Last night, I watched the latest Lifetime original movie, His Secret Family!

Why Was I Watching It?

Last Friday, I not only cried and cried while watching the finale of Degrassi but I also attended a blue moon party that was held in downtown Dallas.  Needless to say, I spent most of Saturday recovering and we all know that the best way to recover from a crazy night is by watching the latest Lifetime original movie!

What Was It About?

Oh my God, poor Haylie Duff!  Earlier this year, she played a woman named Sarah who married a murderer in Til Death Do Us Part.  In His Secret Family, she again plays a woman named Sarah and, once again, she is married to a murderer!  Of course, in this case, her husband is not just a murderer.  He’s got another wife, another family, and another really big house.  It turns out that Sarah is actually the secret wife.

David O’Donnell plays the husband.  When he’s with Sarah, he claims that his name is Jason Goodman.  When he’s with his other family, he uses the name David Marcus.  So is it Jason or David?  Well, regardless of his actual name, he’s more than a little insane.  When he realizes that it’s simply too expensive to support Sarah and their son, Brandon, David decides to both vanish and to frame Sarah for murder.

However, Sarah happens to be best friends with the detective (Parker Stevenson) working her case.  Even though she’s a major suspect in a murder investigation, he allows her to leave town so she can go up to Santa Monica and track down her husband.

Oh, and did I mention that Brandon needs a bone marrow transplant?  And that only David is a match?

What Worked?

This movie was fun in a “how much more batshit insane can this movie get” sort of way.  It wasn’t just that David/Jason was a bigamist with rage problems.  No, this movie also made his a sociopath who coldly refused to do anything to save his son’s life.  Perhaps the film’s best scene was when Sarah confronted David about his secret life, just to have David calmly respond, “Do I know you?”  David O’Donnell was obviously having a lot of fun playing such an insane character and, as a result, he was a lot of fun to watch.

Add to that, since David had two families, he also had two houses.  And seriously, they were both totally to die for!  One thing that I love about Lifetime movies is that everyone owns a big house and the inside of the house is always so incredibly clean and tasteful.  For a hyperorganized germaphobe like me, a Lifetime house would be the equivalent of paradise.  And this film had two of them!

What Did Not Work?

The whole film was full of plot holes and while I usually say that it’s not necessary for a Lifetime movie to make sense, some of the holes in this case were rather deep.  For instance, I could believe that David would end up with two families.  And I could buy that David would eventually realize that it’s cheaper to only have one family.  But, with all that in mind, I never quite understood the whole point of David trying to frame Sarah for murder.  David was already easy enough to hate without tossing in a random murder.  If anything, David just seemed to making things unnecessarily complicated.

“Oh my God!  Just like me!” Moments

Much like Sarah, I often find myself driving to different towns and claiming to be a real estate agent just so I can take a tour of a nice house.  It’s fun!

Lessons Learned

Secrets, secrets are no fun.  Secrets, secrets hurt someone.