose family is picture-perfect: awesome dad, gorgeous mom, cool-as-ice older brother Chris, adorable twin toddlers, lots of fancy presents. But then the dad dies in a car accident -- on his 36th birthday! Oh tragic irony! That is why I rarely drive on my birthday, honestly.

He leaves the family broke, because they were in massive debt and ladies don't get jobs, I suppose. So Mom, who's kinda a C-word from the beginning, brings Cathy and the other kids to stay with her super-super-super-rich parents. However, as soon as they get to the fancy-pants house, it's revealed that Mom's parents have a major beef against Mom, and so the kids have to hide in a deserted wing of the house, basically locked up in a single bedroom that connects to the attic. By hide, I mean that they're never allowed to leave, with meals brought to them once a day and silence and purity demanded at all times.

Purity? Oh, yeah. Grandma, who's the only other person who knows they're in the house, knows how to use a switch, knows how to do it often and is constantly looking for opportunities that prove that the kids are full of sin so she can punish them with religious fervor. (C-word-ness is hereditary, apparently.)

The reason for this is that -- surprise! -- Mom and Dad were related! Whoops! Dad was the half-brother of Mom's father, though only three years older than her, and so when they met, it was teenage love at first sight except for the part where they're related and EWWWWWWWWWW.

Mom's gravely ill father, who wrote her out of the will when all this went down initially, has reluctantly accepted her back into the house, but has no idea that there were any kids, and Mom's determined to keep him from finding out as part of her "suck up to Dad and get back into the will" plan. So the kids are stuck in the attic until Grandpa dies, while Grandma, who sees any child of this union as being unclean, gets to constantly accuse Cathy and Chris of being naughty.

Eventually this becomes somewhat self-fulfilling, because thanks to the decision to lock all the kids up together for what ends up being YEARS, Chris and Cathy are forced to play mother and father to the twins and eventually start experiencing some for realz sexual tension thanks to the changes of puberty and EW EW EW EW.

Blah blah blah flagrant child abuse, attic romping and Cathy and Chris nearly fucking. Soon the kids start noticing more and more of Mom's C-word-ness, like how she keeps saying she's going to secretary school and saving money to help them escape, but wears fancy clothes and jewelry and buys them fancy presents to keep them from complaining too much...

God, it just goes on forever. Frank, I'm just going to tell you the ending. After about three years of this, Mom gets married to this dude who has no idea she has four kids stashed in the attic; Cathy sneaks out one night and in a weird moment of confusion kisses her new step-dad, which makes Chris so jealous that he starts raping her, but then she gets into it so it's not REALLY rape, which is what she tells him afterwards. So it's not at all gross and totally consensual. DID I MENTION EW?

Then, one of the twins starts vomiting constantly, and the kids convince Mom to take him to a hospital, where he dies, and while initially they're told it's pneumonia, eventually they figure out their mother was poisoning their food. Also, Grandpa died like a year ago, so in theory, they could have been freed then, except Grandpa added a clause to his will stating that if there was ever any proof that Mom and Dad had kids, Mom would be cut off from the family fortune forever. Hence, Mom's motivation for... What's the fancy Latin phrase for killing your own children? I'm too depressed to look it up.

Anyhoo, the surviving children escape using money they've been stealing for the last few months to hop a train out of town. At which point, the sequels (FOUR SEQUELS, FRANK) continue the story.

Seriously, how the fuck do you pitch a series like this? "It's like _Wuthering Heights_ but with WAY MORE INCEST!" says the agent. "Turn that incest dial UP TO ELEVEN." So gross.

I did not feel good reading this book, Frank! It was not a pleasant experience! Except for this one thing: I always figured the mean girls in elementary school were stupid bitches. The fact that they liked this book is, in retrospect, excellent proof.

Love,  
Liz

**Liz Tells Frank What Happened In** _Gargoyles_

Dear Frank,

Okay, we're doing something a little different with this: I'm going to attempt writing the bulk of it in a half hour, without Wikipedia, without video, without references of any type -- just me, my time-damaged memory, and 30 minutes to write 1000 words. This will probably go badly.

So let's talk about _Gargoyles_!

The 1994-1995 series _Gargoyles_ , Frank, was the show that taught me how rewarding being a fan could be, as well as how much can be done with half an hour animated installments -- provided that Disney isn't paying too much attention to the fact that you're packing a children's weekday afternoon show with Shakespeare references. _Gargoyles_ , to be clear, was the most awesome TV series I watched before I started watching _The X-Files_. And looking back, I think _Gargoyles_ holds up better.

Here's the basic deal: A thousand years ago, during the Dark Ages, there was this poky little castle in England with a bitchy Princess, an evil magician, a slightly less evil apprentice magician, and a bunch of magical creatures called gargoyles who, while stone during the day, spent their nights guarding the castle from outside foes. The leader (and hottest) of the gargoyles is Goliath, who had a mentor gargoyle, and a bunch of teen tagalong gargoyles along with a bunch of other clan members, and a dog.

One big happy clan of warriors by night, statues by day -- until, whoops, the evil magician tipped off a bunch of Vikings or something, who attacked during the day so that they could destroy the gargoyles. (This seems like a strategy that should have come up before, but whatevs, I guess this is what happens when you don't have smartphones).

Goliath, his mentor, and the teenagers escaped this fate, but the slightly less evil apprentice magician, who for some reason blamed the gargoyles for the castle being attacked (I don't remember exactly why, except that he had a crush on the princess and thought she had died in the attack and was thus in a really bitchy mood), cast a spell on them turning them into stone permanently -- a condition which would only lift when "the castle was raised above the clouds."

Why such a strange and specific loophole? I guess the magician guy knew that in a thousand years, a bad-ass billionaire named Xanatos would hear about the spell, go to England and airlift the castle to the top of his Manhattan skyscraper. This isn't just a bold architecture statement; by doing so, Xanatos brings the gargoyles back to life. And then they have adventures!

This was all summed up nicely by the bad-ass opening narration, which I can still recite by heart, though it's better to hear Keith David do it, because LISTENING TO KEITH DAVID TALK = HAPPINESS. He still does voice work on commercials and such from time to time, and I still get a little giggly over it. BOY HAS A VOICE, I tell you.

Seriously -- the voice cast, overall, was bonkers -- Keith David is a voice acting legend with countless credits, and he's backed up by an incredible array of performers, including Ed Asner, Salli Richardson, and at least _eleven_ former _Star Trek_ cast members, including Jonathan Frakes as Xanatos.

Just a note, Frank: I know you have a lovely girlfriend right now, but if you ever find yourself again on a third date, and the urge to recite the eleven _Star Trek_ cast members who did guest voice appearances on _Gargoyles_ strikes you, avoid it. Not that I've ever done that.

But what was I saying? Oh, right, so they're in Manhattan, which is confusing enough if you're from this century, but while Xanatos is pretty shifty from the get-go, they do make a special human friend to help them figure out basic 20th century stuff, Det. Elisa Maza. Elisa was kind of their April O'Neil, except _even more awesome_ , because she carried a gun, solved crimes, had a mixed-race heritage and a cool red jacket and only occasionally fell off buildings so that Goliath could catch her.

Goliath and Elisa, in a bold statement for monster-human relations, were the show's primary will-they-or-won't-they relationship, one to rival Sam and Diane. (Except with magic and lasers and guns and Shakespeare because did I mention _Gargoyles_ WAS AWESOME?) But things were complicated, though, because while initially Goliath thought his entire clan, save their poky little group of survivors, was dead, turns out that wasn't the case for his previous gargoyle girlfriend, a winged lady named Demona.

Although they were quickly reunited in the present, Demona and Goliath didn't just hop back into the sack together, because of how Demona spent the thousand years between Goliath's freezing and unfreezing struggling to survive the prejudice and hatred of humanity, which preeeeeeeeeetty much turned her full-on evil. (Demona was a nickname she got from those humans \-- textbook self-fulfilling prophecy, right there.)

Oh, god, I'm at over 800 words and I've barely explained the premise. Okay let's see how fast we can do this: Over the course of the first season, Goliath and his fellow gargoyles got to know Elisa and New York, developed quasi-dimensional personalities (Broadway likes to eat! Lexington likes technology! Brooklyn's kind of an asshole! Bronx is a dog!), figured out Xanatos was pretty evil and had a big air battle with Xanatos' army of robot gargoyles that lead to them moving out of the castle.

Oh, and then, things got EVEN MORE complicated, mostly through the addition of a bunch of characters directly drawn from Shakespeare. I mean stuff like MacBeth, the former king of Scotland, coming after Demona with a laser pistol and a hover-scooter because the three witches from _MacBeth_ had cursed the two of them to live forever and experience each other's pain until they might die at each other's hands. Normal weekday afternoon Disney animation stuff.

Oh, and then there was the episode where Demona stole a mirror from a museum containing the fairy Puck (voiced by Lt. Data, _of course_ ), who gave her three wishes \-- of course, when Demona tried to get rid of all the humans with her first wish, Puck just made all the humans into gargoyles, which meant that Elisa got turned into a TOTALLY HOT LADY GARGOYLE, and then the spell got reversed, which turned Goliath into a TOTALLY HOT DUDE MAN, and god, that episode was just the freaking best.

Okay, I'm well over half an hour and 1000 words now, but the more I think back over the show, the more crazy shit I remember. Like this team of TV actors/professional wrestlers called The Pack who turned out to be kind of evil and eventually became cyborgs, except for this chick Fox, who instead married Xanatos and had his baby.

Or, man, the three-parter where Elisa and Goliath end up on the mystical island of Avalon, where they meet Titania and Oberon (don't remember who voiced Oberon, but Titania was played by Capt. Kathryn Janeway! Who was also Fox's mom! For fuck's sake, show!).

That part was especially insane, because it turns out the kinda bitchy Princess, who felt bad about the shit that went down with the Vikings and the freezing-into-stone-for-a-thousand-years thing, had decided to do the gargoyles a solid and take their surviving eggs to Avalon, where she and the apprentice magician raised them. And because time passes differently on Avalon, only about thirty years have passed for them, which means that when Goliath arrives he's like holy shit, I have a daughter with Demona! Whoops!

Angela, the daughter (SUBTLE, SHOW), decides she wants to see if the pizza in New York is as good as everyone says, so she decides to leave Avalon with her dad and Elisa. But as they're rowing away in a boat (it's a magical island?), the magician guy's like oh, you're not going home, Avalon's probably gonna send you on a magical quest of some sort. Like magical islands do.

And thus commences their WORLD TOUR, in which the _Star Trek_ guest stars really start popping up: Capt. Sisko as an alien stationed on Easter Island, Lt. LaForge as the trickster Anansi (fucking giant spiders, ugh), Chief O'Brien as some guy in Ireland (where there was a banshee voiced by Sheena Easton), Lt. Uhura as Elisa's mom. The Avalon episodes are occasionally awesome and occasionally annoying, but they have one universal quality: BATSHIT INSANITY.

I really miss this show.

Eventually, they get back to New York, there's a lot of reunion drama as they've been gone for months, and also all of the teenage gargoyles want to bang Angela because she's the first non-evil lady gargoyle they've literally seen in a thousand years. Goliath still doesn't trust Xanatos, but Xanatos, now a new father, wants to make amends and let the gargoyles move back into the castle. This decision becomes easier for the gargoyles when their previous home, in a clock tower above the police station where Elisa works, gets blown up by a bunch of guys on a blood vengeance quest against all gargoyles.

That's all part of this three-parter where Elisa went out on a date with one of those hunter guys, not knowing that he was on a blood vengeance quest against her buddies and secret love interest. She makes out with him a little, which Goliath sees through her window and gets all jealous about, and then later Elisa falls off a dam during a confrontation with the blood vengeance quest guys and Goliath isn't able to catch her, which makes him think she's dead, which sends him on his OWN blood vengeance quest, and it's all very poignant when he discovers she's still alive.

The second season ends with Goliath and Elisa kissing on the roof of Xanatos' castle, and the sun rising, and me giggling hysterically because I was JUST SO HAPPY FOR THEM. (I was fourteen, for the record.)

And then there's a third season that Disney kicked creator Greg Weisman off, and it sucks, and we don't talk about it. THE END.

I met Weisman a few years ago at Comic-Con, and took the opportunity to tell him how much I loved the show. He took the compliment kindly, but in a kind of bitter and resigned way, a way that speaks to what happens when you think outside of the box in an genre unused to this sort of innovation. _Gargoyles_ is barely a cult favorite now, but it and Weisman deserve so much more credit.

This was all written from memory, remember. Some details, I may be off on, some details, I may have forgotten entirely. (Oh, god, I think there was stuff with clones and a magical time travel device and the Illuminati?) But, oh, this show. I remember this show well.

Love,  
Liz

**Liz Tells Frank What Happened In** _The Help_

Dear Frank,

One of the quirks of working in a male-dominated office is that I have cultural touchstones the fellas don't; on average, they're all very excited about that play made by that guy during that game last night, and are much less interested in what happened on _Revenge_ or whatever other lady-focused thing I've been watching.

So it came to pass one day that I was in a meeting, and the subject of _The Help_ came up, and I mentioned that the dramatic climax of the book (as well as the movie) involved one woman eating a pie that contained the shit of another woman.

And no one believed me.

Thankfully, there was another girl in the room, and she confirmed that yes, _The Help_ , nominated for many many Oscars, includes a scene where Ron Howard's daughter, Bryce Dallas, eats a pie made of Octavia Butler's shit. But it was still really confusing for all involved.

_The Help_ is one of those guilty pleasures that really does put the emphasis on guilt. I read the book in one gulp while home sick, and thoroughly enjoyed its heartfelt, yet gossipy, worldview, while also fully aware the whole virtuous-white-woman-saves-the-black-people thing had some, shall we say, racially charged fucked-up-ness. I still remain unsure how I feel about the book or movie, so I will tell you what happens, and let you be the judge.

The basic plot of _The Help_ , Frank, is this: The domestic workers -- or, in 1960s terms, maids and nannies and mammies and whatnot -- of small-town Mississippi don't have great lives. Some of that's because they're living in a violently racist time and place, some of that's because their husbands beat them and their sons get beat to death by white dudes, and some of that's because the ladies they work for are entitled sorority girls – or as we say in ye Olde English, "beeotches."

A girl named Skeeter, who also is technically an entitled sorority girl (but is BETTER than the others because she didn't drop out of college to get married), has returned to town with a college degree but no husband, AKA A FAILURE, and for want of anything better to do, is forced to hang out with her entitled sorority girl friends who are NOT failures.

Skeeter's entitled sorority girl friends are Bad Momma (the kinda poor one who's a bitch to her kids, when she's not ignoring them) and Queen Bitch (president of the Junior League and everything)! Queen Bitch is the one played by Bryce Dallas Howard in the movie, which means she's the one who eats shit later, but we'll get to that.

Because this book suffers from no shortage of first-novel-itis, Skeeter wants to be a writer, and manages to get a job writing the housekeeping tips column for the local newspaper. But as Skeeter is essentially an entitled sorority girl, she has no idea how to actually keep a house. So she asks Bad Momma's "help," a nice lady named Aibileen, for advice on the advice she's supposed to be giving out.

