TV is the New Reading

Lifetime’s ‘Side Order of Life’ has a strange message

The summer premiere of Lifetime’s “Side Order of Life” is sharp, insightful and affirming, but could well wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat wondering where the heck it’s going.

Photographer and bridezilla Jenny, played by Marisa Coughlan, is young and gorgeous. She’s smarter than everyone she works with and has a vivid imagination. She works for a weekly magazine and is surrounded in her life with bright, vivacious, exciting, fun, interesting women and vaguely jerky and more-or-less interchangeable men.

Her best friend, Vivy, has a terminal brain tumor and advocates living richly and deeply, eating dessert first and never compromising. Put the dressing all over everything! she insists. Never on the side! Never compromise! Don’t wear ugly bridesmaid dresses and don’t marry a guy you sort of love!

See, Jenny’s fiance, Ian, played by Jason Priestly, is one of the more-or-less interchangeable men in her life. She agreed to marry him because, well, he asked. But as Vivy points out, he’s this great pair of shoes that’s just not in her size. She needs to trust that the universe will provide her with just the right pair of shoes – that is, the right man – and not live in fear that the perfect footwear will pass her by.

The show continues exploring the basic interchangeability of men – most of them with less personality than footwear – in the story Jenny’s sent to cover. A woman’s appendix burst and she’s attended by her three husbands. Oh don’t worry, she’s never signed a marriage license – she just had three ceremonies because she loves weddings. One of the guys loves her for her body, one for her mind and one for her cooking. And they trade off different days. Still, the man she truly loves, and who truly loves her, is a fourth man. They can barely acknowledge one another because they’re afraid the other will leave and so they hide this all-consuming love of theirs from each other and keep each other at a distance.

Jenny writes this story up and it’s gushed over as being Pulitzer material by her boss (another more-or-less affirming guy in her life). Meanwhile, Jenny calls a wrong number and the accommodatingly nice guy on the other end listens to her while she complains about her just-about-perfect life being ... just not perfect enough.

Perfect vs. good

It’s an interesting show because it’s reasonably well written and the acting is pretty good, especially for a midseason cable production. But what’s so troubling about it is the message. It’s true that no one should be defined by a relationship or settle for the sake of settling, but ...

OK, the deal-breaker with Ian – the point at which Jenny decides that she’s not going to go through with the wedding – is that he bought her a ring that was too large. That’s right. The rock is just too damn’ big. The message is that he’s showing her off as an acquisition.

And that’s a fair point for discussion. Ian and Jenny should be getting married because Ian loves Jenny and Jenny loves Ian. There shouldn’t be any suggestion of chattel or social status or property or ownership or anything of that sort.

But apart from a few nightmares of walking down the aisle in her panties, there’s no discussion about the relationship itself or what, ultimately is wrong. Jenny simply informs Ian during a morning run during the week of their wedding that she’s just not that into him and won’t be marrying him that weekend. He laughs and wonders absently if there’s any way to recoup some of the costs of the wedding.

Wow. That’s just ... incredibly lame. Even so, much more of this emotional whimsy and what the universe will be providing for her is an apartment for her to sit in, tending to her two dozen cats.

But for now, to be perfectly fair, Jenny and her fabulous friends can carry a show. It’ll be interesting to see what sort of guy is perfect enough for her, and to envision the wish-fulfillment implicit in the creation of that character.

Features Editor Terry J. Aman compiles the Best Bets for The Minot Daily News.

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