George Stults | Through the Shattered Lens

Last night, I watched the latest Lifetime movie premiere, Killer Caregiver!

Why Was I Watching It?

Why not?

What Was It About?

While visiting one of her clients, Mariah Wilson (Nicole Hayden) is shocked when an accident leads to not only his death but also to her breaking her arm. With months of physical therapy ahead of her, Mariah hires a home caregiver. Tara (Camila Banus) seems like she’s perfect. She gets along with Mariah’s estranged husband, Greg (George Stults). She helps Mariah exercise her arm. Most importantly, Mariah’s son, Jacob (Jaeden Bettencourt), loves her!

It all seems perfect, except … uh oh! It turns out that Tara is the daughter of Mariah’s dead client and she’s out for revenge!

What Worked?

Oh my God, the houses were to die for! Seriously, one of the things that I love about Lifetime films is that they always take place in these huge houses, the majority of which have a pool in the back yard. But, even by the standards of Lifetime, this film featured some nice houses. In fact, Greg and Mariah’s house was so nice that I was half expecting Greg to reveal that he worked as a money launderer for the mob. But no, Greg’s job had something to do with computers. Having seen this film, I’m now encouraging my boyfriend to get an IT-related job because I could have a lot of fun with a house that big.

However, it wasn’t just Greg and Mariah who had a nice house. Tara also had a really nice house, too. For that matter, when Greg, Mariah, and Jacob were forced to stay in a motel for a night, the motel looked really, really good.

From her first appearance, Tara established herself as being a classic Lifetime villain and Camila Banus really threw herself into the role. From the minute Tara showed up, she was like, “This is my film and now, everyone’s at my mercy!” A film like this is only as good as its villain and Tara was a great one.

What Did Not Work?

What happened to Eugene? The well-meaning but intellectually disabled groundskeeper (played by David Meyers) seemed like he was going to be an important character but then he just kinda disappeared. It was hard not to feel that the character deserved a resolution to his subplot, as minor as it may have been.

Other than that, it all worked! I mean, I could sit here and wonder if perhaps Tara could have come with a simpler revenge scheme (spoiler: she could have) but that would be kind of silly on my part. Melodrama is one of the reasons why I love Lifetime movies! Besides, how can you go wrong when you’ve got a great psycho and a big house?

“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments

While I personally would never plot anyone’s downfall, I still found myself admiring how organized Tara was about it. You could tell that she probably made out a To-Do List before she set about destroying Mariah’s life:

Become a caregiver
Get hired
Brainwash Jacob
Drug Mariah…

And so on and so forth. At least, that’s what I would do.

Lessons Learned

With enough planning and preparation, there’s nothing you can’t accomplish.

Plus, computer people make hella money!

(Lisa is currently in the process of trying to clean out her DVR by watching and reviewing all 40 of the movies that she recorded from the start of March to the end of June. She’s trying to get it all done by the end of July 11th! Will she make it!? Keep visiting the site to find out!)

The 36th film on my DVR was Killer Assistant (also known as simply The Assistant.)

Killer Assistant originally aired on Lifetime on June 20th and it won major points from me just because of the title. Though often underappreciated, administrative assistants are the glue that hold most offices together. If there were no administrative assistants, the entire world would literally stop spinning so I’m always happy whenever I see a movie in which the assistants finally get their revenge.

The assistant of the title is … well, he claims his name is David (Brando Eaton). That’s not his real name, of course. And he’s really not from a small town in upstate New York despite what he tells everyone. He may be a shady character who stole someone else’s identity but that doesn’t mean that he’s not a good assistant! He especially proves to be invaluable to Suzanne Austin (Arianne Zucker), an editor at a fashion magazine. As Suzanne struggles to put together the magazine’s 50th anniversary edition (all the while being watched by her boss, who bare a probably not coincidental resemblance to Anna Wintour), David proves to be a great source of ideas. When Suzanne thinks that she’s seen her husband (George Stults) cheating on her, David proves to be a great source of comfort.

Which is another way of saying that they end up having a one night stand. How passionate do things get? So passionate that the sex scene is actually shown in slow motion. (You know that Lifetime is getting serious when they start using the slow mo.) However, the next morning, Suzanne announces that the previous night was a “mistake” and tells David that he is fired.

David, however, has other ideas. After all, he already went through the trouble of attacking one of Suzanne’s other assistants just to make sure that he’d be able to keep his job. David tells Suzanne that he’s not going anywhere. He’s going to continue to answer the phones for her and schedule meetings for her. And if she has a problem with that, he’ll just show everyone the little film that he made of the two of them during the previous night.

So, Suzanne is stuck with David. And David is now flirting with her rebellious teenage daughter, Calista (Natalie Lander).

Anyway, Killer Assistant is rather ludicrous but I enjoyed it because 1) it was about a crazy administrative assistant and 2) it took place at a fashion magazine and was, therefore, full of bitchy dialogue. Plus, Brando Eaton did a really good job in the role of David. He was just so clean-cut, helpful, and cheerful, no matter what terrible things he was plotting. As I watched the film, I found myself imagining a possible spin-off in which Suzanne is a guest judge on Project Runway and David blackmails her into praising the ugliest dress. It was fun!

(For those keeping track of my efforts to clean out my DVR, that’s 36 films down and 4 to go!)