Hello again! I have been having a hard time starting this newsletter because whenever I look at Substack, it reminds me that it has now rated all my subscribers from zaero to five stars depending on “how actively they use my newsletter” (???) and it is actually incredibly fucking depressing to look at. Are you reading this? Are you reading it in your email? That’s nice. Thank you. Subscribe and tell your friends but also lol nothing matters. Anyway I’m going to tell you about a Lifetime movie now! It’s about organ transplants, and it breaks with naming convention by putting “KILLER” at the end of the title: BLACK HEARTED KILLER. Pretty clever! Content warnings for car crash discussions, stalking, murder, and the sudden realization that the male lead in this movie is the guy from SCARY MOVIE.
This movie lives up to its name right away, thank god, with a quick opening scene of a woman in an office somewhere getting murdered because she worked late. The murderer is a slender person in all black from baseball cap to boots. Chic. Stylish. Black hearted killer.
Anyway, after the credits roll over a tour of a teen girl’s bedroom, we meet our real protagonist, Juley, as she arrives at her Hip Office to do her Interior Decorating job (“interior decorator” absolutely being one of the jobs women are permitted to have in Lifetime movies [literally who even hires interior decorators anymore? we have Pinterest]). She’s confronted with some sort of banister-related emergency but gets an alarming email that sends her home to her husband, Dennis. Juley, a boomer, shows Dennis a printout of the email, which they discuss sitting in that teen girl’s bedroom we saw earlier. The bedroom belonged to their daughter Madison, who died in a car accident six months ago, and the email is from the woman who received her heart when they donated her organs. Juley doesn’t really want to meet her, and Dennis says she doesn’t have to but that it might bring her some closure, which wouldn’t mean forgetting their daughter. Juley keeps crying but agrees to meet her.
Juley and Dennis go to a coffeeshop to meet the heart recipient. Remember going to a coffeeshop to meet someone? God that was nice. The recipient’s name is Vera, a pretty blonde woman in her late twenties maybe? I don’t know how aging works. Dennis orders them all coffees while Vera tells them how grateful and lucky she feels to have gotten this gift, and how well her recovery is going. Juley gets all weepy and Vera apologizes for bringing this upon her, gives her her phone number, and leaves. Nobody got their coffees! You wasted the barista’s time! In bed that night, Juley tells Dennis she feels awful that she freaked Vera out and wasted her time. Dennis tells her they’re all doing their best. We’re all doing our best, aren’t we folks.
The next day, Juley surprises Dennis by inviting Vera over for dinner. Vera goes overboard complimenting the gnocchi Juley bought at the store and boiled, and then tells them about herself. She studied classics at a small liberal arts college but no one wanted to hire her to discuss Middlemarch so she’d been waitressing until she got sick and needed the heart transplant. I’ve never read Middlemarch. Is it any good? Sound off in the comments, and share this newsletter with someone who’s read Middlemarch.
Juley, realizing that she has even more to offer this woman than the heart of her late child, offers to check with HR to see if they can get her a job at her firm. Vera thinks that sounds great, and then excuses herself to use the restroom. Dennis seizes the opportunity to ask his wife what the hell she’s doing. They don’t know this woman at all, really! Why offer her a job! Juley just feels bad about how they treated her at the coffeeshop, even though honestly it seemed fine, it seems normal to be sad about your dead daughter a mere six months after losing her. Anyway, where IS Vera, wonders Dennis, and Juley and I both respond, “it’s been like 45 seconds my dude, chill out.” Vera turns out to be in Madison’s bedroom, and instead of seeing this as a violation of privacy, Juley tells her about the time a bird flew into one of their gigantic windows. Madison named it Peanut and nursed it back to health. Okay but what kind of bird. Are we talking a house sparrow or a phoebe, a starling or a yellowthroat? I could go either way on this. Dennis is like, okay, yes, cool, our daughter was great, let’s finish dinner and end this weird, weird night. On her way out, Vera snags a locket off Madison’s dresser.
