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Hello friends! Do you like…secrets? Do you like…….wilderness? Do you like Alone-style challenges and Lifetime movie arguments that are uncomfortably topical here in July 2022? Okay, great, I can work with that. Let’s talk about SECRETS IN THE WILDERNESS! (Content warnings for a pregnant woman in peril, actual gaslighting, guns, and not really much else. Also this one will cut off, click the title to read it in your browser.)

This is a MarVista joint, so you know there’s an in medias res opening we’re gonna get back to in approximately 85 minutes. This one features a puffy-coated woman named Lisa running through a snowy forest, past a bloodied man yelling for her. Lisa tries to call for help but the call fails as a man with a gun approaches. Lot of moving parts right out the gate!

Three weeks earlier, Lisa hosts some pals for dinner. She’s indoors, so she’s not wearing a puffy coat, but it’s for sure her. Lisa’s husband Tyler is in Aspen on business, “selling tiger meat.” “Isn’t that illegal?” one of her friends (half of a gay couple, the half that wears a beanie) quietly but urgently asks, but no, not tiger meat, Tiger Meat, Tyler’s company that sells outdoor gear, popular with frat boys. Lisa does the graphic design for Tiger Meat (women in Lifetime movies simply love to be graphic designers), and she named the company too, after that thing people eat in Wisconsin that’s just raw ground beef and onions on rye bread. I will give the non-Midwesterners in the audience a few moments to look around the room and think “raw ground beef and onions on rye bread?? And they call it tiger meat????” Yes. You agreed to come with me on this journey when you opened this newsletter. After dinner, Lisa’s friend Stephanie asks her if she’s doing okay, she seems a little bummed to be spending all her weekends alone, but Lisa insists she’s fine. Something else she is, is pregnant, but she hasn’t told anyone yet, be cool.

When Tyler comes home from his business trip, he’s fucking psyched about making Tiger Meat into the next megabrand, he can taste it. Tastes like onions. Lisa, with cautious excitement, tells Tyler that she’s pregnant. Tyler does not take it well! Isn’t she on the pill? What about all the meetings he has to take for his megabrand? I’m sorry about all the italics but this is how Tyler talks. Sure, Lisa does her meetings for her design clients over Zoom, but Tyler has to do his meetings in person so his clients can see and smell him, like animals and men (a kind of animal). Hey, here’s an idea: why doesn’t Lisa just have an abortion, because she’s so pro-choice? Lisa does not want to have an abortion, she wants to have a baby, with this man and his megabrand, this is her choice. “What about my choice?” yell-whines Tyler, woof! He’s never heard of anyone having a child and a career, and he certainly doesn’t want to be the first. Lisa tells her husband he needs to man up and own this, and he yells at her that SHE needs to OWN this ACTUALLY, and walks out, slamming the door. Yikesarooni!

The next morning, Lisa tells her friend Stephanie that Tyler might not be coming back, the baby might be a deal breaker. She feels so stupid! Steph assures her that actually she’s great and Tyler is stupid, but then Tyler comes home with flowers. He’s so sorry! He’s been doing some soul searching! Does he actually say he wants to have a child with his wife? No, but he’s been talking to his friend Phil, who told him about a good marriage counselor, and he’s willing to try counseling if Lisa is. He’s really meeting her an eighth of the way here and he’d like some credit.

So they go to the counselor, a pretty woman named Alana. Lisa talks about how she misses her weekends with her husband, and feels isolated and kind of unsafe in their house by herself. Tyler replies that she doesn’t want to come on his business trips, and she points out that she did once and it sucked, so no thanks to shit that sucks. Well, asks Alana, has Lisa ever done outdoorsy stuff with Tyler, separate from Tiger Meat? Because Alana has a great suggestion! She has a chalet nearby where she does marriage retreats for one couple at a time. It’s a private safe area for them to work on themselves, and also, she will be there, hi, it’s Alana. Tyler says his wife wouldn’t be able to handle a whole week in nature, but Lisa disagrees, and Alana tells her that she is indeed very strong and courageous.

Lisa is, in fact, so strong and courageous that she turns down Steph’s offer to stay with her the next weekend when Tyler is away on business. Unfortunately, a guy in a ski mask breaks into her house, because she was right to feel unsafe there. She hides in the bedroom until the guy goes away, and then flees to Steph’s house, where Tyler picks her up in the morning. Somehow what Lisa gets out of this experience is “we should definitely go on that marriage retreat.” We all take different paths in life.

