MyPeopleAreNordic

Seriously, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - THIS is actually peak Jude Law. He should hire the spray tan/makeup team & hairpiece people from this series to work in every project he does ever. Also, while I wasn’t paying attention over the last 3 years, Jude Law has morphed into this era’s Cary Grant. THIS is actually Jude Law in his prime, acting & looks (lots of credits for the looks to the amazing hair/makeup team, once again). I seek atonement for my hubris when I thought peak Jude Law was him beautifully lazing around Italy in “The Talented Mr. Ripley” two decades ago. I knew not what I had done. Hot Pope Pius is actually peak Jude Law. When is the sacrament of reconciliation being offered again at Primetimer? Because I also need to confess to this sin. 😉 I’m off to re-memorize the Act of Contrition since I haven’t been to confession in over a decade (shhh....don’t tell the nuns I grew up with, although they’re probably too busy dancing to ”The Good Time Girl” & low-key subverting the patriarchy to pay me any mind 😉 ).

Probably unpopular opinion: I loved pretty much everything about this episode. The only thing that could have made it even better IMO was if during the crowd surfing scene, we saw Lenny’s parents in the crowd (like at his speech in Venice), but this time they were among the people holding him up as he was lifted/moved via the crowd. That would have given me a bit of closure (or knowing Lenny had some kind of closure about his parents) as to orphan Lenny’s storyline with the parents who abandoned him, which felt like an integral part of Lenny’s story/character in the first season. I was somewhat underwhelmed by the show until Lenny/Pius woke up (& somewhat disappointed in Malcovich’s character arc as well) but have really enjoyed it since Lenny has been back awake. This episode was gorgeous and moving. Even with the plot not being as explained as it could have been for some characters (the Lenny cult’s devolution), it was pretty darn close to perfection to me. Maybe I’m just enamored of Hot Pope Pius, though. 😉 I also really loved Voiello becoming pope. On one hand, I’d love to see a season of Pope Voiello, but on the other hand, I remember that I love this show best when Hot Pope Pius is around (and speaking or living, not just silently appearing alongside characters). I’m okay if it stops here, but hope there’s some way to do a final season with Pope Voiello (and bring back SisterMaryDianeKeaton as part of his storyline) AND also include Hot Pope Pius without doing the “he’s not really dead” thing again (although I don’t easily see how that could be done). As much as I like Voiello and want to see him as Pope, I also think Jude Law & his character is what makes this show. Same. I was raised Catholic (12 years plus kindergarten of Catholic school, mass every Sunday growing up) & still identify as culturally Catholic, but I don’t actively practice aside from the “fun” folk Catholicism stuff, which in south Louisiana includes Mardi Gras, crawfish boils on Fridays during Lent (such a big sacrifice, haha), etc., I feel the same way about this show. I get why some people might find it sac-religious at face value, but it’s the opposite for me. It reminds me that the Catholic Church is an imperfect institution ran by men - who are humans grappling with bureaucracy, human nature (& its dark side); legacies of outdated/misogynist traditions vs. modernity; & the inability of humans to still totally understand even when given miracles/seeing the power of a higher power/seeing heaven/resurrecting from the (brain) dead, etc (and how they grapple with not having all the answers even if they have some - for example, Lenny knew that what Brannox had said at his brother’s grave but didn’t know that the terrorists at the end were members of the cult dedicated to him). Like another of my favorite (and criminally under-appreciated) shows, part of the beauty of this series is seeing the characters (& viewers) ultimately “let the mystery be.” This last episode made the so-so first handful of episodes totally worth it (for me). And gods, I loved that last little Kubrick-wink with little kid Pius running into Voiello. Hunter S Thompson said “it never got weird enough for me” about life. Well, this season was just the right amount of weird to scratch a strange itch I didn’t know I really had as a lapsed cultural Catholic (who also loves her some Hot Pope Pius & thinks this is the best Jude Law has ever looked with that perfect spray tan & hairpiece). Thank you for that, Sorrentino & Law (and shout out to the actor who plays Gutierrez for breaking my heart in almost every scene and to Voiello’s actor for stealing so many scenes).

