Martha, Inc.: The Martha Stewart Story

Ah, good times. Not for Martha Stewart, necessarily, but for the rest of us, absolutely. NBC takes the high road by basing Martha Stewart’s crash and burn on an unauthorized biography, in Martha, Inc. Cybill Shepherd plays (bitchy off camera/slightly less bitchy on camera) Martha, but the most enjoyable moments come from watching her grow into the evil corporation we now know: sabotaging a friendly neighborhood pie bake-off (at the age of eight!), sabotaging childhood friends with bad stock tips as an adult, even sabotaging her own first business partner in home decorating when she goes out of town—anything to get an edge. Plus, where else are you going to see a high school Martha Stewart offer up some cookies to her friends only to be called a “lesbian”? Shepherd takes over from here, making Martha manipulatively scary in her modernly mature years, and the movie unfolds like an elaborate joke setup—with one hell of a punch line. Like we always say, it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt. Unless that someone is Martha Stewart. Then it remains fun and games.