It's worth mentioning now that the novel is told from three different characters' points-of-view -- Aibileen, Skeeter, and Aibileen's best friend Minny -- and Skeeter is the only one I've needed to mention by name up until that last paragraph. If you want proof this is very much the story of a white woman saving the black folk, there it is.

Anyway, Skeeter and Aibileen become close enough that Skeeter learns just how shitty life is for Aibileen and her buddies, and her brilliant idea is to put together a book of their experiences, including what they really think of their employers.

They initially hesitate, because they don't want to get BEATEN TO DEATH, but a bunch of shitty things happen, most memorably the bit where Queen Bitch starts this Junior League campaign to forbid "the help" from using the home bathrooms of their employers. The ladies get so pissed off they agree to tell Skeeter their stories, so she ends up literally sitting at Aibileen's kitchen table, taking dictation, editing the results, and BECOMING A PUBLISHED AUTHOR--

I'm getting ahead of myself. Point is, Skeeter throws herself into telling the stories of "the help," and then a fancy New York City! publisher agrees to publish it, and all of these women, whose literal existence depends on the paychecks they get from the women whose secrets they have just divulged to the literary world, realize OH SHIT THIS WAS A TERRIBLE IDEA.

All the names were changed to protect the beeotches, but there's still a chance someone might figure out who said what about whom, so that's when the fiery Minny steps forward with an idea: include a terrible, terrible story about Queen Bitch, and Queen Bitch will make sure no one ever officially reveals the true identities of those involved.

Minny then reveals that a while back, after getting fired by Queen Bitch over something stupid, she got so mad that she made Queen Bitch one of her famous chocolate mud pies -- which Queen Bitch ate. And Queen Bitch ate it in front of Minny, and Minny made sure to wait until Queen Bitch had a few bites before she mentioned that whole I-put-my-shit-in-that-pie thing.

This is meant to be the thing that keeps all the "help" safe. Unfortunately, when the book becomes a best-seller, what actually happens is that Queen Bitch reads it, figures out who all the people are, and swears to make their lives miserable. POOR PLANNING.

Her primary target is Skeeter, even though Skeeter isn't officially the author of record, and the whole thing costs Skeeter her hot senator's son boyfriend. Who cares, though -- Skeeter shares the book royalties with Aibileen and her friends, but she's managed to get a job in New York out of this, and thus no longer has to worry about Queen Bitch's wrath.

Which means Queen Bitch turns elsewhere, using her beeotch superpowers to get Aibileen fired by Bad Momma, which is heart-breaking because Aibileen was basically the mother to Bad Momma's two children and now will never get to see them again.

Aibileen yells at Queen Bitch something fierce before walking off, resolved to write her own stories down... And THE END.

I mean, as we both know, Frank, writing is not an automatically easy and profitable profession. But, at any rate, good for her. Good for many of the female characters in this book, for being self-actualized characters. And also, good for the movie, for being one of the truer book-to-movie adaptations I've ever seen. But that does mean all the book's problems can also be found in the movie -- most specifically, the whole white-woman-saving-the-black-folk thing.

I saw the movie the Sunday of opening weekend with a friend, in a packed theater, and Frank, the audience was just fucking NUTS. The only experience I could compare it to would be a _Harry Potter_ midnight premiere at the Mann Chinese. I'm seriously talking that level of hooting and cheering and applause \-- especially when we got to the shit pie scene.

I sat there, wanting to be excited, to be as enthused as the people around me, but something held me back. The movie did have its moments, its exciting victories: The hero (the white hero, that is) got a happy ending. The bad guy ate pie with shit in it. Basically, this was as close to Joseph Campbell's monomyth as we could probably ever hope for.

And yet, I just couldn't get on board. I felt pandered to, embarrassed, and ultimately left out. Maybe it comes down to this, Frank: The movie was clearly engineered to be a crowd-pleaser, to generate that level of enthusiasm in its audience: specifically, its female audience.

But even though I am a lady, the only person in the office who knows what happened on _Project Runway_ last night, I still prefer movies made for PEOPLE. Not just women.

Love,  
Liz

**Liz Tells Frank What Happened In** _Ladyhawke_

Dear Frank,

You never saw _Ladyhawke_ as a kid? Really? I mean, sure, your mom wasn't my mom, which means that your mom didn't have a weird crush on Rutger Hauer and thus sat you down to watch this movie at least two or three times before you were 12 years old. But I'm still glad I have a chance to fill in this grave oversight in your education.

So here's what happens in the second-best trashy medieval fantasy epic of the 1980s ( _Willow_ being the best, and I will totally knife fight anyone who disagrees). First, there are the opening credits, which consist of a hawk flying into a wind machine set against the most ridiculous synth score ever created for a fantasy epic. You should look it up on YouTube. It will NOT disappoint.

And then Matthew Broderick shows up! He's a thief escaping from prison, kind of working a Ferris Bueller at Medieval Times angle -- which, as you might imagine, is CHOCK FULL of authentic flavor. Instead of bitching to the audience about not having a car, though, Ferris asks God for favors and (when reduced to more thievery) reminding God that God knows how weak-willed he is, being God and all. Side note: Matthew Broderick? Not a master of accents.

Apparently, the evil clergy ruling Unnamed Vaguely French Medieval Kingdom give a shit about Ferris escaping, even though he's clearly just a common thief. Ferris' escape from the dungeons is labeled a miracle, btw, but "I believe in miracles," says the Evil Main Priest. "It's part of my job." AUTHENTIC MEDIEVAL FLAVOR IN THIS MOVIE, RIGHT HERE.

So the evil clergy's guards go hunting for Ferris and catch up with him quickly, but here's Rutger Hauer, NOT wearing tight leather and (if you're a _Blade Runner_ fan) talking about tears in the rain -- but instead being a blond badass with a sword. He also has a pet hawk. NOT THAT THAT'S AT ALL RELEVANT.

Anyways, Rutger saves Ferris from the evil church soldiers, and then hauls him away into the forest to... Okay, I'm not totally clear as to why. But that doesn't matter, because please note that every time I mention an action scene happening, that smooth synth Alan Parsons sound can be heard. I cannot describe how phenomenal this soundtrack is.

When the sun sets that night, Ferris, who's taken on his new role as Rutger's bitch with no small amount of bitching, meets Michelle Pfeiffer, rockin' a cute spiky hairdo and a badass black cloak. Look, I'm gonna cut to the chase here because the movie sure won't: Rutger is a dude during the day and a wolf at night, while Michelle is a hawk during the day and a lady at night. I will save the explanation of how this happened for later, but rest assured it is completely sensical and not at all ridiculous.

Before we get the full rundown on this shit, though, we gots to deal with a lot of coy scenes between Rutger and Ferris about the hawk, and a lot of coy scenes between Michelle and Ferris about the wolf. The truth isn't revealed, though, until Ferris tries to escape this crazy threesome, gets caught by the evil church soldiers, and gets liberated by Rutger again. In the process of said liberation, the Ladyhawke takes an arrow to the chest, and Ferris takes her to Drunky McEx-Priest for medical attention.

Drunky McEx-Priest is the one who explains that the reason we've got DudeWolf by day and Ladyhawke by night is that Evil Main Priest fell in love with Michelle, back in the day, and when rejected by her for Rutger (she and my mom have similar taste, apparently), he made a deal with the devil to create this totally awesome high-concept premise for a fantasy epic! But Drunky McEx-Priest has a plan for fixing this sucky deal: If Rutger and Michelle confront Evil Main Priest with their love during an eclipse (well, there's a lot of malarky about "a night without day and a day without night," but it's a fucking eclipse, we get it), the curse will magically be broken. Like I said, it is totally not ridiculous at all.

But now we're finally at my favorite bit of the movie, where Ferris essentially plays matchmaker for a couple who are already in love, carrying messages back and forth between Michelle and Rutger and making up some shit of his own while he's at it. Super-cute.

Okay, maaaaaaaaybe it goes on for hours and hours, this bit. But whatever. The main purpose is to I guess convince Rutger that Drunky McEx-Priest's plan is a good one, instead of Rutger's current plan, which is to kill Evil Main Priest and probably die in the process. Ferris and Drunky go so far as to dump the pair of them in a hole right before sunrise, so for the first time since the cursing they get to see each other as humans for a few moments in between hawk-wolf transformations. It's a sweet scene, except for the part where you could replicate the visual effects used to create it with a Sony camcorder from the late '90s.

Even that doesn't discourage Rutger, though; he's determined to make with the vengeance, not believing the eclipse plan could work (to be fair, if you don't even know the earth is round, the concept of a solar eclipse might be hard to buy). He even gives Ladyhawke to Drunky and tells him to kill her, which pisses me off on a feminist level and an animal cruelty level. Note to any of my present or future suitors: Yes, I'd be sad if you died, but if that becomes a possibility please avoid leaping to the murder-suicide place without my explicit consent.

Rutger has some good luck storming the castle on the day of the eclipse, and there's a lot of sword-fighting and shit. But just as he's about to kill Evil Main Priest, Michelle in non-Ladyhawke form walks in, because Drunky and I feel similarly about Rutger's stupid-ass plan, and that eclipse business ended up working out after all.

(Ewwwww. When Michelle shows up at the church, Evil Main Priest totally strokes the shaft of his big pointy scepter. Man, I wish I could unsee that.)

The whole thing is big and dramatic and ridiculous, especially when Evil Main Priest is all, fuck this, and tries to stab Michelle with his big pointy scepter, and Rutger totally skewers him with his giant sword. EMP dies, Rutger and Michelle make out... okay, give 'em credit, it's a pretty sweet make-out scene, especially the part where Rutger gives Michelle shit about cutting her hair. For the record, Michelle's hair in this is AWESOME: short and spunky. I want that haircut. I bet it's a bitch to maintain, though, especially when you're a hawk all day long.

And then we get some jazz flute up in this Alan Parsons business; Ferris and Drunky walk into the sunset; and Rutger and Michelle dance the night away. HAPPILY EVER AFTER, Frank. May we all be so fortunate as to have drunk ex-priest friends who know better than to be accessories in murder-suicide pacts. Because, seriously.

Love,  
Liz

**Liz Tells Frank What Happened In** _Left Behind_

Dear Frank,

The bullets I take for you keep getting bigger and bigger, but I don't know how I'm going to top the first book in the _Left Behind_ series, because this insanely popular global phenomenon (16 books! 25 bajillion copies sold! at least 60 souls saved!) is just... Just... Oh, I lack the words at this moment.

But let's make something clear up top: I'm not anti-religion in the slightest. What I am is anti-bigotry, anti-ignorance, anti-hatred and anti-judgment (except when it comes to shitty media). This keeps me at odds with most contemporary Christian denominations, especially ones that seem to really enjoy reading a poorly written Tom Clancy-esque rendition of the Rapture unfolding on Earth.

(Yes, I am aware of the feature film starring Kirk Cameron, and that it would be far easier for me to watch that awful movie as opposed to reading this awful book. But the born-again version of Kirk Cameron weirds me the fuck out. Fun party game, Frank: Doing his _Way of the Master_ "Are you a good person?" quiz with friends. "Okay, who here has lust in their hearts?")

Writers Tim LaHaye (the guy in charge of the Bible stuff) and Jerry B. Jenkins (the guy in charge of the writing stuff) kick things off with a truly sanctimonious dedication to two women "who ensured we would not be left behind." Then we're meeting Rayford Steele (sigh), an airplane pilot with a happy nuclear family but lust in his heart for his hottie lead flight attendant Hattie.

Rayford's lust isn't his fault, though. It's his wife's fault, because recently she's become a hardcore, born-again Bible-thumper, and that's a real turn-off for him. (NOT MAKING THIS UP; THIS IS HOW HE REALLY FEELS.)

Oh, but Rayford's not a God-less atheist or anything. He thinks, "God is OK" and that his casual approach to faith won't fuck him over when the Rapture comes. Whoops!

Because then the Rapture happens, on page 16, while Rayford's flying his international airplane to Europe and musing about how deep he wants to bury his bone in Hattie. (Sorry, the more puritanical the literature, the dirtier my mind gets.)

Oh, before then, we got some flashbacks to some crazy Biblical shit that was happening in Israel, courtesy of Buck the Ace Reporter, who's flying first-class because he's a member of the Godless media. But right now, let's just stay focused on how a hundred passengers have just disappeared off the airplane, leaving their clothes behind, and the world below is in chaos.

It takes Rayford four pages to figure out his wife was totally right about the Rapture and he's been left behind. Way to keep the mystery alive, duder. By the way, this is one of those books where everyone's referred to by their full names on pretty much every occasion. And it's not Ray; it's Rayford. Boy, I'm glad I don't have a gun right now.

It's on page 19 that the weird dilemma of _Left Behind_ becomes apparent. Because the thing is, now that all the saved people have fled the mortal plane and apocalypse is upon us, the only characters in the book are unclean and unchosen. Yet, in theory, for this to be at all engaging (the way that it clearly is to some -- seriously, can actual numbers count how many copies of these books have been sold?), we have to be able to empathize with these characters at least a little, for many, many more books. It's an interesting challenge Messrs. LaHaye and Jenkins have set forth for themselves.

(Spoiler alert: They pretty much fail.)

Post-Rapture, there's the expected looting and freaking out amongst those God screwed over. Suicides are common. But not Rayford! For one thing, he's getting a helicopter ride back to his suburban Chicago home (with Hattie on his lap -- hoo boy!), and he also has an unsaved college-age daughter named Chloe waiting for him. Alas, his wife and young son have flown the coop.

Cut back to Ace Reporter Buck, who's hot on the case of what caused this -- and who's been told by his editor that a bunch of international Jewish organizations have been meeting recently and maybe that's the cause. WHO DOESN'T LOVE A JEWISH CONSPIRACY? Sigh.

Hattie's off trying to track down her family; Rayford's moping about how his son and wife are gone; and Buck's getting the scoop on the Anti-Christ Nicolae Carpathia (sigh), a Romanian politician who's emerged on the world stage as a calming figure for the panicked. The Anti-Christ Nicolae Carpathia gets the approval of The World's Most Important Jew, Chaim Rosenzweig (sigh), so he must be good news, right?

I take it back. I _wish_ I had a gun.

Oh, especially after Buck says, re: religion, "The Jews hate Jesus." WHAT? This is in the course of a big Buck section about the world switching to a single currency and streamlining all finances, to make it easier for an individual to take it over -- like, say, the Anti-Christ Nicolae Carpathia? YET MORE SPOILERS, FRANK!

Then we get back to feeling sad about how all the kids everywhere got Raptured, and Rayford (fuck it, Rayford is the stupidest name ever; I'm calling him Ray now) is reading the Bible, and I'll be honest with you, Frank, I'm now pretty much just flipping through the pages in the hopes of getting through this faster.