After Vera leaves, Juley and Dennis argue about Vera while doing the dishes, because clearly this gigantic kitchen doesn’t have a dishwasher in it. Dennis asks Juley if she saw the track marks on Vera’s arms (I didn’t) and Juley replies that she must have had a lot of IVs being in and out of hospitals. Well, that’s another thing, says Dennis, she didn’t tell them why she needed a new heart. She could be an addict who ruined her first one! I mean, that’s literally true. She could. She could have scooped her own heart out with a spoon. Anything could be true.
Feeling guilty, Vera asks to meet with Juley to return Madison’s locket. She explains that she just felt this overwhelming love and kindness and connection with Madison, and she’d never felt that before. Juley is moved and tells Vera to keep the necklace, it’s not like Madison is going to wear it anyway. Vera puts the necklace on and confesses that actually her recovery isn’t going as well as she’d said when she first met them, she’s been struggling with opportunistic infections and the treatments aren’t covered by her crappy insurance. Juley is sorry to hear that, and sorry that her firm couldn’t find a job for her, but she writes her a check to cover the treatments. After all, she’s family now. No! She isn’t! She literally is not, you just met her and you didn’t even really want to meet her! You don’t have to give her money, you gave her your daughter’s heart. Fine. Fine! They clearly have money, it’s fine.
At home, Dennis does not think it’s fine. He wants to know why Juley, who “won’t even give a dollar to a homeless person” (ha ha fuck Juley), gave this woman five thousand dollars. Juley points out that she doesn’t need his permission to spend her money, and adds that he seems to be moving on from Madison’s death a lot better than she is. “She’s not Madison!” Dennis and I yell at Juley, but she insists that because Vera has Madison’s heart she’s going to be in their lives. I know I’m a weird closed circuit of a person, but I don’t see why, really. Madison had so many organs! At least as many as you or I. This is the only recipient who’s being weird about it. There’s no BLACK KIDNEYED KILLER.
It’s the weekend now babyyyy, and Juley and Dennis are having a party! I didn’t really follow why, but it doesn’t matter. Dennis talks to his officially designated one friend (Gary) and Juley chats with hers (Emily, Gary’s wife), although it seems like they’ve maybe never met before, because Emily excitedly asks Juley if her job is like those home improvement shows. The closed captioning transcribes this as “Herman Friedman shows.” You know, that genre we all grew up on, learned, loved. Herman Friedman shows. Anyway the point of this party is that Vera shows up at it, even though she wasn’t invited, and she gets drunk and weird and is the last person there after everyone else leaves. Dennis tells her they don’t ever want to see her again, and Juley tries to cushion the blow by telling Vera they just need some time, and she can keep the money. It’s not insulting at all!
That night, Juley and Dennis are awakened by a car alarm. Wait a second, that’s our car alarm! Someone got all slashy and smashy with their car. Dennis calls the police and tells the cop who shows up, Detective Quinn, that he is sure Vera did this. Juley isn’t sure but she certainly doesn’t have any other ideas. Unfortunately, they don’t even know Vera’s last name (?????) and the security camera out front somehow didn’t capture the car-smashing, so they don’t really have anything. How do they not know her last name? The email she sent them didn’t have it? Her phone number isn’t attached to it? This didn’t seem weird to them? What? The cop is like, well clearly y’all have something going on here, but I can’t help you, even though you are wealthy white people whose property has been damaged, making you literally the only people cops actually try to help. Call your insurance!
