CIRCLE OF DECEPTION: DTMWaGL #36
Hello friends! January, huh? 2022, am I right? The sheer force of inertia being the only thing pushing us forward into the next day from the last, you know? I write this newsletter, so I’m going to write this newsletter here in January. I watched CIRCLE OF DECEPTION, a movie of post-Christmas murder “based on an Ann Rule book,” which is a curious way to skirt “based on actual events.” Possibly because, as far as I can tell, it plays extremely fast and loose with those actual events. That’s fine, but in my opinion they could have made the protagonist like 25% less annoying. It’s fine! (Content warnings for murder, suicide, fatphobia, drug use, and some weirdness about domestic violence.)
Because this is a Lifetime movie, someone gets murdered in the first scene. In this case, it’s a middle-aged man wearing socks with sandals and driving a small SUV strewn with takeout containers. He’s rehearsing an apology to his wife, asking her to take him back, when he pulls over next to a wooded area. A person strides out of the wooded area and the driver recognizes them, giving them a cheery “merry Christmas!” He is then shot in the face for his trouble. That’s what happens when you don’t say “happy holidays” in Obama’s America. Cops milling around the scene identify the deceased as one Russel Douglas, and we then immediately cut to a pretty redhead being led out of a police station in cuffs. She delivers a voiceover about how everyone underestimates a beauty queen, but really her only crime was falling for the wrong man. So she will tell us her side of the story, oh boy will she ever.
Our protagonist is Peggy Sue Thomas, of Whidbey Island, Washington, and her side of the story picks up one year earlier, at a memorial service being held in a bar. Peggy does not give one solitary hoot about the dead guy; she is only there to attract the attention of the dude she had a crush on in high school, who has since moved away. Peggy’s big sister Janice points out that it’s crass to try to get laid at a funeral, and I know it’s Peggy’s big sister because Peggy replies, “you say that like it’s a bad thing, big sister.” Anyway, Peggy says, it’s totally normal that this vaguely handsome man didn’t notice her in high school: she was fat then. Exactly the kind of guy you’d want to pine over for twenty years or so. Peggy saunters over to the object of her horny affections and he, Jim Huden, introduces himself because yeah he really does not remember her from high school. She was fat! After they agree that it’s fucked up that good people die young and old bastards get to go peacefully in their comfy, comfy beds, they make out in the hallway to the bathroom, scientifically determined to be the most romantic place in any bar. Peggy invites Jim to her place, and the rest is history. No wait there’s still so much movie left.
In the morning, Jim does a business call in his undies in Peggy’s kitchen, which is directly next to her bed despite everything here looking way nicer than a studio apartment? Maybe she just hates walls. Anti-wall aktion. When Peggy wakes up to the sweet sounds of Business, Jim ends his call and explains that he has a software company in Florida with his partner, and that their last project sold to Microsoft for a lot of money. The next one will be massive! He climbs back into bed with Peggy, and then we cut to a hair salon, where Peggy is talking about all the sex she had last night. So much! Just hours and hours of sexing. Like…ten hours? Does that sound like a long time? Yeah, you wouldn’t even believe it. The receptacle for Peggy’s very cool and normal sex bragging is her coworker/friend/tenant Brenna (a very cool and normal web of relationships). Brenna is trying to count money, but she pauses to protest that she and her husband Russel have sex too. Tons of it! Marathon sex! And it’s uh, it’s weird! Weird marathon sex, Russel got some fuzzy pink handcuffs! Sure, he kind of sucks, but he’s a good dad, and he’s good with money. Well, not that good with money, as Peggy reminds Brenna that she’s late on her rent again. So, the salon belongs to Brenna and her husband Russel, and Peggy works there, and is also her landlord, and also they’re best (??) friends. Anyway, Peggy is no fan of Russel, and tells Brenna she could do better. Maybe not right away, but after she loses a few pounds. She’s just trying to help, remember when she was fat but then she got in shape and won Ms. Washington? If Peggy is going to be really fucking weird about this, then I’m going to be really fucking weird about this: Peggy has like eight inches of height on Brenna but they probably wear the same dress size?? Peggy is statuesque and curvy and a knockout but she is not “skinny” and Brenna is not “fat” and obviously it would be fine if she was! And according to the scene five minutes ago, this is Peggy’s “side of the story,” and in her own side of the story she’s a fatphobic narcissistic landlord. Awful. Jim comes to pick up Peggy so they can have ten more hours of sex, leaving Brenna to sweep up the rest of the hair on the floor I guess.