Ray's daughter Chloe shows up after taking a bunch of planes from Stanford to Chicago, and the two of them fight over whether or not Jesus took Mom on a joyride to Heaven. (Because Chloe is a young woman, she is clearly on the wrong side of this fight.) But then Ray and Chloe watch a videotape (1995!) made for people left behind, and a whole lot of Jesus talk later, Ray has accepted Christ as his savior and accepted what's happened to the world. Chloe's pretty skeptical, though, and the only thing that keeps me from liking her is the fact that I'm sure this won't last.

Oh fuck me freddy I'm only halfway through this. Okay, Buck's trying to investigate the Jewish conspiracy, despite the occasional assassination attempt. Ray wants to convert Hattie, while playing things cool with her heart because he feels guilty about wanting to bang her in those heady pre-page-16 days. Hattie is sad about how her abortion counselor sister is out of work. Flying Spaghetti Monster, this gets worse and worse...

Buck finally meets the Anti-Christ Nicholae Carpathia, who's so charming and suave and reassuring and vaguely resembles a young Robert Redford (so sayeth LaHaye and Jenkins, anyway)! He's so smooth and reassuring that Buck's boss Steve goes to work with him as a press agent, leaving Buck to take over running the Global Weekly Jewish Conspiracy Rag.

There's a bit of a love triangle here, btw, between Buck, Hattie and Ray. Except Buck's trying to woo Hattie with an introduction to now world-famous the Anti-Christ Nicholae Carpathia, while Ray's totally over trying to bang her, but wants to save her immortal soul. Frank, just a tip: One of these approaches works on girls in the real world, and one of them doesn't. Hopefully, you can figure it out on your own.

In the _Left Behind_ world, however, Hattie gets turned off Buck because of this stunt, but that's okay, because Buck's just fallen madly in love with Chloe (whom he meets because he wants to interview Ray for some reason). RAPTURE = GETTING A SHOT AT HOT YOUNG BABES. That is what we're all learning today.

This leaves Hattie free for Ray to scoop her up with the classic line "I'm sorry I nearly adulterated with you and I want you to consider becoming born again." She's into it, AT LEAST FOR NOW.

Meanwhile, Chloe is so touched by all the stuff Ray says in his interview with Buck about the Bible predicting the end of the world that she finally converts! Oh, and she's totally into Buck too! Double hooray!

And get ready for the double-plus hooray: Buck has figured out that Nicholae Carpathia is (gasp!) the Anti-Christ. So he and Chloe and Ray, affirmed in their belief that world events are echoing what the Bible predicted (go Bible!), decide to start a secret Green Beret organization to fight Carpathia and remain pure in the coming days of fire. Seriously, the Green Berets are the reference point, though there's no word as to whether or not they'll wear fancy hats.

But they're not all one big happy family; the Anti-Christ Nicholae Carpathia has not only taken over all the world governments and revealed himself privately as evil, but he's gotten Hattie to join his side. (That is the one major hazard of the introduce-the-hottie-to-a-famous-person wooing plan, btw.) This looks like a job for the Tribulation Force! In the sequel, that is. Because this book is over. Happy sigh.

Fun fact, Frank: In the course of writing this, I did my very best to avoid taking the Lord's name in vain, because for some reason it felt wrong to do so. Like rubbing salt in the wound, I suppose. Because man, oh man. If there is a God, He deserves better fiction than this.

Love,  
Liz

**Liz Tells Frank What Happened In** _Madea's Family Reunion_

Dear Frank,

_Madea's Family Reunion_ is the first Tyler Perry movie I have ever seen (and will, hopefully, ever see). According to Laurel, Kara and Aimee, who came over to watch with me and said many funny things I'll try and include in this, it was not quite as randomly violent and batshit insane as _Diary of a Mad Black Woman_ , the film that launched the Tyler Perry empire. But that turns out to be a very, very high bar for crazy.

After the credits spell out Tyler Perry's name in rose petals at least _six_ times (he acts, writes, produces, directs AND does the music! Take that, Ed Wood and Orson Wells!), we arrive in a luxurious high-rise apartment, where a gal named Lisa sleeps between (presumably) silk sheets. "What year was this movie made? It looks like 1996," Kara asks immediately. The answer turns out to be 2006, but it never really crosses into this millennium at any point.

I mention that, honestly, because I'm stalling, because I really don't know how to do justice to the opening scene of this movie. Let me just offer you yet another valuable dating tip, Frank: In the future, should you find yourself engaged to a lovely lady, your sleeping fiancee may find it romantic if you cover her in rose petals that, when she awakes, lead her to the bathroom, where you have prepared a hot bath for her.

But if you're going to do that, STOP THERE. Don't hire A STRING QUARTET AND A LADY WITH A FAN to stand around the candlelit bathroom. And for god's sake, if you are going to hire A STRING QUARTET AND A LADY WITH A FAN to stand around the bathroom while your fiancee takes a bath, at least let her get undressed and into the bath in private. Don't STRIP OFF HER NIGHTGOWN WITHOUT HER PERMISSION in front of A ROOM FULL OF STRANGERS.

The guy doing all this is played by Blair Underwood, by the way, which just breaks my heart because I have liked Blair Underwood in many past roles. Like _Sex and the City_! And _Set It Off_! Even _The Event_ , which is not necessarily at all a good show. And it only gets worse from here!

I think this is Lisa's birthday or something, because after this incredibly weird bath scene, her sister Vanessa and another random girl show up to kidnap her for a glamourous spa day. While reclining poolside, the sistas get real about how tough it is to be a black woman, a concept I would normally be totally on board with except they're sipping champagne and getting hand massages at the same time. I mean, racial equality is still a long uphill battle; I get that; I'm just saying it's been a long time since I simultaneously got a hand massage and sipped some champagne.

Oh, and then this guy wanders into the spa to hit on Vanessa. I will say this for Tyler Perry's dialogue: It's efficient. Within two seconds, we have learned that this guy is a bus driver who is also a painter. Vanessa blows him off, but SPOILERS she's totally gonna hit that.

After the spa day, the girls go back to Lisa's apartment, and for some reason, a stripper the other girls have hired shows up to groove on her. Blair Underwood walks in right in the middle of this, and Lisa is totally scared to see him but he plays it totally cool in front of her friends, telling her to have a good time...

Of course, the second her friends leave Lisa gets slapped around good, with some emotional terrorizing thrown in. He actually seems less upset about the fact that there was a half-naked man in his house and more upset about her not answering her phone all day... I dunno. He's a bad man who wants to control her at all times. That's the sole extent of his character development.

And then we finally meet Madea. I...I don't want to talk about it. All you need to know is that she's in court because she violated her house arrest and so the judge makes her take care of a 14-year-old, who is played by the very sweet Keke Palmer from _Akeelah and the Bee_ (another actor who I have liked in other projects).

The girl gets whupped by Madea first in the car ride back to Madea's house, then when the girl is late coming home (that time is with a belt). This movie has some very confusing messages about domestic violence, as Blair Underwood slapping Lisa around is generally considered to be a bad thing.

Frank, this is taking forever, but the actual sequence of events doesn't really matter here -- for timeline to matter, this movie would have to have any sort of structure. So I'm just gonna tell you what's going on:

Blair Underwood is SO MEAN, but Lisa's momma won't let her leave him, because Momma isn't doing well financially and needs this wedding to happen to stay afloat (why, I have no fucking clue, it's just implied that she's running out of money and that if Lisa and Blair get married, she'll be fine). Blair tells Lisa, "I'll love you to death" like it's a death threat, which it is, especially when he does things like threaten to throw her off the high-rise balcony when she attempts to escape. Subtlety, thy name is not this movie.

Oddly, Kara is very good at predicting exactly when and how Blair Underwood is going to hit Lisa. She claims that she and Blair Underwood never had an abusive engagement, but we suspect she's just covering for him. "Kara, show us on the doll where Blair Underwood hurt you," Laurel asks, but no dice.

Meanwhile, the other sister, Vanessa, starts dating Bus Driver Painter Guy after he successfully gets her to go out with him in front of a busload of passengers and isn't freaked out by her already having two kids by two different baby daddies. For their first date, they go out to an open mic poetry club where, out of nowhere, they do this beat poetry/live sketch session together (Bus Driver Painter Guy, despite claiming to love painting, never holds a paintbrush once in this movie). Cool first date. Very cool. Their subsequent dates seem really great -- they are a totally non-abusive functional couple, and their kids get along well -- but Vanessa has some Emotional Trauma that keeps her from being able to get too close. (You'd better believe a big emotional reveal is a'coming.)

Lisa tries to leave Blair and comes to stay at Madea's house where Vanessa also lives. While they never explicitly tell Madea that Lisa's fiance is beating her, Madea gives Lisa's "friend" the following advice: Boil some grits and then throw them on the guy.

I still don't really want to talk about Madea; she's an obnoxious caricature whose actions are limited to physically abusing people, saying wise and inspirational things, and making decade-old pop culture references. All you need to know, Frank, is that she's successfully rehabilitated little Akeelah, and she told Lisa to throw grits on abusive assholes. Aimee, confused by the messages of this film, wore Hulk hands for most of it -- to keep her feelings under control, I suppose.

Oh, like an hour into this movie, by the way, the family reunion happens. It's entirely an opportunity to bring in respected elders of the African-American community, who then proceed to lecture the Youth of Today on their moral decline. Maya Angelou, I have read your memoirs -- you had some good times in your day.

The reunion is also a chance for Vanessa and her momma to have a big public slapfight after having a very private and very awful fight about that time Momma let her husband, who was threatening to leave her, rape Vanessa. YIKES.

After the reunion, we skip pretty much immediately to the wedding day of Lisa and Blair, because for some reason I SERIOUSLY DO NOT KNOW WHY OR WHEN Lisa has gone back to Blair Underwood. Except, and again I HAVE NO IDEA WHY, on the morning of the wedding she's at Madea's house, and because she's running late, Blair Underwood comes to the house to slap her around some more. Madea isn't just a psychopath, though; she's also an enabler, which is why there's a big pot of boiling grits on the stove. It takes about two minutes for Lisa to throw them into his face, probably causing third-degree burns and doing damage to his eyes, ears and mouth. Abusive fiancé problem SOLVED.

What problem isn't solved, though? Oh, there's a big fancy wedding all planned, but no bride and groom! Fortunately, we have a non-abusive couple ready to step up and take it on: Vanessa and Bus Driver Painter Guy tie the knot instead. (This is also when Kara pointed out that Bus Driver Painter Guy was played by Boris Kodjoe, yet another actor I've really liked in other stuff, but like much more without hair and a ridiculous soul patch, as it turns out.)

I would need a thousand words to describe what is wrong with this wedding decor, by the way. Just know that there are human beings being suspended from the ceiling whilst dressed as angels with harps. TOTALLY NORMAL WEDDING DECOR. The movie that starts with a creepy romantic gesture ends with a creepy romantic gesture, I suppose. But, whatever, THEY GET MARRIED THE END.

Final thoughts, Frank: The _Madea_ films, to the best of my understanding, are meant to be comedies, and to be fair, in Shakespeare's day the defining characteristic of a comedy versus a tragedy was that a comedy ended with a wedding. But that was when they only had two genres of entertainment. And didn't consider child rape that big a deal.

Love,  
Liz

**Liz Tells Frank What Happened In** _Millionaire Matchmaker_

Dear Frank,

Over the past few months, some ill-advised bouts of channel surfing have created within me a hate/fascination for the Bravo reality series _Millionaire Matchmaker_. Frank, this show is the WORST show I have ever watched multiple episodes of. It's about horrible human beings and the horrible things they will do and say just to be on television. I have seen at least six episodes and could easily watch six more.

The queen of these horrible people is a woman named Patti Stanger, who claims to be a third-generation matchmaker "with a 99-percent success rate." (If I were to base that success rate on the episodes I've seen, I would put it at maybe 25 percent? If I'm being generous. If I'm being VERY GENEROUS.) She also looks just a bit like what would happen if Snooki ditched the Bump It and aged 30 years.

When I first started hate-watching this show, I quickly became conscious of the fact that Patti was a human nightmare whose personal insecurities are matched only by her incredibly offensive beliefs about men, women and the way relationships are supposed to "work." However, I'm no longer entirely alone in this knowledge, as she's made headlines by saying on live TV that gay men are incapable of monogamy and Jewish men lie. She said this in front of her gay Jewish boss, which made it all the more special. But not at all a surprise to me.

Because to observe Patti on a long-term basis is to learn that apparently being a matchmaker means dealing in stereotypes and making snap judgements about people's psychological makeup based on superficial facts. Patti will say to a girl, "Oh, you have a dog? That means you'll be a good mommy." Patti will say to a client, "I wouldn't sleep with you, and I wouldn't give you a blowjob either," because he's wearing a hoodie. In short, I feel very comfortable giving Patti a fun little nickname. Given how she "encourages" ladies looking to "date" millionaires to get hair extensions like hers, let's call her Peltwhore!

Here is the way a typical episode of _Millionaire Matchmaker_ works: Two millionaires (usually guys, but not exclusively -- though when they are women, they're [BARF] "millionairesses") are introduced via a video diary-type thing. Peltwhore decides immediately what's fucked up about these guys and why they've never found love without paying for the privilege. She will never change her opinions of them, even after spending hours in their company.

Having decided for herself who these men are and what their damage is, Peltwhore then meets her clients in person, whereupon she asks them what they're looking for in a lady and tells them what they need to change about themselves in order to find one. This ranges from life coaches to hypnotherapists to full makeovers, none of which are ever very successful.

After that, Peltwhore and her assistants have a literal casting call (with headshots and resumes!) where they bring in scores of women and judge whether or not they're right for these guys. This is again based entirely on appearance and vague first impressions, and is actually probably as soul-sucking as being an actor on a real audition.

Following the casting call is a "mixer" where the two guys and the two dozen or so selected girls mingle uncomfortably with glasses of wine. After who knows how long, the two guys select two girls each to talk to for ten minutes, after which they each pick a girl to take on a "master date."

After the master date, everyone regroups to discuss how fucking wrong everything went, and we get a brief postscript as to whether these "matches" actually managed to work out.

Spoiler alert: Probably not. Because what one learns after watching more than one episode of this shitshow is that if someone has a lot of money and isn't in a relationship and has resorted to a reality TV matchmaker in order to find what they're looking for, THERE IS PROBABLY SOMETHING DEEPLY WRONG WITH THAT PERSON.

Here are just some of the clients Peltwhore has "helped":

  * The guy whose non-negotiable requirements for a lady include being blonde, busty and "Godly." Oh, and she can't be under 30 and she can't have a career or a job she would mind leaving to immediately start having children. Peltwhore has to explain to him that most ladies over 30 who are single might have been doing something up until then. He ends up with a lady that meets most of his requirements, but then during his first date, he makes some really creepy jokes about getting her pregnant. Fabulous.

  * The former London party girl/stripperobics instructor who Peltwhore tells to be "less aggressive" and instead "be a girl." Oh, and Peltwhore also tells her to be less slutty. And calls her trash. NOT EXAGGERATING. I actually like kinda stripperobics lady, but the more she agrees to do things like wearing Ann Taylor dresses, the sadder I feel inside. Fortunately, she rebels! Unfortunately, she rebels by putting on a pole-dancing show for her master date. Because this show is in part about how women should be ashamed of their sexuality, it ends up not going well.

