itainttippithebird

Ha, I love it - taking the "is it ok to punch a nazi?" question to its ultimate, brains eating extreme. (The only wrinkle being then LIV will be a nazi for several days, which, nooooo, her being that racist grandpa dude was plenty bad enough.)

I'm actually pretty stoked to see Ali return to her bitchy baby sociopath roots this episode - Ali, Our Lady of Sadness and Boxy Blazers, was boring the shit out of me! Of course her jealousy and pettiness is irrational and insane - isn't that what we're here for?! That's the premise of the whole damn show! :)

Ditto on the "worried about Taylor" front. This ep gave me a lot of complicated feels, but to point to just one set of them - it really felt kinda sleazy and gross to coerce her out and onto camera when it was very obvious that she wasn't ready to be out about her sexuality publicly. Yes, she signed a release so it's her own "fault" or choice, but what we saw felt very coercive, no doubt the pressure was even higher behind the scenes/unedited . I would bet the production assured her that being on the show would be the best thing for her and rah rah rah gay pride - but it seems likely that things didn't turn out that well for her, given her affect on the show and her refusal to do any follow up. She probably doesn't fit very neartly into their "revealing yourself one Catfish will make your whole life better" narrative, and that's highly inconvenient for them. I would not be surprised if she withdrew from Mecca and production because the whole thing was kinda traumatizing for her. Of course, she shouldn't have deceived Mecca or used her profile, but that doesn't mean she doesn't deserve to come out on her own time without mountains of coercion. I was kinda surprised iO didn't express any ambivalence about this (that they showed anyway).

Seems to me the writers came across "The Traffic in Women" when researching this season, given the strong "marriage is the sneakiest traffic of all" vibes in this ep!

Re: Saint - there are a lot of whispers that he has Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, but nothing is public/confirmed that I know of. These poor kids - their lives really bum me out, as much as I love watching their parents' antics.

My guess is Shay is going to want an abortion but be blocked by the Christian shelter; Kimora will have to become her reluctant advocate who is torn up about it inside be she would do anything to be pregnant.

Would just like to add to the Amber Valletta convo that she was FIRST famous in the mid-90s as a model/it girl, along side Shalom Harlow, Alec Wek, Chloe Sevigny, etc. The funny thing about being "too old" to know the reference is she's probably best known among 35-45 year old women who watched House of Style and were into Anna Sui, Todd Oldham, Betsy Johnson in the 90s and then secondarily known to 20-25 year olds who know her more recent acting jobs. In the parlance of Who Weekly, she was a 90s Them who is now a solid Who. It's almost like answering "who is Luke Perry?" by saying he's the dad on Riverdale - it's not a too old or too young question, but a matter of generationally different reference points?

I cannot believe the number of Ericka haters up in here! And the level of vitriol! Bums me out. That said, she totally DID overreact to Eileen (and has since owned up as such) - I think she was at wit's motherfucking END because of Dorit and totally lashed out inappropriately in the heat of the moment. But she had Dorit's number SOLIDLY in hand - Dorit can't constantly keep tabs on the number of compliments and confidences Ericka brings her into and then turn around and pretend like she doesn't care if Ericka doesn't like her! Absurd.

Bama: Cherry Jones is two years younger than Tim McKay, so I was kind of bewildered when another recap (Vulture, I think?) called Laurie Ann his mother! But also in the very first scenes, she talks about "Daddy" and his health with her brothers - the siblings, led by Laurie Ann, are starting to take over Hesby on their ailing father's behalf.

Timothy Hutton from S1 and S2 is another interesting example: in both narratives, his major arc has to do with fatherhood (or more symbolically, being a father figure/role model of what it means to be a man) and in both, his major moral quandary orbits around the question of what does it mean to do the right thing - to stick it out, no matter what, or to change course while there's still time? In the second season, S1 "Russ" gets a chance to turn back the clock and correct his mistakes as a father/role model, but as S2 "Coach Dan" - who is able to be there for his children (biological child and his team) and doesn't cut and run. But does he end up in a better or more resolved place? No, because whereas Russ ran too fast (then stuck it out too long vis-a-vis the house/the case - Russ's timing is generally terrible), Dan gets the timing right in terms of standing behind his kids in the delicate moment of adolescence - yet that alone is not enough, because in this lifetime he actually fails his daughter and his team by being TOO concerned with loyalty & support and not enough with character. As a result, he has a sociopath for a daughter (only being slightly hyperbolic here, ha) and a team full of young men who have deeply fucked up ideas about sex/sexuality/gender/consent. Will Season 3 Tim Hutton repeat the patterns? Time will tell! (Obviously, this is a subjective interpretation of the characters and their downfalls, but it works with the theory.)

This one. I don't think we can say much yet with only two episodes, but I think Felicity Huffman stretches this theory the thinnest, given her major departure in character/moral dilemma in season 3 compared to 1 and 2. I guess it remains to be seen if the experiment works for all of them!

