Tawdry Tuesday: Perverted in Portlandia

Younger readers of Giant Electric Penguin might know Madonna only as the elderly woman who sang with a choir during this year's Super Bowl, but back when I was a kid, Madonna was the hottest thing on two legs with a conical bra. Remember when Mtv banned the video for "Justify My Love" from its airwaves? Watching the video now, it seems about as racy as a modern day perfume ad. Is it sexy? A little, but mostly it makes me want to drive to Macy's and buy my mom a bottle of something expensive for Mother's Day.

Has the world gotten more perverse and, therefore, less concerned with the amount of sex shown on its television screens and at its cineplexes? Absolutely. It's why are country is going to Hell and the reason we need Rick Santorum to step in and right the ship again. But this is Tawdry Tuesday, not Political POV Late Afternoon Thursday (coming soon!), and on Tawdry Tuesday we revel in all that is kinky, seedy, and perverse. And today our focus is on Madonna and her 1993 film Body of Evidence.

The faces of hand fun.

Before sitting down to watch it, I knew exactly one thing about Body of Evidence: at some point in the movie, Madonna drips candle wax on Willem Dafoe. That's it. What I didn't know--besides the details of the derivative plot, the rampant bad acting, and the abject boredom brought on by actually viewing the film--was that Madonna doesn't "drip" candle wax on Willem Dafoe, as much as she "dumps" candle wax on Willem Dafoe's balls. Yes, that's what was going on in the candle wax scene a 14-year-old Matt could only dream about in 1993. I'm sure back then I probably thought the idea of Madonna pouring hot wax on some dude was dirty and exciting. Of course I did! It was weird, and I was into some weird stuff. Plus, I hadn't yet developed the thick layer of chest hair I sport today. I didn't think of the consequences that a night spent flinging candle wax around would bring. I didn't have to. Today all I could think about was the clean up process the next morning.

But that's not the point. The point is, Madonna unequivocally saturates Willem Dafoe's scrotum with molten candle wax. There's nothing fun and sexy about that. If that's your kink, more power to you, but it's not for me, man. I don't like to have my balls ignored during a sex session, but maybe when melted wax is being prepared for the specific purpose of being dumped all over my boys, too much attention is being paid. I mean, c'mon, ladies. Let's use some common sense.

Here's the thing though: I think by this point in the evolutionary development of humankind, women understand the fragility of a man's balls. No virgin is starting off her first time with a quick uppercut to her lover's bing-bongs, right? You wouldn't like to be punched in the vagina, right, nameless virigin I just made up? Well, your partner doesn't want to be clocked in his junk neither. We all understand balls, I think. Let's move on.

I guess what really matters here is if Body of Evidence is, in fact, tawdrier than the first five episodes of Melrose Place. Simply put, yes. Body of Evidence is way tawdrier than anything on Melrose Place. I don't remember anybody ever pouring candle wax all over Billy's nutsack or giving Jake a hand-job in an elevator. Maybe that's in episode six.

For everything Body of Evidence isn't (i.e. thrilling, kinky, good, etc), it is, without a doubt, tawdry as all heck. Here is a quick list of the tawdriest acts depicted on screen: sex tapes, "reverse cowgirl," hand cuffs, Willem Dafoe butt shots, elevator hand fun, parking garage cunnilingus, stairway Frenching, adultery, Julianne Moore nipple suckage.

Yes, Body of Evidence is a tawdry romp on the mild side of sex, but it isn't particularly good. And, despite what you might think from the list above, it is surprisingly tame. Madonna's involvement implies, to me anyway, that a film is going to get all kinds of freaky, but in Body of Evidence, Willem Dafoe's character seems blown away by the dull fact that Madonna and her elderly lover video taped themselves having sex and watched it later. Oh, that's crazy!

NEXT TIME: ORIGINAL SIN (I don't know anything about this movie, but a quick Google image search yields a plethora of pictures displaying Angelina Jolie and Antonio Banderas enjoying a naked embrace, Jolie's boobs strategically blocked by Banderas' arms in each one. Move your arm, dude!)

