Mothra

Especially in a family that has already lost a child to an intra-family car accident.

Whitney is in a situation not unlike that of the Teen Moms. What's going to happen to her once her show ends? How on earth will she support herself, and how will she manage without the emotional support of her fans? I have a feeling Glenn sees this, hence his desire to get her married and living a life of her own. He understands that she has zero marketable talents--whereas Hunter does work on his own, outside of the show (as do the Barnacles, afaik)--what on earth will she do? She has embraced a glamorous lifestyle, with expensive "vacations" and the opportunity for "apps" but what will happen once the only people who are remotely interested in her are whatever fans she will have left once she's off tv? Ironically, her app thing with Jessica might have taken off, due to her tv-based name recognition, and provided a means of support. Her big-girl dance class was successful and might have led to a franchise-type situation that could have supported her. If she had become a certified fitness instructor, she might have been able to create a career out of that, with fitness classes aimed at overweight women who are afraid to go to the gym--she's had any number of opportunities to create perhaps lucrative long-term businesses but has been unable to follow through on any of them. She has no work ethic. I don't know whether she's lazy or having too much fun getting all the free pleasures tv has provided or extremely short-sighted, but she needs to wake up and smell the latte.

I was glad to see that Dr. Now (lord how I've missed that guy) seems to have abandoned the prescribed diet in favor of a simpler calorie-limited diet, which allowed Nathan to eat the foods he liked (bacon!) instead of foods that probably would be foreign to him and not taste good to him. We were spared the trip to the supermarket where the pounditicipant had to be puzzled and dismayed as he scootered through the produce department. I think eating the foods he liked and still losing weight makes it more likely Nathan *might* have long-term success. Yay for Dr. Now for not persisting in a plan that hasn't worked for lo! these many years and trying something different. I also liked the fact that Dr. Now did not attend to Nathan's medical problems--that awful-looking open wound and his mysterious apparently taint "growth"--but stuck to weight loss. Maybe he referred Nathan to another specialist for his skin treatments. Sure hope so. And another yay for Dr. Paradise (whom I've also missed like Easter candy) for advising them to shop for food and to eat separately. I think that in situations like this, where both partners need to lose massive amounts of weight, there is sabotage, including self-sabotage (like Tammy and Amy) in a sort of sick competition between the two and monitoring of the other which makes the situation untenable. Dr. P. realized from the start that the wife didn't think much of her husband and might not want to see him succeed. Again, not continuing a method ("you can help each other") which has been unsuccessful for billions of years. A likeable pounditicipant, a villainous spouse, mysteriously normal-sized child, filthy double-wide, and dogs! I didn't see any tattoos, but otherwise--Perfection!

That's what I keep waiting for, an "I love you" (not je t'aime because she wouldn't know what it meant) from le Blur. You know that if he had said the slightest thing that could be considered romantic we would have been treated to it. There hasn't even been an "I can't wait to give you a big hug" or anything friend-zonish. This was the most tedious episode yet, and I was surprised to find so many comments about it. Will Whitney go to France? Will she have to buy two seats? Does she fly first class (those seats are more capacious)? Does Novocaine count in her "no pain-killer for me" stance? Will she get dry socket from not caring for her extraction properly? Who will accompany her to France? God I hate myself for watching this show. Once in a while she wears an attractive, well-fitting and appropriate outfit but mostly if it's not a sports bra and stretchy tights it's something see-through and horrifying. She needs help, serious help, in every aspect of her life, and if her fans truly love her, they'll help her get that help instead of encouraging her to display her craziness.

Whatever label is put on Tammy's problem with losing weight, the thing that shouts out is that what they've tried *over and over and over*, namely a controlled-calorie diet, is not something she can do. It's not even a question of "sticking to a diet"--she can't even start out on it--I don't think she comprehends how it's supposed to work. She is truly, truly at death's door, and she truly, truly needs something drastic *right now* to get a couple of hundred pounds off her--and it's not going to be the same thing they've tried with her for lo these many years. Why is the medical profession, specifically the bariatric medical profession, so damned stupid (as in trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result)? With all the experts we have, MDs and nutritionists and psychotherapists--why are they all being trained to use the same, basically useless (since even people who can lose weight on a diet often can't keep it off), techniques, especially with the morbidly obese, like Tammy? This is a real failure, imo, of the medical profession, and does not represent a failure of the patients they have been unable to help.

