REVENGE DELIVERED: DTMWaGL #46

The dangers of babies growing up to be adults

Hello friends! So, here’s something about me: I really like Lifetime movies. I know this seems obvious, but sometimes I tell people that I write a newsletter about Lifetime movies and they say, “oh like Hallmark movies?” and I say, “no, that’s different, Lifetime movies, like the ones where a plucky young interior designer realizes her husband has a secret family and the other wife is her long-lost identical twin who’s also evil, or a jewelry blogger [you know, someone who blogs about jewelry] who uncovers a kidnapping plot behind the scenes of the San Francisco Gem Museum. Lifetime movies.” And they say, “oh my god those are so bad.” And I say, “well, I mean, they have a lot of interesting things to say about the terrors and anxieties of women, and the vocabulary of a Lifetime movie is totally different from the vocabulary of a Marvel movie because it’s not trying to appeal to men and I find that fascinating,” and the person I’m talking to says, “okay.” But some of the movies, honestly? Are pretty bad. I’m allowed to say it. REVENGE DELIVERED, while there are some good and interesting things in it, is pretty bad! I’m going to tell you about it anyway! (Content warnings for maternal death, a suicide attempt, and child abuse, and I am serious about these!)

We open in a hospital, as a distressed woman in labor is wheeled into an operating room. She screams at the surgeon that she wants her husband, but the surgeon, who is our protagonist Dr. Victoria Brooks, tells her that this baby has to come out right now, via an emergency c-section. A nurse counters that she’s already lost a lot of blood, but the patient, Kerry, grabs Dr. Brooks by the arm and tells her to save the baby. The camera lingers on a tattoo of a heart with a crown on it on her forearm, and we leave Kerry and Dr. Brooks preserved in amber, here in The Past.

In The Present, Dr. Brooks is being congratulated by her peers for winning some award for best doctor. The Docties. The prize is: a sheet cake, and the opportunity to embarrass her adult daughter by announcing that she’s starting her residency at St. John’s Hospital with them tomorrow. Everyone clap for Noelle! Noelle looks away uncomfortably and has a flashback of cutting her wrists in a bathtub and being found by her parents. This work party is so bad Noelle would literally rather reminisce about a suicide attempt than be present at it. Anyway give it up for Dr. Brooks, the best obstetrician in Evanston!

Victoria and her husband Thomas take Noelle home, and Victoria tells Thomas she’s worried about their daughter. She thought the therapy was working, but now she’s not sure. Thomas reassures her that they’re all doing great, and he’s proud of both of them. Thomas, even more than most Lifetime movie husbands, has absolutely no interiority or agenda of his own. Thomas is here. That is enough. Victoria goes to Noelle’s room to give her a charm bracelet that her mom gave her when she graduated med school, and fastens it over a scar on Noelle’s wrist. It’s sweet! They’re healing, together, as a family — oh no, someone is watching them heal together as a family from across the street, with binoculars!

In the morning, Dr. Brooks meets with her group of baby doctors from Northwestern: Noelle obviously, Luna, and Claire. She and her colleague Dr. Evans introduce them to Maddy the administrative assistant and Darnell the head of security (he’s hot), and Dr. Brooks gives them a pep talk about how delivering babies is so important, because today’s babies are tomorrow’s doctors and lawyers. Babies: they grow up to be adults! At the end of the day, in the locker room, the clerks get to know each other in the weird and accusatory way that accomplished and competitive young women get to know each other. Pretty cool that Luna did pre-med at Dartmouth, huh? Pretty cool. Oh and how about Dr. Brooks being Noelle’s mom? Neat.

Meanwhile, Dr. Brooks is alone in some office somewhere struggling with a printer, which is supposed to be spitting out her paperwork but is instead spitting out page after page of text reading “I know what you did on 10/22/95” over and over. Victoria flashes back to the patient from the first scene, and how she tried to shock her back to life to no avail. She also remembers walking past the nursery and seeing Kerry’s husband looking at his Libra-Scorpio cusp baby with absolute hatred, and then turning that hatred on her. In the present, Dr. Brooks wanders around the dimly lit office but can’t find whoever is sending rude messages to her printer. Damn you, cloud printing! Damn you to hell!