Tawdry Tuesday: New and Improved and Sexxy

So, yeah, Tawdry Tuesday has pretty much been a bust up to this point. Melrose Place failed to provide the cheap, titillating thrills I had hoped for. Plus, it kinda sucks. I mean, have you actually seen an episode of Melrose Place? It's crappy. Even by 90's standards. And I'm pretty sure it doesn't get any better. Also, I've not seen a single episode of Mad Men, yet I was totally prepared to watch seven seasons of Melrose Place. There's something deeply wrong with that.

So, yeah, I didn't like Melrose Place. I do, however, like Tawdry Tuesday. Monday is the dreaded first day of the work week and, therefore, a total bum-out; Wednesday, known in some circles as "Hump Day," is the day Americans traditionally hump one another; on Thursday most people flip the switch to neutral and coast into Friday; and Friday, well, you've got to get down on Friday, right? I mean, everybody's looking forward to the weekend weekend, RIGHT??? What's Tuesday got? Nothing. So, I'm filling Tuesdays up with tawdriness galore. Here's what you, dear perverted reader, can look forward to on Tuesdays in the coming months:

April--Body of Evidence

Madonna, Willem Dafoe and Joe Mantegna?!? That's almost too sexy (you know, except for the Willem Dafoe and Joe Mantegna part).

May--Original Sin

Sinning is, like, the sexist thing a person can do. I can only imagine the varieties of sin Antonio Banderas and Angelina Jolie could get into together.

June--Blown Away

That's right: the Coreys made an erotic thriller. I don't believe it either. We'll get to the bottom of this soon enough.

July--The Last Seduction

Get your tube socks ready, gentleman and ladies. I have a feeling this one is gonna be eroticker than hell.

Meet me back here one week from today for the all-new, Melrose Place-free Tawdry Tuesday. I promise it'll be the sexiest thing you ever do aside from actual sex.

(Also, don't wait until next Tuesday to visit GEP. There's going to be all kinds of stuff to new stuff to read before then. Just sayin'.)

Tawdry Tuesday: Am I At The Wrong Address?

All right, what's going on here? I thought Melrose Place was all backstabbing bitches and illicit sex with other people's lovers, not missing wedding rings and lovestruck dental students. This show is totes not tawdry. It's lame. Did the internet lie to me? Not the internet!

Let's see. In episode four, "For Love or Money," Jake and his coke-snorting gal pal Perry, hump some paint onto a canvas and attempt to con a dopey LA hipster into thinking it was done by an exciting new artist--played predictably unconvincingly by Jake himself--only to have Jake grow a conscience and reveal that the whole thing is a ruse. What gives, Jake? Insta-consciences have no place in the world of trashy prime-time soaps. And in episode five, "Leap of Faith," Jane discovers she is pregnant and decides to have an abortion behind Michael's back, but doesn't and the episode ends. Listen, I didn't want Jane to get the secret abortion. I wasn't sitting on my couch, going, "C'mon, Jane, abort that thing! Abort it!" waving a pendant. First of all, I was laying on the couch. Secondly, who owns a pro-abortion pendant? What possible use could an individual have for one?

The Melrose Place of Season One is all about flirting with danger, walking up to the edge of tawdriness and deciding, "No thank you. I'm gonna do the right thing. Now let's go to Shooters and play pool, guys!" The show seems nervous to unleash the full crazy I know will become its ultimate legacy. It's waiting for the crazy switch to be thrown that is so frustrating. I've been able to get my tawdry fix from ABC's Revenge and the CW's Gossip Girl (Holy shit, Louis is, like, totally evil now! Who saw that coming?), but Tawdry Tuesday was designed for Melrose Place, and so far the show's been a total dud.

When does this thing heat up, Melrose fans? Is it when Heather Locklear moves in? My wife keeps mentioning Jane's crazy sister. Does she waltz in and mix it up a bit? I don't think I can take much more of Billy's goofiness and Alison's casseroles. Somebody blow up Melrose Place already! Sheesh!

Characters' tawdry pasts: Sandy's had a trailer park abortion; Jake is a former coke addict.