So they go on the marriage retreat! They get a little lost on the drive out to the middle of nowhere and an old guy in a fur hat approaches them on foot. Tyler tells him they’re looking for Alana Dufresne’s house, but the GPS led them astray. The old guy, who is holding a long gun, asks why he needs GPS, he knows where it is. This doesn’t make sense in the moment, but just wait! It’ll make even less sense later. Also, what’s with the gun? Oh, it’s to shoot the wolves that have been scavenging his traps. Oh okay, fuck you. Tyler turns the car around to get off this wolf murderer’s property.

When Tyler and Lisa finally arrive at Alana’s and tell her about this weird person whose “laneway” (Canadian English, whoopsy doodle) they found themselves on. Alana assures them that’s just harmless old Tom O’Brien! Sure, he fired a warning shot at some workers clearing brush near the property line, but that’s what warnings are for. As they get settled in Alana’s beautiful chalet, she takes their phones away and then brings them some cannoli as a welcome treat. Tyler, who has never seen cannoli in real life, puts on a Brando voice to say, “leave the gun, take the cannoli,” and like. Okay. There is nothing in this world less impressive than a white man in his 30s quoting The Godfather, but Alana is impressed. Tyler, loving the attention, continues in his mediocre Brando voice to ask what the difference is between an elephant and an Italian grandmother. Alana jumps in with the punchline: fifty pounds and a black dress! She and Tyler laugh and laugh, and I’m no artist, but I can accurately render both my face and Lisa’s at this point: :/. When Alana recovers from this hilarious jape, she lays out the shape of the retreat: a few days of outdoor activities, culminating in a daylong cross-country ski trip and then a spa day. Also, they’ll be sleeping in separate bedrooms for the first three nights, because Alana thinks they’ve been replacing emotional intimacy with physical intimacy. Okay, sure

Tyler wakes Lisa in the morning with a cutesy pillow fight, and then they receive their first (secrets in the) wilderness activity: they have 30 minutes to make tea, with only the items in a backpack Alana hands them. Tyler and Lisa successfully build a fire, melt snow in a little pot, and make tea, while Alana watches from her deck and takes notes. Lisa is wearing (p?)leather leggings but that doesn’t mean she can’t hang with the outdoorsy stuff, okay. The next task is making some Andy Goldsworthy ripoff art. I am vastly less endeared by this than I was when Claudia Kishi taught kids to make Andy Goldsworthy ripoff art at a guerrilla art class in the woods, but it’s pretty good when Alana sends them off with, “Give yourselves over to Gaia today.” Lisa and Tyler make a heart filled with moss and leaves. It’s fine. It’s fun to make a art out of nature junk, this is true. That night, Alana asks the two of them how they’re holding up, and Lisa says she enjoyed making tea and art today. Oh, good, says Alana, because that was creative, girl shit for the pregnant woman. Tomorrow they’ll do something “kinetic” to suit Tyler. Girls are like this (“creative”) and boys are like this (“kinetic”) and Alana is like this (“annoying”).

Lisa has a little morning sickness the next, ah, morning, and comes downstairs looking pretty peaky. Alana, who was watching Tyler split firewood, compliments her earrings, a gift from Tyler, and asks how the two of them met. Lisa was a graphic designer at a t-shirt shop when Tyler brought in a terrible design for his softball team’s shirts, and she thought, “I could fix him.” They’ve always been one of those opposites attract couples, she says. “People aren’t magnets, though,” says Alana, a marriage counselor, “the attraction doesn’t always stick.” “Uh,” replies Lisa.

Annnnnyyyyyywaaaaay, today’s kinetic activity is snowshoeing along the property line! The property line where Alana’s neighbor tried to shoot someone for getting too close? Yes, the very same, don’t worry about it! Alana sends them off with an activity to complete at the halfway point, and they shuffle away. Tyler is, of course, great at snowshoeing, and Lisa, who’s never done it before and is pregnant, is not. Also Tyler is, of course, not going to wait for his wife to catch up. He’s too busy being kinetic. At one point, Lisa completely loses Tyler and wanders onto neighbor Tom’s land, which she realizes when she finds a dead rabbit in a trap and also is shot at by an old man screaming, “HEY! DO YOU WANNA DIE OUT HERE?” Aah! No! Lisa wants to die indoors and warm, so she runs away and finds Tyler, who shows her the map and is like, “see, wife, carrier of my child, the man was right to shoot at you because you were on his property, and anyway we are at the halfway point, let’s do An Activity!” So you can see why Lisa is fighting for this relationship. The activity turns out to be building a rabbit snare, which Lisa does not want to do at all, but Tyler loved trapping adorable wildlife as a small boy (yeah I bet) so he can get this done in like two minutes, what fun! Lisa feels sorry for the rabbits so when Tyler isn’t looking, she picks up the wire snare and pockets it.

