a brief timeline of mattie jensen’s hypothetical career:
2000: nancy departs new york city. light of our love is riding high and mattie is the queen of the new york soap scene circa the turn of the millennium, such as it is.
2001: rick arlen dumps mattie and has a brief fling with ashley judd, one of many such one-offs to litter his future. the tabloid media increasingly depicts mattie as desperate and jealous. think jennifer aniston with a cgi head clumsily photoshopped onto her body. mattie is gunshy about hiring an agent to fix her image problem (because… you know) so she’s never truly able to get past her public perception.
2002: rick finally makes good on his threats and leaves light of our love for a film career that goes nowhere. a tone-deaf william pappas hires a new rory danner – an actor in his early 20s –feeding into the perception that mattie is a past-her-prime predator. ratings tank.
2003: in a brief ebb in her fortunes, mattie wins a daytime emmy. it is generally agreed she did not deserve it.
2004: mattie begins a high-profile relationship with brady armstrong. the couple is plagued with gay rumours and breaks up within eight months.
2005: tabloid coverage of mattie’s messy romantic life is interrupted by tabloid coverage of her yo-yoing weight. by the end of the year, mattie is thin but unhappy.
2006: light of our love is cancelled. mattie begins appearing at industry events acting erratically.
2008: in an effort to relaunch her career, mattie does a series of self-deprecating talk show appearances and hosts an episode of saturday night live. it’s not bad but it could have been much worse, so the whole endeavour is considered a lukewarm success.
2009: dwayne’s newest piece of fuckery in the bahamas comes to light. mattie is called upon by various media outlets to comment. this is probably the most successful and respected she’s been in years. there are rumours of a co-host spot on the view but nothing ever materializes. instead, mattie parlays her minor resurgence into a series of mom roles in groanworthy tv movies about cyberbullying.
2010: mattie does the reality tv circuit: celebrity big brother uk (universally considered uninteresting and voted out fourth to a tepid audience reaction), dancing with the stars (forced to recuse herself in week two after fracturing her ankle rehearsing the cha cha), and, most devastatingly, a poorly received series of Friend of the Housewives cameos on RHONY.
2012: images surface of an allegedly clean mattie doing cocaine in a nightclub bathroom.
2013: mattie is embroiled in a scandal when she drunkenly commits a high-profile act of public indecency while touring a play in the uk. mattie is forced to undergo a treatment program, perform 100 hours of community service, and donate her time promoting the scottish tourism industry.
2014: photos of mattie looking unrecognizable at a charity event do the rounds on social media. it later emerges that she has undergone, among other procedures, three eyelifts in one day.
2015: who can say what the future will bring but given that a previously apolitical mattie has been using the tail end of 2014 to espouse increasingly extreme right-wing political views, probably nothing good.
