Strangers Beside Me

It's Lifetime's World, We Just Live In It

I was checking the referrer log to see what people who came here from Google thought they were looking for, and found a Google search for “sociopath gaslighting” that had this blog at the top of the search page: A Perfect Target. It’s a blog by a former spouse of a sociopath who was into financial malfeasance and serial adultery. The blog hasn’t been updated for a while; it’s a series of posts describing her own story, plus some discussions of books and media reports on sociopathy.

It’s a bit hard to navigate since the “archive” button seems to be broken, but you can follow Catherine’s personal story, from the beginning, at these links: The Truth, Some Answers, Once Upon a Time, Too Good to be True, All the Other Women, Trouble in Raleigh, What I Know, No Surprises, The Wisdom of Hindsight, In Retrospect, My Journey, My Aha! Moment The Little Voice. There are a couple more general posts about sociopathy here: ”The Loser”, Coincidence.

Otherwise, I think you can see all the remaining posts on the front page of the blog.

It’s pretty fascinating reading. The only difference between this woman’s life and about 1000 Lifetime thrillers is, her ex-husband never tried to fake his own death after looting his company, or tried to frame her for murder, or tried to kill her for her life insurance or anything. Lifetime villains really DO exist, they just don’t usually go all in like that. It’s interesting how Catherine feels the need to keep pointing out she’s not just a vindictive ex-wife, there really was something wrong with this guy. Lifetime movies make that unambiguous because of how they end, but we the viewers know these villains are evil from the very beginning because they’re shown pulling the kind of behavior Catherine describes in her courtship and marriage with Mr. Evil.

Lifetime Movie Review: Mind Games (1998)

Mind Games (1998) Jayne Brook, Lindsay Frost, Kyle Secor.

A psycho psychotherapist manipulates a family nigh unto self-immolation, but gets burned herself instead. Symbolism! As marked: +House=family, ++Blood in the home=death threat to the family, +++Fire=destruction of family

We open with Hannah Berrick celebrating the success of her environmentally-conscious cosmetics company (“Virtues”) and her appearance on the cover of Chicago magazine at a party at home+ with friends and family. Just as she begins her “I owe it all to my wonderful supportive husband and kids” toast, a guest shrieks in horror. Red liquid is dripping from the floor above!++

It turns out their young son Luke has decided to clean his paintbrushes by putting them in the shower and leaving them there. It is time to deal with Luke’s behavior problems. But Karen the beautiful blond family therapist has a mysterious troubled past, and begins unraveling the family unit posthaste. She convinces Hannah to tell Doug about a one-night stand she had seven years ago, Doug worries about the parentage of his daughter about that age, has revenge sex with Karen, and moves out of the house. Karen tells Hannah that Doug has been molesting their daughter, and little Luke that his parents will probably divorce and send him to boarding school, but that anger is his friend, he should use it as his guide.

Luke sets fire to his room+++, whereupon the Berricks finally figure out what is going on and begin to turn the tables. Hannah tries to tell the other therapists at the clinic what Karen has been up to, but Karen has already told them that Hannah is a compulsive adulterer who has persistent dreams about the family home being on fire+++ and is the source of all of the family problems, so they think she is just lashing at out her therapist with her crazy accusations.

Finally a detective investigating the “suicide” of a previous patient of Karen’s hooks them up with Karen’s sister, Anne, who tells of their father’s sexual abuse of both of them, and Karen’s murder of their parents,++ also disguised as suicides. Anne says, some people are just evil: Dad opened the door, but Karen walked right through. They convince her to come forward about Karen’s murder of her parents, and attempt to go into hiding from Karen until Anne can speak to the police, but Karen finds Anne and kills her, then follows them to their cabin in the woods and kidnaps Luke. She crashes her car, which bursts into flames, and the Berricks rescue Luke, but when Hannah tries to drag Karen out of the car, Karen tries to drag her into it instead.+++ The Berricks run from the car, which explodes as soon as they are clear of it.

We close with Hannah and Doug sitting in their garden patio, planning the renovation of their partially burned house+, and a message Karen has left on another therapist's answering machine from beyond the grave: "Once you start to destroy your family, you've destroyed a part of yourself. And then, where does it end?"

Lifetime Rating: ***

Themes

Here's a list of some of the themes I expect to be tagging in my movie and book reviews here. I'll be adding to this list and posting longer discussions of each as my review database grows and I'm able to flesh them out more with examples.

Abuse Excuse
The childhood abuse theory of human evil has largely replaced the theological one in most contemporary movies and fiction. In the Lifetime format, usually a brief pro-forma flashback or description is used to "explain" why a bad person is so very bad. It more often appears as a device to enhance the plausibility of floridly evil characters than as an actual subject of the drama, though sometimes the specific form of abuse has plot implications also.

Bad Girls
Usually sexually manipulative sociopaths, though occasionally there's a "normal" woman deranged by childlessness or infidelity. It's unknown whether most Lifetime viewers enjoy tales of bad women as an exercise in social disapproval and self-validation, or as vicarious pleasure in forbidden bad behavior. (I tend to vacillate between the two in the course of a viewing, but the latter usually wins. Shhh, don't tell anyone!) Either way, these are pretty much the most fun Lifetime movies there are, in my opinion.

Demon Lover
Oh no, my perfect new boyfriend/husband or latest date is a scary stalker or wife-killer! Maybe! I won't know for sure until I break into his apartment/office/computer ...

Gaslighting
Nobody else can see the unnerving things I see! Is someone trying to drive me crazy, or just trying to make me look crazy to people who might otherwise help me?

Kill My Husband
Or sometimes just maim my husband. Ripped straight from the pages of Jane Eyre! Husband is maimed or killed in the course of attempting either to kill you, or just to commit various evil acts while suffocating you with his crazy love. You get the house, the kids, and the money and maybe a hot new boyfriend if he dies, or all of the above (less the boyfriend) plus a non-threatening (and probably paralyzed) grateful object of your care if he lives. And absolutely none of this is your fault! Grim, yet surprisingly common!

Secret Identities
You suddenly discover your husband is a completely different person than you thought he was, usually some kind of dangerous criminal, usually after he has faked his own death. Play your cards right and you might get the money, but you've got to stop him from killing you first, which you will! Potentially aggravating subsequent marriage counseling is obviated by his death or arrest. This is really a subset of Kill My Husband, but I think the frequency of the faked-death plot rates its own category.

Stranger Danger
A criminal or group of criminals threaten a family, which in turn is in the midst of some kind of trial of its own. The family bonds by repelling the outsiders.

Stranger in the House
This has some features in common with fairy tales about changelings, and with Heathcliff (probably a Gypsy baby!) in Wuthering Heights. A woman lets a safe-seeming person into the house--it could be a renter, or a handyman, or someone posing as a long-lost relative--and must discover the truth in time to repel the danger before she or her family is killed.

Lifetime Facts for Women
Not really a theme, but I'd like to keep track of them anyway. These are bald-faced lies about how the world works--usually touching on the legal system, but sometimes we get fake science and technology facts also--that are inserted into a Lifetime movie script to make the plot work. Kind of.