  * The Vegas plastic surgeon who says all the women he dates in Vegas are "retarded" and is deemed by Peltwhore to be too "controlling." To her credit, he does flat-out say that any woman who shares his bed has to get the fuck out of it when he does. At 5 AM every morning. He takes a lady on a MMA fighting date at 7 AM! It's the 7 AM, not the MMA, that leaves him single at the end.

  * The 41-year-old salon lady who wants her future boy toy to have a perfect model body and talks obsessively about wanting to give grown men makeovers. Hilariously, the salon lady says she doesn't like Peltwhore's bangs in her introductory video, and Peltwhore thus declares salon lady to be her _mortal enemy_ , and they bitch each other out and Peltwhore makes fun of how much plastic surgery the salon lady's had and only reluctantly agrees to take her business.

    * Seriously, Peltwhore takes EVERY POSSIBLE OPPORTUNITY to knock down this lady's looks and call her a bitch. The episode, TOTALLY COINCIDENTALLY, opens with Peltwhore having to do a photo shoot for the cover of her new book and freaking out over her weight, age and appearance. NO CONNECTION THERE. I'M SURE.

In short, Frank, the show is the worst of the dating life. Episodes should be shown to couples considering ending relationships as a deterrent, as a reminder that being single can at times be an awful, bleak, terrifying thing.

Why? Because this show could be considered _a best-case option_ for a single person. It's certainly set up like a fantasy, with the "romantic" dates and the promise of financial and emotional comfort; the show's entire premise hinges on the possibility that love is possible for all these people.

Except, of course, it isn't. Because human beings are weird and unpredictable, and treating them like "types" and talking to them like they're very stupid children is no way to figure out what kind of person would make them happy.

It is, however, how to make television that I will hate-watch whenever possible. Seriously, Frank, this show is the fucking worst, and my legitimate genuine hope is that by telling you about it, I will rid myself of the desire to ever watch it again.

How I hope, Frank. How I hope.

Love,  
Liz

**Liz Tells Frank What Happened In** _Night of the Living Dead_

Dear Frank,

Happy almost-Halloween! The perfect time for a foray into that most classic of horror films, the 1968 _Night of the Living Dead_. I am usually a giant fraidycat during horror movies, but, fingers crossed, George A. Romero's first foray into the zombie genre won't have the truly scary stuff figured out yet.

Down to business. Serious scary black-and-white business. We start off with two young people who look like Brad and Janet from _Rocky Horror_. (Okay, they're brother and sister, but that doesn't matter much when it comes to _Rocky Horror_ comparisons.)

Anyhoo, because they are young people and it's the '60s, they're whining a lot about parental obligations -- specifically, having to come out and put a wreath on their dead father's grave. When Janet admits to being a little creeped out by the cemetery, Brad's a dick and totally taunts Janet -- okay, her name is Barbara. I know this now, because Brad has THE CREEPIEST LINE EVER: "They're coming to get you, Barbaraaaaaaaaa."

Brad's giving Barbara shit in the above scene because some random duder is wandering around the cemetery at 8 PM and she thinks he might be some sort of monster. SPOILER ALERT: HE IS A MONSTER, who first attacks Barbara, then Brad.

When Brad's head gets whacked on a gravestone, Barbara totally ditches him and flees for her life. (I love my brother, but I kinda see where she's coming from here.) Turns out this is like the smartest Z-word ever, though -- (fun fact alert: the word "zombie" is never uttered during the course of this movie) -- because he uses a ROCK to break the car window. The genre in its infancy, Frank.

Barbara flees, in a weird flailing sort of way, into a farmhouse with a gas pump outside (that strikes me as weird, but I am not familiar with country folk); the Z-word chasing her (who looks like a very tall Ray Wise, tell you the truth) lurks outside.

But moments into Barbara taking refuge in the house, she gets a houseguest whose name is Ben and is THE BEST. Ben shows up and is like, oh, cool, a safe place to crash, and don't worry, blondie, I'll take care of you.

Ben is black, which wouldn't normally be worth mentioning except that I have seen _Mad Men_ and thus know that the '60s were not a happy sunny racial paradise. So the fact that the smartest and most capable person in this movie (who's not above punching a hysterical lady) is black is pretty damn impressive. Hell, in striking contrast to modern horror films, he's not even the first to die!

Point is, Ben is EXACTLY the kind of guy you want to hang out with during a Z-word emergency -- skilled at activities like boarding up the windows, plus smart enough to figure out that the Z-words are afraid of fire and find the shotgun that belonged to the original owners.

He also, as mentioned before, knocks out Barbara when she starts talking about going to rescue her brother. Barbara has devolved, since fleeing from Ray Wise, from relatively capable Final Girl candidate into full-on catatonic mess. So I can't say I disagree with Ben's reasoning or methods here.

Now that Ben's got everything boarded up, it's about time for a twist, and that's when the people hiding in the cellar decide to poke their heads out! One of them is bald and annoying and thinks the cellar is the safest place to hide with his wife and "sick" daughter (sick from a Z-word bite UH-OH), but when Ben won't let him take food or the radio downstairs, he and college boy Tom (who's also hiding in the cellar with his co-ed sweetheart Judy) agree to relocate upstairs.

They spend a LOT of time watching the news, which is a big ol' infodump about how these mass murders (which, the newscaster gleefully reports, are followed by the undead cannibalizing the new corpses) are all NASA's fault: A satellite orbiting Venus may have brought back the infection keeping the dead alive. Whoops! Stupid Venus.

Z-words are milling about outside as a reminder of why exactly slow Z-words can be even scarier than fast Z-words -- slow Z-words can be outrun, but there are just so fucking many of them. And they _never give up._

Announcements are made about rescue stations in the area, and most everyone (except Baldie the spoilsport) wants to go to one, especially Tom, who has my favorite line of the whole fucking movie: "The television said that's the right thing to do." WELL SAID, TOM.

In order to do so, though, they have to fill up Ben's pick-up truck from the gas pump. And at this point, there are like thirty Z-words waiting outside to eat them. Ben has a plan, though, involving Baldie throwing Molotov cocktails from an upper-story window while he and Tom fill up the truck without accidentally setting the truck on fire.

Unfortunately, Ben's plan does not go perfectly when it comes to that last part. I'm not totally sure how Tom managed to set the truck on fire while filling it up, but I do know that truck? Totally on fire.

And for some reason, Judy decided she wanted to come along on this mission, and when her sweater gets stuck while trying to get out of the truck, she and Tom both go BOOM. Tom and Judy were nice people, but I'm thinking that for the good of the gene pool, it's probably for the best that they never got a chance to reproduce.

Ben flees to the house, but Baldie (who's jealous of how much THE BEST Ben is) hesitates to let Ben in. Ben handles this situation by kicking open the door and giving Baldie the Barbara treatment. To quote the wise scholar Rose McGowan in _Scream_ : "Boom boom bitch go down!"

Oh, and now the Z-words are eating Tom and Judy. Lovely. Lovely. According to the IMDB Trivia page for this movie, the actors were provided with baked ham covered with chocolate sauce for this bit. Deeeeeeeeeelightful.

The TV, which is still telling us the right things to do, is now referring to the Z-words as "ghouls" and picked up on that most important bit of Z-word lore: Aim for the head.

Conflict between Ben and Baldie is at an all-time high, and while Ben's trying to keep a pack of Z-words from breaking down the door, Baldie steals Ben's gun in a power grab clearly designed to lead to Ben's death. Given that this is the second time Baldie's quasi-tried to kill Ben, I got no problem at all with Ben shooting Baldie, who retreats to the cellar.

Except whoops, remember Baldie's "sick" daughter Karen? She's better now, if by better you mean "no longer suffering from the effects of a Z-word bite and instead now actually a Z-word." And Karen's in a bad mood -- first she eats Baldie's arm off, then, when Karen's mom comes downstairs to see what's going on, stabs her over and over again with a spade. (Again with the Z-words using tools. Romero clearly hadn't worked out what it means to be undead yet.)

Ben, meanwhile, just watched Barbara's reunion with her brother -- he's having so much fun being a Z-word, he drags her away to join the party! Poor stupid Barbara. I had such hopes for her.

The house is now full of Z-words, including young Karen, so Ben takes refuge in the cellar after disposing quickly of the newly-Z-worded Baldie and Karen's mom. Morning comes, and the house empties of Z-words, leaving Ben free and clear to make his escape.

So now you're like, awesome, now Ben gets his well-deserved happy ending. Oh, but here comes the mother of all WHOOPSIES. A bunch of (noticeably all-white) sheriffs and deputies and duders with guns are roaming the countryside disposing of the Z-word menace, and when they get to the house Ben's hiding in, Ben's like, oh, this sounds like help, I'll see what's going on. And then the sherrif's deputy SHOOTS BEN IN THE HEAD, and they drag his corpse out of the house and burn it in a bonfire.

THE WORST, Frank, the absolute saddest. I'll be honest and say that I didn't find this movie as scary as I would have liked -- there's some great character development and some decent jump moments, but most of the big scares are a little too telegraphed for a modern first-time viewer.

The scariest bit, ultimately, is the reminder that Z-word apocalypse or not, it really sucked to be a black guy in 1968.

Love,  
Liz

**Liz Tells Frank What Happened In** _Rollerball_

Dear Frank,

Every once in a while, as you know, I ask Liz Tells Frank readers who are not you what they would like me to tell you about. I find this adds a nice level of variety to the entries, and also guarantees more than one person actually wants to read them.

However, some LTF fans who are also MONSTERS have been, for the last year or so, asking me to re-watch the 2002 remake of John McTiernan's _Rollerball_. In case you were unsure based on the previous sentence, those people are MONSTERS. So here's the deal. It's been requested too often for me to ignore, but it's also going to be exclusive to this humble e-book you hold in your hands, because IF I AM GOING TO REWATCH THIS MOVIE, I AM GOING TO MAKE PEOPLE PAY ME SOME MONEY FIRST.

Let's start with this: Beyond the fact that both of them involve fictitious sports where people wear shoes with wheels on them, the original 1975 film and the remake have basically nothing in common. I will not even mention the original talent involved with the project, out of respect. Let's be clear: They do not deserve to have their names linked to this.

_Rollerball_ opens with, basically, a bobsled race down the side of a hill on skateboards. In San Francisco? Who the fuck knows? I sure don't.

Which is strange, because there was a period of my life where every Friday night, I would go with a friend or two and see whatever movie had opened that weekend -- WHATEVER MOVIE. Which means that in January 2002, I saw this movie in the theater. Fortunately, I remember pretty much nothing. Ten years of drinking has done me a huge favor, it turns out.

I mean, seriously, I forgot LL COOL J! He rescues Chris Klein literally off the street from the bobsled race I've been ignoring. And now we're talking about hockey? Klein wants to go play pro hockey. But we're actually talking about the fine sport of Rollerball! LL Cool J flashes Chris some bling, tells him it's easy to get laid as a star of this ridiculous thing. Chris initially is like, nah, but then he tries to go home and he sees some element of mobsterism I will bet you money will not matter later waiting for him and then...

FOUR MONTHS LATER! OPENING CREDITS! Which means a list of actors who clearly have terrible taste, but I have liked in other things:

Jean Reno (so good in _The Professional!_ )  
LL Cool J (the best!)  
Rebecca Romijn (back when she was still a Stamos!)  
Naveen Andrews (from _Lost_!)

Right now, we're in some sad central Asian mining town, which is the hometown for Our Heroes' Rollerball team. Rollerball, in this case, is pitched as some gross, third-world sport that's crazy popular enough to distract the local oppressed miners from how much life sucks as an oppressed miner.

(The original film took place in a futuristic dystopia; I do not know how a futuristic dystopia becomes the third world, but that is math I will leave to the Hollywood geniuses who made this movie possible.)

We finally get to the Rollerball action, featuring Chris Klein, LL Cool J and Rebecca Romijn on a team against a bunch of guys who wear gold who will never matter as characters. This is the point where we learn the major advantage the remake has over the original: Rollerblades as opposed to roller skates.

An announcer started explaining the rules to Rollerball just now, and there are graphics to help with the explanation, and I am so mad that I am watching this movie that I DON'T CARE. Also THE RULES DO NOT MAKE SENSE: WHY ARE THERE PEOPLE ON MOTORCYCLES AND PEOPLE WEARING TUTUS? FUCK THIS MOVIE FUCK THIS MOVIE FUCK THIS MOVIE--

It's roller derby. It's basically just fucking roller derby. But extremely fucking complicated and there are motorcycles and accompanied by a live rock band. My GOD I wish I were actually watching roller derby.

I mean, I like a sports movie; I like roller derby; I've even enjoyed the odd pro wrestling match. So in theory, I could get behind watching all this rollerballer-ing... If it was at all coherently edited. SPOILER ALERT: It is not.

At the end of this first match, this rather sweet player we all like gets maced in the head, and we see the ratings go up! Which makes all the guys in suits sipping champagne look at each other meaningfully. Chris Klein, in vengeance, rallies his team and they win. Yay? I don't know. I've lost the ability to feel joy.

ONLY AN HOUR AND THIRTEEN MINUTES TO GO, FRANK.

Post-match, a reporter asks LL Cool J if his mother was a crack whore. "She was a pediatrician!" LL COOL J WHY ARE YOU IN THIS MOVIE?

Now everyone is driving sports cars around for some reason? I was checking my email in the hopes something would distract me from this crap, and so I might have missed the reason why Chris Klein and LL Cool J are in sports cars, but I will be fucked if I re-watch part of this movie a second time.

Now we are at da club. Everyone parties at da club. Vodka is drunk. The guy who got head-maced's chin strap was cut? Sure. Okay.

Jean Reno, for some reason at the same club as everyone else (central Asia, I guess, only has one club), calls Chris Klein "the angriest man in the game." Jean Reno, c'mon. For that to be true, Chris Klein's face would be able to replicate some sort of human emotion.

Chris goes back to the stadium locker room for some reason... Oh, wait, Rebecca Romijn is doing topless weightlifting. And then she and Chris bone. And then they cuddle in a steam room! Chris is like, maybe we could do this in a bed sometime and she's like, nah. Sure! Whatever, movie! I GIVE UP! YOU WIN!

Rebecca has a scar on her eyebrow, which means she wears a face-covering helmet whilst Rollerballing and is kind of shy. But she also knows the whole accident with their teammate was planned by the TV organization running this bullshit, because some guy told her to check the camera angles. This moment of the film might be its most convincing and well-scripted. Sigh.

Chris and Rebecca go to talk to Rebecca's guy about it, but get caught up in a riot and Chris's fancy sports car gets set on fire so he has to ride bitch on her motorcycle. Hahahahaha, that gives me pleasure.

Oh man, Frank. Every five minutes, some random clip of what I guess are local television broadcasts just gets randomly inserted into the movie, I guess to indicate when we travel to different countries? Because we're now in a different country -- an Arabic country, specifically, which means the scantily-clad cheerleaders are wearing hijab. Because, sense.

