VioletNevermind

Absolutely. I really enjoy making fun of the dolts on this show and look forward to coming here during the week to snark, but there is nothing funny about that poor little girl being forcibly limited by her high-and-mighty parents. Her THs are so sad, with her struggling to form the simplest words and pulling her dress up over her head. Anytime she speaks, she's still looking to her older siblings and copying what they say. It breaks my heart because she qualifies for so many services and interventions! The time is going to come when it's no longer cute and Jim Boob and J'Chelle will have no one to blame but themselves. Thank goodness for them that they don't actually raise their children, or they'd be pretty worried!

Okay, so let me get this straight. Jim Boob and J'Chelle won't allow their adult daughters to express clothed, vertical love openly with their guys (one of whom is engaged), but they'll handcuff them together and force them to clamber around on a jungle gym to teach them the importance of working together (i.e. for ratings and their own amusement)? I love the fact that Jill commented, however mildly, on the ridiculousness of the activity. Josh's 5K: Honestly, good for him. I know what it's like to struggle with weight issues and I have to give grudging props to anyone who achieves a physical goal like that. I did notice that he was wearing SHORTS. That's somewhat momentous in itself. I can recall episodes where Jim Boob and all of his sons ran races, etc. with heavy jeans on. Between Joshie's legs and his highly visible nips through his shirt, I felt (dare I say it) almost defrauded watching Josh haul his sweaty ass across that finish line. We were treated to yet another photographic retrospective of Jim Boob and J'Chelle when they talked about how terribly naughty they were in the early days of their relationship. You know, the picture of J'Chelle in the cheerleader uniform and the shot of Jim Boob dipping J'Chelle backwards into a kiss in front of the car. Once again, I'm reminded of what a filthy slut I am for kissing boy(s) before marriage and engaging in unspecified other things that only confirm me as the harlot that I am. Side note: I'm capable of having a laugh just like the next person, but I really didn't like the fact that the police officer's time was used that way. Maybe I'm a big stiff (pun intended), but it felt inappropriate to me. Also, I've said this before, but why in the hell do they constantly refer to Derick and Ben as "Derick Dillard" and "Ben Seewald?" Do they think we won't remember or we're going to confuse them with those other Dericks and Bens on the show? I really need to understand.

I think this is the link you're talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ1sjnm5y7M. Please, everyone, watch this. There are more videos and they could have been written by any of us.

I suspect that a good 60% of this show is comprised of reenactments. I'm sure Jill had already asked her. Jana has never seemed very comfortable in front of the camera.

If the Duggar washerwoman did die, J'Chelle would still find some way to avoid doing the laundry, even without her all-encompassing nursing schedule to adhere to.

* Jessa's statement: "My mom hasn't been able to have kids for a while and Josie's growing. It could be me or one of my sisters bringing in the grandkids." Newsflash: THERE ARE ALREADY THREE GRANDKIDS. J'Chelle gives them absolutely no attention when they're around and vice-versa. If I were Anna, I'd be kind of pissed that my children were totally swept under the rug. * Jill reminds me of myself at around 14. My head was in the clouds, I was silly, I giggled when I talked about boys, I squealed "Awww, you're so sweeeeet!" when a boy said something nice to me, etc., etc., etc. I wasn't emotionally mature enough for marriage then and neither is Jill now. At least I had the excuse of being 14. * JimBoob's all-guy who-has-the-biggest-penis camping trip. Bin referred to himself as the least outdoorsy of the guy's group. After last week's "guest room" DIY debacle, I can believe it. If he can't even manage to figure out how to use a measuring tape, I doubt his abilities to pitch a tent (probably both kinds). I love the irony of the fact that he's the most manly of the group in terms of appearance, but he's the biggest wimp. Also, he defrauded the ladies in the audience with his shorts! If you need me, I'll be in the prayer closet. * John-David actually acknowledged his single status. He said that his father has tried to "hook him up with some girl." Yeah, I'm sure there's a well-worn path to his door of girls looking to submit applications to JimBoob to marry that mouth-breathing lout. * My heart broke for Joy Anna when they were reading their letters at the dress shop. For all practical purposes, Jill is her mother. In Joy Anna's eyes, her mother is moving out and moving on. This scene made me loathe J'Chelle more than ever. She is nothing more than a brood mare who popped out 19 kids and then disregarded them in favor of canoodling with her husband, working out on her treadmill, and criss-crossing the country for her bullshit speaking engagements. Joy Anna didn't smile one time during the bridal shop experience. Still, I feel more sorry for the "littles." At least Joy Anna had the experience of being mothered, even if it was by a teenage girl. The youngest kids will be fending for themselves in a few years, unless the "parents" plan to continue to rob Jana of her young adulthood by keeping her on permanently as an indentured servant. * Count me among those who are completely sick of the stupid little factoids peppered throughout each show about how you could fill a football stadium with the number of hot dogs they eat in a year, blah blah blah. Cut it out, TLC. No one cares.

