ninjago

Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, there lives a clip from an old E! True Holloywood Story or something, of Tommy Lee saying that after their second date, he found out Pam Anderson was in Mexico doing a photo shoot so he flew down there and found her and crashed the shoot, despite knowing it could mess it up for her, because he didn't want to wait for her to come back. So he's controlling and needy and he comes by it honestly. If he wasn't young, and attractive and connected it would be recognized as creepy.

These people are vapid or strange or intense or mixed up or all of the above, but I do think they are authentic. Like, I think this is really how they are. Am I naive? I'm kind of impressed by how open they are and how real I think these situations are. The exception is Kaitlyn. Last season Kaitlyn was open about not liking this group and not wanting to be around them-presumably this was when she had one foot out Brody's door and one foot into Miley's. But she's a hustler and she makes her money via social media, so now she's back and she's got to pretend she cares about Brody, who she left and enjoyed taunting when she was shacked up with Miley. She should be on Vander Pump Rules.

No one does more to prop up the “gay men are bitchy queens” stereotype than Bravo.

I thought the gay son was giving his best David Rose impression. Also, the dad and the pole dancing! I thought of the third property brother!

This is one of those casts where it is obvious many of them would never spend time together. The snobby lady and Mary? The blonde girl and the birthday lady? The show only works if it can at least appear like all of the women want to be part of the group and I think several of these women couldn't care less what several of the other ladies think of them and aren't going to be able to hide it. Has anyone else been watching Bravo long enough to remember Blow Out, about the LA hairdresser, Jonathan Antin? The medispa lady looks like his sister, Robin, who founded the Pussy Cat Dolls. Also, Khloe Kardashian many faces ago.

The shot of him on the plane to Albany and he was reading some sort of self-help book....Oh my God, Mark. Go to a damn shrink for Pete's sake. A real trained one who will actually help you sort your shit out instead of dressing it up as Unique Specialness.

Either I’m just heartless or many of these women need to read some “The Gift of Fear”, because I would punch Mark in the face if he started on the “I’m on your team”, “We are taking them down”, “Poor me, I didn’t know bad things were happening!” Like, Toni (Catherine, Bonnie, Sara, Barbara, etc.) you don’t need to forgive Mark! You certainly don’t need to have him in your home and share a meal with him. Mark was the right hand man through all of this shit-he was the one leading these groups and shaming his wife and attracting people with his propaganda. And he still sees himself as, primarily, a victim.

Why did the filmmakers include Catherine/India in this documentary so prominently when they are making their own documentary, focused exclusively on themselves? They could have been cut out of this series easily-they were almost a distraction, running parallel to the real story.

Can we talk about this conversation? Based on it, and what we've seen so far, it seems like Mark and Nippy had very different relationships to NXVIUM: Mark was looking for a place to belong. He was a true believer in Keith, totally bought in, thought he was doing important work with an important person and disregarded his misgivings because he believed in Keith. His guilt is in being snowed so completely that he contributed to the abuse and aided the building of this cult. Nippy seemed to think Keith was kind of a clown, but NXVIUM had a role for him where he could continue to be recognized as a "leader" and address this issue that he had with toxic masculinity. His guilt is that he thought his thoughts/service were so valuable and his moral compass so true that it outweighed whatever BS Keith was pumping out-in other words "I wouldn't get involved in anything immoral so if I'm involved in it, it's not immoral". Was Nippy at the meeting with the punishments? I like Nippy but boy it is hard to see any of them who were at that meeting as anything other than total sadistic misogynists, including Mark.

My reaction was Keith was abused by a woman as a child and that's why he hates women. Any man who was in that disgusting "fucking" lecture/SOP group should be flagged and monitored. What a bunch of creepy losers. This is the kind of shit that ends up with a group of wackos trying to kidnap the governor of Michigan for being a "bitch".

What a psycho Nancy is. She was hypnotizing people for this POS? What kind of evil person would do that. And that creepy Pam. Her name was on the Consumer Buyline lawsuit, too. Sex with Keith was listed on her top 10 life experiences! She enabled Keith's raping of her 12 year old dog walker. I don't care how anorexic she was, they should have gone way harder at her. She got a soft feature about what a wonderful woman she was earlier in the series. She was a total monster. Also, part of her Claire Bronfman's punishment should be financial settlements with these women like Susan and Toni, whose lives she ruined.

All of these people-not just Keith- had an inflated sense of self. Mark seems like one of those mediocre white guys who thinks he is brilliant and insightful when really he is just tall. Nine women, some of whom have been with Keith for decades quit at once, to be replaced by the Seagram's heiress and the son of the president of Mexico...and Mark? And Mark thinks, "Yes, of course, I am the natural choice to complete this board."