As someone who was a teen during the super-plucked, thin eye brow style phase of the late 90s, all I can say about this current, opposite eye brow trend is: YOU ALL WILL REGRET THIS WHEN YOU LOOK AT PICTURES A DECADE FROM NOW. You'll see this trend was kind of ridiculous & looked especially ridiculous on the average person (compared to famous people & models with make-up artists & the like). (But I feel Anna & Josh regret a lot about their lives already, anyway, but aren't about to change anything.)

https://www.beautywithtori.com/ Did ya'll know this was a thing? Cause it's a thing. (I think Tori is a NuSkin consultant and I think NuSkin is a MLM? Is that what's going on here?) Edit: It is indeed NuSkin (which is a MLM), although her website is set up to make it not super obvious that the brand is NuSkin. Googling tells me she's been part of this MLM since 2018 and Ian Ziering was (or is?) in it, too. I guess at least she doesn't seem to push it too much in her @torispelling instagram (she has a @beautywithtori one that does a little more).

They talk about/post about how Stella was bullied by boys both times at both schools and how she used to want to grow up to do something that would benefit and empower other women & girls. I went to an all-girls high school and I know how mean girls can be, but I was bullied way less at the all-girls high school than my co-ed middle school (where both boys & girls bullied me). Stella has now been at three different schools due to bullying. If this continues, perhaps Stella may want to try to see if she feels more comfortable at an all-girls school. (I think Tori graduated from an all-girls school, the Westlake School for Girls, which merged with a boys' school sometime in the 90s and became Harvard-Westlake. I think Tori was in one of the last graduating all-girls classes. So the option of trying an all-girls school for Stella shouldn't be too foreign to her.) And I agree with other posters that the stuff their parents have put out into the public about their private lives, etc. probably don't help with the bullying the kids get. 😞

Babies grow so fast. I don't want any more kids (and can't have any more after my total hysterectomy anyway), but I do so miss my kids being babies. I love babies. I wish I could go back in time and play with my kids when they were little babies like Vaeda here one more time. They grow so fast. Interact with her, Catelynn! #MakingYourBedIsNotLiberating Look, I don't care if you make your bed everyday or not. (I don't make my bed at hotels, but I also don't take selfies with unmade hotel beds in the background.) Before you take a selfie with your bed in the background, MAKE YOUR BED! You picked your clothes, did your hair, and posed for the 'gram, make your bed for the 'gram, too. It will probably take less time to make your bed than to pick out your bracelets or perfect your pose. (Sorry, unmade beds & heaps of clothes in the background of "public" figures' social media posts when they've obviously taken time to style/fix/pose themselves for the camera is becoming one of my pet peeves.) It's like you went this far...just tidy up the bed in the background so it won't be so distracting from the look your look that you think is so "put together." Also, that unmade bed is still more inspiring than that 6th grade poetry. GIRL, you already have a baby. Vaeda just turned one. I had my kids 16 months apart (by surprise, not by design), so maybe I can't say anything, but I wish she'd enjoy the baby she currently has right now (see above post about Vaeda trying to get her attention). They're still so much more palatable than Jenelle or Amber, though, so I'll give them that. (Low bar, I know.)

I also really miss the story line about Lenny's parents who abandoned him at the orphanage and his struggle to understand it/search for them. I was almost expecting him to immediately be like "I saw them before I blacked out" after he woke up....but maybe he got all his answers when he saw heaven or...his mind is occupied with the whole "whoa, I was dead and I'm totally alive" stuff. In any case, I found that story line and how it shaped Lenny's life and actions to be the most interesting season 1 story line....and it feels unresolved. Is Lenny no longer bugged by it? Will he be bugged later? Is it a total non-issue for the resurrected? I hope there's some kind of answer in the next two episodes rather than ignoring it.