In the morning, Victoria declines to let her husband or her daughter in on the weird goings-on of the printer. Why worry them? It’s fine. No one is going to deliver any revenge here, ha ha! Claire comes over to pick up Noelle for work, and this is when we learn that if a Lifetime movie wife has a real job (obstetrician), the husband has a fake job (fixing up classic cars and selling them). Claire loves cars, and she also loves Dr. Brooks’s beautiful family, she says, looking around the McMansion appraisingly. Claire’s gonna boost a hot rod.

The three clerks meet with a patient who, as she gets out of the bed while she says “I’m losing consciousness!” turns out to be a medical actor, but they all keep up the kayfabe. The music is so intense! Claire takes charge of the room and tells Noelle to do compressions while Luna acts as scribe and timekeeper, and Dr. Brooks flashes back, again, to losing Kerry. Is this all being a doctor is? Is Kerry the only patient she’s lost in over 20 years? Dr. Brooks snaps back to attention to evaluate her clerks as the exercise wraps up: they all did some things well and fucked up some other things. Just like life. As they file out, Victoria pulls Noelle aside and asks her why she wasn’t running the room. Noelle is like, because? Claire? was? It’s a bizarre conversation, and Noelle realizes this, and her mom does not, and I’m not sure the movie does either. Anyway, Victoria would love to stand here scolding her daughter for not placing herself at the top of an arbitrary hierarchy, but she’s got a date with her husband to go on!

Or, Victoria would have a date with her husband to go on, if someone hadn’t smashed the windows on her Mercedes with a rock. The rock is wrapped in a note reading “next time it won’t be a window I break.” Mm. It’s okay. You could punch it up. “Breaking windows is easy, breaking hearts is hard.” No, wait, fuck. Victoria goes to security guy Darnell, the hot one, to ask if there’s any security footage of whoever did this to her luxury car. There’s a sign on the wall in the security office reading “Keep calm and let the security officer handle it,” but it’s printed in Calibri on yellow printer paper. I’d like to dunk on it but we’ve all seen worse things taped to the walls of windowless offices. Victoria also asks after Darnell’s pregnant partner Tamika. She’s fine! I’m sure she’ll remain fine throughout the course of the movie. The only information that they get about the person who broke Victoria’s car is: human person? Two legs, two arms, probably, although who knows, under the dark clothes they’re wearing? Could be fewer, could be more.

Victoria finally makes it to her husband date, and she fills Thomas in on the aggressive printer error (did she ever get her paperwork printed out? I’ll die wondering) and the rock in her car. She asks him if he remembers October 22, 1995, and he does, she came home and stared at baby Noelle in her crib all night. Victoria is sure that Kerry’s husband blames both her and his infant child for his wife’s death, and she felt awful sending the baby home with him. Thomas proposes that the husband is harassing her, lo these 26 years later, and she says, yeah, maybe, and he says to go to the police. Yeah, I guess, she says, and she ends up talking to a Detective Garcia, who asks why, lo these 26 years later, this guy is finally settling the score here, and Victoria does not know. There’s a lot she doesn’t know. Remember that the next time you go to the doctor.

Dr. Brooks takes some time away from puzzling over very specifically informative threats to do her job leading her clerks in patient care, and she and Noelle give Tamika, hot Darnell’s pretty wife, an ultrasound. Turns out she’s pregnant! No, she knew that already, she’s super duper pregnant. Here’s the baby, here’s its heartbeat, et cetera et cetera. Noelle is super fucking jazzed about doing her first real ultrasound, and she wants to go for drinks with the other clerks. Luna knows a place! She just has to get changed, whoa, what’s this, Luna has a lower back tattoo that matches Kerry’s? Except instead of just a heart with a crown, it’s a heart with a crown and angel wings? Put a random Chinese character in the middle of the heart and you’re in business, baby.