Back at the chalet, Tom O’Brien yells at Alana, returning to his refrain of asking if you would enjoy perishing in his vicinity. She shoos him away and it’s fine, I guess? They’ll be staying closer to home tomorrow, don’t worry about it. That night, Alana pours wine for herself and Tyler and gives Lisa some nice chocolates and asks how it went today. Tyler loved it! Stretching his legs! Being in nature! His wife being shot at and threatened! Oh what a treat! Lisa thought it was exhausting and cruel. Alana tells her that actually the snare gives the rabbit a very peaceful death, it struggles and passes out and then dies from hypothermia. “Ugh,” says Lisa. I do love when a normal person makes it into a Lifetime movie.

Lisa is in bed drinking tea and reading by 9:00 (normal) when Tyler comes into her room to offer a foot massage. He knows tromping around the brush isn’t really her jam and he appreciates the effort she’s making. He’s also been thinking that actually it would be cool to have a kid to do outdoor stuff with. So that’s nice. He’s growing as a person, as his wife grows a person. Lisa falls asleep while he’s talking. So sleepy, this one.

In the morning, Lisa wraps herself in a crocheted blanket because her room is freezing. Alana thought maybe it would help her sleep if she turned down the thermostat. It did not. Lisa asks Alana if Phil and Jackie did all these wilderness activities, and Alana is like, “Phil?? and??? Jackie???? oh RIGHT, Tyler’s friends, yes, they did,” and Lisa is like, “oh because I thought maybe Jackie’s knee replacement would have bothered her?” and Alana is like, “no actually she loved it, I have a quote here, ‘my knee replacement has never felt better than it did after a pointless snowshoe trip to trap a rabbit, at Alana Dufresne’s house, and I barely even got shot at.’” Case closed! Today they’ll be hanging out in Alana’s sauna, which Lisa is looking forward to because it will be warm. “Yes, I thought you might like that, Lisa, seeing as you’re always shivering,” Alana says. Yeah god it’s so annoying when you make someone cold on purpose and now they’re cold.

As they file into the sauna, Alana takes off her towel to reveal a string bikini and hands them tea made from wild sage. This is a good place to speak the truth, it just sweats right out of you, she asserts. Lisa’s truth, which she should have thought of earlier, is: hey wait is it safe for me to be in here? I am pregnant. Alana says sure, especially this early in her pregnancy. Actually fun fact: it is worse early in pregnancy! Raising your core temperature in the first trimester is associated with birth defects. But sure, lets’s listen to each other’s hearts. Tyler’s heart feels deceived by Lisa because she stopped taking the pill on purpose. No, she did not, but Alana bullies her into saying that she did. “I thought it was what we both wanted,” Lisa finally says, and Tyler is mad, and Lisa is hurt, and it’s all very depressing actually. Alana loves it! Sink into your feelings while I get some water! Tyler needs a minute too, and leaves his pregnant wife alone in the sauna to sob. Lisa starts to overheat in the sauna (no shit?) but can’t get the door to open. She throws one of the rocks from the sauna heater at a window and pulls herself out into the snow. Lisa is very strong and courageous! But when Alana and Tyler come back to the sauna, they’re like, “lol the door was just stuck, what’s the big deal.” Alana brings her a blanket and sends her inside, and then says, “Man! Someone can’t handle a little heat!” to Tyler. Yes! True! The pregnant woman and the barely-a-fetus inside her can’t handle a little heat!