Things I've learned about LA: It is perfectly acceptable to pat a homeless street musician on the shoulder instead of giving him your spare change if you enjoy the music he is performing on his beat-up saxophone

It is super easy to get a job as a barista. You don't need to know anything about coffee, your interview will take exactly 30 seconds, and the ruder you can be to your future boss during said interview, the better.

But seriously...: How did Jake get a job at that coffee shop? Completely ridiculous!

Actual dialogue from the show: Jake: I always liked you in red. Perry: You always liked me in bed. (Ugh.)

Tawdry Tuesday: The Old "Lost Wedding Ring" Routine

Melrose Place is set in a simpler time when computers were bulky, the GAP was still considered hip, and tired sitcom tropes were all the rage. How else do you explain "Lost and Found," the third episode of MP's premiere season. Billy uses a lumpy computer with the smallest screen imaginable (It looks like the kind of "futuristic" computer you'd see on a spaceship in an Italian sci-fi movie from the 1970's.) to type his first screenplay; the 90210 gang (Ugh! Why won't they go away?!?) discuss Kelly's love life while shopping for jeans at the GAP; and Jane loses her wedding ring during a raucous night on the town with a couple of musicians. Didn't I see this same plot on Perfect Strangers once? If not Perfect Strangers, then every other situation comedy ever taped before a live studio audience. The old "lost wedding ring" routine is a fairly standard bit of business. I guess I just wasn't expecting it so soon.

The wedding ring in question is Jane's. After two failed attempts to celebrate her and Michael's Three-Months-in-Los-Angeles anniversary--because that's something people do--Jane opts for a night at Shooters with Rhonda. Sandy--she of the laughable Southern accent--convinces Jane to remove her wedding ring for the evening to see if she's still got "it." Jane, who is only 23-years-old and most certainly still has "it," obliges and before long,she is whisked away to a dance club by a long-haired, Percy Shelley-quoting, wannabe rock star.

(Re: whether or not Jane's still got "it": While perusing my notes before writing this review, I noticed a blurb scribbled next to the episode title in my notebook which read "Jane is bot!" Fairly certain that Jane Mancini is not, in fact, a cyborg, I believe I meant to write "Jane is hot." And she is hot! That's the "it" everyone's talking about, right? Josie Bissett is drop-dead gorgeous. Why would her character be unsure of said hotness? Dumb.)

Anyway, the rocker goofball wants to speed things up a little, so Jane admits she is married. To prove it, she reaches into her coat pocket to retrieve her ring--a Mancini family heirloom from the old country--and finds that it is missing. She searches the entire dance club, but finds nothing, and returns home intending to tell Michael everything. Michael, however, feeling awful about blowing Jane off at the hospital, has filled the apartment they share with candles and chili dogs. Ah, romance.

Just before the Mancini's get down to some sexy business, Jane decides to come clean about her wild (?) evening. Before she can reveal how totally non-wild it was though, Sandy shows up at the front door with her wedding ring, which she found in a trash can at Shooters. God is in His heaven and everything is right with the world once again. Credits.

Also in this episode...

--Billy finishes his screenplay, "The Big Shock," and asks Alison to read it. She hates it. To soften the blow, Alison makes Billy a tuna casserole. Billy gets mad for five whole minutes.

--Kelly Taylor tries to seduce Jake while they make a lasagna. Jake rebuffs Kelly's advances. Later, the couple is visited by an actress Jake has hired to accuse Jake of being a "crumb bum." Kelly leaves, hopefully forever.

Questions:

1. Was every character on this show an English major in college? Everyone is always making and/or understanding literary quotes that I don't even get and I was an English major in college!

Answered Questions:

1. It's official: Michael is an actual doctor. He's dressed in scrubs, on call, and hanging out in a hospital break room anyway. I'd be pretty surprised if he is simply running some sort of long con, but this is Melrose Place, so, who knows.

Lost Alum Alert:

--Nestor Cabornell (Richard Alpert on Lost) plays a bass player Rhonda and Jane meet at Shooters.

