David Lipper | Through the Shattered Lens

“Greenish brown female sheep,” the two lovers at the center of 1997’s Swearing Allegiance often tell each other.

It’s their code and only they understand what it means. It’s not that hard to figure out.

Greenish Brown = Olive

Female Sheep = Ewe

Olive Ewe.

Say it out loud.

I love you.

That seems cute until you really think about it. David Graham (David Lipper) and Diane Zamora (Holly Marie Combs) are high school sweethearts in Texas. They go to different high schools but they’re totally in love (or they say). David is planning on attending the Air Force Academy in Colorado. Diane is entering the Naval Academy and she hopes to someday be an astronaut. Diane is so convinced that she and David are going to be together forever that she loses her virginity to him. David, for his part, seems to be a bit of a lunkhead but he leads the ROTC with an intense determination. They’ll tell anyone who asks that they’re going to get married and be together forever.

And yet, neither one ever really tells the other, “I love you.” Instead, they speak through code. It’s cute. It’s the sort of thing that I used to do when I was like 12. But when you’re nearly an adult and you’re still saying, “Greenish Brown Female Sheep,” it suggests that you might not be as ready for life outside of high school as you think you are.

One night, after a teary David confesses to Diane that he cheated on her with one of his teammates on the school’s track team, Adrianne “A.J.” Jones (Cassidy Rae), Diane snaps. Instead of dumping David, she tells him that the only way they can make things right is by murdering Adrianne, which is what they proceed to do. They almost get away with it. With the police focusing their attention on the wrong guy, David and Diane leave town for their respective colleges. David and Diane swear to themselves that, from now on, they are going to live with honor and loyalty….

This made-for-TV movie was based on an actual crime that happened outside of Mansfield, Texas in 1995. For years, the crime itself lived on as a cautionary tale that was told to teenage girls (including myself) in order to keep us from sneaking out and sneaking around. Interestingly enough, in 2005, Zamora’s attorney said that the prosecution deliberately withheld evidence that David Graham had been lying about having sex with Adrianne Jones as a part of twisted scheme to keep Diane from breaking up with him. I don’t know if that’s true or not but I do know that, whatever may have happened between Adrianne and David Graham, she deserved better than to be murdered and then turned into a cautionary tale.

One thing I do like about the film is that it is clearly on Adrianne’s side. Cassidy Rae gives a sympathetic performance as Adrianne, playing her as a genuinely nice person who fell victim to David and Diane’s toxic relationship. David Lipper is a bit blank-faced as David but Holly Marie Combs is appropriately intense as the obsessive Diane Zamora. The film actually aired before the case went to trial, which shows that, even in the 90s, there was always a thin line between tragedy and entertainment.

Zamora and Graham are currently both in prison. Zamora took a polygraph in 2007 but the results were tossed out when it was determined that she was trying to alter her breathing to fool the machine. As Zamora now claims that Graham alone was responsible for killing Adrianne, I imagine they’re no longer speaking about greenish brown female sheep.

So, here you are.

You’re middle-aged. You’ve just split up with your adulterous husband. Your teenage daughter is upset because she’s about to start at a new school. Even worse, you’ve just been hired to be the new principal at that school. It’s the summer. You’re at a conference. This is your last chance to enjoy yourself before a new school year begins.

You’re at the hotel pool. Suddenly, a handsome man who is quite a bit younger than you jumps into the pool and, after briefly fooling you into thinking that he’s drowned, he starts up a conversation with you. He’s charming in a simple way. He says that you were sexy when you were concerned that he might be dead. He invites you back to his room and you know exactly why.

Do you go with him?

That’s the decision that Kathy (Gina Holden) is faced with at the start of the Lifetime film, Sleeping With My Student. What does she do when she’s given the opportunity to have one night of passion with Ian (Mitchell Hoog)? Well, your answer is right there in the first half of the film’s title. And, as you can probably guess from the second half of title, Ian eventually turns up as a student at Kathy’s school! Even worse, Ian has a reputation for being a bad boy and a trouble maker and soon, he’s dating Kathy’s daughter, Bree (Jessica Belkin)!

Of course, it all turns out to be about more than just one night stands and bad disciplinary histories. It turns out that it wasn’t a coincidence that Ian showed up at the hotel and jumped into the pool at the same moment that Kathy just happened to be there. It also wasn’t a coincidence that Ian just happened to end up getting transferred to Kathy’s new school. It’s all a part of a massive scheme that Ian has cooked up in order to get vengeance for something that happened in the past. I mean, seriously, no one should be surprised. There are no coincidences when it comes to Lifetime.

Speaking as someone who has seen a few hundred Lifetime films over the past few years, I enjoyed Sleeping With My Student. Gina Holde, Mitchell Hoog, and Jessica Belkin were all well-cast in their rules and the great Gerald Webb showed up as Officer Compton, the school security officer who first explains that Ian is bad news. Yes, the plot was a bit predictable but that’s honestly a part of the film’s appeal. You don’t necessarily watch a Lifetime film because you want to see something unexpected. Instead, the appeal of these films is to be found in their very predictability. There’s something comforting in knowing that, on Lifetime, no one night stand will turn out to be just a one night stand and that the film’s villain will always do something particularly evil at the halfway mark. The best Lifetime films are cinematic comfort food. They give you exactly what you want and they don’t demand much in return and we’re all the better for it!