I've enjoyed this show quite a bit since it started, but this was the first episode that made me genuinely uncomfortable. I realize that this is a game and the participants are there willingly, but I feel like the producers set them up to fail. This was the most inhospitable location yet. Where was the food? Was there food available and we just don't know that because there were so few efforts made to find it? I was almost on Honora's side until her ugly rant against Matt halfway through the episode. "You f*cking stink, dude, and you're fat, lazy and stupid!" Really? This is coming from someone the announcer described in the beginning as 'highly intelligent?' Sure, he seemed like a schmuck from the beginning and didn't do much besides work on the shelter, but her comments were mean and unnecessary, not to mention totally counterproductive toward someone she was depending on so much for survival. Matt impressed me by the end of the episode, especially when he allowed her to use his machete and made sure to grab her magnifying glass on the way out so he could return it to her. I have to wonder if the crew is really as hands-off as they claim. My bullshit meter has gone off a couple of times during this series. Unless Matt's body relied completely on his extra body weight to survive without food for so long, I really don't see how he completed the extraction with as much energy as he did.

Thank you! That drives me INSANE. I realize that she's not exactly raising her kids, but her nest is nowhere near empty. Like, not even in the ballpark. Several of her children are still very young, one of whom clearly has special needs that are being blissfully ignored by her parents, which I think is an absolute tragedy. That child will be five-years-old in a few short months, but appears to have the developmental capability of a much younger child. I'm certainly no doctor, but even I can see that she needs speech therapy, at the very least. She was the one child I doubted would be lost in the shuffle like her older siblings were, but no such luck.

Every time I watch this show, I feel the same way. I hate how the parents have such a firm hold on their kids' psyches even after they leave the nest. Who says the kids have to have as many kids as God gives them? JimBoob and his wackadoo wife insist that the kids make their own rules regarding what to wear and how to court, but that's clearly not the case.

Same here. It's such bad form to nag people about having kids, regardless of the family relationship. I listened to one of my siblings constantly nag and tease another sibling for years about when they were going to "finally have kids." Turns out they were struggling with some serious, emotionally painful fertility issues and trying different solutions that tend to take a long time. My policy is, if you're not one of the people creating the baby or committing to getting up at 3 a.m. to feed the baby every single night, you don't nag, ask, or tease. J'Chelle will spend the next three decades of her life encouraging her spawn to follow in her increasingly ridiculous footsteps regardless of their desire to give birth to two baseball teams of children.

Oh, Duggars. First of all, can I just say that I'm sick and tired of feeling judged by these people? They act like anyone who kisses someone before marriage or holds hands before getting engaged is some filthy, back alley whore. "We don't want our kids to make the same mistakes we did." They claim to not judge, but come on. The sanctimony drips from them when they say things like that. As for Josh, he's not as "obese" as the trainer made him out to be. The boy likes his food, I get it. I'm in the same boat, having the same struggles. I just think I would have been a little insulted if I were Josh. He comes from a Southern background of tater tot casserole and nary a vegetable or piece of fruit in sight. Those habits take a serious effort to unlearn, if they ever can be. It's entirely possible to have those "naughty" foods, just in moderation and not as often. Prediction: Over the course of the next year, J'Chelle is going to morph from a baby-obsessed "mother" into a grandbaby-obsessed menopausal woman, constantly nagging the crap out of her kids to give her (more, more, more!) grandchildren. Someone needs to take J'Chelle to the side and remind her that she has THREE "grandbabies" already. I understand that it's harder to see them now that Josh and Anna moved, but when they are in the same room, I don't see very much interaction and cuddling going on. For someone who supposedly adores children as much as she says she does, she sure is casual about showing that love. Kids' faces don't lie. Josh's three kids can't seem to keep the apathy off their faces when their loving Grandma Duggar is around.

I hear you, but I feel kind of sorry for him because he's obviously not the brightest kid. He's being taken advantage of and I don't think he realizes that. I'm not sure it would look quite so bad if the Duggar's treatment of Derick weren't so utterly different. Derick is well-respected in this family and there's no way they'd ever consign him to cleaning toilets and mending fences just to be "permitted" to marry their equally immature daughter. The whole thing is just nuts and highlights how young and ill-prepared for marriage these two are.

