Flipping back and forth between 'Monday Night Football' and 'Liz and Dick'

You know the state of the Eagles is a mess when instead of watching a Monday night game in full, I decide to flip between the game and the Lifetime movie Liz and Dick, with Lindsay Lohan trying to act her way out of a paper bag as Elizabeth Taylor. Both the game and the movie were a demoralizing disaster, barely appreciable on a serious or ironic level. Both were a shadow of their former selves. I knew all this going in but hey, what else was I going to do on a Monday night?

To start with on Lifetime, there’s Lindsay, made up to look like Liz. They actually almost pull it off and her makeup doesn’t look too bad. I can almost see Taylor in a few shots. Lohan’s voice, however, is flat and hoarse, a far cry from Taylor’s sort of breathy sound. First, she and Richard Burton are being interviewed while sitting in director’s chairs, wearing all black in a black room. I’m assuming it’s all a profound metaphor for death. Then the two cavort on the set of Cleopatra. The scenes are edited so fast I am getting whiplash.

The Eagles-Panthers game is already in progress when I flip over, in no hurry to get there. Already the score is 14-3 Panthers in the first quarter. For the eighth time this fall, I sigh heavily.

Back to Liz and Dick. Christ on a cracker, is this script awful. Did all this stuff actually happen? They have Burton and Taylor sitting around and in walks Eddie Fisher. Burton tells Fisher he is sleeping with La Taylor and makes her choose between the two men. I mean, did that happen? Was the reality as clunkily written as that scene?

Back at the Linc, there are a lot of empty seats. I’m assuming they didn’t black out the game because the tickets had already been sold and people just didn’t feel like showing up to the game. It’s depressing to see all those unoccupied seats and makes me despair that it might take awhile for the team to get back to the playoffs. I also realize that I just don’t care for ESPN’s Monday Night Football coverage. Something about it is very quiet and deflating, even during a more interesting game. I wonder who got fired for scheduling this crapathon on prime time.

Oh, look, Theresa Russell, who played a very different Liz in Whore, is playing Liz Taylor’s mother. She isn’t bad, actually. She doesn’t call attention to herself and doesn’t overplay it. And the guy who plays Creed on The Office is some agent. It’s nice to see familiar faces to lighten this disaster.

Touchdown! The Eagles are on the board! I don’t know who this guy Bryce Brown is but he’s been running a lot so maybe that’s a ray of hope for the team. They miss the two-point conversion, which would have tied the game. Oh, well.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth is hung over on her yacht. Lying down to sunbathe, she asks the waiter for two bloody Marys. “I ordered breakfast,” she tells Richard as he joins her. I thought that line was actually a little funny. Later, Burton’s brother falls down the steps and hurts himself. “I’m sorry,” the doctor tells Mr. and Mrs. Burton in the hospital. “It’s his spine. He’ll never walk again.” And walks away. Would a doctor actually say that? Wouldn’t you soft-pedal it so it’s honest but slightly less brutal?

Isn’t that Allen Iverson at the game?

Liz and Dick seems to suffer from one of the most unfortunate tendencies of biopics: Stating a thesis about a character instead of showing it. A bored Taylor states outright that she has been so busy all her life that she never learned to just do nothing. Hey, why show when you can tell?

Hey, at least Alex Henery seems to be doing well. So there’s that.

Then on Lifetime, it’s the ultimate insult: Lohan’s impression of Taylor’s ferocious performance in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? “That better not have been a full bottle, George,” she chides Burton after he breaks a bottle. “You can’t afford to waste good liquor — not on your salary.” This is one of the most amateurish line readings I’ve ever heard. Lohan has none of the venom or fire that made this dialogue classic. It’s like second graders trying to perform Edward Albee. It’s like the worst Saturday Night Live parody you’ve ever seen. To be fair, Lohan is punching above her weight class here, trying to pull off a challenging part in Virginia Woolf. But Taylor nailed it and Lohan didn’t even come close. They say Lindsay Lohan wasted her acting talent on booze and drugs and running around and even though I’ve never seen her in much, what I’ve seen does not give me a good impression of talent. Judging by Liz and Dick, she just didn’t have a lot of talent to waste in the first place.

Halftime and the score is 15-14 Eagles. Maybe they’ll stop the losing streak at six games but I’m not staying up to watch it. I hate to say it but the outcome barely matters this late in the season. Rather than being in a bad mood and tired on a Tuesday, I’d rather just be in a bad mood.

So that was that, switching between one train wreck and another. Both Lifetime movies and Eagles games used to be a lot more fun than this. It was a night to forget.