Rollerball rollerball rollerball. Rebecca and LL Cool J both get hurt because THEY'RE GETTING TOO CLOSE to uncovering the incredibly obvious truth that OMG, Rollerball is a fake sport? So now they all want to quit. But Jean Reno won't let them!

Side note: Chris sure is wearing a lot of turtlenecks in this movie. Maybe it really does take place in the future. A very turtleneck-y future--

Oh, god, we got to the night-vision scene. The night-vision scene is basically the only thing I remember from this movie, and all I remember from it is that it lasts something like FIFTEEN MINUTES. Let's see if I'm right!

Basically, Chris and LL are trying to sneak over some sort of border to freedom, but their bodyguards are chasing them. It's at night, so the whole thing is shot in ultra-grainy green night vision because FUCK THIS MOVIE. You see, Frank, if you shoot something in ultra-grainy green night vision, you don't really have to bother making it work in terms of editing, directing or acting. It might be, no joke, the laziest goddamn action sequence in film history.

I do appreciate the fact that Chris is once again riding bitch. I can just about make out that much.

STILL IN NIGHT VISION, there's an off-road airplane (what?) making cartoon BROIIIING! noises. LL makes a solo run towards the border, whilst Chris watches from afar -- but Jean Reno has tracked them down and LL's ass gets snipered. Chris sees this and is sad...

Okay, no more night vision. That only lasted seven minutes. In _Rollerball_ time, though, that converts to about three months.

Jean Reno captures Chris, taking him onto his off-road plane--

God, I have written over 1,400 words so far about _Rollerball_. I am the Chris Klein of the sport Rollerball when it comes to complaining about _Rollerball_. Which is to say, I am good at it, but I am also dead inside.

TWENTY EIGHT MINUTES TO GO, FRANK. Jean Reno is talking about how powerful he is, I guess to intimidate Chris into continuing to Rollerball. Uuuuuuuuuugh.

But Chris has a plan! Because Chris likes Rebecca, he asks Jean Reno to trade her and thus keep her safe. Which Jean Reno does -- UH OH! TO THE TEAM CHRIS'S TEAM IS ROLLERBALLERING THAT VERY NIGHT! Not very safe, eh, Chris? Chris's plan sucks.

This big final game (praise the Lord I'm able to use the word "final") is all very intense, especially when the evil corporations announce that RULES ARE SUSPENDED and NO PENALTIES and someone is probably gonna get killed. Oh god I hope it's me, in the audience. SEVENTEEN MINUTES TO GO, FRANK.

The lack-of-rules change is basically an excuse to beat the shit out of Chris, which I'm fine with, but eventually everyone gets really upset and when one of Chris's teammates gets shot protesting this crap, the audience flips the fuck out...

Of course, instead of protesting the corrupt system, the crowd just chants Chris's name so he'll get up and win super-big for the Gipper, I dunno... Instead, Chris grabs some rollerballs and uses them to attack Jean Reno and his fellow suits, going on a mindless beat-down rampage.

I'm completely serious, Frank: This movie's dramatic climax is Chris Klein beating Jean Reno to death with a stool and shooting Naveen Andrews with a shotgun. Meanwhile, the other players revolt and start beating up just... I don't know, everyone?

Satellite dishes are torn down. Chris Klein is a folk hero. Rebecca says she wants to fuck him in a bed. CREDITS OH THANK GOD THE END.

Let's end this installment with the following final observation: OMG, how far hath John McTiernan fallen? Once upon a time, he was one of the hottest directors ever! He made _Die Hard_! Which is still a great movie! And now, I mean, holy shit, the man has no career whatsoever. He has fallen SUPER-FAR -- um, like, he-went-to-jail far.

However, while jail is bad, _Rollerball_ might be worse.

Love,  
Liz

**Liz Tells Frank What Happened In** _Sex and the City 2_

Dear Frank,

Here are two facts:

1) I have seen every episode of _Sex and the City_ multiple times.  
2) I hate _Sex and the City_.

There's no rational explanation for this, really, except my uterine-born affinity for the tropes of romantic comedy. Watching people deal with the pratfalls of falling in love is something that either biology or social conditioning makes me feel happy, safe, content -- and each episode of _Sex and the City_ would contain up to four different romantic scenarios! Four times the romance of your normal romantic comedy! It's rom-com crack!

Sometimes the writing was hideous -- especially the metaphor abuse that was so bad those metaphors should have fled to a shelter for victims of domestic violence. And sometimes, it resulted in me wanting to punch every single character in the face. (This paragraph got away from me a bit.)

But there were charming gentlemen and the occasional wonderful moment of triumph, and I fucking cried during the finale, because I was so happy to see Carrie Bradshaw, after years of disappointment, stride confidently through Manhattan, in love with the city, a man, and more importantly, herself.

However, that was the show, which I hated for making me like it -- because I did like it, for its complexity and heart and some genuinely great moments.

The movies? The movies are just fucking dumb.

I don't really want to tell you much about the first movie, Frank, known only as _Sex and the City_ , because thinking about it too much hurts my brain. Here's all you need to know: Carrie (after two-and-a-half hours of bullshit) got married to Mr. Big, whose name is John – the first time I heard that, I was like, "does that make Carrie a 'ho?" but that's neither here nor there.

And that marriage is basically the focal point of this bloated mess of a two-and-a-half hour movie. Marriage in general is, really, starting with--

Okay, wait, the opening of this movie is cute in its way; I don't want to overlook its only vaguely original and fun element. In a quick series of flashbacks, we get very bare-bones details of how the "girls" of this show met: Carrie and Charlotte on a 2 AM subway ride, Carrie and Miranda in a dressing room, Samantha at CGBG's.

Because those meetings took place in the '80s (because these bitches be OLD), the flashbacks feature some pretty amazing '80s hair and wardrobe. Meanwhile, in the present, Carrie is wearing a really lovely, simple white dress with gold heels. It is the last normal outfit that will appear in this movie.

The first 20 minutes or whatever of this movie concern the marriage of two semi-regular gay characters from the series: Stanford and oh-god-I-can't-remember-his-name-the-really-screechy-voiced-one-who's-also-Italian-oh-wait-Italian-that's-right-his-name's-Anthony!

It is a super-gay wedding. The words "gay wedding" are uttered so often that if you were using them for a drinking game, you would now be trying to convince a liver transplant board it wasn't your fault; it was _Sex and the City_ 's. Liza Minelli (as herself) officiates the wedding and performs Beyonce's "Single Ladies" at the reception. DO NOT PLAY THE DRINKING GAME!

Here, the issue of fidelity is introduced: Anthony's allowed to cheat on Stanford, Carrie learns, and she's horrified because despite the fact she's lived in New York City for nearly four decades, she's never heard that many couples, including gay male couples, take a flexible approach toward physical fidelity.

However, while she and Big do totally do it at the SUPER GAY WEDDING, otherwise Carrie is unhappy because after two years of marriage and 50-plus years of life, Big has become a bit of a homebody. The most egregious offense? He buys a TV to put in the bedroom. WHAT A MONSTER. Discovering that in a committed relationship, men tend to watch movies and not leave the house after reaching a certain comfort level is quite a shock to Carrie. I look forward to her discovering that men also sometimes leave the seat up after going to the bathroom.

Carrie, after being worried about losing their sparkle, goes back to her old apartment which she still has because the economy and real estate, apparently? Whatever. She spends two days away from Big, and Big picks her up with his old sparkle, and the next day he's like, this was great! Every week, we should take two days off from being married and sleep in separate places so that the other five days a week, it feels special!

Carrie is, like, dude. That doesn't sound like marriage. But he half-convinces her it's a good idea before she leaves for Abu Dhabi--

Oh. Yeah. The "girls" all go to Abu Dhabi, because Samantha got some sweet PR consulting gig and she insisted on her friends getting to come with her to visit some super-swank hotel in the middle of the fucking desert.

Fuck, Frank, this is way too long already (it has that in common with _Sex and the City 2_ BOOM DROP THE MIKE). I need to simplify. Let's just break everyone's stories down into chunks, because believe it or not there are characters in this movie who aren't Carrie.

CHARLOTTE: Has a hot nanny to help her deal with her two young daughters, because Charlotte is literally reduced by tears over having to be a mother to two small people at the same time as it is, and HOLY SHIT being a mom WITHOUT A NANNY must be the number one cause of death of the poors, right? So Charlotte is glad she has a nanny. But her nanny is hot! So when she and the "girls" go to Abu Dhabi, she's freaked out that her husband will sleep with the hot nanny. But when she gets back home, she finds out the hot nanny is a lesbian so EVERYTHING'S OKAY. THE END.

MIRANDA: Has her high-powered law job, but her new boss is a dick. So in the middle of a meeting, she quits! Her husband Steve is super-supportive of the fact that the principal breadwinner of the family has quit her job and she's happy that she gets to make it to her son's science fair on time because CAREERS ARE FOR SUCKERS, LADIES. She has a nice time in Abu Dhabi. She comes home and gets a new law job that lets her work outside sometimes. THE END.

SAMANTHA: In case you've forgotten, Frank, Samantha likes DOIN' IT. Often, and with any man or (sometimes) woman who crosses her path. But Samantha is 52! Which means she gets caught on the red carpet at the beginning of the movie wearing the same dress Miley Cyrus is wearing and it is TOO YOUNG for her and it is embarrassing and Tim Gunn says "Awkward, size 2," and NOOOOOOO Tim Gunn you are better than this I am sad now.

Also, she's on tons of hormones and gels and stuff to counteract the fact that she is a human being getting older. But when they get to Abu Dhabi, they take away all her drugs! So she loses her sex drive instantaneously because that is the way the human body works -- until she meets a hot Danish guy! She gets arrested for making out with him on a beach, and the criminal activity costs her the fancy PR gig she was getting and the ladies have to leave the country in a hurry lest they be forced to fly COACH. But there are complications there...

CARRIE: Goes to Abu Dhabi, and makes friends with her personal butler, who is played by a guy from _Spooks_ and seems pretty nice. He sees his wife once every three months because she lives in India and airfare is expensive even when you're working as basically a 24/7 slave in a fancy hotel.

Carrie's takeaway from hearing this story, of course, isn't that the socio-economic situation that has forced this young man into being separated from his wife for extended periods is super fucked-up. Instead, she takes it as justification that maybe Big wanting two nights off a week isn't such a big deal. And then she runs into her ex-boyfriend Aiden in the middle of a street market because seriously this movie can go to hell.

Oh, and she's so distracted by running into Aiden that she seriously leaves her passport on the counter of the shoe guy she's buying shoes from. Spoiler alert: SHE WILL NOT REALIZE SHE LEFT HER PASSPORT IN THE MARKET UNTIL LIKE A WEEK LATER. For fuck's sake.

So Carrie, feeling kinda bummed out about her marriage, goes out to dinner with Aiden and despite the fact that they're both married, they kiss. Carrie, instantly guilt-stricken, ends up calling Big to tell him she made out with the other dude, and Big hears her confession and hangs up the phone without saying anything. That is not good! Carrie is thus concerned.

Then all the shit with Samantha getting arrested goes down, and as they're waiting for cabs to rush them to the airport, Carrie JUST THEN realizes she doesn't have her passport. So the "girls" go to the market where she last had it, but Samantha's condom-filled purse explodes as they try to exit and it is NOT LOOKING GOOD FOR THEM!

Fortunately, a bunch of Muslim women wearing couture under their burkhas come to their rescue -- sure, fine, whatever -- and the "girls" borrow said burkhas to escape to the airport in time for their flight.

When they get home, everyone else gets a happy ending, as previously stated before, but oh my god I don't even understand what happens to Carrie. When she arrives back at the apartment she shares with Big, she discovers he's gotten rid of the TV in the bedroom -- and then he gives her a giant black diamond ring because she is a special snowflake and he's sorry he made her kiss her old boyfriend in Abu Dhabi. Frank, I nearly had an aneurysm typing that sentence. But it is really and truly how this movie ends.

There's a lot of stuff that happened in this movie that I didn't mention, Frank. For example, I didn't mention how Charlotte gets cameltoe while riding on a camel because we are friends and you don't need to know about that and OH SHIT Frank, I am so sorry I messed up. You have that in your brain now. You deserve better.

You'd seriously be amazed at the amount of stupid you can fit into two-and-a-half hours, Frank. You'd seriously be amazed how easily a franchise to which I was once addicted, could become such poison.

Love,  
Liz

**Liz Tells Frank What Happened In** _Showgirls_

Dear Frank,

So, I know you have, technically, seen _Showgirls_ \-- once, many many years ago. But here's the thing, Frank -- to only watch _Showgirls_ once is to not be fully aware of just how transcendent a piece of entertainment it is; understanding _Showgirls_ requires constant vigilance and study.

Of course, I say this as someone who has watched Paul Verhoeven's boob-straganza at least six times since its release on Laserdisc, two of which happened in the process of writing the paper "Bitchy or Just Misunderstood? _All About Eve_ , _Showgirls_ , and Female Melodrama" while studying film at USC. (TRUE STORY. I got an A-minus instead of an A because I spent too much time making fun of _Showgirls_. Looking back over the last ten years, I've clearly not learned my lesson.)

Comparing _Showgirls_ to _All About Eve_ is remarkably easy, because the former is essentially a remake of the latter. (Even the Razzies were aware of this; it was nominated for "Worst Remake or Sequel," losing out, justly, to the Demi Moore _Scarlet Letter_.) Except that instead of being told from multiple points of view, _Showgirls_ is seen entirely through the eyes of the batshit crazy ingenue hitching to Vegas to make her fortune.

Wearing her finest slutty paisley blouse, our gal Jessie Spano from _Saved by the Bell_ (a cultural touchstone of our generation) and her Samsonite get picked up by a guy with a serious Elvis fetish, at least as regard to his hairstyle choices.

But the second Elvis gets handsy, Jessie whips out her switchblade and screams at him, because Jessie is, as aforementioned, batshit crazy. I'm not saying it's unreasonable for her to hope that she travel unmolested; I'm just saying her reaction would be more appropriate to him pinning her down and violating her. (Whoops! Spoilers!) Just assume that any time Jessie does anything in this movie, it is an overreaction, and overacted.

Jessie and Elvis arrive in Vegas, where he promises to hook her up with a job. (Given that her only clear job skills so far are having boobs and her own switchblade, it's interesting to ponder what he has in mind.) But distracted by the slot machines, Jessie doesn't even notice that he's driven off with her suitcase. This causes her to fling herself into oncoming Vegas Strip traffic -- like you do -- but at the last second, she's pulled to safety!

Her savior is a nice young lady named Molly, whose reaction to meeting this batshit crazy woman is to offer her a place to stay. Molly's a wardrobe gal for a super-glam topless revue called "Goddess"; for a while, you think she's going to be the only woman in this movie to escape nudity, but oh, you are wrong in the worst possible way.

Six weeks later, Molly and Jessie are besties, and Jessie is working for a less-than-classy strip joint called the Cheetah, which features plenty of girl-on-girl action as well as a zaftig stand-up comic who makes a lot of jokes about her ladybits. Jessie, as strippers go, ain't too bad at her job, but she wants to be a "dancer" -- a desire revealed when Molly sneaks her into "Goddess," and from the audience, she mimics their fancy dance moves.