Dennis picks up Juley after a hard day of working at her Hip Design Firm and they both apologize for picking on each other about the whole Vera thing. Juley admits she probably shouldn’t have given her five thousand dollars, Dennis has been kind of a dick. When they get home, the table is set with a whole feast that Dennis has prepared as a treat, complete with wine glasses filled all the way to the top, just like how rich people do it probably. Isn’t…the food cold now? Well, before they can tuck into their room temperature feast, the doorbell rings. It’s a cheerful Vera, bearing a bottle of wine as a little thank-you for the barbecue. Dennis tells her a cheap bottle of wine isn’t going to make up for the damage to their car, but Vera gaily says she has no idea what he’s talking about. Should Vera even be drinking, if she has a heart transplant? I am finding conflicting information about this, US sources generally say no, but the NHS says it’s fine as long as you keep to under 14 units a week. Vera, for her part, says that in Italy, they start the day with “fruit wine” to “aid digestion.” I love fruit wine and plant vegetables and grain pasta. Dennis tells her to get out of their gigantic, over-designed house, and Vera calmly lets her wine glass slip out of her hand and shatter. She tells them they’ll regret this and walks out. They already regret it, Vera.
Dennis contacts the foundation that arranged Madison’s organ donation and gets the name of the person who received her heart. Guess what, it’s not Vera! They go visit this nice mixed-race family and their pretty 15-year-old daughter, who has Madison’s heart. They show her a picture of Madison and she thoughtfully looks at it and then presses it to her chest. It’s very sweet. On their way out, Juley asks if they know a woman named Vera Something, any Veras? Any Veras at all? They do not. As Juley and Dennis eat lunch at a cafe (god I wish that were me), they again lament not knowing Vera’s last name or literally anything about her. Wait a second, wouldn’t her name have been on the check Juley wrote her? Juley mutters that actually, she wrote it out to cash. Juley! It never occurs to anyone to even check out her phone number. This is the diamond ring in TRAPPED SISTERS all over again.
Working in the Hip Design Firm late one night, Juley’s eyes beheld an eerie sight: a woman lying on the sidewalk sobbing about her baby. When Juley approaches, the woman knifes her in the arm but is scared off by some guy. Detective Quinn comes to visit while she’s being patched up in urgent care, but he’s literally just there to inform them that he is useless. Welllllll, here were a couple other robberies outside that building in the past year, so. Juley incredulously replies that this wasn’t a robbery, what the fuck are you talking about, but he’s like, you know what they say about ACAB. Dennis and Juley tell him he sucks and he leaves. My favorite part of any Lifetime movie is when the protagonists correctly tell the cops that they’re doing a really bad job. It’s very satisfying.
Juley and Dennis visit the heart foundation to try to get to the bottom of this whole thing, but they get nowhere, as a nonprofit doyenne serenely explains to them that there’s no way Vera got Madison’s information from them, they take client privacy verrrryyy seriouslyyyy. They leave with no further information, until the doyenne’s assistant chases them down and tells them that the woman they were describing sounded an awful lot like this woman who briefly worked at the foundation. Her name wasn’t Vera though, it was Riley Leeds. Riley got hired at a weird time, after one of their employees was murdered right in the office (oh that’s who that was in the first scene), and she was kind of off-kilter herself. They cut her some slack, since her twin sister had just died in a car accident six months earlier, but then she quit a month ago and didn’t even pick up her last paycheck.
At home, Juley and Dennis look up “Riley Leeds” and realize that her sister Carrie was killed in the same car crash that killed their daughter. “I can’t believe I never looked it up before,” says Juley, looking at a news article featuring a picture of her daughter next to a woman who is identical to Vera. Uh yeah, me neither! I also can’t believe Vera/Riley’s entire plan hinged on this unbelievable fact! Did she have a backup plan in case they had said, “wow you look literally identical to the woman who died in the same crash as our daughter, freeing up her heart to be donated to…you?” at that first meeting at the coffeeshop? This was a bad plan and Riley got lucky. Why make them identical twins! Make them fraternal twins or just regular sisters! This is so goofy!
Apparently Juley and Dennis still have some measure of faith in the justice system, because they meet with Detective Quinn to tell him what they’ve learned. “I’m not following,” he says, of course, so they explain the entire plot of the movie to him, and then Juley drops another piece of information: the crash was Madison’s fault, because she was texting while driving, and she was texting Juley. Madison was on the way to her dad’s surprise birthday party, and all the texts were from her mom telling her not to be late, hurry up, your dad’s always early to things. Oh yikes yikes yikes yikes! Yikes!!! So yeah, Riley blames Juley. “Now I have a lead,” says the cop. Yes. Now.