Same. I almost cried when the boy had a tear and I full-on bought everything Pius was telling him, even though I have no idea what his lips were actually saying. And I personally am also not religious. Jude's acting there was just perfect. Also, I've really been missing Hot Pope Pius Law. Swoon. Beautiful Jude Law in his beautifully done hair piece & spray tan in beautiful locations. I don't know why I was trying to kid myself that I watched this show for another primary reason. Ah, that makes sense. I thought he was letting them glimpse into Heaven to see their son there, but that explanation makes more sense, I think (from what I remember of the scene).

I like dogs more than I like most people, especially more than I like Jenelle & David. I hate these people and I hate that they keep getting dogs (and other animals).

I am kind of shocked at how bored I've been at least half the time by Malkovich. I'm not sure if it's the character or the character's story line (rather than Malkovich's acting), but ugh. Pope Malkovich's story line has had some glimmers of hope for becoming interesting, but I'm much more bored by Pope Malkovich than I expected.

I'm glad I'm not the only one seeing the resemblance! Jude Law really has kind of morphed into Cary Grant as he's aged (probably due in part to the amazing hairpiece and make-up/spray-tan team on this show, who I think he should try to get to work on every project he's in. IMO, Jude Law has never looked as beautiful as he does as Pius)! Ha! I concur!

Um, pretty sure we all know what happened (and you added details about how and where it happened with the kitchen counter tweet, Kail). And go ahead and justify how you came to the decision to have another kid with a man who you acknowledge doesn't do anything for the child you already have with him. I'm sure there's a total justification beyond "I thought trap baby 2 might do the trick to lock Chris down," so go ahead and tell us. We'll wait.

Nathan doesn't look all that hopeless in this picture. Maybe Jill has taught Nurie how she can grift him some orthodontia (as someone who needed a lot of orthodontic work, I feel terribly for him that his family couldn't afford it and I'm not trying to make fun of him. It sucks to get made fun of for your teeth being crooked and weird, since you have no control over that). Maybe he looks shiny & terrified in pictures Jill posts because Jill & the whole Rod clan have been around so much. That would be enough to make anyone sweaty, break out from stress, and look like they're terrified. Hopefully once he and Nurie are married, he will be able to put a little space between his new household & Jill, even if it's by hooking up (And Kaylee) with his brother or introducing Renee to a Duggar boy. I will give Nathan credit for having the confidence to smile with his teeth showing. Years after a lot of orthodontic work, I still don't have it. It's just been ingrained in me to smile with my lips closed from years of having crooked teeth. So good for Nathan for having the confidence to smile real smiles, even if they're imperfect. It also speaks a tiny bit well for the Kellers, IMO, that their two non-Fundie daughters wore pants in the picture. There isn't any of this "I feel convicted to wear pants but I'm still going to wear skirts only around my parents out of 'respect'" (ie: fear) capitulation that we see with Jinger or with the Bates girls when they're with their families. The Kellers might be slightly less authoritarian than the Duggars & Bateses, which could be good for Nurie. (The Keller parents still have awful beliefs & basically sold of Anna to the despicable Duggar crown prince, so I'm still not singing their praises.)

I feel like it's some kind of weird Fundie Super Power for some of these fundie families. The girl children of the Duggars and the Kellers especially seem to somehow inherit a combination of their parents' genes that is much more aesthetically pleasing than how the gene combo plays out in boy children once they're adults. I also hope Suze and Nurie become friends and Suze can subtly influence Nurie's make-up and hair choices (as well as maybe encouraging her toward some modern modest clothing), as it seems Anna is going to ignore Nurie as long as she can and while Priscilla seems sweet, I doubt it would occur to her to subtly try to help/influence Nurie's look (as it seems Priscilla isn't particularly in tune with what's going on around her). Suze has to know that poor Nurie & the Rods are a mess, especially since J-Rod had to resort to taking a picture of a picture of Suze to include in her thank you for Nathan & Nurie's engagement ring cake. The fact that she made that cake for Nathan & Nurie speaks to the fact that Suze must care about them, though (unlike Anna who is apparently too much of a Duggar Princess-In-Law to acknowledge the Rods marrying into her family).