That night, Brenna sits on her bed, surrounded by a panoply of attractively arranged sex toys. This is absolutely the first butt plug I’ve seen in a Lifetime movie. Mark that down. Brenna’s husband Douglas pops up from behind the array of vibrators and says, “Welcome to Taboo for You! Do you long to indulge in your naughtiest fantasies?” and I can’t stop thinking about a guy in a sex shop asking me “wouldst thou like to live deliciously?” while handing me a ball gag. Brenna simply giggles helplessly while her husband tells her that there’s a lot of money in these in-home marital aid parties, maybe they could go to that swingers club he’s heard about? Or hey, Jim’s going back to Florida and Peggy is having a going-away party for him, they could set up there? Brenna tells her husband that Peggy and Jim do not need help with their sex life, they do it for ten hours every damn day, and she will not show up at a bar “waving an armload of dildos.” Incredible. God I wish a coworker hadn’t come up behind me while I was writing this paragraph.
Jim’s going-away party is just him and Peggy and Peggy’s sister and Brenna, and Brenna is drunk so Peggy’s sister gives her a ride home. Jim asks Peggy if she’s satisfied with her life, and she’s like, well who is, plus I live on America’s 40th-longest island when I could move to Las Vegas or something. Anyway, what’s Jim’s dream? He’s normal, so he’s always wanted to kill someone. “Who doesn’t!” laughs Peggy. She’s fun. Brassy. Murderous. Like a…kestrel.
In the morning, Peggy awakens alone but for her sister Janice, who is for some reason gathering up Peggy’s clothes and taking them to the washer. Everyone in Peggy’s life is in servitude to her in some way. While Janice does her laundry, Peggy takes time away from wearing gigantic dangly earrings in bed to google Jim, and discovers that his business partner is also his wife partner. No time to dwell on that now though, she has to go to work and gloat to Brenna about how she’s decided to move to Vegas. Brenna is like, “oh that sounds fun, over here in my life, my husband asked me to make marinated shrimp skewers so I did, and then he just fell asleep eating microwave popcorn.” Again: incredible. Brenna is happy for Peggy living her dream though! So happy for her! Ha ha! Happy! Peggy leaves and says Brenna should come visit her in Vegas. Maybe she will!
Well, Peggy lives in Vegas now, and she has a phone call with Brenna that’s rife with double entendres because she’s in bed with Jim while she’s having it. Gross. Don’t do that to your friends. Also she brags to Brenna that Jim bought her Egyptian cotton sheets and they act like that’s a big deal? If you can buy them with the giant 20% off coupon that comes in the mail three times a week it’s not a big deal. Brenna says she’s going to be late with the rent again and gets off the phone to have an argument with her husband. Russel took their daughter Sally to the carnival, and got her all hopped up on sugar and toys, and also he took his girlfriend Fran to the carnival, and got Sally all hopped up on Fran. “Is Fran the old lady you’ve been sleeping with?” Brenna asks, and Russel replies, “She’s not old, she’s 42.” This is: a bad response! Brenna kicks him out. She calls Peggy that night to tell her, and Peggy congratulates her and crows that once she gets a big divorce settlement, she can just buy Peggy’s house that she’s been renting. Does getting divorced make money appear out of thin air? I do not think it does. Brenna and Peggy’s conversation is cut short when Jim and Peggy hear a noise in their house. (“Their house”? Jim is married to someone else? Okay.) It turns out to be Peggy’s sister Janice, who let herself in with a key under the mat. She fought with her husband and was so mad she just drove straight to the airport. So mad she could kill him! Jim offers to take him out, and Janice, confused, replies that he’s not very social. No, Janice, he wants to take him out. He wants to murder him. He wants blood and gore and guts and veins in his teeth. Janice declines this offer, which Peggy laughs off, and is so weirded out by it that she sneaks out after Jim and Peggy fall asleep.