I don't know if this has been posited elsewhere, but I have a kind of grand unifying theory of American Crime seasons - it's not something I believe is "real" or yet to be revealed or something, but more of a thought experiment. What if the different seasons are representative of parallel universes, where the same souls (the recurring characters) are struggling with the same basic moral/ethical quandaries, just in an infinite number of possible life trajectories? Richard Cabral's characters got me thinking about it first - when Season 2 rolled along, I thought, "oh, that's a sweet little bit of irony, that Hector finally got his 'job in technology', albeit through another storyline." Then I started noticing all these other similarities between the two characters (that I think you could extend to this season's Isaac, probably) - the desire to be something bigger and grander than what life has dealt you, the way those dreams (or delusions of grandeur) can actually lead to your downfall, etc. Then I started thinking about how that would apply to other characters, and while I don't have it all mapped out or anything, I think it's an interesting lens to apply to the seasons - how are Felicity Huffman's, or Timothy Hutton's, or Regina King's characters in each season united by similar struggles, etc? P.S. Lovvvvving the podcast, Quinn and Joe!

I am well-versed in urban dictionary, but I don't trust it on this one - Bananas was clearly being facetious and fake concerned the whole convo, so tonally, it fit that he was mocking it as an invidious distinction! But fine, I'll accept that blasting = something more akin to "the shocker" if the kids say so....

Co-signed, one hundo- there are unmistakable lowkey homophobia vibes in the air...

I was for SURE that that was going to win best reaction of the week! Unlike Jenna, she stuck the landing and stuck it with aplomb. I ducked out of the Challenge about 12 seasons ago and now I'm back - do we know what Cara Maria's sexual identity is? When Nicole said she didn't know if she was straight or bi or what, I was like, but WOULDN'T YOU?!?, from this nonstop hook up fest of a show?! I'm guessing that means CM is (at least understood to be) straight and this is wishful thinking on Nicole's part, but I got a total queer vibe from Cara Maria so I was taken aback at this. [ETA: I'm now on this week's episode and I'm like, oooooh riiiiiight, Cara Maria and Abram! Nevermind.] Finally, the whole "weakest link" discourse around Shane is, no doubt, partially about size/body mass, but really, it smacks of unspoken homophobia - a subtle assessment that he's too femme-y to be taken seriously even though he's just as fit and strong as all the other dudes. Side eye. (Though I did get a chuckle out of TJ's awkward reaction to Shane's gay tourism concept.) Oh! And I assumed Bananas was being facetious when he made the distinction between finger banged and blasted, but now you've got me worried I'm out of the slang loop, Sarah D. Bunting!

300000% agreed with Sarah on this - this bums me out so much. And I didn't dislike the old show, as OOT as Tyra was! It was its own, weird, absurd thing. But then the new hosts and style gave the show a breath of fresh that it really revived it. And this feels like a devolution. BOOOO.

I completely forgot that he straps Trouble on the back of his motorcycle until I re-watched and I had a fit of shock giggles thinking about HOW BATSHIT INSANE a cat would go when hurdling through space on a loud ass motorcycle in the open air. I'm pretty sure Trouble will have permanent brain damage by the first night, if not from being tossed to and fro, then from pure terror.

But then she wouldn't have gone all Lolita. That character is a "nymphet" who loves seducing older men. But even Lolita realizes at the end of the book how fucked up it all was...

Completely agree with our recapper Sarah Beckham - these are the kinds of stories SAB has always told and has usually told well until the murkiness of Bay's sexual assault storyline (and I think even some parts of that were really good storytelling). Even if this isn't primarily about the switch or the families - it is, like the Occupy Carlton storyline and many others, about the pains and pleasures of fighting for justice. It's about the ways that love and family and obligation and ethics and friendship create multidimensional struggles that shape who we become - and to me that's what Switched at Birth has been committed to as a motif since the very first season.

Regarding that first screenshot of Trouble - is Trouble a polydactyl?! How VERY Dylan McKay to have a Hemingway cat, lol.

Chagrined to admit that I know this, but Brittany said on social media that the mysterious cheek "bruise" was the smudge left by a diamond shaped temporary tattoo she put on her face the night before, which kinda checks out since they were putting those all over Schwartz the night before.

AGREED! How creepy is that?! Really draws attention to the intense wrongness of it all. For all their faults in glorifying a teacher/teen romance, at least on Pretty Little Liars they all stopped calling Ezra "Mr. Fitz" almost immediately.

Also it wasn't mentioned in the recaps and I haven't seen it here either, but DOES EVERYONE ELSE GIGGLE HYSTERICALLY EVERY TIME THEY CALL BETTY'S MOM "ALICE COOPER"?!?!

I'm almost certain this is the actual "twist." Such a letdown by comparison!

Yeah, that AND the credibility straining workaround they'd have to create to explain why everyone in this entire town is willing to pretend that Polly and Betty were different people, given that they've all known Betty since elementary school, but still. That would be some REAL Dark Archie shit...