How many more Duggarling births will there be? There will be an infinite number of opportunities for her to tell that story over and over. Hopefully, the show will go off of the air at least before we've had to hear it at the 30th grand-Duggar birth. Maybe it was both. Maybe Abbie wanted some privacy and used JD's possessive streak to get him to advocate with Big Boss JB that Abbie wasn't going to be home-birthing on the toilet for the cameras to see. In either case, I'm glad Abbie didn't have to be subjected to that.

My son is five and talks ALL the time. My daughter is 16 months younger and used to not talk very much. It wasn't until my son went to preschool that she started talking a LOT, too. She used to not really need to say anything because my son would always try to answer/speak for her and because it's hard for anyone to get a word in when he's talking. Spurgeon doens't go to preschool or anything, so I guess Henry doesn't have the "need" to talk much with his talkative big bro around all the time.

I bet it's something incredibly boring - like he accidentally read something that contained a passage from a non-King James version of the Bible or he watched five minutes of an R-rated movie before he could turn the TV channel. My guess is though that he's either struggling with school (poor guy, I want him to break free from Fundie-dom by having an actual career/skill, but he's been "prepared" by Jill's SOTDRT education) or he's simply worried that he's not the current golden child getting most of Jill's attention since Nurie & Nathan are courting. Poor Tim is probably trying to figure out how he can be introduced to an available sister of a Duggar-in-law so he can be Sweet Mama Jill's Most Precious #1 child. (I figure he & Nurie are constantly in competition for who is Sweet Mama Jill's Goldenest Golden Child. Tim got lots of attention & praise from Sweet Mama Jill last year when he went off to school and some at the start of this school year, but Nurie & her Duggar-adjacent courtship are getting all the attention right now and will until at least July.)

I was just over in the Sweet Fellowship thread where there are several pictures of the family of Jill Rodrigues with Anna's parents (Anna's brother is engaged to the eldest Rod daughter). I never noticed before how much Anna looks like her mother (but Anna is still young/thin, has had the advantage of orthodontia, and has JB giving her spending money for modern clothes). I take back what I said before about Anna possibly having some tweaks done. I think her face has just rapidly started changing into her mom's face over the past year or so. (My face looked more like a mix of both of my parents until I hit my 30s. I've looked a little more like my mom than my dad each year since I turned 30. Maybe Anna has this "used to resemble both parents but is aging into her mom's face" phenomenon that I have going on, too.) Maryella is a beautiful baby, even if her name looks like Mary-Yell!-A and if her pathetic disgraced conservative-politican-wanna-be and his adoring wife are her parents. Maryella looks like she knows what's up and is embarrassed of her parents already. I'd be fake sleeping in all photos with them, too.

Okay, Kail (and Ana). Go get graduate degrees in education or child psychology. Read peer-reviewed research data and conduct your own research to be submitted to scholarly journals. Then tell me how we can best reach most (not all) students in the current world we have (stagnate wage growth, single parents/both parents working, limited resources, limited space, different learning styles) in a system tasked with educating the public on a shoestring budget. There's a lot that could be done better in our education system and it's not a perfect fit for every learner as it is. But if you feel this passionate about it, go devote a few years to studying (and I don't mean just reading social media posts) how we can make it better within the economic, time, and social constraints schools unfortunately have to face. Use your MTV $$$ & lack of regular 9-5 to go educate yourself & then use your position as a "reality TV star" to advocate to change it. Plenty of educators & parents would love to be able to have the time and funds to research and try to implement better educational practices in our society. Kail has that chance here. But she'll just tweet instead (kind of like how she'll just retweet anti-vax conspiracy psuedo-science that Karen posted on the internet instead of pursuing some public health or immunology college classes). I feel like either the kids are getting teased at school, the other parents at the private school are not even pretending anymore like Kail isn't trash, and/or that she worries how to afford paying private school tuition for 4 kids once the show ends (and she knows Chris won't be ponying up for private school for Lux & his little bro Olay). Of course, Kail can't just send them to public school since she's "high profile" and all, so I guess she'll want to home school* them. I hope she keeps in mind that having kids (especially the older ones) home for home school will considerably get in her way when chasing losers and doing whatever it is she does during the day when the boys are at school (Stalking Chris? Following everything said about her on social media? Texting Chris's other girls? Retweeting anti-vax nonsense? Podcasting?). *I have no problem with home schooling when parents actually oversee a real (non-Duggarish) education for their kids and I understand traditional schooling isn't for every student. However, I don't think those are Kail's real reasons for retweeting about the education system. I think it's because it's trendy among her anti-vax peeps to criticize anything pertaining to the norms of American child-raising and to get attention for being a "woke" Karen-mom.