Does Peggy have a job now? It seems like no. She’s hanging out in the morning when Jim wakes up, and she announces that her sister bounced last night because Jim freaked her out. He’s sorry, and he’s not a psychopath or anything (hmm), but when he was a kid his stepfather abused him and his mom. Jim is extremely pissed off that his stepdad got to die peacefully in his sleep, and he just wants to get revenge on him somehow. Peggy tells him she’s here in Vegas living her dream because of him, so she’ll help him any way she can. What is Peggy’s dream? Is it just to live in Las Vegas? As a person of no particular ambition or dreams, I can’t relate to any part of this, but I really can’t relate to that.
One night at a bar that, it must be said, looks very much like the bar where they met, Jim gets a call from his wife Jean. She tells him that she’s running out of money and their business is going under, and he replies that his band is doing great! Jim is in a band*. Jim plays guitar. This is how he, a fully middle-aged man, has been explaining his months-long absence to his wife. He just needs his big break, baby! When he hangs up, he’s faced with Peggy, who asks him how ol’ Jean is. It’s fine. She knows what she’s getting into. Yes, clearly this whole thing is worth fighting for. Ten hours of sex every day and all.
At some point in the nebula of time this movie takes place in, Brenna has another argument with her husband, and then dumps their daughter on him so she can go visit Peggy in Vegas. They go to that same bar, and just as Peggy smugly informs Brenna that they are thriving and also the bartender here loves her rack, Jim’s card is declined when he tries to buy drinks. Brenna chooses this moment to tell Peggy that she can’t buy the house after all, because I was right about getting divorced not making money appear out of nowhere, it is not magic. She was hoping Peggy would have some ideas? Peggy is like, “ah ha, oh ho, ahhhhh no.” They go back to Peggy’s place, where Jim passes out on a couch while Peggy purrs to Brenna about how she’s attracted to his darkness. That guy? With the patchy facial hair? And the necklaces? Passed out on your couch with a bottle of cheap whiskey? Okay.
Brenna goes home, having wasted her money and her one wild and precious life, and Russel correctly snipes at her for gallivanting around with no regard for their daughter, and threatens to take Sally to live with his dad. In Alaska! Brenna immediately goes to the police to get a restraining order against Russel, telling them that he was unfaithful and threatened to take their daughter to Alaska. When that fails to impress the detective, a woman named Williams, she adds that actually, once, Russel told Brenna that he would hold her head under the bathwater until she stopped kicking. This is where the movie really turns on Brenna as a person. I have not read the book this movie is based on but I have read a couple longform articles, and Brenna Douglas did indeed file a restraining order against her husband alleging infidelity, emotional abuse, and threats of violence. It strikes me as extremely fucked up to just baldly state that this woman, a real person who is really named Brenna Douglas and whose husband was really murdered, was lying or exaggerating that. I don’t know if she was but neither does Ann Rule and neither do the people who made this movie.
Anyway, Jim and Peggy are broke. They argue about whose fault that is, and I say to my television “what….do you…….do, for money.” Jim has to go home to his wife and his business connections, both of whom keep him warm at night, and Peggy shrieks that she will come to Florida and bang down his door, wife or no wife, business connections or no business connections. While they’re yelling, Brenna calls Peggy to tell her about how splendid it is to file a restraining order. Russel sucks, he’s always spending his money on silly shit like skateboards and life insurance. Life insurance, even though he’s not even dead! He’s got three policies. Anyway, just wanted to drop that information on you, byeeeee. While Brenna prattles on, Peggy sorts through a stack of mail and papers, lingering on an owners manual for a Beretta handgun. You know what they say about Chekhov’s gun…manual.