Why on earth is Bin subjecting himself to this crap?! If he were my son, I would flip my lid and immediately order him home, 19-years-old or not. Don't get me wrong: I absolutely support older adults giving shiftless young people a proverbial kick in the rear and teaching them the value of a good day's work, but this is ridiculous. Bin's parents have basically relinquished him to Boob's 24/7 control. There's no way in hell I'd prove my worth to my potential father-in-law by scrubbing his toilets. This whole arrangement boggles my mind and I've seen more than my fair share of wackiness in my day, so that's pretty hard to do. John-David deserves his own separate paragraph. I think he's a monumental dick, plain and simple. Everything he says sounds sarcastic and borderline nasty. He's clearly enjoying the hell out of Bin's indentured servitude. The rest of the episode was a blur. The younger kids painted plates, yay. Whatever.

Well, I purposed to stay awake during these two episodes, but had a really hard time avoiding the temptation to allow my eyes to stray toward more interesting things. Still, I hung in there until the bitter end, my chastity intact, but just barely . . . 1. Chaperones everywhere! I couldn't get over the fact that the two adult (barely, in Bin's case) couples had to cart young boys along with them on their dates to basically act as mini cockblockers. I was raised pretty darned conservatively, but even my mother simply smiled and wished me a good time when I went on dates at the age of 20. The more exposure we have to the Duggar's dating lives, the more I get an arrogant vibe. It's fine with me if they want to restrict their kids, but they seem to view those of us in the "outside world" who engage in fully-clothed vertical kissing or face-to-face hugs as ungodly heathens, turning a blind eye to God's rules. There's no way on earth that the girls are 100% behind those rules, especially Jessa. She looks like she's going to eat that poor boy alive whenever she's within six feet of him. 2. Still just loving Derick to pieces. I appreciated how he treated James during the picnic: "You look like the kind of guy who would love a fig." That was some picnic he prepared for them. A far cry from tater tot casserole and the other dump-n-stir meals in the spinster J'Slaves' repertoire. I still hold out a glimmer of hope that Jill will allow Derick's normalcy to rub off on her once she's a bit more removed from the compound, but we'll see. 3. Jill sounds about 14 when she interacts with Derick. "Oh, that's so sweet!" "Totaaaally!" He is so much more worldly and mature than she is that it makes me wonder what he thinks when she says things like that. 4. Bin and Jessa. I'm almost to the point where I can't watch those two without feeling bad. Good God, they are SO. YOUNG. They have no business getting married! They're the kind of real-world couple who would "date" for a few months, fellowship each other's brains out, and move on, no hard feelings. It is a rare 19-year-old boy, indeed, who is even remotely mature enough to enter into marriage, let alone care for children. I hope he knows what he's getting into. Never underestimate the power that the promise of sex on the horizon has on a young male. 5. The fake "scouting for wedding locales." Oh, get real TLC. Anyone with basic knowledge of how things work in religious circles knows that fundie weddings almost always take place in churches, not country clubs, in gazebos, in fields, or in sunlit pastures. As for the cake lady, I wondered why Jill didn't go to an actual shop for her 1,000-count (!!!) wedding. That's a hell of a lot of cake for one person to bake out of her home kitchen. 6. Jennifer and her glasses, bless her heart. How young she is to already be so dour! She was probably wondering why her buddy-mother didn't take her. Last night's episode really highlighted the totally impassive, detached way that Michelle relates to her children. It's as if she's a teacher's aide or PTA mom helping out on a field trip. She's only there to make sure no one dies during the outing, but everything else is the real mom's job. 7. A couple of the middle boys didn't even look familiar to me, they haven't been shown in so long.

Exactly. They have lots and lots of practice at picking and choosing what they want to view as God's plan, ignoring little things like science or the simple, sad fact that it's not possible for every single pregnancy to go to full-term. I honestly fear for Michelle's sanity when the Freight Train of Truth hits her and she realizes that her baby-catchin' days are over and she still has many young children and no daughter-moms left at home to raise them.

Michelle's first pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage that they have decided is due to the fact that they used birth control. From Josh onward, they've "left the size of their family up to the Lord's timing." Hence, the 19 kids (and no longer counting, because seriously, it's over, Michelle).

This may have already been addressed, but does anyone else find this show to be depressing now? I've been watching since day one and Matt's conduct toward Amy has never been what I would call respectful, but now that they're separated, I almost feel like I'm intruding on someone's troubled private life. Not that I don't enjoy a bit of voyeurism, but Matt's attitude is a real downer.

