Last night, after I got home from my aborted attempt to celebrate Memorial Day a week early (read the previous post for details), I watched the latest Lifetime premiere, Marriage of Lies!

Why Was I Watching It?

Well, the obvious answer is that not only was it on Lifetime but it also had one of the most stereotypically Lifetime titles ever.

Marriage of Lies!

It just screams Lifetime melodrama, doesn’t it?

There I was, still feeling embarrassed over getting the date of Memorial Day wrong, and what do I see listed in guide?  Marriage of Lies!  As soon as I saw that title, I knew everything was going to be okay.

What Was It About?

Call it Gone Guy.

One morning, Rachel Wilson (April Browlby) wakes up to discover that her husband, popular teacher Tye Wilson (Brody Hutzler), is gone.  Because their marriage is already troubled because of a past infidelity on Tye’s part, Rachel thinks that Tye has just temporarily gone off on his own.  She doesn’t report him missing for two days and, after she does, she suddenly finds that she’s the number one suspect.

Everyone thinks that Rachel murdered her missing husband, including a world-weary detective named Gus (played by Corin Nemec).  At first, it seems like Rachel’s only ally is her best friend (Virginia Williams) but soon, Rachel starts to doubt even her.

With reporters camping out in her front yard and the entire world convinced of her guilt, Rachel starts to wonder if Tye’s actually been abducted and/or murdered or if maybe there’s something even stranger going on…

What Worked?

Marriage of Lies was fairly well-done.  The actors all did a good job.  Among those of us who were live-tweeting the film on twitter, Detective Roper (played by Zachary Garred) quickly emerged as our favorite character.  Roper was Gus’s partner.  Whereas Gus was cynical and beaten-down by life, Roper seemed to actually be having fun with his job.  Of course, he was also pretty quick to assume that Rachel was guilty but that was just Roper being Roper!

The ending, with its suggestion that the truth means nothing and that sensation-seeking observers have no real interest in reality, was properly cynical and nicely done.

What Did Not Work?

The movie played a bit too slowly and the pacing definitely felt a bit off.  (Of course, it’s difficult to judge these things when the action has to stop every 17 minutes or so for a commercial break.)

After all of the build up, I was hoping that the eventual solution to Tye’s disappearance would turn out to be totally fucked up and weird but instead, it pretty much played out the way that I predicted it would after the first five minutes of the film.

“Oh my God!  Just like me!” Moments

I have to admit that I related to the character of Kinna (Madison Iseman), who was one of Mr. Wilson’s students and who had a huge crush on him.  I felt that way about some of my teachers when I was in high school.  Also, much like Kinna, I would probably be totally useless as a member of a search party.

Lessons Learned

It’s easier to vanish than you might think.