Thank Grieco It's Friday

So, I’ve returned to the regular workforce. It was a sad day, but my current situation has driven me to leave the house and join the rest of the world in long commutes and fluorescent lighting. Truth be told, it’s a pretty cool job, and very soon it will be a part-time gig, so I’ll still get to spend a few days a week working in my robe. But it took me only two full days in the office to remember how tired the whole real job thing makes me. By the time 11:00 rolled around on Friday night I was exhausted. I took the opportunity to sip on some magic juice, recline on the couch, and settle in for a weekend fit for a fifty year-old. Then, something beautiful happened. As I scanned through various channels, I came upon the Lifetime Movie Network, and I (along with the lovely Sherpa) was able to catch the last half-hour of a Grieco piece I didn’t even know existed.

It was Him or Us
We were thrust right into the action. A sweaty, semi-bloated Grieco is holding his ex-girlfriend and her parents (the mom is played by Anne Jillian) hostage at gunpoint. As he swigs from a non-descript bottle of booze and sniffs continually as though he’s just dying for some coke, Grieco alternates between moments of quiet rage and moments of yelling rage. Seriously, the switch between the two happens on like every line, so Grieco looks kind of like a maniac and kind of like he was giving the director two different takes on the character to choose from, but the director just decided to combine them. As Grieco berates his ex for cheating on him or pretending to cheat on him (it got a little confusing), he wears his sleeveless vest thing with pride and sports eyebrows that are clearly not of this world. Amidst the profuse sweating and stumbling around the house for no apparent reason, Grieco shouts lines like “I’m not stupid!” and “I’m not dense!” with the force of fallen star. As subtlety gets murdered inside the home, the police negotiator tries to talk Grieco down from the outside. (note: one of the cops or something is played by Will Wheaton. The unstoppable Grieco/Wheaton combination would resurface later in a little film I like to call Book of Days.) Anyway, the negotiator brings Grieco’s mom in to try and talk him down, and this makes Grieco start saying all of his lines like a little kid. It’s fucking awesome. OK, so Grieco drops the ex’s dad by whacking him over the head with a rifle, thus raising the stakes and making it imperative for the family to escape and take the old man to the hospital. While the ex-girlfriend distracts Grieco, Ann Jillian climbs through a hole in the basement ceiling, fights through some serious editing problems, gets out of the house, sneaks back into the room where she keeps her .22, and moves in on Grieco who is yelling to the ex, “Our love can’t survive this universe. We’ll be together in another universe!” Ann Jillian then has a sweet slow-mo entrance, and as Grieco turns to see her, she kills him, because…you know…it was him or us.

I can only assume that Acts I and II of this picture are as totally Grieco as Act III. I know I mentioned the man’s eyebrows already, but they’re really doing the work up there, and one of Ann Jillian’s kids who escapes to the outside before the shit goes down is played by little Virgin Camden from “7^th Heaven” sporting a wicked mullet. As you know, if Grieco appears in a film it automatically gets an extra 1 ½-Griecos. Now, I don’t feel right judging the entire movie, not having seen how Grieco came to have a rifle, a pistol he holds sideways, and a few hostages, but I do feel comfortable giving the final 30 minutes of It was Him or Us 4-Griecos (see ratings).

Next Friday, if work has beat you down, flip on the old Lifetime Movie Network, you might just be pleasantly surprised. I mean, y’all need to learn more about a woman who was lured into having an affair by a charming older man only to find out that he was married and secretly hated retarded children, so to get even she took up a post as a crossing guard at the school where his daughter went and tempted the child with lollipops and moonbeams and then kidnapped her, demanding that her father publicly humiliate himself by stating in a court of law that he was both an adulterer and a hater of the mentally challenged, but in the end she learns that she doesn’t need to get even to be strong, she only needs herself… she only needs herself, y’all.