In Bed and Streaming: If You Don't Rate, Just Overcompensate

 

You can't get romantic on a subway line, ow

Conductor don't like it, says "You're wastin' your time.”

 

Ricki Lake must not have listened to Van Halen, which probably explain a lot.

Against David Lee Roth’s admonishment, Lake did just that in an awful remake of the German film, Sugarbaby, called Baby Cakes.

When it comes to entertainment, stealing from the Germans should be a non-starter.  After all, these are the people that gave David Hasselhoff a singing career.  

Ignoring the sage advice of Van Halen and pilfering intellectual property from the Deutschland is two strikes already.  And that’s before I reveal a single detail of the film in question.  Buckle up, meine freunde.   

Baby Cakes is a dreadful made-for-television movie starring Ricki Lake in her days prior to smut shoveling on the daytime TV talk show circuit where she battled the likes of Sally Jesse Raphael and Charles Perez for audience share table scraps.  

This was unleashed on the public for Valentine’s Day, 1989.  CBS was the guilty party.  Lake plays Grace, a miserable sap of a human being.  She works as a mortician for the always droll and real-life Jay Ward character, Paul Benedict.  Her assistant and best friend is Keri, a homely, hypochondriac wet blanket who shouldn’t have access to sharp objects unsupervised. 

Grace commutes via subway, where she spots one of the train drivers, Rob, who looks like the Teemu version of MacGyver–without the intellect. Smitten, Grace goes into full-on stalker mode, enlisting the ever-negative Keri to assist in her reconnaissance mission. After posing as a janitor to gain access to the personnel office and Rob’s personal information, she and a sniffling, bitching, and generally miserable Keri set up surveillance across the street from Rob’s apartment. 

At this point, can we even pretend that if the roles were reversed–that if a frumpy, dumpy loser of a guy—Gary, perhaps–watched an attractive woman–Renee, maybe–through binoculars while she was in her private residence that this wouldn’t be branded inappropriate, troublesome, or simply be cancelled outright?  Instead, this scene is intended to prompt shouts of “you go, girl,” from the audience.  

While spying, we learn Rob lives in an apartment with his fiancée Olivia. Grace laments the physical traits she lacks and Olivia possesses.  Keri dutifully shoots them down, speculating her hair is dyed and her boobs are fake.  Rob is wearing sweats and holding a basketball when he pops out onto the balcony, apparently forgetting that there is no basketball court on the six-by-six deck.  Rob and Olivia appear to be having a disagreement.  From this, Grace extrapolates that they have a terrible relationship. 

Stalker Grace is now on a mission.  She demands that her boss honor the PTO she’s been stockpiling so that she can take the holidays off to pursue Rob. It just so happens that Olivia leaves town to visit her family.  Rob has to work and stays home all by his lonesome.  Grace’s first move–in an act of optimism–is to purchase a new mattress set.  Grace hauls it up to her apartment, telling her landlady straight up that she plans on getting freaky on this thing.  Her landlady responds with an expression somewhere between sure, whatever and nausea.

Grace has not formally met Rob yet.  Their only contact was when she gifted him a package of Sugar Babies on the subway platform.  With the help of sourpuss Keri, she hatches a plan.

Rob is a figure skater. In retrospect, I realize this does not bode well for the end of the picture.  When he’s not motoring or under Olivia’s manicured thumb, he likes to practice his axels and lutzes at an outdoor rink.  The plan is to mix skates in the locker room.  Why Keri has to execute this I have no idea.  Anyway, Grace has Rob paged, he claims his skates, and she invites him to dinner at her place.  Understandably confused by the whole scene, Rob is polite but most definitely noncommittal.  Grace races over to tell Keri that Rob has accepted her invitation.

Oh, yoo-hoo!

Instead, Rob opts to spend his first night of freedom hitting a bar with his coworkers. In searching his pockets for beer money, Rob comes across Grace’s address. His coworkers see this and are instantly curious.  Rob plays it nonchalant and tosses the slip of paper into an ashtray on the bar.  

Rob decides getting hammered and playing pool with his boys is fun, but his boys turn out to be pussies, tabbing out at 10:00 and leaving alone Rob ripe for bad decision making.  Meanwhile, Grace has set the table, lit a gross of candles, and has cooked a large meal, complete with dessert.  Keri calls to confirm the obvious--that Rob didn't show--and Grace has a tantrum.  She mows down the dessert cake and a bottle of Mateus and trashes the table before passing out with a chicken burning in the oven.

Rob, demonstrating the dangers of when booze and boredom commingle, shows up at Grace’s place, hammered and holding a singed piece of paper.  The apartment is filled with smoke and the detector is ringing incessantly. Grace is furious over being stood up for a date that was never agreed upon.  Rob talks her down with drunken charm before passing out on Grace’s new mattress.

"I was going to sedush you!"