Tawdry Tuesday: LA's Mild Side

For a TV show with a softcore porn soundtrack, Melrose Place is surprisingly wholesome. Married people kissing. Reminders to practice safe sex. Jake's chaste relationship with Kelly Taylor. Where's all the rampant bed-hopping and wanton good times I was promised. This is Tawdry Tuesday, man! A frequently-shirtless Billy is no longer titillating enough.

I cheated and read one or two Netflix descriptions of future episodes to find out whether or not things would start "heating up" at 4616 Melrose Place anytime soon. Here's what I got:

Episode 3--"Lost and Found": Alison is impressed that Billy has worked on his screenplay all night. He drops off his completed screenplay, and she reluctantly agrees to read it.

Hmmm. That doesn't seem very sexy on the surface. Maybe Billy is writing a sexy period piece about young society ladies who find themselves yearning for one another sexually. That might be hot. What else you got for me, Melrose Place?

Episode 9--"Responsibly Yours": Billy, while driving his taxi through crowded streets, spots a lady driver in distress. He offers to help but is not an expert in auto repair. Jake stops to talk to Michael.

OK. First of all, this episode is called "Responsibly Yours." Responsible people very rarely engage in condom-free one-night stands or hot and sweaty Hollywood orgies, so there's probably none of that.

Secondly, "Jake stops to talk to Michael?" Is that supposed to excite me? "Wow, I can't believe Jake is going to take a few minutes out of his schedule to converse with Michael! I wonder if it's going to be like that time he had a conversation with Michael in Episode 2. I can't wait to see what they talk about. This could possibly be the most important conversation in television history! Squeeee!"

Speaking of Episode 2, let's speak about it briefly. It is titled "Friends and Lovers," but don't whip out your boners just yet. Very little love is made, and what there is of it is made by married people offscreen. Gross.

In "Friends and Lovers," Billy gets a job as a cab driver. His first fare is a young woman named Marcy. They bond over their mutual hatred for fake people/love of Italian food. Before you know it, Marcy is spending the weekend with Billy and Alison. Alison is bummed, though she can't really explain why. I think it's pretty obvious that she and Billy will hook up eventually, but for now I'll just assume she was pissed off because Marcy ate her last grapefruit.

Anyway, as their weekend of romance comes to a close, Marcy expresses her love for Billy, who freaks out--understandably--and goes to resident high school fingerer, Jake, for girl advice. Billy tells Marcy that she is moving too fast and that he does not feel the same way she does and Marcy swallows a bottle of pills and drowns in the Melrose Place swimming pool.

No she doesn't. She just goes home and studies for her dental exam.

Look, I get why Marcy fell in love with Billy so fast. He is endlessly charming. He's also nice. I know that's an innocuous description for someone, but, in this case, it is apropos. Billy is simply a nice dude. I get why Alison is jealous of Marcy. Billy is genuine and kind and handsome. Dammit, I want to be with him. Not "be with him" be with him, just, you know, hang out with him. We could go to Shooters, down a couple of brews, shoot some pool--bro shit. If things got a little intimate while calling it a night, then so be it. There's worse things you can do than sleep with Andrew Shue probably.

Also in this episode...

--Jake gets in a fight at the unemployment office and Kelly bails him out of jail.

--Jane's feelings get hurt when Michael cannot remember the exact moment he fell in love with her.

--Steve Sanders attends a barbecue/pool party at Melrose Place for some reason. Seriously, why is he there?

Questions:

1. Why is Michael the building manager? When Jake complains about his faulty plumbing, Michael gets all combative and pissy. It's your job to listen to resident complaints and fix them, dude. But also, you're a doctor (possibly), Mike! Do you really need the building manager gig on top of that? Your wife already thinks you spread yourself too thin and her legs not enough. Why not choose one job and bone your wife on a regular basis?

2. Marcy is clearly mentally unstable, but is she stupid as well? During a "getting to know you" chat, she makes Billy guess what she "does for a living." He guesses teacher or lawyer; Alison guesses astronaut. They're both wrong. What does Marcy do for a living? She's a dental student. How do you "make a living" as a dental student? No one pays you to be a student, do they?