The show's titular Goddess is played by Gina Gershon, who is the best and the funniest and calls everyone "darlin'." To describe her performance in one word? Predatory. I mean, she's a flat-out lesbian who's very taken with Jessie from the beginning, though she's also having sex with show manager Kyle McLachlan, which is probably why his hair resembles a butch lesbian stereotype.

Jessie doesn't like Gina Gershon very much, because Gina's idea of foreplay involves some super-catty put-downs, but later, Gina and Kyle McLachlan's haircut go to the Cheetah, and Gina pays Jessie five hundred dollars to give Kyle a lapdance make him come in his pants.

Apparently this was a job interview, because another night a scout for "Goddess" comes by and offers Jessie an audition; she does well because she's a dick to the dickish director, but is insulted when told to ice her nipples for full erect-ness. Despite storming out in a psychotic rage, though, she's still offered the job -- because, as she finds out later, Gina Gershon fixed it that way.

But, whatever, Jessie's moved up to the big leagues: showing her tits to a ballroom of folks enjoying $10 steaks, while wearing a wide assortment of costumes. It's at about this point in the movie that you become completely numb to the sight of naked breasts.

There are a number of funny little moments during this section of the film: Jessie buys a fancy dress from Versace and says the designer's name proudly and phonetically; Jessie nearly gets whored out at a boat show to a Japanese businessman; Jessie seduces Kyle McLachlan and uses her abdominal core strength to turn his swimming pool into a jacuzzi. All class.

Oh, by the way, there's this whole other subplot where this guy who sees Jessie dancing at a club tries to get her to star in his modern dance show that he "choreographed just for her" (by "tries to get her to star" I mean "tries to bone her"). He's played by Glenn Plummer, who also appeared in _Speed_ and _Strange Days_ more likely because of his pretty cool dreadlocks than any real acting ability.

Jessie and Glenn do some sexy dancing at his loft, but because she is a sociopath, she teases him and ditches him. I think his purpose in the film is to show that not all men are unredeemable bastards; however, he does end up knocking up the new girl at the Cheetah (who did fall for the "choreographed just for her" line), so it's not really a victory for mankind.

Not that women really get out of this movie looking any better. Jessie gets so sick of being pushed around by Gina Gershon that she pushes back -- literally, she pushes Gina Gershon down the stairs after a show, breaking Gina's hip (Because Gina is so old! Like Bette Davis in _All About Eve_! Homage!) And after her little swimming pool session with Kyle McLachlan, Jessie's Gina's understudy and the new star of "Goddess"! Hooray!

I mean, Molly's mad at her, because Molly saw Jessie pushing Gina. But Molly's only trace of sexuality is that she has a hardcore crush on this Yanni-like singer named Andrew Carver, and when Molly finds out Andrew Carver will be at Jessie's big "fuck yeah I'm Goddess!" party, well, what's a little attempted murder between friends?

So Molly shows up at the party and giddily meets Andrew Carver, who immediately lets his friends gang-rape her. This scene is gross and horrifying and completely unnecessary (not that any of this movie is necessary, but whatever); I have tried to prepare you for it by making some references to rape earlier, but rape jokes are never funny, and really, you just feel very, very sad for Molly.

Confession, Frank -- during my most recent re-watch of this last Saturday, with a delightful crew of friends, I fell asleep around this point (in part because if you drink every time Jessie hits something or says the word "dance," you drink more than a little bit). But all that really happens is that Jessie's secret hooker past is discovered by the "Goddess" management (who actually insist on paying their dancers legally and doing background checks -- good for them!).

It's thus time for Jessie to skip town, but before she does, she does have some unfinished business. First, Jessie puts on hooker boots and nipstick and goes over to Andrew Carver's house to beat the shit out of him with her ninja stripper skills. "Goddess" may have found out about her secret hooker past, but did they uncover any training with the CIA?

And then Jessie goes to see Gina in the hospital. They make out, and then Gina gives Jessie her signature cowboy hat. Because these are things that rational human beings do. Did you know that Joe Eszterhas was paid $3.7 million for writing this script? Because he totally was.

Finally, Jessie hitches her way out of town \-- and boy oh boy, who should pick her up but Elvis! Switchblade fun ensues, as Jessie was really very fond of her Samsonite. This seems like an ignoble ending for our heroine -- alone, her only friend brutally raped, her fame brief and transitory. Yet when asked if she won big in Vegas, Jessie says yes.

And that, truly, is why she's insane. Remember that, Frank, as you pursue your dreams in the rough-and-tumble entertainment world. Remember always, Frank, to bring your switchblade.

Love,  
Liz

**Liz Tells Frank What Happened In** _Sliders_

Dear Frank,

Of all the terrible things about being a teenager, here's one that's only really terrible in retrospect: There will be books and movies and TV shows you consume in your adolescence that, upon future reflection, might prove to be embarrassing, especially when you realize just how much they reveal about you. There's an inevitability to this -- the most you can hope for is that the media with that kind of power over your psyche won't include a Vancouver-produced, micro-budgeted Fox show about people who hop between alternate universes with the help of an oversized cell phone.

I am, alas, not so lucky.

The pilot episode of _Sliders_ opens with Jerry O'Connell videotaping his experiments with wormhole technology in the basement of his mother's house; blah blah blah science science science Jerry's a genius, having successfully opened up a portal of some sort to a... I dunno. It's a mystery! (The answer is parallel universes.)

This probably goes without saying, Frank, but Jerry O'Connell's character has floppy brown hair, flannel shirts and a cat named Schrodinger that he refuses to subject to experimentation -- teenage me was definitely in like with him.

Jerry's pretty psyched about his breakthroughs, natch, but still has to go to school to ignore physics lectures by John Rhys-Davies, AKA Gimli the dwarf, and go to work at a computer store to ignore Sabrina Lloyd's crush on him. Poor Sabrina Lloyd! (We'll get back to this.)

Jerry decides to jump through the portal and see what happens, his only safety measure a giant modded cell phone with a timer that will bring him back home. After traveling through some CGI-whooshing, he lands back in his mother's basement, and assumes the experiment didn't work. Or did it? (It totally did.)

After listening to a radio DJ blather about President Kennedy and his ladyfriend Marilyn (both still alive), Jerry nearly gets into a car accident because in this alternate world, green lights mean stop and RED means GO. This makes no sense to anyone who's studied colors as they relate to human psychology, but whatever.

Jerry's timer eventually launches him back to his home world, where he immediately starts running around to tell people what happened, but somehow while he was gone, someone else who looked like Jerry was there? And that someone mocked Gimli and made out with Sabrina Lloyd and everything is all confusing!

So Jerry retreats to his basement, only to discover OMG parallel himself! Who, let me be honest, tucks in his shirt like a douche, and was also fucking around with Jerry's life by screwing with Gimli and Sabrina, remember, but our Jerry doesn't seem to mind, trusting Alterna-Jerry when he tells him that "sliding" between alternate worlds with a super-cool not-at-all-just-like-the-cell-phone-my-mom-had-in-1995 is super-fun.

Frank, lest you think Alterna-Jerry is an okay guy, when he slides back to his home universe, he's all like "Oh, but there's one super-important thing you gotta know--" right before disappearing. Say it with me, Frank: KING DOUCHE.

But Jerry's not bothered; he's just jazzed about his new future as a slider. And when Gimli and Sabrina Lloyd show up at Jerry's house because they're worried about him and the shit with his doppleganger, he asks them if they want to join him on his next slide.

Gimli's initially reluctant, but eventually is like, sure, for science blah blah. But Sabrina Lloyd... Sigh.

Frank, here is where, when re-watching the pilot as a lady of advanced years and improved perspective, I find _Sliders_ ever so slightly uncomfortable. See, Sabrina Lloyd is a tomboyish, awkward computer nerd whose innate cuteness goes unnoticed by the guy she's most interested in. Then, her crush asks her if she wants to join him for a potentially super-dangerous and most definitely unproven experiment involving jumping into a magic glow-y CGI vortex. And she is like FUCK YEAH.

This? This made COMPLETE AND TOTAL SENSE TO ME when I watched it as a lass. I was like, sure, of course, that's exactly what I'd do if the boy I liked asked me if I wanted to do something incredibly stupid and unsafe with him. Jesus Christ, my parents were lucky I was completely incompetent socially until the age of 20. In the alternate universe where I was capable of actually interacting with boys as a teenager, I'm pretty sure I was either knocked up at the age of 16 or (in the alternate universe where my crush was a physics genius who had discovered a way to travel between alternate universes) trapped in an alternate universe.

Speaking of which! The guys go ahead and make their first big leap, and frankly it sucks: They land in a frozen-over San Francisco. And they also have company; see, Jerry turned up the power on his not-a-cell-phone in case it wasn't strong enough to transport three people (even though one of them is a dwarf yes I know I can also be making _Indiana Jones_ jokes about John Rhys-Davies but I'm in a _Lord of the Rings_ place today).

By doing so, though, he accidentally sucked in soul singer Rembrandt Brown and his car, bringing them all along for the ride. I'm really not sure why the fuck the show's creators chose to bring in this character this way. I suppose they didn't think it was believable that Jerry O'Connell would just have a black friend. Racist.

Alas, Rembrandt is kind of worthless at least in this episode, whining about his missed chance at a comeback for the majority of his screen time. The actor goes on to be the only one to stay on the show for all five of its seasons, but I have no reason to mention him again during this recap.

Things aren't great on Ice World, and they're stuck there for another four hours when an ice tornado (I guess that's a real thing) starts heading toward them. Everyone is like "FUCKING HELL JERRY, GET US THE FUCK OUT OF HERE" and Jerry's like, "But I bet that fucking with the timer is the thing that my alterna-self said never under any circumstances ever do!" and the ice tornado says "RARRRRRR I'M A TOTALLY REAL NATURAL PHENOMENON RARRRRRR!" Jerry loses the argument and mods the not-cell-phone to get them out of there.

BAMF they think they have arrived home! But THEY'RE STILL IN THE GAME! I mean, they're not home yet. Instead, they're in a world where the U.S. lost the Cold War, and Soviet Russia fill-in-the-blanks you! And they're stuck there for a while, because the timer has reset itself randomly!

There then proceeds to be 45 minutes of oh-man-we-are-in-an-alternate-universe-and-we-have-problems. (I have just described for you the premise of every future _Sliders_ episode ever, for the record.) Alterna-Sabrina is the leader of the rebellion! Alterna-Gimli is the military commander in charge of San Francisco! Rembrandt is worthless and whines! Jerry O'Connell can't believe it! (That is an extreme inside joke that maybe three of our college friends will get, Frank. But it'll make them happy, so what the hell.)

Eventually, the time comes for them to jump back home -- or is it home? (It isn't.) I mean, they think it's home -- everything is as normal as Jerry O'Connell might have imagined. But then, during a super-normal dinner with his super-normal friends (and stupid whining Rembrandt), Jerry's dad comes into the dining room! But he's supposed to be dead! Whoops! Looks like the cell phone is broken, and they are LOST 4-EVA.

And thus ends the pilot of _Sliders_! For the reasons mentioned above, I fell hard for this show when it premiered and, for the first season at least, watched it obsessively. But _Sliders_ suffered tremendous drama behind the scenes and eventually became largely unwatchable. I believe I gave up around the time the sliders slide to an alternate world with dinosaurs on it. (I mean, I like dinosaurs, but seriously, fuck that.)

This means I missed things like the discovery of Jerry's long-lost brother (played by Charlie O'Connell, Jerry's less handsome brother in real life), Sabrina Lloyd getting captured by evil aliens and turned into a psychic breeder for them or something, and Charlie's and Jerry's characters literally morphing into a whole new dude played by a whole new actor after the brothers O'Connell decided to quit the show. In short, I didn't miss much.

Fate was fickle when it comes to which sci-fi shows survived the '90s, Frank. Fickle and unfair.

Love,  
Liz

**Liz Tells Frank What Happened In** _Sucker Punch_

Dear Frank,

About two months before its release, it got programmed into my brain that I wanted to see _Sucker Punch_ , Zach Snyder's "first original film" -- in part because I'm a sucker for anything that might promise to be a girl-power epic, and in part because I have a strange residual fondness for _300_. (Not just because of its incredibly cut men, but, yeah.) Combine that residual goodwill with the fact that American film is currently experiencing a drought of original premises and I like to support the ones that do make it into theaters, and you end up with me giving Zack Snyder my money.

Let's end the mystery right here, Frank: If the movie had been great, I wouldn't be writing this, and this installment wouldn't be filled with SPOILERS. Read with caution.

_Sucker Punch_ starts off by introducing a young girl only known as Baby Doll, who gets sent to a mental asylum by her evil stepfather after the death of her mother. (This movie does not deal in subtleties.) In the mental institution, she meets a pack of girls with whom she teams up for an escape attempt \-- because in five days, thanks to her stepfather bribing an orderly, she's getting lobotomized.

What then happens?

Here you go: The girls try their best to break out, but pretty much fail. Three of them are murdered; Don Draper lobotomizes Baby Doll; and it's only the girl known as Sweet Pea who manages to escape the asylum, taking a bus back home to Mother. THE END. Shortest Liz Tells Frank ever! Hooray!

"But Liz!" you say. "What about the totally bad-ass steampunk/fantasy/sci-fi/samurai sequences I saw in the trailer? Isn't this movie a totally insane and awesome hybrid of the fantastic?" NOPE. Here's the deal: Almost as soon as she enters the asylum, Baby Doll starts imagining that instead of an asylum, she's being held captive in a cabaret/brothel -- the other patients being her fellow dancers/whores, their doctor the dance instructor/madam, and the orderly their pimp/pimp.

In the brothel fantasy, Baby Doll starts planning the escape attempt, which involves them stealing various items (a map, a lighter, a knife, and a key) from the orderlies. Her plan is, in every instance, "I will dance sexy and distract dudes, and then one of you go steal what we need."

Not only is it bad planning, it's boring planning, which is why every time Baby Doll starts to dance, we go a fantasy level deeper (that's right, like _Inception_ , except stupid), to some awesome/dumb scenario that the girls need to beat like a video game.

I say awesome/dumb above because if you said to me, "Liz, would you like to watch a movie where heavily-armed young women fight a dragon, or some super-sized samurai, or steam-powered WWI zombies, or a train car of robots on one of Saturn's moons?" of course I would say yes. But we're not inside my brain; we're inside Baby Doll's brain, and because we know absolutely NOTHING about her as a character, we have no idea why Baby Doll's _second layer_ of fantasies manifest as a pastiche of a century's worth of science fiction.

All these fantasy sequences, by the way, are introduced by Scott Glenn, who appears in Baby Doll's fantasy world as a mentor/positive representation of the patriarchy, because every woman in this movie is ultimately dependent on the patriarchy for salvation-- Oh, man, I just wrote patriarchy twice in the same sentence. Deep breaths, Liz. Deep breaths.