After Lisa warms up, she finds Alana in the kitchen and tells her that at least the sauna experience made her a little hungry for the first time in a while. That’s good, because Alana made lunch. It’s tiger meat! Yes, it’s a delicious plate of raw ground beef, which can be enjoyed by all. Oh I guess Lisa’s a little touchy about eating raw meat because she’s pregnant. Alana haughtily informs her it’s not grocery store meat, it’s grade-A Kobe beef from a specialty butcher, and she thought Lisa would appreciate the symbolism. You know? Tiger meat? Tiger Meat? Get it? Yeah, no, she gets it, but she would like some real food, cooked food, jesus christ. Alana resentfully reheats some leftovers, and Tyler assures Lisa that she meant well. Boy, I’m starting to think that somebody has some secrets in the wilderness here!

The pre-bed pep talk today consists of Alana announcing that tomorrow is the big cross-country ski trip. Lisa is like, “fuck no, fuck you, I’m so fucking tired, I’ve never fucking skied before, I’m fucking pregnant, I’m constantly fucking nauseated, no.” But Tyler reassures her that skiing is easier than snowshoeing, and Alana chimes in that it’s just five miles there and the same five miles back! “Ten miles is ten miles,” Lisa replies, correctly. “Yes, we know, Lisa, you’re pregnant,” says Alana. Tyler, who I guess knows that his wife is pregnant, is so excited to do this thing she seems physically incapable of doing! He’s gonna have such a great time! Fucking go by yourself, then, Tyler. Take your skis and be free. Alana goes to the kitchen to top off Lisa’s tea but it sure seems like she’s doing something other than making chamomile tea in there. Lisa declares that she’s going to get cozy in bed with her tea, and takes it upstairs.

Once Lisa is alone with her tea, she dumps it down the sink because Lisa isn’t stupid. She’s examining her haggard face in the mirror when her husband comes in and asks if she’s okay. No! They disagree on whether Alana is being “unprofessional” or simply “out of the box”, and Tyler thinks that trying to feed raw meat to a pregnant person was just a wee little oversight. He’s also pretty sure Alana hasn’t been flirting with him, maybe Lisa just thinks she has because her pregnancy hormones are screwing with her. Lisa wants to go home, but Tyler thinks that would be bad for their commitment, and also the sacrifices she’s been making have made him think that he could be sacrificing more for her. Yes. He could. Great. Wow thanks Tyler.

In the middle of the night, Lisa sneakily retrieves her phone from the jar where Alana imprisoned it, and calls her friend Stephanie. She fills Steph in on how the neighbor is trying to kill her, and Alana is maybe trying to kill her and probably trying to bone her husband, and Steph is like, “yeah I always thought this sounded weird.” She looks Alana up on Linkedin and she seems legit, but then Steph notices that Alana and Tyler went to the same small college at around the same time. Just as she realizes Alana and Tyler were two of the five members of the ski club, Tyler comes in Lisa’s room and finds her on her phone. Can he be cool about this? No, of course not. He and Alana, who is also here, demand that Lisa give the phone back, deeming this a serious breach of trust, but one they can overcome in service of therapeutic cross-country skiing. Lisa gives the phone back but she has suspicions.

Still later that night, Tyler comes in Lisa’s room but she pretends to be asleep and then follows him out, to Alana’s room. Lisa hears Alana mention drugging her tea with hydroxizine and then Tyler and Alana start smooching and calling each other “babe.” Never trust a “babe” person, is my life advice. Tyler wishes that “that old coot had just shot her,” but Alana assures him it’ll still work out for the two of them. The city girl will just wander off the trail tomorrow and get lost and get cold and quietly die, like a rabbit. Lisa crawls away from her post listening under the door and silently panics for a moment before grabbing her big puffy coat and going to her car. Tyler hears her go outside and guess what, the car doesn’t start. Lisa sprints into the woods as Tyler tells Alana to get dressed, Lisa knows.

Tyler and Alana briefly try to find Lisa in the woods, but then Lisa’s friend Stephanie calls Alana’s phone. Lisa gave her the number for emergencies, and this whole situation, from her end, seems like kind of an emergency. Alana tells her that Lisa and Tyler are having some quality time, call back tomorrow, and Tyler is like, “damn you’re smooth,” and Stephanie is like, “hmm you know what, I’m calling the cops.” Tyler has never perceived a situation correctly in his life. Of course, when Steph calls the cops, they tell her, “we can do nothing to help you, of course, lol, why would you think we could?”