I'm watching episodes out of order, maybe, but my heart shrank two sizes when I saw Mother Chantel in a hat that was the right size. I cheered up when she assured me that she didn't have to do anything she didn't want to do re: food. Sea Breeze's loyalties, as usual, seem divided. Father Chantel, as usual, has abandoned his testicles at the door. Winter and River, as usual, are looking for a fight. Stasis.

<I have the vapors> <plonk>

Paint? Knees? In all seriousness--and I am very serious, Mr. Buhbye, men assume a lot about what women find pleasurable, and are apparently unaware of the lengths some women will go to avoid acts she may not enjoy performing--without hurting her partner's feelings (or anything else).

My son's dental health was not at risk, but he had a big gap between his top two teeth, and he was braced (successfully) to correct that basically cosmetic defect. I've mentioned before that so great was my desire for braces--I didn't need them, and even if I had, my family couldn't have afforded them--that I made fake ones by wrapping the silver foil from chewing gum wrappers around rubber bands which I then stretched across my upper teeth, anchoring the rubber band around my molars. I did this only while visiting my grandparents because the kids at home knew I didn't have braces. The fake ones worked fine. I felt glamorous and rich.

And Hunter is family, so he can't be canned. Hunter was sort of a mysterious background (non)person for me until the last couple of episodes. Now he is my hero. I want more Hunter. Edit: oh never mind

I have no idea what you're talking about. But shame on you, anyway. What are fake braces? Fake braces are trending among teens in some countries where orthodontic treatment is associated with a high-dollar lifestyle. And as bizarre as it may sound, for some, getting fake braces is just as cool as getting a funky haircut or a tattoo. In the majority of cases, these misguided teens are following a social media trend and are seldom aware of how unhealthy this can be. If you’re a concerned parent or a curious teenager who wants to know more about this trend, read on. In this article, we will dive deeper into artificial braces and the negative effects of wearing them. We will also answer the following questions: ...<snip> Are fake braces dangerous? <snip> Fake braces that look real are hazardous. The cons completely outweigh the temporary joy of following a social media trend. The problem with artificial braces lies in the materials they are composed of. Often toxic, they can even cost you your life if you aren’t careful. Modern problems like the artificial braces trend can only be tackled with awareness and education. For this, health authorities, parents, and guardians will have to be watchful. It's critical to make younger generations understand that no trend is worth risking their health or their lives. https://www.dentaly.org/us/adult-braces/fake-braces/ Apparently there's no danger of whatever it is you're talking about.

I don't do SM but I watch a lot of Reality TV, and I can tell you that many young women whose teeth looked great in previous seasons are now sporting braces.. I do believe it's a Thing, right after spider eyelashes.

I'm relatively new to this forum, so please forgive me if this has been discussed to death: money. What gives with bartering for health care (I saw somebody's ?toothache? being paid for with salmon when I was idling by this show, yet they always have lots of heavy machinery--*new* heavy machinery--at their disposal? Sometimes they have to trade crap (old cedar boards for a boat), yet everybody who needs one has a shiny new chainsaw? Here is my theory: Billy's family had money, and either he inherited that, or there was life insurance, or a suit against the plane manufacturer. Anyway, Billy had lots of money, which he used when it would be too tedious for viewers to watch his sons haul scrap long enough to buy a Husqvarna--can you imagine how much scrap metal those boys would have to come up with to buy even a used chainsaw? And forget about a front-end loader. Gabe's rubber-band expenses alone could send a family to the poor house. Which makes the mystery of Bird's teeth that much harder to fathom. For me it comes down to she just doesn't want her teeth fixed. I also have intimations of lesbianism from Bird; could it be that she wants to be unattractive (in her mind) to men? But not to women? Huh? Or maybe she's asexual? Of course, there's the fact that she's nutty as a fruitcake, too.

Another thing: A while back, I remember one of the boys saying that he'd been told he had a weird accent, which he sort of shrugged off, saying he didn't understand it, either, since they'd grown up in isolation. Well, first of all, I'm not so sure they did grow up in isolation, but assuming they did, how come each of the boys (I don't notice it in the girls) has a *different* strange accent? How did pompous Noah achieve that pomposity, and where is he picking up the fashionable (among young women, anyway) "uh" at the end of words? Did the ADD one learn his lockjaw speech from Katherine Hepburn movies?

Thank you! I thought I'd lost my fucking mind. And it doesn't look like the charcoal/kohl look the girls were trying out, either. That was Maybelline. Of all the Brown boys, Gabe seemed to me the least likely to wear makeup.