After an argument with her daughter about whether or not cauliflower smells like a diaper, Brenna suddenly decides that this whole thing is too hard on Sally and calls the cops to cancel the restraining order she just took out. She takes Sally to the park to meet up with her dad, and Russel and Brenna apologize to each other. They agree that they’re not a good couple but they’re good parents. I don’t know, you’re raising your child to not appreciate brassicas. That’s going to do some lasting damage. Russel asks if maybe they could try the couple thing again, and Brenna asks for more time.
It might help, Russel thinks, for him to call his girlfriend Fran, who is 42, and break up with her while Brenna listens. It goes okay, and Brenna is pleased. Meanwhile, Jim calls his wife (I don’t have a Kristen Roupenian link for that) and begs for money, but she doesn’t have any. Jean looks rough! She misses…Jim? That doesn’t sound right. Jim isn’t landing any gigs, and he hasn’t been working on his programming, and Peggy’s credit cards are getting cancelled, and she hasn’t gotten any offers on the house Brenna rents, and Brenna’s broke because Russel spends all their money on butt plugs and life insurance. Again with the life insurance! Peggy and Jim decide to go back to Whidbey Island for Christmas, totally unrelated to the price on Russel’s head. Completely.
When they arrive back home, Peggy calls Russel to tell him that she has a present for Brenna that he’ll need to come pick up from her. That’ll be easy because Russel will be spending the holidays with Brenna. And he got her something to show her how he feels about her! But because he’s Russel, it’s a sex swing and some blueberry-flavored condoms. You know what, I’m gonna level with you, I do not understand what sex swings are for. Please do not tell me. Brenna does not appreciate these gifts, because they were supposed to be taking it slow, and she also doesn’t know what a sex swing is for, and she turns on the tv. “Oh look, Bad Boys II is on,” she says flatly. But in the morning, she feels bad for turning down his gifts, and she does, after all, love blueberries. So they bone down, and then he has to go run an errand (picking up that present from Peggy). He can’t find his shoes, so he has to wear socks with sandals. Oh no, that was what he was wearing when he got murdered! The foreshadowing is getting so thick I can’t see my fingers in front of my face.
Okay yeah so we’re back to the first scene except this time we see that it’s Jim who shoots Russel right in the face. Because of his darkness, you see.
Two detectives, one of whom is the Detective Williams Brenna got her restraining order from, visit Brenna at home. Before they tell her that Russel is dead, they ask her some questions about him and the restraining order. Brenna says that Williams knows: they fought a lot, and he cheated on her constantly, with women and men. One man. That she knows of. And he leads a deviant lifestyle! He wore a kilt to work! He wants to swing! And he thinks everything he sees on the internet is normal. Oh no that is troubling. Williams’s partner, Steadman, finally tells Brenna that they’re here because her husband is dead. “Oh,” replies Brenna, blankly. “He was shot in the head,” Steadman adds. “Oh,” repeats Brenna. The phone rings, and she excuses herself to answer it. In cop logic, this means she’s a suspect because she didn’t seem surprised. This thinking has never made sense to me, because someone who is cunning enough to murder is probably also cunning enough to act surprised when told of that murder. People know how they’re “supposed” to act, and to me (a person who admittedly struggles with nuance and interpersonal relationships to a degree where I should probably be evaluated for autism except what’s the point of that really, at this juncture), it seems like a much more authentic reaction to just go “oh.” That seems like it’s on the wheel of feelings, right across from wailing and rending of garments. But I’m not a cop, so.
A couple weeks later, Brenna meets with a representative from the life insurance company, who’s got an awful lot of nosy questions. Questions like: what’s the freaking rush, lady? Jim died December 26, and Brenna filed on January 3. Why would you not file right away? I thought one of the purposes of life insurance was funeral expenses and end-of-life care? Whatever. Brenna replies that she asked for the money to which she is entitled because she’s fucking broke, lady, why else? The life insurance person informs her that because she’s still a person of interest in Russel’s murder, the insurer would like her to take a polygraph, and Brenna pulls out a prepared statement and primly reads it aloud: it is inappropriate to withhold the money based on unsubstantiated allegations, for which there is not a shred of evidence. She hands the representative a copy of the statement as well. Only guilty people make duplicates, obviously.