3. Also, doesn't Marcy owe Billy a shitload of money? She hired his cab and proceeded to spend the entire weekend with him.

Tawdry Tuesday: It Begins

Before I married my wife and we bought our first house, I lived in a musty, dilapidated, horseshoe-shaped apartment complex that me and my friend/roommate, Jonathan, affectionately referred to as "the shitty Melrose Place." Our first week there, one of the neighbors visited--she was the only neighbor I ever met or said more than one word to the entire time I lived there--and welcomed us to "the 'hood." She probably just meant "the neighborhood," but as a twenty-something white male who had seen Boyz in the Hood and various other films of its ilk, I was sure she was welcoming me to my demise, probably at the hands of a stray bullet from one of those drive-by shootings you read about.

But bullets don't have hands--not even stray ones--and poor people typically don't steal from poor people, so our time spent in "the shitty Melrose Place" passed without any violent incidents. There were non-violent incidents aplenty, but I never heard any gun shots or pimp slapping. There was a funny smell coming from another neighbor's apartment one time, that prompted Jonathan to inquire, "Is that what crack smells like?" We never found out for sure whether or not it was crack, but I like to believe it wasn't.

Here are the things I knew about Melrose Place--the television show, not the cockroach-infested, mold-choked hellhole I lived in during my mid-twenties--before I started watching it for this feature:

1. It was a spin-off of Beverly Hills, 90210, another prime-time soap on Fox that I didn't watch.

2. Heather Locklear joined the cast at some point.

3. A crazy lady blows up the titular apartment complex in a special two-part episode.

That's it. I didn't know the characters, I didn't know the story, and, frankly, I didn't care very much. But then one afternoon, while listening to the Extra Hot Great podcast, I heard a pop-culture critic talking about the aforementioned exploding Melrose Place two-parter with such mirthful gusto, I knew I had to see it for myself. But I'm a completist at heart, so, obviously, I had to start from the very beginning. So, here we are.

If you're not familiar with Melrose Place's characters, allow me to provide a quick cheat sheet. Keep in mind that I've only watched the pilot at this point, so these are my first impressions.

--Alison Parker (Courtney Thorne-Smith): A cute, but totally sexless blonde from the Midwest, who moved to LA to break into the exciting world of advertising. I mention her lack of sex appeal only because this is Melrose Place and I was under the impression that everyone here was sexy and maladjusted. Alison is kinda meh, but the pilot sets her up as the show's focus, so maybe she'll grow on me.

--Billy Campbell (Andrew Shue): Melrose Place's frequently shirtless struggling writer. He's irritating, but not in an overly offensive way. He rescues Alison from her boss's unwanted sexual advances in the pilot, so I guess he's not all bad. He can't dance for shit though.

--Jake Hanson (Grant Show): The damaged bad-boy. Ugh. He's also the way in for 90210 fans, because I guess he fingerbanged Kelly or something.

--Jane Mancini (Josie Bissett): Clearly, Jane doesn't understand how being a doctor in a hospital works. She is always on her husband's case about working late, but the man is a doctor, for Pete's sake. Give him a break, Jane. All of that aside, Jane is, by far, the least irritating character in the cast. The prettiest too.

--Michael Mancini (Thomas Calabro): Jane's doctor husband and the building manager. He seems like kind of a prick, if I'm being honest.

--Rhonda Blair (Vanessa A Williams): Melrose Place's resident African-American stereotype.

--Sandy Harling (Amy Locane): A struggling actor from the South. What part of the South, I'm not entirely sure. In which state do people speak in horrible Southern-parody accents? She's the worst and from what my wife tells me, she doesn't stick around very long.

--Matt Fielding (Doug Savant): A nice, normal social worker who dresses in weird hip-hop-themed clothing for some reason. He is also not irritating. Yet.