So the three baby doctors go for drinks, and chat about why they chose obstetrics and gynecology. Noelle looks up to her mom, Luna’s been taking care of a sick dad for two years and likes taking care of people but wanted to “maintain health rather than treat sickness”, okay, and Claire’s sister pushed her to become a doctor because they grew up poor and it was a path to success but then she realized she loved it. Oh, Claire has a sister, how interesting. And she doesn’t want to talk about her sister right now, even more interesting, this will pay off for sure. Dr. Brooks happens to be drinking in this same cocktail bar, and Luna calls her over. Noelle is like, “haha weird! no thanks!” and goes to the ladies’ room, accompanied by Claire. They both take their drinks with them? To the bathroom? Which would be a thing I might do if I were hot and 22 and alone at a dive bar, but as an adult having a nice cocktail with my friend and my mom? I would trust them to watch my drink. Noelle has clearly made a miscalculation here, because first Claire “pranks” her by turning out the lights when she’s in the bathroom stall, and then her drink is suddenly suspiciously foamy. When they get back to the table and toast to new beginnings, Noelle immediately passes out and hits the floor.

Victoria takes Noelle home, and when Noelle wakes up, she scolds her for drinking too much and embarrassing her. Noelle insists that she had one drink, and her mom tells her to stop lying and also, stay home from work tomorrow. Noelle is like, excuse me, fuck you, I will be at work tomorrow, and also I’m not lying. Victoria seems like a bad mom, maybe? Well, Claire is also here, waiting in the kitchen, and she tells Victoria she did a great job raising Noelle, and she’s glad they’re friends. More evidence. Claire declares that she’s going to stay the night in the guest room, and on her way up, she meaningfully says to Victoria, “you know, you’re a real lifesaver.” We are fucking not even halfway through this movie y’all. I am so sorry.

The next morning, Noelle is sleepy at work because someone (??) dosed her drink and then she had a fight with her mom, so receptionist Maddy makes her coffee. That’s so nice of receptionist Maddy, who is surely blameless in this life. Luna informs Dr. Brooks that the supply cabinet is unexpectedly out of morphine, so Dr. Brooks goes on an expedition to the supply room. Someone swiftly turns the lights out on her and locks the doors because that is the most menacing thing the writer of this movie can imagine, and she stumbles around for a while, until Maddy hears her yelling for help and turns the lights back on. Another win for Maddy! Once she’s freed from the very dangerous (??) supply closet, Dr. Brooks lets a colleague know about the missing morphine and then notices on her charts that Noelle fucked up two patients’ dosages. Victoria tells Noelle to go home, while Claire listens in with a very “oh hell yeah” kind of face.

At home, Noelle takes a nap and wakes up in time for dinner. Thomas is taking time away from his car hobby to make lamb for dinner on a weeknight, and hey, why not invite Claire? Since they’re such good friends? That’s a great idea! Inviting Luna is also, an idea. And just like that, they’re having a lamb dinner party on a weeknight. Lamb! Do people eat lamb? Do you eat lamb. What’s it like, I’m a vegetarian.

Dinner is, as you might imagine, extremely weird. Victoria is briefly called away to take a call from Detective Garcia, who tells her that Russel Myers actually dropped off the face of the planet eight years ago, pretty weird, keep an eye out for him I guess, enjoy your lamb! At the table, Luna talks about some child psychology classes she took at Dartmouth and Claire snipes that now she’s down here with the rest of us. Claire, do you think Northwestern is like, a downtrodden community college? Northwestern is an extremely good school. Luna goes on about ethical dilemmas like: what if they had to choose between the life of the mother and the life of the baby? Victoria chokes on her lamb as Claire and Luna argue about who they’d choose, and then somehow Victoria cuts herself with a steak knife. This woman is a respected medical doctor. Claire reaches to help her and spills Luna’s red wine on her. It’s chaos! Noelle and Thomas are also there.

Victoria brings Luna to her room to lend her a sweater, and asks why she brought up having to choose between a mother and her baby, and Luna’s like, sorry? I think about it a lot? Which she should? As an obstetrician? Why is everyone acting like this is SUCH an extraordinary situation. Victoria offers her a pink cocoon sweater and catches a glimpse of her tattoo as she’s changing. It looks terrible, and Luna explains that it’s just a teenage mistake she’s getting lasered off. Don’t worry about it!