Meanwhile, Peggy and Jim return to Vegas, with Jim immediately then departing to Miami. It’s fine though, he told Peggy that what they have is special, so he’s for sure coming back. Peggy keeps texting him without a reply, and when she reads a news story about Russel’s murder, she slowly knocks her glass of white wine onto the floor in what I think is supposed to be a meaningful moment but which I do not understand (see: two paragraphs above).
The murder investigation is plodding along, and someone calls Det. Steadman with an extremely vague tip that boils down to “the killer had a girlfriend,” which does not narrow it down a whole lot. Williams is working her way through a list of numbers off Russel’s phone, and has a completely uneventful conversation with Peggy that nevertheless wholly convinces Peggy that she is the number one suspect in Russel’s murder. She’s the number one suspect in all murders. All crimes. Everyone is constantly thinking about Peggy Sue Thomas. She calls Brenna, who’s pretty pissed off at her for never answering her phone when she calls, and Peggy cries to the widow that she’s just very upset. “Yeah dude, same,” replies Brenna, although she has gotten the payout from one of the insurance policies Russel had on himself. “House? House? Buy house?” asks Peggy, but no, Brenna will not buy house. Truthfully, it never seemed like Brenna wanted to buy that house, and now that it’s the house she was living in when her husband got murdered, she just wants to leave. She bought a different house, for a fresh start. Peggy hates fresh starts and mumbles, “congratulations, I guess,” at her best (????) friend before hanging up. She looks at herself in the bathroom mirror, puts on a long chunky necklace, and says, “Hey. Wanna go on a trip?” to herself in the mirror. If this movie is about nothing else, it is about the power of a long chunky necklace.
In Miami, Jim’s wife Jean nuzzles him while he rolls a joint and coos that she couldn’t catch a buzz while he was gone, but now she feels high all the time. Literally what is it about this guy. This guy??? Are you sure????? Someone bangs on the door and obviously it’s Peggy and her long chunky necklace, here to announce that Jim is only here to sponge off Jean, and his heart belongs with her. Jim rises off the comically tiny couch he’s sharing with his wife and replies that actually, he loves Jean and he’s staying. He’s got a beer, he’s got weed, he’s got a tiny couch, this is the life he’s built. Peggy snaps that the cops called her, so he better watch himself, and stomps out. Jean asks what was up with that last bit, and Jim answers, “You remember what I told you about my stepfather? Something happened on Whidbey Island. I did it, Jean. I did it.” Jean probably doesn’t feel high anymore. Or maybe she does! How’s the weed in Florida?
The guy who gave the detectives an extremely vague tip calls them back and tells them the shooter was his friend Jim, and Jim’s girlfriend Peggy put him up to it, and the detectives are like, oh thank god someone did our work for us, we were getting nowhere. Steadman heads to Miami to pick up Jim, interrupting a heartwarming moment between husband and wife (Jean’s vewwy pwoud of Jim for swaying his demons), and Williams picks up Peggy at her Vegas condo. Condo? House? In real life, Peggy was a limo driver in Vegas, but in this movie she doesn’t do anything other than portentously break glasses of white wine. Not sure which I’d rather do.
In separate interrogations, Jim chivalrously swears that he’s never even owned a gun and he’s pretty sure Peggy is trying to set him up. Williams tells Peggy that they have a sworn statement tying her to the murder, and Peggy smarms that that’s nice, but they don’t have a weapon or a motive. Fun fact: you don’t really need a motive to pin a murder on someone! It’s immaterial, who cares. Regardless, they’re let go, and it takes another round of begging the public for information to get one of Jim’s friends to go, “oh, Jim? Jim Huden? Yeah, I have his gun, he asked me to hang onto it, said this Beretta was for shooting pigeons.” Because Peggy’s fingerprints were found on the gun manual (see!), the police search her house. Peggy calls Jim and reams him out for not getting rid of the gun and also confessing the whole thing to his bass player. Hahaha! Oh, that’s who that guy was, I knew he looked familiar and also like a bass player. She’s not going to prison because Jim fucked this up! Jim’s not going to prison because Jim fucked this up either. He packs a bag with a few essentials, like several fistfuls of oxy, and leaves, while his wife yells at him that he can’t just tell her he killed someone and leave with her drugs. Where the HELL is she going to get more oxy.