Maybe people didn't know about the sex cult thing, but there was definitely an undercurrent of sleaziness/swinger throughout the group. The first scene I saw was Mark introducing Sarah in front of a group (employees? clients? Is there a difference?) and she comes up and they hug and kiss on the mouth. Then the clips at the retreat, with the women in bikinis. The party with the giant dildo and fake boob costumes. Cut to Keith kissing a succession of women on the mouth casually. The sexual references at the volleyball game. The extremely gushing comments about how physically beautiful the women are. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there wasn't all kinds of screwing going on and that would at least help explain how the group went from self-help and career advancement to sex slavery.

And they devoted a significant amount to Pam in an earlier episode, about her Jness/pro-women stuff and her death, you'd think they might mention some of this other stuff. I don't know, are they going to have an episode where they just go through everyone they've discussed and tell the really bad stuff they've done?

That Pam Cafritz-the one who started the Jness women's group and was one of the women who lived with him and was wearing the fake boob costume at the birthday party and later died of cancer- is like a spider, the way she's always hanging around the periphery, looking earnest. I looked her up and found this on popsugar: "Cafritz's complicit behavior can also be traced back to the '90s during Raniere's CBI days. According to The Times Union, she reportedly hired a 12-year-old girl to walk her dog, encouraging the girl to visit the townhouse she shared with Raniere. Later, Raniere raped the underage victim, whose mother worked for his company. He allegedly had around 60 sexual encounters with her. Two years later, in 1993, the girl reported the abuse to the police. She eventually signed a waiver saying that the claim that Raniere had sex with her was true but that she wouldn't press charges." YAY WOMEN! Also she left Keith $8MM in her will and Frank Partolo thinks Keith poisoned her.

The best part of that thread could possibly be that the acapella group the Crosbys are from Binghamton College...as in, the Bing Crosbys. When Allison Mack met Keith she gave off a very strong DTF vibe. She's the one who dropped the sexual references, not him. I wonder if he was having sex with other members before her or if she was the beginning of him seeing that it was possible.

Oh my gosh I found the forum and crazy Lauren Salzman was on there posting long-winded garbage about how unjust it is to call it a cult and how she enjoys producing musical theater (cut to clip of Mark on stage doing jazz hands). Also, someone says the college groups who complained about having "random", "unqualified" Alison Mack on the judging panel were being "xenophobic". Haha, wait, though, I thought other people's opinions of you were really your responsibility! You're at cause!

These people are so extra. Why is there footage of them putting on some sort of singing and dancing stage show? It's so corny. I think this cult appealed to people who are arrogant, who think they are extra-special and have so much to offer, if only they could put even more focus and resources into themselves to remove blah blah blah roadblocks. It's so self-centered, like all wellness BS. Just total self-absorption and preciousness.

I think she will ultimately end up there, but, God it will kill her to have to throw in with the uncool Fox people. In thinking through the usual platforms, I actually think she probably does in fact agree with a lot of Fox's thinking, but she is online enough to know that isn't what the cool/beautiful people of pop culture espouse and embracing that is going to leave her out in the cold.

Many years ago Kim Richards told Kyle, “Lisa doesn’t care about you. Lisa cares about her family, her businesses and her dogs, that’s all. She doesn’t care about anything else.” And despite any and everything else Kim has done or said, I thought that was an absolutely accurate statement.

I can believe she has some money saved, but, for the time being she has zero income and no way of making any income in the future, certainly not an income that will allow her to maintain anything like her current lifestyle. Regardless of her fan base/followers, who will sponsor her?

But she tweeted “JusticeforFloyd”! How could anyone doubt her sincerity?!

Her podcast got cancelled too. I wonder if she will get dropped by her publishers. In some ways I think she is a victim of her own success. Unlike some of the Housewives or Southern Charm people, I would argue she is one of the highest profile people on the network and there was just no way for them to keep her around when she is really one of the "faces" of their brand. She will miss the money and the fame, but it will absolutely eat her up to not be one of the "cool, beautiful people" on the right side of this movement. Remember how crazy it drove her when she was exiled from the group and had to sit at the loser table with Kristin and not the cute girl table with Lala and Ariana?

I don't like Lisa, but I feel bad for her. She has a very unlikeable way about her. She said something during this challenge-something about having a lot of brussel sprouts?-and the way she said it made me just think, "That is not how someone who knows how to get along with people talks." I don't think she's necessarily doing it on purpose, to be obnoxious or braggy, but more like she just has kind of a bad personality.

Aside from The Pianist I don’t think I’ve seen any depictions of the invasion of Poland in film or TV, so Kasia’s story is interesting. I’m also happen to be reading The Splendid and the Vile so I’m above average disgusted by the Nazis and I don’t know if I can stomach things like the little girl with epilepsy. The British-based characters are not compelling. Is Lois’ bad singing supposed to signify the dearth of talent available/willing? Her brother and Charlie’s mom are one-note so far. Finally, with respect, I hope they find something to do with the gay characters and, specifically, I hope they don’t make the black man the Magical, Self-Assured unicorn used to prop up the white guy that so often black/gay characters are reduced to.