Back at St. John’s, Victoria does some internet sleuthing and learns that Luna’s Facebook header is MS Paint art reading “we are the granddaughters of the witches you couldn’t burn”. Claire’s Facebook was created like thirty seconds ago, and Russel Myers doesn’t have one. Then she remembers that she’s a doctor and checks on Tamika, who’s having some pregnant-lady anxiety freakouts. Tamika makes Dr. Brooks promise her that if anything goes wrong and she has to save her or the baby, choose the baby, and that’s just, so specific. Meanwhile, Claire and Noelle are chatting because they’re such good friends. Noelle compliments a ring Claire is wearing, and in return Claire invites Noelle to stay at her family’s cabin this weekend. These people have known each other for like, four days? What is the shortest amount of time you would know a person before inviting them to your cabin, assuming you weren’t planning to murder them? Also Luna is sitting right behind them and she looks a little put out that she wasn’t invited, because Dartmouth doesn’t have a class called How To Not Get Murdered by a Coworker.

At the end of the day, Victoria takes the stairs out, for apparently the first time, as she ends up in a weird laundry room with a wicker wheelchair in the middle of it. What the! Is this here every day? Victoria keeps catching a glimpse of a person out of the corner of her eye, and she picks up a big medieval-looking syringe that’s just, here in the laundry room, with the wicker wheelchair, and yells, “come out, you coward!” Yes, face Victoria with her Sherlock-Holmes’s-cocaine-ass syringe. The coward declines to come out, and Victoria notices a message for her on the wheelchair: Kerry Myers’s death certificate, on which someone (the coward) has scrawled “MURDER” in red nail polish or whatever. Victoria runs out of the pocket dimension laundry room, which she could have done the whole time I guess, and when she gets home her husband is like, “you HAVE to tell the police, it has to be Luna, the tattoo!” But Victoria points out that a heart with a crown is not a heart with a crown and angel wings, plus it’s on her back and not her forearm, so who knows!

The next day at the hospital, someone who is obviously Claire, who is wearing the ring Noelle complimented Claire on three minutes ago, puts a whole bunch of some drug into Tamika’s IV. An alarm goes off when her vitals drop, and Dr. Brooks and Noelle rush in to give her epinephrine, but it’s not in the cabinet, and when they realize she’s overdosed on morphine they give her naloxone but also need to prep her for a c-section to get the baby out, like, right now.

Tamika and the baby come out of that just fine, tension immediately resolved, and Dr. Brooks finds her daughter composing herself in the locker room. She tells Noelle she held it together like a pro, and she’s proud of her, and also, hey, one time when she was a new doctor she had to choose between saving a mother and saving her baby, and the mother told her to save the baby so she did, but she still feels horrible about it, and it’s like it’s coming back to haunt her, and Noelle is like, “???” and I am also like, “???” because everyone in this movie acts like this is the most impossible, extravagantly unusual situation, and I don’t think it is? It’s awful, obviously, but it’s not like the situation was: save Kerry from a velociraptor, or save her baby from said velociraptor. People die in labor. It’s horrible and it happens more often than it should, but it…happens? I don’t think Dr. Brooks is being accused of malpractice by anyone? This movie is not good. This movie puts out situations and shrugs at them and expects me to create the drama in my own head. Anyway, Dr. Brooks kind of accuses Noelle of mixing up Tamika’s meds and almost killing her, and Noelle is adamant that she did not fuck this up. She storms out. Oh also because this movie has no sense of pacing, Detective Garcia calls Victoria to tell her they just found Russel Myers, and he’s super dead, a skeleton buried in the woods, so perhaps she has another idea? She does! Dr. Brooks and her colleague Dr. Evans conclude that because Luna had access to the supply closet with the morphine, she must have been the one who overdosed Tamika, and they have brand-new father Darnell take her away. Darnell is working?? right now?? even though his wife just came out of an emergency c-section??? Give this handsome man a break.

There is a confusing scene where the chairman of the hospital board suspends Dr. Brooks’s medical license pending investigation of what happened to Tamika (fun fact: he cannot do that), and then Victoria finds a fun little gift in her office. Someone, some coward, has left a newspaper clipping stuck to one of her framed diplomas in her office, with “happy early retirement :)” written on it in red marker. The article is about a missing person in a town called Clearwater, so Victoria googles “Russel Myers Clearwater” and finds a picture of him with Claire on his dormant Facebook. Uh oh!