In the morning, Tyler and Alana survey the woods from Alana’s deck. Tyler declares that he’s going to go look for Lisa, and Alana tells him that there’s no going back, Lisa gave them no choice and aren’t therapists generally against ultimatums? She seemed so reputable. Lisa is hiding under some pine boughs, which she sets on fire to make a big plume of smoke, and then runs for it. She’s learned some things out in the wilderness, and while Tyler and Alana try to put out the fire, Lisa gets to her car. It starts now because she plugged it in overnight. I had this in my notes as “Lisa does something with…an extension cord?” but she’s off! She showed me. Unfortunately, there’s only the one road to Alana’s house so Alana and Tyler are hot on her tail, sniping at each other all the way. If these two can’t even commit one murder without resorting to bickering, are they really built for the long haul? More misfortune for Lisa: not only is there only the one road, it ends at a padlocked gate. She gets out and hops a barbed wire fence, pursued by Tyler. “It’s okay, baby, it’s okay!” he yells at his pregnant wife, who he is attempting to murder.

Tyler finds Lisa crying on the ground and says, “hey, we can fix this!” which is a hell of a thing to say while advancing on someone and holding a coil of rope. Lisa tells him she knows this whole thing was a setup, starting with the break-in at their house. He tells her that they were always a mistake, and Lisa says, “Then just divorce me!” because, again, Lisa is normal. Just get a divorce! You don’t have to murder your pregnant wife in the snow after trying to feed her raw meat and trap her in a sauna! “Wlllll, then what?” asks Tyler. Child support for a kid he didn’t want, and Lisa getting Tiger Meat all to herself? Lisa is like, oh my god, just take the fucking company, I do not care, take it with your chalet-owning ski-loving rabbit-trapping marriage counselor girlfriend. Tyler doesn’t believe her, and tells her he has to do this. “No,” Lisa says patiently, and stands up. Tyler advances on her, right! into! the snare Lisa set up! because she still had the wire in her pocket from the one on the snowshoe trip! Haha hell yeah Lisa, hell yeah! Lisa picks up a log and whacks her awful husband right in the head.

Having dispatched Tyler, Lisa returns to the road to see what Alana’s up to. Alana is lying in wait with a big flashlight, and they both get some good punches in before Alana says that she helped Tyler pick those earrings out, and they looked better on her. They look fine on everyone. They’re diamond studs. Lisa ends up with the upper hand and the flashlight, and takes Alana down with it. While Alana is unconscious, her phone rings. It’s Stephanie! She tries to answer it but the call fails (they’re in the wilderness, you see) and also, Tom O’Brien has wandered over to ask what the fuck is happening over here. Lisa doesn’t want to tell him what the fuck is happening over here, she wants to run away from him, so she does that, and now we’re back at the beginning of the movie.

Just like in the beginning of the movie, Lisa runs past a woozy Tyler and hides behind a tree to try and fail to call for help. This time though, when O’Brien gets closer, Lisa tries to hit him with a branch and he says, “Please don’t do that, I’m not here to hurt you.” Why does every victim of a violent crime not simply say, “Please don’t do that”? It works on Lisa. O’Brien hands her his rifle to prove he’s not going to shoot her with it, and tells her he already tied Alana up, let’s go make sure Tyler’s secure too. While he hogties Tyler, O’Brien explains to Lisa that he wasn’t shooting at her the other day, he was shooting at the wolf that was tracking her, which he would have explained if she hadn’t run off. Haha! Okay! Please learn some manners sir, we don’t shout “DO YOU WANNA DIE OUT HERE?” at people we are not trying to kill! Also, he’s seen Tyler up here with Alana before, which made him wonder why Tyler was bringing his wife up here, unless they were planning….something. So that explains why he told Tyler he knew where Alana’s house was, but it does not explain how Tyler got lost on the way to Alana’s?? Whatever! Whatever. Tom called for help and came over to Alana’s when he saw the fire Lisa started with the pine boughs, and we hear sirens approach. And Stephanie is on the phone, finally! Hooray for Stephanie.

SIX MONTHS LATER: Lisa hosts Stephanie and her boyfriend? husband? who cares, and her two gay friends (the chatty one and the one who thought tiger meat was real) for pizza on her deck. She’s quite pregnant, and Steph and the chatty gay friend tell her they’re totally ready to help her take care of her baby, and everyone congratulates her for the seven-figure buyout of Tiger Meat and her new job as a creative director somewhere. Hooray for Lisa! Hooray for chosen family! Hooray for having a baby because you want to have a baby, and not because you’re forced to by the power of the state!

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