Lifetime

Lifetime is a television network made for women, gay men, and straight men who have an abuse fetish. In one of those adorable little ironies that always pop up when principled people do anything, the Lifetime network has more instances of women suffering physical and emotional abuse than any other non-pay-per-view channel on TV. From women being beaten to women being cheated on and everything in-between and beyond, Lifetime is the go-to place if you get hard at the thought of women being put in their place. You might even get lucky and score a couple of bondage scenes if you catch the right show or movie.

What 90% of Lifetime programming looks like.

Lifetime Movies

Lifetime movies are entirely victim focused, with the protagonist almost always being a female with a black friend or something. They tend to fall into one or more of the following categories:

Family Taken Hostage

Bad people have broken into a family's home and taken them hostage for some retarded reason. Either the family works together to overcome the problem, or mom takes care of it singlehandedly. Thrill as a middle-aged woman in a Christmas sweater outsmarts a gang of bloodthirsty terrorists - all of them men, of course - in bland ways.

Kidnapped

A child has been kidnapped. Or, a woman has been kidnapped. Or, I don't know, maybe a pet has been kidnapped. These films are most often watched by bondage fetishists hoping to catch a captivity scene or two. Sadly, they are never as sexy as they should be. The kidnapper is usually a man.

Nasty Divorces

If the woman shares any blame whatsoever for the divorce, she and her husband WILL get back together. No exceptions. Otherwise, it's LIBERATED SINGLE WOMAN IN HER LATE 30'S time! Those women always have snarky daughters. After they get back together, the man looks at her wrong, resulting in a slug to the head.

Oh, look. A blandly middle-aged woman staring resolutely.

A mother fights back!

An old yet blandly pleasant-looking mother takes a stand against some horrible wrong that usually happens to her children, and occasionally DEFINITELY screws over the husband. Mother decides to defend her family and stand up to the school that protected the football playing rapist, the company that crippled her kids, the military that shot her gay son, the frat boys that raped her husband, or the police who ignored her hysterical pleas. These movies are great if you're turned on by women staring at things off-camera and looking determined. In 9 out of 10 of these movies, a man dies.

Sexually/Physically Abusive Stalkers

A man pays attention to a woman, then, he gets a hot .45 ejection upside the head in return for his respectful and chivalrous conduct.

Giant Robot Battles

Wait, I may be thinking of Power Rangers.

Pedophiles, Pedophiles, Pedophiles!

Pedophiles are everywhere, as these films often remind us. They are on the Internet, which allows them to reach right into your homes and caress your daughter's flat, silky, glistening chest, and to press her delicate little frame against their own, feeling her tremble against them like a newborn baby deer, running her little hands up and down...

...I'm sorry.

(FYI: The pedophile is a man. No exceptions.)

Whiny Ass Women with Psychological Problems

Maybe they think they are too fat or too thin, or maybe they don't like the size of their tits. It makes them do stupid things, like vomit or steal from golfers or sell their bodies to the Yakuza. Then it's up to a mother or an equally annoying friend to swoop in and do something.

Oh, and did we mention that while she's working out her problems, she gets physically/verbally/sexually assaulted by a man?

Ripped Straight from the Headlines

When the producers and writers of Lifetime movies run out of ideas; they rip off shit that made the news.

Psychics

I don't know what it is. Women just can't get enough of psychics. They're also obsessed with that "Inspired by a true story" shit.

These movies almost always star Meredith Baxter Birney, Tori Spelling or the dykey chick from The Facts of Life. Sadly, Ms. Garrett's huge rack never made an appearance in any of these movies.

HOLY CRAP ZOMG we almost forgot!: The psychic tells the movie's protagonist she's going to get fucked over by a man.

Examples are as follow:

TV Shows

Lifetime is a popular place for shows involving unattractive women talking about sex (i.e. The Golden Girls, a staple amongst nursing homes). It's also a good place to go to if you want to watch long-canceled shows that nobody else cares enough to buy the rights for. Also, for a channel that claims to be all about empowering its core audience, there are a large number of shows about how to do a good job in the kitchen and garden.

The future of Lifetime

Lifetime's ratings have suffered greatly ever since its other core audience discovered that abuse and kidnap porn are easily found on the internet without the boner-killing prospect of the women overcoming her trials. However, thanks to its abundance of moral panic and sexy grandmas, Lifetime has been able to hang on long enough to give us such gems as Cyber Seduction and that movie about white slavery.

Will Lifetime be able to survive into the near future? To find that out, you need to shut the fuck up and get back into the Goddamn kitchen.

And get me a beer, while you're at it!

See Also

• Woman
• Crap
• Tubgirl