I will spare you the heavily feminist elements of my critique, Frank, except to say that boy, I'm glad of another reminder that women can only be strong and powerful if their navels are exposed, and always require rescuing by a man.

Because here is this film's fatal flaw, which our friend Jeff essentially pointed out a few weeks ago with the following Facebook status post: "Ladies, help me out. If you escaped into a magical fantasy world of your own creation, would you dress yourself like the girls from _Sucker Punch_ do?"

Not a single one of those who responded said, "A sailor suit with thigh-highs? You bet!" In fact, many responders seemed to idolize, to some extent, Trinity from _The Matrix_ , whose femininity was never compromised by relatively sensible wardrobe choices. (Trinity wore sweaters on the Nebuchadnezzar! During their off time, the girls of _Sucker Punch_ wear leotards, heels and tights.)

I will admit that while _Sucker Punch_ is flawed, it's flawed in really interesting ways. The script is a mess, but it's competently made and there's a lot of imagination on display; it's hardly a _Battlefield Earth_ -level disaster. But honestly, I'd have rather seen the exploitation version of this movie -- the _Showgirls_ edition, if you will -- than the weird hybrid of good intentions and terrible execution that ultimately failed creatively and financially.

Because, really, there was no way for this film to truly succeed without Zack Snyder understanding one basic fact: The strongest feminist statement you can make as a filmmaker these days? Create a female character who isn't just an outfit, but a _person_.

Love,  
Liz

**Liz Tells Frank What Happened In** _Sweet Valley High_

Dear Frank,

It only took about thirty years, but I think the young ladies of today have stopped reading _Sweet Valley_ books. To which I say -- oh, THANK GOD.

See, Frank, when I told you what happened in _Are You There God, It's Me Margaret_ , I mentioned that I was giving you one of the true secrets to understanding women. _Sweet Valley High_ is another one. It's not because it has any real insight into the reality of being a teenage girl -- _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ offers a more realistic portrayal of high school life -- but the genius of _Sweet Valley_ is that it had nothing to do with reality. instead, it preyed on the deepest insecurities of young ladies, managing to be simultaneously aspirational and soul damaging. Reading these books could fuck you up for life. Let me explain how.

The series focuses on Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield, two incredibly gorgeous blonde twin sisters who live in an affluent suburb and drive around in a sports car. The girls are identical appearance-wise (and also wear matching diamond necklaces; did I mention that they got some money to throw around?), but Elizabeth is a total goody-two-shoes whose only big secret is that she writes the high school paper's gossip column anonymously; meanwhile, Jessica is a manipulative spoiled whore. (Okay, she's more of a tease, but we'll get to that.)

The drama of the first book in the series, _Double Love_ , is approximately as follows: There's a cute boy at school named Todd who's more interested in Elizabeth than Jessica (which makes sense, given that he shares her quasi-bland personality) but when Jessica finds out, she gets pissed and gives Todd the full-court press (he plays basketball y'see CHECK OUT MY SPORTS METAPHORS I TOTALLY UNDERSTAND MEN). But he rejects her! Quelle jerk! (That is French for "what a jerk" I ALSO KNOW FOREIGN LANGUAGES.)

So Jessica, feeling vulnerable, goes to A BAR (omg she's only 16!) with an older guy named Rick who totally dropped out of high school because he is a BAD BOY. (By the way, Frank, I am using my quasi-vintage 1991 copy of this book to write this piece, and Rick is described as having "the ice-cool handsomeness of a junior Clint Eastwood." Oh my.)

At the bar, Rick gets fresh with her (and Jessica is not yet old enough to understand that when you get into a guy's car and agree to go to a bar with him, the guy might be expecting things, especially if he is a BAD BOY), and she freaks out, which causes a bar fight, and that brings in the cops!

Jessica, because she is the worst, not-exactly-accidentally lets them think that she's Elizabeth, and then when the cops drop her off at home and loudly say "ELIZABETH WAKEFIELD, YOU ARE A BAD, BAD GIRL" (I mean, they don't actually arrest her or anything, but it's the SHAME of it that burns), the school gossip happens to be walking her dog at just the right moment and immediately starts calling bitches to blab about it!

So then Elizabeth's reputation is _ruined_ and everyone thinks she's a WHORE, including that hot guy Todd, but Elizabeth rises above it and eventually convinces Todd that she a) is not a dirty whore who goes to bars; and b) is totally into him. And when Jessica fails to really make amends for letting the whole school think Elizabeth was the DIRTY one, Elizabeth plays a switcharoo that results in Jessica getting thrown fully-clothed into the school pool. HUMILIATION! HOORAY! The end.

Frank, there is a chance that the sharp stabbing pain in my shoulder due to recent overwork and bad ergonomics is affecting my ability to tell you about this book in detail. But honestly, what matters here isn't the plot.

Y'see, for characters not created by Nathaniel Hawthorne (literature reference!), the folks who live in sleepy Sweet Valley are fucking _obsessed_ with how they're perceived by others, especially when it comes to relationships. Beyond the whole Elizabeth-gets-mistaken-for-a-whore storyline, in this book there's also a running thread about the twin's older brother Steven and his FORBIDDEN PASSION for a girl named Tricia who comes from a BAD FAMILY (her sister does DRUGS, you see). And all the Wakefields are worried about this lady who works in their father's office, because she is UNMARRIED and so may be having an affair with their father, and oh man, how humiliating would that be?

Oh! And there's also the scene where Jessica yells at Elizabeth for agreeing to go to the big dance with the school nerd, because that embarrasses BOTH of them -- not to mention the DRAMATIC CLIFFHANGER at the end of the book where Elizabeth's best friend Enid comes running to Elizabeth because her SECRET PAST is about to be revealed and Enid's boyfriend will totally dump her when he finds out! WHAT A BUNCH OF WHORES.

I mean, on a one-on-one basis, these all seem like justifiable storylines for these characters. (Well, except for maybe the Steven/Tricia thing, which is just stupid.) They may even be vaguely representative of reality. But when you factor them all in together, the resounding message is that all that matters is your reputation. Put another way: ALL THAT MATTERS IS WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK OF YOU. Which is an awfully insidious message to be planting in the heads of pre-teen girls imagining what life will be like once they get boobs and boyfriends.

_Sweet Valley High_ 's era of cultural relevance has since passed -- now young women have _Twilight_ and _The Hunger Games_ to warp their young minds. But while I definitely prefer the latter to the former, I gotta admit that even _Twilight_ strikes me as a sign of improvement for the girls of today. I mean, the character of Bella may be trapped inside a ridiculous narrative meant to promote celibacy and Mormonism. But she doesn't drive a sports car.

Love,  
Liz

**Liz Tells Frank What Happened In** _Terra Nova_

Dear Frank,

All last fall, as I watched _Terra Nova_ , YET ANOTHER family-from-the-not-too-distant-future-travels-to-the-past-and-gets-to-hang-out-with-dinosaurs drama, I knew it would be something I should tell you about at some point.

Frank, I thought we'd have more time. Alas, the show is no more -- at least for Fox, though when they canceled it, they claimed the show would be shopped around to other networks HAHAHAHAHAHAHA GOOD LUCK WITH THAT GUYS. I mean, I sure did watch it. But that doesn't mean I think the odds of it returning are anything less than EXTINCT (HAHAHAHAHAH I AM FUNNY TODAY'S LIZ TELLS FRANK IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY COFFEEEEEEE).

So let us memorialize the show the best way I know how -- by snarking about it! It's been a while since the show's season finale last December, Frank, so I'm just going to tell you the stuff I remember, but that's probably all you ever need to know, anyway.

The gist is this: The future totally fucking sucks; people have to use respirators to breathe outside, but someone has discovered a magic time portal that allows people to travel back to one fixed point in the past -- specifically, the prehistoric era with dinosaurs. (I refuse, on principle, to look up what specific prehistoric era they actually traveled back to, because c'mon.)

So, because the air's much cleaner in the past, humans have set up a colony that's humanity's last hope for survival or something...

...Except of course for THAT METEOR THAT WILL AT SOME POINT HIT THE EARTH AND MAKE HUMANITY EXTINCT ALL OVER AGAIN. The closest _Terra Nova_ gets to acknowledging this genius move is with a casual aside in the episode where people get infected with a virus that takes away years of their memory. Is anyone really surprised that this show's not getting renewed?

Anyhoo, in the midst of this is the Shannon family (whose last name I only remember because the mom's name is Liz -- don't worry, Frank; it never affected my vanity Googling). Mom's a doctor; Dad's a cop who's in prison because he beat up another cop over the fact that they had a secret third child (overpopulation's a bitch, y'know); and the children are a predictable mix of precocious (Zoey, the littlest), super-genius (middle child... shit, I forget her name -- we'll just keep calling her Super Genius) and unspeakably annoying (the oldest son, whose name I also forget, so we'll just call him Whineface).

Mom is so awesome at doctoring that she gets recruited to join the folks back in Terra Nova, and with a convenient prison breakout and whatnot, Dad's able to sneak back with the rest of the family. You'd think this would be a bigger deal, but by the end of the pilot, Dad (an escaped prisoner) is basically the sheriff of the colony. I don't remember exactly why anyone involved thinks this is a good idea, except that it has something to do with Dad charming Stephen Lang, who was the first guy to go through the portal and is basically just playing a nicer version of his character from _Avatar_. Way to find your niche, dude.

And Dad is played by Jason O'Mara, who is much better cast here as a time-traveling cop than when he was playing a time-traveling cop on the American adaptation of _Life on Mars_. Actually, I liked most of _Terra Nova_ 's casting, and respected its commitment to gender and race diversity -- it was its commitment to being really fucking dumb at times that drove me crazy.

For once the Shannons get to Terra Nova, every episode of the show essentially breaks down as follows:

Crisis of the Week stuff (that stupid virus I mentioned before, a murder investigation, maybe a swarm of bugs? I think a swarm of bugs happened once.)

Mysterious hints about another colony of people living in the past who are called the Sixers and occasionally try to steal shit from Terra Nova, and how they have some ability to contact the future.

Family drama (mostly due to Whineface being a whiny waste of space)

CW-esque teen romance (Whineface's fault again, though Super Genius is also at times to blame)

Awwww, Isn't Zoey Cute? (She is.)

Well, that's true of the bulk of the episodes. The season series finale actually featured some level of badassery; basically, the Sixers are revealed to be working with a corporation in the future that's going to come back and harvest all the past's resources, and so in a two-part extravaganza, the evil corp sends a bunch of mercenaries into the past; they take Terra Nova over; and then Stephen Lang and his soldiers retake it through some guerrilla warfare action.

I bet sometime like four paragraphs ago, you were asking yourself -- wait, what about the butterfly effect? The long answer: By going into the past, the Terra Novans have created some sort of alternate timeline so everything's just fine and dandy. The short answer: HAHAHAHA WHY ARE YOU APPLYING LOGIC TO THE SHOW ABOUT PEOPLE GETTING EATEN BY DINOSAURS?!

Because Frank, that's really where _Terra Nova_ shined -- in its commitment to people getting eaten by dinosaurs. I mean, let's be clear: The CGI was pretty bad, but goddamn, did those poorly rendered dinosaurs tear into humans occasionally. It was truly, truly satisfying.

The finale, by the way, includes one of the finest moments of television I have ever witnessed, a moment so amazing that it apparently eludes being pirated to YouTube or screencapped online. Let me just say this, Frank:

Man.

Outrunning dinosaur.

Outrunning EXPLOSION.

It was MAGNIFICENT.

Frank, I could mention other stuff -- like Stephen Lang's hot crazy son, or the smarmy scientist guy who basically functioned as the show's Wikipedia, or the big "game-changing" reveal at the end of the finale that was truthfully super-lame. But this is a memorial, so let us end on this note:

Man.

Outrunning dinosaur.

Outrunning EXPLOSION.

_Terra Nova_ wasn't perfect. But every once in a while, it delivered.

Love,  
Liz

**Liz Tells Frank What Happened In** _Tron_

Dear Frank,

Sometimes, the holes in your pop culture knowledge seem understandable: The world is vast and wide, and _Dirty Dancing_ isn't every young man's cup of tea. But you haven't seen _Tron_? Completely bizarre. I mean, sure, it's been a decade or so since I saw it, maybe two decades... Okay, maybe I don't really remember it at all. So I'm glad you're kicking my ass into watching it again, especially since _Tron Legacy_ is looking pretty disco. (I'm attempting to return, as we speak, to an time where the word "disco" meant "cool.")

So first off, the first shot of _Tron_? I guess the Wachowski Brothers didn't just rip off your favorite French philosophers when they made _The Matrix._ We zoom through the title into code and hardware renderings, which then dissolve to good ol' Flynn's Arcade, your friendly neighborhood 1980s-era video game establishment. There, an unseen player is rocking a lightcycle video game -- which we then zoom inside!

Because here's where the Disney magic starts, Frank! See, everyone in this movie wearing nifty glowy costumes isn't a person, but an anthropomorphized software program living under the totalitarian rule of the Master Control program, which either absorbs smaller programs to make itself bigger or forces less useful programs to compete in games. (This is totally not at all a metaphor for the Soviet Union.)

In the lightcycle game, some programs get killed (it's Disney-friendly violence, because they're programs and thus not real people, you know?), a mere tease of the ULTRA-FUTURISTIC action that awaits us, and then it's time for the worst transition in the world! Rather than come up with some clever way to segue back from the computer world to reality, the film cuts to a shot of Jeff Bridges programming, with the chyron "Meanwhile, in the real world..." super-imposed over it. GOOD JOB, MOVIE. Very cool.

For Jeff Bridges, the act of coding isn't so much writing in an artificial computer language as it is a dialogue between the Dude and his program, which he supplies with positive reinforcement like, "You're the best computer program that's ever been written, now go after that data!"

The Best Program In The World? Anthropomorphized in the computer by Jeff Bridges. (Sometimes, things in _Tron_ are definitely not metaphors.) And when Master Control captures and tortures the Dude program, he lasts for like five seconds before dissolving. The Best Program In The World is kinda a wuss.

Whatever, though, let's move on to Enron or whatever the evil big corporation du jour is named, where the CEO, a guy named Dillinger, is really just Master Control's bitch. Dillinger is played by David Warner, otherwise known as Jack the Ripper from _Time After Time_ and the voice of Ra's Al Ghul in _Batman: The Animated Series_ (which makes him awesome).

He has underlings, too, including some blonde chick who used to date the Dude and Sheridan from _Babylon 5_. Okay, yeah, so people born before the year 1980 might refer to Bruce Boxleitner as "Tron from _Tron_ ," but I was raised on syndicated 1990s sci-fi, and I work with what I know.

So the reason the Dude's trying to _Swordfish_ (i.e. -- hack like Hugh Jackman) his way inside the Enron-or-whatever mainframe is that the Dude used to work for the company. But he left because he wanted to own an arcade and look really hot shirtless (or Dillinger stole the rights to the computer games he created, one of the two).

This all gets explained to us when Blondie and Sheridan go to warn the Dude that Dillinger is onto his efforts to break into the Enron system computer. I'm not super-clear on how this leads to Sheridan and Blondie agreeing to help the Dude break into the Enron facility in order to get proof that Dillinger stole some game designs from him, but it totally happens.