Yep. Kids are ruthless as pre-teens when it comes to teasing. Poor Isaac. I have secondhand embarrassment for Kail and I don't even know the girl in real life. That's poor, sensitive Isaac's mom and I'm sure awful tweens tease him about it. 😞

Is Nathan's younger brother the nice-looking (by Fundie standards) young man in the striped shirt and blue shoes who is sitting with another boy by the door (in the video of the Rods & Kellers singing/fellowshipping)? If so, I like him for Kaylee (assuming he isn't a sociopath or anything). (And Kaylee) and Not Nathan would make a nice looking Fundie couple.

There appear to be a total of eleven clothing items for sale on the Tierra Reign website. Six of those eleven (so more than half) are $20 Tierra Reign Logo Shirts is slightly different colors/styles. https://tierrareign.com/collections/all 🙄🙄🙄 I guess at least they're kind of following through with something they started (which is a big deal for people from this franchise to do), but Tierra Reign's "re-launch" is underwhelming (yet still better than Tyler's poetry).

I know a lot of people will disagree, but honestly.... Being left home alone for Friday evening and Saturday morning would hardly be the worst thing that's happened to Sophia. She'll be 11 in a few weeks. I stayed home alone occasionally for a few hours at 11 as did plenty of my friends. Some stayed home alone all day in the summer at age 11 when their parents went to work (this was in the mid-90s). Google tells me it's not illegal for an 11 year old to stay home alone in California (but maybe staying home alone overnight might be seen as different from staying home alone while your parent is at work during the day or after school). I am NOT saying it's safe or right for an eleven year old to be left alone overnight (especially when they have followers who might be able to tell where they live via social media posts)....but....I feel like of all the sh!t Sophia has witnessed in her life, this is relatively innocuous. Compared to being brought along on her mom's escorting excursions, all the psychotic emotional/verbal abuse/weirdness (and physical abuse at least one time years ago between Deb & Farrah), and the fact that she's probably getting no actual education from her Farrah-directed "home schooling," I'm thinking a night alone wasn't as scary or half as damaging in the long run as what she's seen in her 11 years in the Abraham Vortex.

GET.A.JOB.

That is very sweet of Gary to post. I know it's true and he means it. But Gary....maybe drive the kids to/from school sometimes when you can, offer to let her sleep while you stay up with one of the girls once in a while, surprise her by cleaning the house while she's out, and get her day at the spa or something while you watch the kids. I say this as a mom - these words are super nice and it is necessary for one's partner to express their thankfulness for the everyday parts of running a household and parenting (it doesn't have to be public, but I think it's important for partners to tell each other these things). But it's also important to act on these words by doing things - even if schedules permit that you can only do them every so often - so your partner can have time for themselves (and not just on Mother's Day and Valentine's Day, but out of the blue). If you read here, Gary, take the kids to school tomorrow and let her sleep in. Take the kids on an outing for the day so she can binge Netflix. Offer to watch the girls while Kristina goes to a weekly yoga class or a night out with the girls (or a night in watching TV with friends sans kids). (It's possible Gary does this already, but I just feel like we need to say that the words of acknowledgement/thanks are important and necessary, but also, please act on them by at least offering to help the parent who doesn't make time for themselves be able to make that time & encourage them to do so. It makes a difference for everyone in the family and their happiness.)