TeeMo

Olivia could not be less interested in Rod and is not a good enough actress to convince anyone otherwise. The show should let this particular plot point go. Rod definitely seems to have Austen’s number though and said some pretty unflattering things about him despite being his friend. Craig said similar things on a recent WWHL which makes me think that as bad as Austen comes off on TV, we are only seeing a portion of how awful he actually is. Once again I will say that I am impressed that JT manages to make my skin crawl more than any other man on this show which is saying something considering how gross and awful they all are. He is trying real hard to sell himself as a chivalrous southern gentleman but all I am getting is sociopath who potentially has some bodies buried in his backyard. His pathetic attempts to win Taylor over we uncomfortable to watch. The flashback to Austen in his first season was jarring because he seemed like a baby in both looks and voice. All three of Shep, Austen and Craig have developed a really raspy voice that seems to be caused by several years of hard living.

It felt like this episode had a lot of weird editing which I guess is understandable if they were working around a real life tragedy. Austen repeatedly saying he didn’t want to make everything about him and then just making everything about him was completely unsurprising and on brand. I thought Olivia was surprisingly googly eyed over the basket Austen dropped off and how he dropped it off and it was honestly the first time in 2 seasons I thought that maybe there had been some real feelings there. Venita was actually my MVP in this episode for having the sense to not invite Madison to the little gathering for Olivia (and for trying to not come out and say the reason is that Madison is kind of a nasty witch while sort of saying it anyway) and for trying to keep Taylor away as well in the interest of not upsetting Olivia. The gluten free chicken fingers were also a nice touch. JT and his mother appeared to be on a different show entirely though I did appreciate that even JT’s mother doesn’t seem to have much patience for JT’s bad reality show acting.

Incredible that JT has such little screen time but still manages to make me dislike him more than anyone else on this show. And that’s saying a lot since this is a group of wildly unlikeable people. I am annoyed that the show is clearly trying to make Madison some sort of mean girl rude version of Cameron - the cast member who isn’t actually involved in any of these storylines and has her own life she doesn’t reveal much of while commenting on everyone else’s drama. It worked with Cam because she was mostly likable and also seemed liked a decent friend. Madison is a viper who flits from group to group leaving little tidbits of things to stir the pot and rile everyone up and then waltzes off with that insufferable smirk on her face. This Taylor/Austen business can keep trying but it will never be Scandoval. Olivia and Austen barely dated, Shep and Taylor were broken up and it seems like nothing much really happened anyway. A far cry from continuing an affair with someone in your friend group while your girlfriend of 9 years is off at her grandmother’s funeral. I wonder if Taylor realizes that most of the upset Shep is feeling is over some sort of bro code violation and not because he can’t bear the thought of her being with someone else.

I don’t know how to explain this but Shep is exactly the kind of guy I would hate in real life but inexplicably find somewhat charming on TV so I will admit my bias here but I agree. He is still Shep which is problematic for a thousand reasons but he seems less hot headed and on edge, always spoiling for a fight than he has the past couple of seasons. Much more like the original more likable but still problematic Shep of earlier seasons. In the scenes at the party last week I thought he did maybe still care about Taylor a bit when he was asking about her trip and referencing the one they took together but then his lack of reaction to the Austen/JT stuff made me think he is obviously all the way over her and doesn’t care what happens at this point and is just playing along for the drama here. Guess we’ll see how it plays out.

Olivia’s date seemed like the most well adjusted person this show has seen in a while. Something about Olivia bugs me and I can’t figure out what it is but I am annoyed every time she is on screen. JT can pack his golf clubs and get off my screen, he was super obnoxious and cringey to watch. This episode did a piss poor job of trying to convince us that these two new randos - Rodrigo and JT- are actually friends to the existing cast and not just add-ons because we need some new characters with Austen, Shep and Craig repeatedly going off on their own to have actual conversations. It is super interesting to me that Shep, Austen and Craig do manage to repeatedly mend their friendship after having at least one nasty blowout every single season.