The next morning, a justifiably concerned Rob wakes in Grace’s bed, hungover and afraid to ask what happened the night previous.  He is relieved when Grace tells him he simply passed out.  As Rob scrambles to get dressed and escape, Grace asks if he’ll accompany her to dinner at her father and stepmother’s house Sunday.  After which he’d be given the option of never talking to Grace again.  Rob, an idiot, acquiesces.  

"Daddy, I've got a classy one.  He employs the Jethro Bodine napkin technique!"

As is the case with many screw-ups, Grace comes from a screwed-up family.  Her mother committed suicide and her father, Al, is a feckless butcher at a Stew Leonard’s where he has just remarried one of the store’s cashiers, Wanda, played by Betty Buckley, step-matriarch of the Bradford family on Eight is Enough.  Wanda brings her own younger kids to the relationship and puts on a masterclass of passive aggressiveness–mostly aimed at Grace.  The two get married at the grocery store–the produce section. Al goes with a baby blue jacket and ruffled shirt.  Then again, his television sits on a rolling cart, and he pulls it up to the dinner table to watch golf while he eats.  I don’t know which tournament he was watching as this was December. Maybe the script editor had a dental appointment that day.

Grace decides to gift the newlyweds a garish portrait she painted of her and her father.  It looks like the work of a blind child with cerebral palsy.  Al feigns interest and shows it to Wanda, who looks at it knowing there’s no way in hell it will be displayed in any residence of hers.

"That's really...good, Grace.

After Wanda tells her that she’ll never find a boyfriend until she does something about her bovine appearance, Grace is quite pleased as she walks up the street toward Al and Wanda’s place with Rob on her arm.  A stray splash of color in Grace’s clothing causes Al to wonder if she’s “gone punk.”

Having dinner with her weird-ass family actually causes Rob to start liking Grace. They begin hanging out, determining they are both just misfits in a cruel, judgmental world.  Right on cue, Rob and Grace run into his work friends out in public.  Clearly embarrassed, Rob dumps Grace on the spot. She runs off down the street.  The run home registered a 5 on the Richter Scale.

Knowing that he not only was tremendously rude, but has to admit a newly acquired taste in trophy game, Rob chases Grace back to her place.  After a small argument in the stairwell, they kiss and it’s on.  New mattress.  New silk sheets. No longer returnable. Ick.  

Rob and Grace end up bathing together.  Not the greatest visual, but you typically have to travel toTonga to swim with whales.  Motormen don't make that much.

Sure it's disgusting, but far less expensive than a trip to Tonga

For the next while, Rob and Grace carry on like giddy school kids, allowing third wheel Keri to tag along for some reason. Perhaps so the lovebirds won't be the most annoying characters on the screen.

Olivia comes back early for New Year’s Eve as a surprise for Rob.  Spoiler alert: boy, is he ever surprised!  Arriving home she finds the bed made. In films, this is a tell-tale sign that its occupant is sleeping elsewhere. Seething, Olivia goes out to look for Rob, starting at the skating rink where she imagines he might be toe-picking his way toward the new year.  Rob isn’t there but Keri is (not sure why she would be loitering in a place she despises--unless she intends to snitch).  Keri–in addition to her myriad of flaws–is jealous that Grace is getting laid.  Being the fink she is, she drops a dime and sends Olivia steaming away and in pursuit.

In what must be the lamest New Year’s Eve party not involving Ryan Seacrest, a dozen people are dancing to The Contours' lone hit, “Do You Love Me” in a room about as large as the waiting area at PF Chang’s.   Grace is having the time of her overfed, sedentary life, dancing with Rob, who under Grace’s tutelage, is now dressing like a regular at Barbary Coast.  Grace is swinging and twirling, and you can practically smell the pork sweat and her Secret clocking out for the evening.  Olivia bursts in and goes apeshit, pulling Rob away and then turning her ire toward Grace who has gone punk again for the occasion.

The revelers form a circle and watch as Olivia wallops Grace with her purse several times while calling her fat and ugly and disgusting.  The only thing missing from present day New York City were the camera phones documenting the whole affair.  As amusing as this is, it’s clearly Rob that deserves the beating.  “What the hell, Rob?  Do I need to take you to LensCrafters?”

 

"Excuse me, ma'am; big game hunting is prohibited in the boroughs."

Somehow, Rob remains engaged after this kerfuffle, as we return to his apartment where Olivia is badgering him to go for his tuxedo fitting. Grace, meanwhile, is heartbroken but has renewed confidence after pulling Rob-even if only temporarily. She decides to start a new life and to learn hair and make-up for the living. She also forgives Keri, because friends like that don’t come around every day.

Rob and Olivia finally split. Leaving work, he sees Grace on the train, climbs aboard, confesses his love for her and they kiss on the train.  A small group of over-eager extras applaud enthusiastically. New Yorkers are peculiar people.  They display open contempt for most things but can’t seem to get enough of idiot politicians and subway kisses.  

Or maybe they just appreciate a good cliche. Whatever the case, the conductor still doesn't like.  You are wasting your time.