So, let's talk about this pilot real quick. I'm not going to provide a long, boring plot synopsis, because, frankly, nothing really happens in the episode. We're briefly introduced to each character, so by the end we know what each one of them is about (Rhonda is an unlucky-in-love aerobics instructor; Jake is down-on-his-luck and being stalked by a high school girl; Sandy is a dumb whore; etc). The episode spends most of it's running time with Alison: her roommate moves out in the middle of the night, she doesn't have enough money to pay her $800 rent (I don't know for sure, but isn't that a steal in LA? Let me know in the comments, LA people.), she meets Billy who expresses a desire to move in, she resists but eventually gives in, she is invited to an important party by one of her bosses, she walks in on Billy dancing with a mop, and her boss tries to drunkenly have sex with her. That's the pilot, or half of it, at least.

The other half of the pilot focuses on Kelly Taylor (Jennie Garth) from 90210 stalking Jake. He agrees to have dinner with her, but her friends--Donna, David, and Steve--ruin everything and Jake drives off, handsome and broken, into the Hollywood night on his motorcycle.

Can we talk about Jennie Garth real quick? Pretty girl, but is she an albino? She's either an albino or a ghost, I just can't decide which. I'll check Wikipedia.

As I may or may not have mentioned yet, Melrose Place's pilot is not very good. It's contrived, boring, and relies to heavily on 90210 cameos. However, I never once considered turning the damn thing off. Maybe it's because I've committed to the series for this yearlong feature and feel like it would be disingenuous to give up before I've even truly begun. Pilot episodes are rarely any good. Maybe part of the reason I didn't throw a brick through my television is because I'm kinda interested in watching Alison and Billy's relationship develop or learning more about Matt and his obsession with urban t-shirts or discovering the answer to my most important question: Jennie Garth: Albino, ghost, or albino ghost? Seriously. How do you live in California all of your life and stay that pale?

Questions:

1. Do we know for sure that Michael is actually a doctor? He mentions being at the hospital a lot, but maybe he's an overly ambitious janitor or a weird hospital pervert.

2. Is Matt gay or just extremely insensitive? He basically tells Rhonda that he is repulsed by her when she opens her heart to him by the pool. My guess is that he's gay.

3. The 90210 drop-ins stop eventually, right? They're really distracting and add nothing to the show. My guess is that these cameos were a note from the studio.

One more thing:

I like the fact that Melrose Place is about characters who are struggling. They aren't privileged teenagers from Beverly Hills, nor are they working actors, successful businesspeople, or independently wealthy. Alison is a receptionist. Billy teaches a dance class at night regardless of the fact that he doesn't know any dance moves. Jake is an out-of-work contractor. Sandy is a waitress at Shooters who sleeps until noon every day. It'll be interesting to watch these characters develop over time. I also look forward to shit goin' crazy. That actually sounds like a good slogan for one of Matt's rap tees.

2012 @ GEP

It's a brand-new year, so I'm changing things up a little at the ol' blog-a-roo. There will be no theme months this year. Instead, there will be one yearlong theme. From here on out--at GEP anyway--2012 shall be referred to exclusively as...

THE YEAR OF TV

Yes, we're narrowing our focus to the world of television this year. I'm pretty excited. Here's the line-up so far:

most Tuesdays: Tawdry Tuesday--Join me as I watch the original Melrose Place in it's entirety. Things are going to get so sexy, you might just want to wear two condoms. (I assume readers of this blog already wear one condom when they stop by GEP. If I'm wrong about this, let me know in the comments section.)

most Wednesdays: Reality Bits--Did you know that there are currently over 1 billion reality shows in existence? That's a lot of garbage. No one could watch every episode of every reality show out there--why would anyone want to?--but I'm going to watch/subject myself to some of them and report back to you. Don't weep for me. I considered it my duty.

most Thursdays and Saturdays: 100 Episodes I Love--Like 100 Songs I Love, only about TV shows. Duh.

And much, much more...

And while it's true that I am narrowing my focus in 2012, I am not abandoning the features you've come to know and love. So look out for new editions of 100 Songs I Hate, Movie Penguin Monday, Stop Already, Perving Out, and 100 Songs I Love, as well as a few new ones I'm still figuring out.