I thought this was the best episode in a long time. The last couple of seasons have been a real snooze fest. Shep’s a mess but I feel like maybe he’s starting to have tiny moments of actually grappling with his childish behavior. He seemed genuinely concerned with how to approach Taylor and kept relatively calm (for him 😂) when she started losing her mind screaming about all the times he cheated on her. He’s an idiot for thinking they can be friends but he’s consistent at least. It’s unfortunate for Taylor that she is only now learning that generally speaking, the friends of your ex are his friends first. You could tell Craig was trying not to say it so bluntly but her outburst really pushed him into basically saying “I tried to look out for you but he’s my friend, not you.” Ouch. Also I fully believe Craig trying to stop Shep from drunkenly kissing some girl in a bar was motivated more by wanting to stop his friend from doing something that would blow up his life than from specifically trying to look out for Taylor. Every time I see Austen and Madison in the same room I am left wondering if they had some sort of electric sexual chemistry because they barely seem to have ever liked each other as people - even when they were together!

I don’t even like Katie and agree that she’s been a bit over the top with her reactions to the Schwartz/Raquel kiss but last night I thought she would have been fully justified in knocking Raquel AND Schwartz the eff out. It’s one (pathetic) thing that Schwartz has let Sandoval fight his battles with Katie for years but he and Sandoval have been friends for ages and I can see how a weak loser like Schwartz would let his longtime friend insert himself into arguments he doesn’t belong in. But Schwartz and Raquel are barely anything to each other. Schwartz standing there while Raquel kept beating a dead horse as Katie repeatedly asked her to please just go away was one of the most pathetic things I’ve seen on reality TV. Katie was right a few weeks ago in her TH when she said he may have loved her but he didn’t like her (though I even question how much he even loved her) because he spends half of every episode pretending he hopes they can still be friends and that he is just an aw, shucks, sad nice guy and half the episode letting Sandoval and Raquel get in all the digs against Katie he is too cowardly to get in himself. It’s gross.

It felt like we were already 4 days into this wedding extravaganza and Scheana says it would be nice if Lala could focus on her for the next three days and I screamed “how many days is this wedding?” at my TV.

All this time I thought you were all calling Nurie’s second baby Newmie as a jokey take on Nemo and I just now discovered she named that poor child Newman. My mind is blown.

I think it’s reasonable that Jill’s dad would offer to take the family out for dinner as a gift/thank you since he and Ma Noyes are now living in Jill and David’s home. It is tough to talk my parents out of paying for things when they want to gift something to me like that (though I doubt Jill tries to talk them out of it) What’s foul is Jill posting about it after she’s spent months begging people to donate money to help pay for her parents’ expenses. Not everything needs to be posted online.

One of the things that has always frustrated me about this show was the party line they’d always spout about how polygamy was superior because you gained sister wives and their support alongside your husband. It was absurd from the start since none of these women were really supportive of each other in any real way to begin with but beyond that it was infuriating that they could not see that it is possible to have a network of supportive female friends or relatives who don’t also sleep with your husband. Janelle and Christine had the closest thing to what they tried to sell as a mutually beneficial sister wives relationship but even they had some underlying tension…until one of them walked away from their shared husband. Janelle and Christine now look like true friends who are able to support and care for each other without the emotional minefield of knowing that their husband was sleeping in the other’s bed the night before. Their bond being stronger now proves the exact opposite of the claims they’ve been trying to make about polygamy since season 1. And it’s glorious.

I’ll confess that I was only half paying attention to this snoozefest but it seemed like both Lindsay and Carl said more than once that they really got together the first week of October and the thing with Austen happened before that at the end of September so I was super confused when everyone kept mentioning the dates as if they implicated Lindsay in cheating on Carl. It seems like she and Carl were flirting and affectionate all day at the wedding but that was it, she got drunk and grabbed Austen’s penis (why anyone would want to get that close to Austen is beyond me) and then a week or so later she and Carl decided to actually give it a go and make it official. I don’t even like Lindsay but where is the scandal they all keep raising their eyebrows over?

Kody keeps blaming Christine and Janelle for turning their kids against him but he conveniently forgets that the Brown kids have an opportunity to see sides of their parents other kids do not thanks to this TV show. They aren’t just getting Christine’s version of the story versus Kody’s version of the story, they also get the TLC version of the story. And it’s clear to anyone who has been watching this show from the beginning that in the case of Christine and Kody, there is one person who truly cares about the family and has tried and tried to make things work for the sake of it and there is one person who hasn’t. These kids don’t need Christine to “poison” them against Robyn when they can watch years of TLC footage of her manipulative tactics and his favoritism and come to their own conclusions about what is really going on here.

Meri bloviating about feeling betrayed by Christine after she spent months thinking she was sending sexy photos of a banana to some rich, handsome tycoon who was going to whisk her away from the Brown family circus was certainly a moment in the previews for next week.

The nanny.