Quinn goes to talk to a former coworker of Riley’s, a woman named Sugar who worked with her at some sort of establishment called “Heartbreakers.” Bar? Strip club? Who cares. Sugar and Riley used to be friends, but she was never the same after her sister died. Like, for example, a guy hit on her and she beat him into a coma, which he’s still in. Huh, interesting, says Quinn, and gives Sugar his card on his way out. Then Riley shows up at Sugar’s house and murders her. For…talking to the cop, I guess? Then Riley lures Quinn back to Sugar’s house and murders him too. She’s on a roll! Riley drags the detective’s body out of the car where she killed him, so that his torso is on the ground and his feet are on the driver’s seat. Is this significant? It’s so specific but I don’t see what it could possibly mean.
Okay we’re in the homestretch now! At the end of her work day, Juley is confronted with an interior design emergency and has to go meet with a new client. As she pulls into the driveway, Dennis calls her to tell her Quinn is dead. He wants Juley to come home right now, he has a bad feeling. Juley says no, she has to meet with this new client, this emergency client, a very normal thing to have, either that wallpaper goes or I do. Juley enters this huge house, with lots of dark wood and dark floral wallpaper, and oh you’re going to be so surprised: the client is Riley! She looks fantastic. She’s wearing a gorgeous suit and stilettos, with her hair in a sleek chignon. Also, she’s holding a glass of wine, and a gun. Riley is l i v i n g.
“Vera, this is not your home,” Juley ventures. “Quick deductions there, Sherlock!” replies Riley, and sips her wine. She’s great. She scammed this rich lady out of five grand and murdered an incompetent cop! Riley tells Juley that she knows exactly why she’s doing this, they both read the police report. “My sister is dead because your husband had to be surprised at his party,” Riley sneers, correctly, and demands that Juley call Dennis so that he can get murdered too. Juley does that, but also manages to sneak a nail file out of her purse and slashes Riley in the face. It’s a superficial wound but it gives her a chance to barricade herself in a bathroom. The bathtub has mosaic tile and a swan faucet; I hope Juley appreciated these design elements. Riley shit talks Juley through the bathroom door, but then declares “I’m bored,” and shoots through the lock. When she opens the door, Juley is lying on the floor as though the bullet hit her, but she’s just lying in wait and sprays Riley with, I don’t know, hairspray? Bug spray? It doesn’t matter. Juley and Riley both run out of the bathroom, but only Riley then takes a tire iron to the face, courtesy of Dennis. She’s knocked out, and Juley stops Dennis from hitting her any further, because they’re not going to sink to her level. This was a mistake, because by the time Dennis and Juley get to their car, Riley’s standing behind them, somehow, holding the tire iron. She smashes the driver’s side window, but it turns out Juley grabbed her gun and she gets out and shoots Riley in the chest. And then? Immediately? The movie is over! It ends with Juley and Dennis embracing in the driveway of this random house, while a woman whose sister their daughter killed bleeds out. That’s it! It’s over! What an unbelievably abrupt ending. They didn’t even say, “let’s go home,” or anything. See you next time, I guess! Tell your friends about this extremely poorly plotted movie, so that they may share your pain and/or joy!
I love a good "monster mash" reference
Middlemarch Lover Logging On. I don't know if I'd recommend-recommend it but if you like a good Victorian novel, then yes go for it. I really identify with Dorothea, the protagonist, in all her flaws and stubbornness and "I'm gonna live for higher purposes and a meaningful life" and making herself miserable by doing it--and then figuring out what she does want in life. Also, I appreciate the last lines because they counter the message that it's up to us to be the one person to change the world instead of one of many people changing the world (although the lines/concept could also be used to individualize small acts and ignore big picture):
"But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."