Of course, once the Dude is inside Enron, he starts computer hacking away in front of a big laser that was developed to transport items from the real world into the computer. And thus, when he starts taunting Master Control with unsolvable problems, Master Control "pushes back" by accessing the laser controls and zapping the Dude into the game world. Whoops!

Thus, the Dude gets dragged into some crazy gladiator video games that are, of course, being played for realsies (but remember, everyone's a program, so it doesn't matter when they die). They're pretty cool games, actually, one being a kinda live-action version of Brickles, the other being the aforementioned lightcycles. The most cutting-edge CGI of 1982 goes into creating these scenarios: vector graphics and everything!

Okay, so I got a little bored just now and checked in on Twitter, and when I looked back at the TV, the Dude and his new software buddies -- one of them the titular Tron, who's played by Sheridan -- were getting high off some magic computer pond water they just started drinking (seriously not making that up). I guess they've escaped Master Control's games? Okay, cool.

Fuck. I looked away again. Um, looks like the Dude and his other buddy Ram have now hacked into a broken computer ship and are using User Power to take it on a spin. Good for them! Well, Ram dies shortly thereafter. But good for the Dude, anyway!

This part is really pretty boring, as it's just a lot of running around with no clear goals in place. But something cute just happened: Tron broke into the Master Control office and was reunited with the game world's equivalent to Blondie. It's sweet watching people in glow-y helmets cling to each other romantically.

Man, the Dude sucks at driving the computer ship, which is weird, because the Dude was the one who originally programmed them, but whatever. The ship crashes, leaving Dude without wheels in the middle of town.

Moments in Classiness: Dude declines the services of some cyber-prostitutes. Really, Disney?

FINALLY! User be praised, there's some plot development! Tron and Cyber-Blondie just got a code disk from Sheridan (the original programmer of Tron, which is why they're played by the same actor dontchaknow) that will allow them to take down Master Control. And then Tron and the Dude are reunited! They have a most tender bond.

We get into some religious shenanigans here, because there's this whole thing where programs worship Users like they're Gods, so when the Dude opens up to Tron and tells him he's a User, Tron asks him if everything that's happened has happened according to "his plan." This time, I'm pretty sure it's a metaphor.

So our digital trio go off to try and put the control disc into Master Control, but their glidey-boat-thing crashes into something, and in the crash, Cyber-Blondie and Dude think Tron was "deleted" as a result. Of course, he's just being clever and hiding out on the control ship, which is taking them to Master Control's CPU.

Tron tries to insert his disc to kill Master Blaster, but he can't get his disc into Master Control until the Dude jumps inside the CPU, forcing it open. The computer world is magically transformed into a glittering metropolis, and all the programs seem ready to live happily ever after... But what about the Dude?

Don't worry, Frank; it's all good! The laser spits him back out into the real world, where he's able to get his hands on the proof needed to make money off those video games he created. So cut to a little later, and the Dude is riding around in the Enron helicopter, having gotten the profits he deserved from his games. Everyone lives happily ever after! All those programs who died weren't real people! Hooray!

(It's a metaphor, you know.)

(Except for the cyber-prostitutes.)

Love,  
Liz

**Liz Tells Frank What Happened In** _Wall Street_

Dear Frank,

You know, for over 20 years I'd experienced absolutely no interest whatsoever in watching the Oliver Stone film _Wall Street_ \-- until, of course, you asked me to tell you what happened in it. I don't know why I was so disinterested; perhaps my vague phobia of shoulder pads was a factor. But let me just say that having now seen it, I don't really feel like I was missing out on anything.

This is a movie about baby-faced Charlie Sheen and how he wants to have lots of money because of his blue-collar roots. Right now, he's working the phones at a brokerage on (you bet) Wall Street, but he has big-time ambitions to play with the big boys -- and the biggest boy appears to be Gordon Gekko, a deal-maker and stock-buyer and business duder.

Normally, Frank, you know I like to forgo character names, but Gordon Gekko is a kick-ass character name. Thus, I shall honor it by actually using it.

Charlie's a hard worker -- you can tell, because of the scene where he fucks this random naked chick (who we only see from the neck down, and may have Brazilian roots, if you know what I'm saying, oh you know what I'm saying) and he ignores her as she walks out of the bedroom because he has some high-tech, late-night computer work to do. Like a boss.

But his big chance to impress Gekko comes thanks to his dad, played by President Bartlet (what a striking family resemblance! Such good casting there!).

See, Bartlet, prior to serving two terms as the leader of the free world, apparently worked as a union leader for an airline crew. Bartlet tips Charlie off on some exciting airplane news, and Charlie goes to Gekko with it. Gekko's not too impressed, because even sans Google, he's able to find out that Charlie's dad is an airplane union guy, but he still makes the deal.

And because Gekko can tell how desperate Charlie is, he starts throwing him a few bones -- a free meatloaf, a free suit, a free hooker date. The rich really are more classy than the rest of us.

Eventually, Gekko gives Charlie a chance to prove himself -- which in this case means stalking Terence Stamp around the city and breaking into various buildings by pretending to be a part of the maintenance crew in order to gather information (I didn't really follow what was going on here, mostly because I find plot points about stock prices to be uninspiring).

Gekko also invites Charlie to a party at his Hamptons house; this party is both simultaneously awesome and stupid, because there we get to meet Gekko's INCREDIBLY AWESOME 1980s ROBOT BUTLER...

But we also meet Daryl Hannah. Sigh. Here is, apparently, how to give Oliver Stone a hard-on -- plug your nose and then talk like a stupid person. Both Sean Young (Gekko's largely extraneous wife) and Daryl Hannah are congested bimbos to some degree, but it's Daryl Hannah who especially sounds like a head cold from the inside.

At no point does Charlie show any interest in Daryl as a human being; he meets her at the party, gets told she's an expensive toy, and immediately decides she is the only toy in the toy store for him, thus escalating his determination to be a rich motherfucker. This would be less of an issue if her character was more than a useless bimbo with atrocious design taste and no qualms about occasionally sleeping with Gekko... What I'm saying is that it's an issue.

(I know, right, an Oliver Stone movie has gross attitudes towards women? So weird, how that happened.)

So Charlie's all high-powered and doing business and dragging his lawyer buddy James Spader (who's at an all-time low level of creepy, I gotta say) into potentially illegal doings. He's also totally raking it in, because he now has a million fancy cooking gadgets for making pasta and sushi. That's what screenwriting schools call VISUAL STORYTELLING.

High-stakes business dealings, (theoretically) sexy girlfriend, new fancy apartment to have weirdly staged, backlit sex scenes in... I WONDER IF SOMETHING'S GOING TO GO WRONG?

Oh, look at that, Frank! Something goes wrong. After Gordon Gekko gives his kick-ass "Greed is Good" speech to a bunch of investors or abstinence widows or something (you can tell how much of a shit I gave about the plot of this movie, can't you?), things heat up with the airline that President Bartlet works for. Specifically, Gekko decides to take it over and break it up into little pieces, thus ruining the lives of Good Union Men but making all the suits, including Charlie, a shit-ton of money.

Charlie suddenly has some morality driven back into him -- Bartlet has a little bit of a heart attack over this news, which was probably a factor -- and after eating half a pizza's worth of his feelings, decides to double-cross Gekko with some fancy business moves. (Daryl walks out on him around this point. She is not missed in any way.)

Bull! Bear! Buy! Sell! Shouting! That is what happens, and Charlie saves the airline and is once again a hero of the people!

Gekko, in revenge, turns Charlie in to the SEC. Charlie sobs as the cops lead him out of the office. Whoops! But if Charlie's going to prison, he's taking Gekko with him, made possible thanks to a weird scene in the middle of a rainy golf course (just the kind of place I like to go when I'm settling my business affairs). Gekko shouts about how Charlie betrayed him; Charlie doesn't shout about how he's wearing a wire; and now the SEC has evidence on both of them! Um, hooray?

The movie ends with President Bartlet (it was really barely a heart attack) driving Charlie to the courthouse, where he's going to face his fate and go to jail. Same thing, we presume, happens to Gordon Gekko, except that when he goes to jail \-- per the trailer for the sequel, _Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps_ \-- he brings a cell phone with him. THE END. Thank fucking god.

I mean, this movie isn't worthless; as a cultural artifact, at the very least, it has value. And Michael Douglas is really fucking good in it. But, as much as I love Carey "Sally Sparrow" Mulligan, there really, really, _really_ didn't need to be a sequel.

Love,  
Liz

**Liz Tells Frank What Happened In** _Zardoz_

Dear Frank,

There are times when I am well-versed in the media we're discussing when I sit down to watch it, and times when I am not. This is the latter. Here is literally all I know about this movie: It's called _Zardoz_ , and Sean Connery is in it, and I think it was made in the '70s. I have NO IDEA what's about to happen to me, and to be completely honest, I'm a little nervous.

And okay, I just paused a minute in because WHAT THE FUCK? I think I'm going to be saying that a lot, based on this first minute. Some disembodied head wearing a towel is saying his name is Zardoz and he's a fake god and this movie might take place in "a possible future." Was this the first movie ever made that took place in the future, and the filmmakers were nervous that no one would understand it took place in the future and so they slapped this bit onto the beginning? ONLY POSSIBLE EXPLANATION.

THERE'S A MUSTACHE AND GOATEE DRAWN ON THIS GUY'S FACE. I REALLY DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT'S GOING ON.

And I have just paused AGAIN because the title card "A Film By John Boorman/Set In the Year 2293" has come up, and oh my god Frank, my theory that this movie was made for people who don't get how movies set in the future work is seeming more and more accurate. Sure, this movie was made in 1974; people aren't yet used to the concept of post-apocalypse fiction, but STILL.

Okay, now a bunch of dudes are riding around on horseback and following around a giant floating stone head. (Floating heads appear to be this film's primary visual motif.) The giant floating head is also called Zardoz. And it has strong feelings about guns (they're good, because they kill people) and penises (which are bad, because they make more people). And then a bunch of guns shoot out of Zardoz's mouth so his followers (a bunch of guys wearing orange short-shorts and bandoliers) can presumably go about killing lots of people.

Oh, and here's Sean Connery! He doesn't have a Zardoz mask, but he does have a fetching mustache and a revolver, which he shoots at the camera. So daring!

After the completion of a credits sequence, we find that Sean Connery has snuck the giant stone Zardoz on board, and it's full of shrink-wrapped half-naked people (presumably alive) and human skulls (presumably dead). He still has his gun, though, which he uses to shoot -- the Blue Towel Guy! Blue Towel Guy, who is also presumably Zardoz, then falls out of stone Zardoz's mouth, shouting about all the things he could have shown Sean.

And now I gave up on trying to recap what is happening before my eyes, because WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS MOVIE SERIOUSLY?

Deep breaths. Okay. After watching for about half an hour, I think I have a better understanding of what's happening. To this movie's credit, you really do get thrown into the action. To this movie's discredit, it's stupid, and I hate it.

What happens is that Sean Connery continues riding around inside the Zardoz head until he ends up in a peaceful community of pampered layabouts who all wear crop tops and are fascinated by the presence of someone from the outside, especially a butch savage like Sean (oh, he has a name now! "Zed"). Some of them, thanks to being shut off from the outside world, are fascinated in a SEXY way. Men and women alike, if you were wondering.

Initially, all Zed does is work as slave labor, carrying stuff and pulling carts and shit. There's one Uptight Lady, however, who's not impressed, and is very concerned about how he ended up there and the threat he represents to their happy society.

The happy society, though, appears to be crumbling; there are people called "the apathetics" who are apparently super-bored to the point of being catatonic, and while everyone is immortal (sure), anyone who revolts is aged some portion of years as punishment and forced to live separately from the others. No crop tops for them!

The science ladies are doing experiments on Zed, scanning his memories to understand the outside world and making him watch porn to see if he can get an erection, because apparently this society has lost the ability to get erections? I don't fucking know. He doesn't get an erection during the porn, but does get an erection over Uptight Lady. Awkwarrrrrrd.

I just... This movie, man. At one point, for example, I wrote "This curly-haired duder gets labeled a renegade and is psychically aged a shit-ton at the dinner table." That's a thing that happens. Totally normal thing.

What I'm trying to do here, Frank, is capture the pure essence of what it's like to watch _Zardoz._ But _Zardoz_ is a wandering, boring, confusing, fascinating mess of a film, to the point where words defy it. Except for this (from my notes): "Ugh I fucking haaaaaaaaaaaate this movie."

Eventually, what one of the science ladies figures out is that Zed's arrival in their colony was planned, because he came across a book in an abandoned library which revealed that Zardoz was a homage to _The Wizard of Oz_ , which thus shook his faith in his Zardoz worship, and inspired him to seek out the truth of what was going on.

What is that truth? Well, Blue Towel Guy was the person designated by the crop top people to maintain some sort of order among the savages in the Outlands, so he created the cult of Zardoz-worshippers to murder them with guns. False gods do not look behind the curtain blah blah blah. It's funny, because the whole thing where Blue Towel Guy and Giant Stone Head had the same names made me think of _Oz_ at the very beginning, but it's not like I NEEDED to know, you know?

Anyway, the colony is thrown into chaos as it splits into two factions: one that wants to protect Zed, and one that wants to murder him. Uptight Lady is the leader of the murder squad, and she literally rides around on a horse carrying a torch and it's AWESOME. Uptight Lady is played by Charlotte Rampling, who is pretty and my favorite.

Until, that is, when Zed gets filled with knowledge by one of the main science ladies and also gets handed some sort of crystal containing power; seeing him hold the crystal makes Uptight Lady immediately switch to being his number one fangirl. For fuck's sake.

They flee from the colony as a whole bunch of Zardoz-worshippers invade, murdering the crop-toppers (who are now no longer immortal; right, that's a thing that happened), who are all screaming "Kill me! I want to die!" because apparently being immortal got boring. I kind of want to die just watching this movie about their lives, so I guess I understand.

Zed and Uptight Lady flee to the Zardoz head, make a baby, and through a quick series of dissolves we see the kid grow up and leave the head as Zed and Uptight Lady age and die. The last shot? A decaying gun next to some cave-painting-ish handprints. OMG WHAT COULD IT MEAN? Something bad, I'm sure.

I don't fucking know. That's what happened in _Zardoz_ , Frank. Let us never speak of it again.

Love,  
Liz

About the Author

Liz Shannon Miller is a writer, watcher of web video and pop culture enthusiast. She currently writes for G4's _Attack of the Show_ and the tech blog GigaOM; her work has also been published by the New York Times, Variety, Nerve and Thought Catalog. Her first full-length play, the critically acclaimed _Lights Off, Eyes Closed_ , premiered in the spring of 2012, and she co-hosts the podcast Timey Wimey TV, co-created the video curation site Here's Some Awesome, and tells her friend Frank about stuff at Liz Tells Frank.

Based in Los Angeles, Liz holds a degree in screenwriting and interactive multimedia from USC, and enjoys space battles, old school funk and videos of cats. Learn more about her at lizshannonmiller.com.