Oh no! Noelle is tromping through the woods with Claire on the way to Claire’s family’s cabin! Victoria keeps calling Noelle, but Noelle is mad at her mom for accusing her of almost killing someone (you remember), so she isn’t picking up. Claire tells her she’s right, and “who needs her when you have me?” Noelle is like, “that’s…huh.” Victoria calls Thomas instead, telling him she finally figured out that Claire is Kerry’s daughter, Claire is behind this whole thing. I don’t know if the movie thinks I also just figured this out? Luckily, Victoria still has a tracking app on Noelle’s phone, from when they were worried she’d try to off herself again. Unluckily, someone has taken a screwdriver to Thomas’s car’s tires. Back in the woods, Noelle asks Claire what her mother was like, but Claire never met her mother, and also, she’s gonna take Noelle’s phone now. Noelle thinks, “haha oh! I am fucked.”

Victoria’s tires haven’t been spiked, so as night falls she arrives at Claire’s cabin. The windows are covered with newspaper and there’s graffiti all over the walls but honestly other than that, it’s really cute! It’s more of a “small brick house in the woods” than a “cabin” but it’s very cute. Victoria lets herself in, finds Noelle tied up behind a couch, and then immediately gets knocked out by whatever Claire injects into her neck. Whoops!

When Victoria comes to, she’s tied to a chair with duct tape on her mouth, surrounded by an alarmingly romantic number of candles. Claire is armed with a knife and an array of newspaper articles about Victoria’s life and career, the kind that’s written about every doctor, of course. She has also prepared a monologue about her terrible childhood. Her dad blamed her for her mother’s death, and mostly ignored her to the point of forgetting to feed her. When she grew up she decided to take action; the action was Claire stabbing her dad to death right here in this very room. It was the most satisfying moment of her life! It’s good to be able to pinpoint those times. Once Claire killed her dad, she created a new life for herself, and there was one thing on her new life vision board: revenge! Okay but she did…go to medical school, right? That’s so much work. Step one is this thing she’s doing now (med school was step zero??), step two is becoming a better doctor than Victoria. Flawless plan. It was so easy for Claire to set up Luna (did…Claire convince a teen Luna to get the tattoo? in a disguise? what the fuck is with the tattoo? was it just really popular flash???), but befriending Noelle was even easier. Claire is going to make Victoria know how it feels to lose everything, so she’s going to kill her daughter. Well! I don’t like to criticize something that someone else worked hard on, but Claire, this is a bad plan. And not a good movie. I’m really sorry.

Victoria, still tied to a chair, also thinks Claire’s plan is bad, but more from the standpoint of “doesn’t want to see her daughter murdered” than “doesn’t really hang together, narratively.” Through her duct tape, she says something compelling enough to distract Claire from trying to stab Noelle, and Claire removes the duct tape so Victoria can say her piece. Her piece is: your mom asked me to save you instead of her but good lord I made the wrong choice, you’re a real piece of shit. Claire does not care for this one bit, but it’s too late for her, Noelle has managed to untie herself and find a length of pipe, the kind we all have lying around our homes, and she gives Claire a good whack on the noggin with it. Noelle and Claire fight, and it takes forever, but Noelle wins. You knew she would. An ambulance shows up along with a cop car to take Claire away, and everyone gets the treatment and hugs and justice they need.

Some months later, Dr. Brooks is hosting a little gathering to congratulate Luna and Noelle for completing their clerk rotation and moving on to their top choice residencies. Darnell and Tamika are also here? For some reason? Anyway, Luna’s staying right at St. John’s, that’s nice. Victoria apologizes to her for thinking she was trying to murder her or whatever, and Luna is like, yes, I know, you have made this very clear. It is fine. They are interrupted by the doorbell and the arrival of a package. It’s for Victoria, and it is a note reading “I’m not the only one who thinks you made the wrong choice,” with a photo attached of Russel and two daughters. Claire and….? Claire and Maddy the receptionist! Sitting outside Victoria’s house! Making really aggressive eye contact with her! And then the movie is over! A true “haha! okay!” ending for the ages! Does Maddy have the tattoo too? What the FUCK is UP with the TATTOO? We never find out. I am sorry. See you next time for something better I hope!