The Act: a toxic family drama enough to make you paranoid

Greetings, commies & mommies-dearest! 

As many of you are preparing to send your kids back to school, you are, no doubt, getting all sorts of complaints "Do I HAVE to go back". If your kids accuse you of being "mean", if they wish they had a different mommy/daddy, you can always say: "At least your mommy is not like Dee Dee Blanchard." Based on a real harrowing case of Munchausen by proxy, The Act is a must see for all wholesome (or not) families. As kids, many of us have feigned symptoms to gain sympathy and avoid going to school (come on, own up!) But imagine if the roles are reversed, and it's your parents who are doing the feigning, trying to convince the world that their precious child suffers from a string of mysterious maladies. 

I have to say, having worked in child protection services, I am a little paranoid and prone to scrutinizing certain families. We are trained to see abuse, neglect and toxic parenting everywhere. So it's amazing that the characters in the series had managed to keep up the act for such a long time. Dee Dee Blanchard, brilliantly portrayed by Patricia Arquette, fools the most skeptical and hardened of neighbors. 

A post-menopausal Arquette, is no longer a sex symbol. In the past she had played some dark vixen characters. And Joey King, God bless her, will never be a sex symbol (not that Hollywood needs more of them). She is a few plastic surgeries away from being a generic, mainstream beauty. I hope she never goes the Jennifer Grey route, gets a nose job and loses her quirky appeal. In "The Act" she flipflops between the wounded ugly duckling and a fetish worthy almost-swan. Not many young actresses would have been able to pull that off. 

So, if you think your family has problems, splurge on "'The Act".