This was one of the more intriguing (for lack of a better word) episodes so far. I tried hard to dislike Joshua, but couldn't quite make it happen. He is the epitome of a lovable schmuck. I think he is the least prepared and able survivalist we've seen. Joshua looked to be 5'4" maximum, had a belly, and had just quit smoking on the boat to the location. I mean, come on. Poor guy was hocking up blood at the "throw up tree" (HA!) and in a state of delirium by day three. I doubt that nicotine withdrawal had that serious of an effect on him; it had to have been something else. I would have bet $1,000 at the beginning of this episode that Joshua would not have made it to the end. Too bad I didn't make that bet. As for Amanda, she made no effort to forage for food of any kind after Joshua left. It was as if she was slowly going insane by herself. Still, she deserves major kudos for sticking it out until the end.

I'm in the exact same boat. When I took traditional on-site classes, I was the classic shy student who hid in the back of the room and didn't interact with anyone. I'm forced to interact with my classmates in online classes and it's actually been pretty refreshing to feel engaged in a class for once. Another thing the Duggar kids will know nothing about. http://seewalds.com/marrying-young/#comment-285 Enjoy. ;-)

Word for word, YES. He'll own that poor boy both on and off the clock for the next several years at minimum.

I noticed that, too. Michelle's exact words when she announced the Mother's Day dinner were: "Maybe you girls will want to head that up and organize the food . . . ?" Cut to the girls' less-than-enthusiastic faces. These poor girls never had a childhood.

Oh, where to begin? 1. Bin's and Jim Boob's new working relationship. Talk about control! Jim Boob has Bin by the short hairs and he definitely knows it. That room they put him in is just sad, right down to the sad little single bed and the deer heads on the walls. I wondered during the family dinner why the hell Bin's parents were accepting this. They have to realize that their son is not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, but they're basically throwing him to the extremely Christian wolves. There were moments during Bin's scenes when he just seemed so utterly lost and naive. It made me kind of sad. He will never realize just how negatively the Duggars view him. In the real world, a dopey kid like that would never have gotten to this point with a girl who looks like Jessa. They would have "fellowshipped" like bunny rabbits many, many times, but that's as far as it would have gotten. 2. Jill and Derick. I still really, really like Derick. I still have high hopes for his individuality shining through at some point and his possible refusal to toe the Duggar party line. Jill, of course, is obedient to the extreme, but Derick has lived a little bit of "normal" life and I can only hope that it'll rub off on her. (Side note: I couldn't believe my eyes when a chaperone accompanied Jill and Derick to the hospital to visit his very ill mother. Wow. No other words for that.) 3. The Mother's Day wishes for Michelle. What. A. Joke. The older girls should have received 90% of those well-wishes, given that they raise the children by any conceivable definition of motherhood. 4. Joy Anna's newfound maturity. I loved her self-confidence as she drove Bin around the property, pointing out all of the jobs he'll be assigned. She really seemed to know what she was talking about. 5. Jana! She looks so sad. I have a strong urge to drive to Arkansas, pick her up, and give her a whirlwind introduction to normalcy. There's definitely a lot more going on inside her head than meets the eye. DUGGARS, YOU'VE SUCKERED ME INTO YET ANOTHER SEASON!

This was probably one of the best episodes of this show so far. Hakim was absolutely amazing throughout. He displayed an incredible amount of patience during "discount Miley Cyrus'" (perfect description) meltdown and dysentery-related issues. He was able to push past all of her drama and not only carry them through, but also spend time comforting her. Bravo to him. I still say it's a shame that the better of the two participants doesn't receive some kind of monetary reward. That would add a great element to the show.

I applaud you! Stories like that are what keep me going. I'm 37 and returned to school to finish my BA last year. I am more focused and dedicated than I ever was when I was younger. The only thing is, I don't have 17 kids to raise and $1.7 million in home loans to pay, so I can justify spending the money. I think I feel the way I do because I've always disagreed with Meri's statements that she should get an equal amount of money. I thought they were all in it together to support each other. With only one grown child, the money she receives should be adjusted. Same goes for her huge house. What does she need with five bedrooms? Any sympathy I had for her eroded right around the time of the wet bar debacle. A lot of women would be thrilled with a modest three-bedroom home, let alone a McMansion with french doors and a wet bar. Meri's house costs more than any of the others, yet she has no kids living at home and no job. It's lunacy. I don't know why I expect anything more from people whose sole financial strategy is to file for bankruptcy. If Janelle were to express an interest in returning to school, I could probably get behind it. That poor lady deserves a bit of fulfillment. Christine, too, as long as she didn't treat it like she did her real estate exams. But Meri? Nope. That woman doesn't give a shit about anyone's needs but her own.

Exactly. With all of those kids to take care of, a flailing home business, 20+ people to feed, 17 kids to educate, and four houses that will almost certainly be taken out from under them in good time, there shouldn't be a penny to spare for a 40-something woman to return to school. I really can't see it any other way.