What Liz Said

Courtesy of Stoopidgerl.

When life gets me down, I’ll flip on Maury. Today’s topic? “I’ll Prove You Slept with the Pizza Boy!” It’s yet another very special episode filled with cheating boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, and wives exposed on national television with their own lie detector test results.

Yes, I know it’s a train wreck. I know it’s merely an illustration of all that is wrong with our society, and by watching it I’m perpetuating the cheap side of our culture. I just can’t help it.

It’s operatic in scope. Weeping damsels. Posturing Don Juans. The audience even acts as a Wal*Mart Greek chorus, applauding and wailing at appropriate moments.

I can’t look away.

A woman sits on stage, mascara already running down her face as she recounts the tale of a love gone wrong. He comes home with scratches on his back. He wasn’t there for the birth of their child. He went out for cigarettes, said he’d be right back, and came home three days later. She’s convinced his cohort in crime is none other than her sister. (Gasp!)

A shot of the supposed schemer flashes on the screen behind Maury and his Damsel du Jour. You see him shaking his head, mouthing “Nah, man, you trippin’!” The audience chimes in with boos and hisses. Cut to a girl in the crowd with a french manicure standing, wagging her finger with her hand on her hip. The guest wails louder.

“But I love him!”

I turn the volume up. This is getting good.

Cue the montage put together by the accused. “The scratches are from my cat. I ain’t no cheater. I LOVE her, but she gotta stop,” you hear, with a talk show “heavy metal” scoring in the background.

Maury, our ringmaster, ushers the gentlemen out on stage.

The boos are puncuated every two seconds with bleeps. We know what they’re saying, but the censors say “No, no!” They must keep things decent. Through the bleeps you hear…

“How cou–

“–ain’t lyin’ baby!”

“WHATEV–”

There’s hemming and hawing, as Maury hushes the crowd. The girl makes a statement by dramatically moving her chair away from her man. The audience settles. There’s the false pretense of “hearing his side of the story,” but we quickly move onto the test results.

Without fail we hear from our host “The test determined THAT was a lie. With more than TEN WOMEN.”

Per her contract with Maury, our jilted lover throws herself on the floor. Then she picks herself up and falls into the wall, before stumbling backstage, crying “WHYYYY?!” all the way down the hall.

By this time the Casanova has already pulled his drawers back up, stood up, and stormed off stage, proclaiming “BLEEP this BLEEP! It ain’t true! I’m out!”

Black, white, Latino, Asian… it’s always the same story. Whenever I feel like life has me beat, I’ll flip on Maury.

And I remember that life isn’t so bad after all.