Some amount of months or years, impossible to say how many, pass. Peggy gets married to some rich guy and wears a white cape to do so. Then they get divorced (he found out that a white cape doesn’t mean you’re a virgin) but it’s fine because she got that big divorce settlement she’d heard so much about. Meanwhile, Brenna (remember Brenna? her husband got murdered) is still arguing with an insurance company while getting her house foreclosed on. Meanwhile meanwhile (it’s a nest of meanwhiles), the cops look at their Russel Douglas murderboard and decide that they could use some sunshine, let’s go hassle Jean.
Jean is actively snorting cocaine off the coffee table when Williams and Steadman show up at her door. It hasn’t gotten so bad that she’s been forced to pawn her tiny couch, but it looks pretty dire for her. Jean offers the detectives information about Jim to avoid jail, and it turns out Jim is teaching guitar in Puerto Vallarta. He could have at least switched to keyboards. I bet that scene needs more keyboard players; every scene does. Steadman finds and arrests him for murder very easily, and Williams arrests Peggy for ??? unclear. Being a bitch? Oh right, Peggy told us at the beginning of the movie that her crime was “falling in love with the wrong man,” so I bet that’s what’s on her papers.
This movie is just barreling ahead at the end, and so I will do the same: various people testify about how Jim wanted to kill an abuser, and Peggy told him that Russel abused Brenna, so he killed him. Jim is found guilty and sentenced to 80 years in prison, but he refuses to testify against Peggy. “I plead the fifth,” he says at his sentencing when asked about her. That’s not, well, no. Fine, let’s keep it moving. Jim: in jail. Next up, Peggy!
Peggy and her half-sister Janice are preparing for Peggy’s trial, by which I mean Peggy is nattering on in her walk-in closet while Janice informs her that leopard print is not acceptable for a murder trial. Peggy muses that she’s heard a rumor about a mystery witness who could testify against her, and the movie does not draw out the suspense for literally one second. It’s Janice! We see her crying on the phone to Steadman about the time Jim offered to kill her husband, and how Peggy laughed it off, and then she hangs up because she’s so tired. Then she immediately hangs herself. RIP Janice, you were the most normal person in this situation and you will be missed.
Peggy’s lawyers ask for a delay to the trial so that she can attend a memorial for her sister, and then Peggy helpfully jumps in to add that she also needs to raise money to fight these ridiculous charges, and she needs to maintain her yard to HOA standards, and winterize her houseboat. I’m as shocked as Peggy is that “I need to winterize my houseboat” is not a good reason to leave the state before standing trial, and the judge declares her a flight risk. At this point, Peggy decides, fuck it, she’s not getting a fair trial on this hick island where everybody hates her, so she’ll just take a plea. Is there a version of Pascal’s wager for living in a small town, like: you may not ever be charged with murder and depend on these people for a fair trial, but you might, so you may as well be nice to them? Instead of considering this, Peggy gets tattooed eyeliner so she doesn’t have to worry about that while she’s in jail for four years. She goes in front of the judge to plead guilty and is taken into custody, and boy is she ever disappointed when there isn’t a throng of reporters to hear her side of the story when she comes out. There’s just one guy, and also us. I’m sorry we’re not enough for you, Peggy. Peggy voiceovers about how isn’t it funny that Brenna was never charged with anything, she just changed her name and moved away with her daughter. Brenna takes Sally by the hand and walks away. This movie sure is accusing this real woman of having her husband murdered!
The movie ends with Peggy turning to the camera and informing us, again, that all she did was fall in love with the wrong man, we can all agree she did nothing wrong. Right? No, Peggy! Not right! Not right. You can read up on this case if you want! It’s weird! It made me feel bad! I’m glad I’m done. See you next time, unless this made you feel bad too!
*thank you for reading to the end. Your reward is for me to tell you that Jim’s band, in real life, was named Buck Naked and the Xhibitionists.