“That’s complicated. It seems like you may as well go into the stock market at that point.” -Lil Mama Sarah
“Maybe she’s like Doug. Maybe she has ten of that shirt and ten of that skirt!” -Big Mama Sara
“I know how to use the Internet!” -fat friend Cynthia
At first, Second to Die appears to be about a troubled sister, Amber, grappling with her dead, gold-digging sister Sara’s death and her own feelings of inadequacy by piecing together the final months of Sara’s life through her journal. But with more twists, turns and uncomfortable sexual situations than a drive from Portland to Bellingham, we eventually learn that her sister isn’t dead after all (SPOILER ALERT). We never learn whether her sister is part of some insane super-scam or is just an opportunist capitalizing off her victimized, womanly position with the help of a tokenized older, wiser black role model. But either way, she comes out on top using her wiles, perfect blond hair a Baywatch bod and a pair of new-money strappy sandals.
Poor Amber has been left alone in the trailer park this whole time taking care of their ungrateful, lazy alcoholic mother with nothing but her Bohemian artist lover with a questionable goatee, a shitty bar job, and one outfit–white cotton granny panties included. But as Amber pours through Sara’s diary, alienating half-sweet, half-aggro Bohemian Boyfriend and her abusive mother that has grown accustomed to the high-flying lifestyle of a mother-in-law of a wealthy demolitions expert.
Sara’s first husband, Jim, who you may remember from 83 episodes of Dawson’s Creek, has a buttload of money but it comes with a price: his retarded, wheelchair-bound daughter Nikki who he did not inform Sara of before they were married, somehow. When we first meet Sara, who you may recall from Baywatch, she spends most of her days moping, shopping, getting nonchalantly drilled by her stud of a hubby, and wiping shit off Nikki’s face. When her husband’s slick, not-so-dashing (but with a better car) friend Raymond, aka “Snooch,” starts understanding Sara’s love of tennis, vegetables and being listened to, a fatal love triangle is formed. Sara and Snooch plot to kill Jim, turning his own favorite hobby, building bombs in his garage and carrying them around on his dinky little airplane, against him.
There are a few important observations we made here. First of all, no one actually dies in this movie (TWIST). Second, the plethora of different types of softcore porn, from a wild football-sex fuckfest with your con artist faux-husband to a tantric showdown with your bohemian boyfriend with the crunchy perm to the solo, candlelit, sensual bubblebath (for all you dyke housewives).
But third, and most importantly, was how quickly sympathy shifts to a previously disliked female character once she hints at being pro-life. Poor Sara loses her baby that she conceived during a hot night of grunting football sex. This solidifies her determination to kill her husband for his life insurance money when he shows no sympathy toward their unborn, dead fetus, reminding us that women have one, overarching priority: BABIES.
Women’s second priority, of course, going in line with making babies, is men. Saucy men with crunchy perms and goatees that have tantric sex with you in borrowed houses and remind you that your sister is not better than you. For this reason, as soon as Amber finishes reading Sara’s diary, she runs away to New York with her artfaggy boyfriend, leaving her ungrateful mother alone in the trailer with Sara’s diary, who probably dies soon after the movie ends due to falling asleep while smoking—although, in one, poignant moment before she abandons her poor, alcoholic, ungrateful mother, she makes one last caregiving gesture by extinguishing her cigarette before the trailer burns down.
Softcore Porn:
5/5
Feminine Victimization:
4/5
Trifling Man Factor:
5/5
Chauvinism:
4/5
Sleazy Facial Hair Count:
1