I wish someone there with Tammy would acknowledge that trying over and over to make her stick to a diet is fruitless and just give up on that. They've tried so many times to get her to follow a diet, and it's just not going to work, so please can we try something else? I'd like to see a dietitian sit down with her and ask her what she would like to eat, then help her understand that she can continue to eat what she wants, just lesser quantities. This will take a long, long time--years, in fact--but it will take out the message of failure and at some point she will find a feeling of success and be motivated to eat in such a way that she will lose weight. What she needs is a feeling of success, and since she's not going to do anything that's not on her own terms, she's never going to succeed if they keep going the way they are now. For example: She wants eggs, bacon, sausage gravy over biscuits and donuts for breakfast--or whatever it is. You prepare her breakfast *just as she wants it, in just the quantities she wants* and then you say: Tammy, what can we reduce? Instead of six slices of bacon, will 5 1/2 be enough? Or whatever. You can come to an agreement with her to reduce her intake *on her terms* and then go with that. Let her see how she feels with that reduction. Then after a week or so, ask her if she's ok with 5 slices. And so on. *She* is in control. At some point, she will lose a pound--*success*--and at some point she will get it and reduce her intake more quickly. We can only hope she doesn't die first.

And *flat*--how can chanting and spoken word be *flat?* but they are. Edit: They have an unfortunate body type: they are very short, with all their height apparently from the waist down. They choose to emphasize their breasts, which makes them even shorter-waisted, so the overall effect is blockish. I think that a woman with a very short waist who is also very short in height would be better served by not inflating her boobs (in fact by deflating them) and working on making her (long) legs the alluring part of her body. These women, with their flowing hair and enormous tits, tiny waists and overblown hips, are emphasizing the parts I think they should work on camouflaging. Edited again: Have these women ever consulted some professional dresser or someone who could help them shape or dress their bodies properly? I doubt it because they seem to want to present themselves as experts in that area. But they need help.

Never even considered that but holy moly, Princess. Right on the money.

A Dumpster fire! An honest-to-god Dumpster fire! I can die satisfied.

Whitney always was pretty, with skillful makeup (she has little pig eyes which were well concealed--the pigness, not the eyes. Plus you know how I feel about pigs; I wouldn't change their little eyes for all the tea in China--on pigs). She had Babs' true Cupid's-bow lips, so unusual and I think so pretty, and she's gone right ahead and over-plumped them so she just looks stupid. Babs seems to have restrained herself on the lip injections. I'm interested to see what if anything the Botox does to Babs' face. And do those lip injections last forever? I remember somebody on TV who had hideous lip *implants* which couldn't be removed, and I wonder about injections. Maybe they are just gradually absorbed? I think Whitney's lips look awful.

And he's receiving Social Security, all of which means he isn't having to touch his capital (not a euphemism). Between SS and pension a single person who doesn't live in an expensive location could live very comfortably indeed. Not only is Lisa a second person; she is a second person who believes she is married to a millionaire and doesn't understand why he is being such a tightwad when she wants to spend a thousand or so on clothing. If she were to marry him and of course outlive him, and if his will doesn't contain the dreaded "Fluffy Clause" which leaves the bulk of the estate to the care of his cat, she would inherit a big wad of cash. I doubt that she can bear to be touched by him for that long, The smart move for Stan imo (if he is so hot for Lisa) would be to marry Lisa and then dip into his savings to give her what she wants and spend it all before he dies, leaving his widow with zip.

That blew my mind, too. Does she just not bathe? And does she just turn on the shower to clean that litter box? You're supposed to have more than one box if you have more than one cat (I read somewhere one box per cat, plus one)--her whole toilet must be unusable due to the odor. Is she hooked up to some kind of cess pit? Won't that absorbent litter eventually clog her pipes? And what a lazy slob to not bother with litter boxes! Re: Gabe's braces: on other reality shows, young women seem to wear braces forever, and I thought it was some kind of new cosmetic thing, but with all those rubber bands, Gabe's braces are obviously functional, both upper and lower. Bird's teeth are so jacked up I guess we can assume his are, too. I'd love to see a photo pre-braces. Of course Bird's teeth would be a thousand times better if she'd get something to fill in that missing front tooth. Edit: Google is my friend.

I swore I would not watch this (just like I swore I'd never watch Darcey & Stacey), and I should have kept my word. I happened upon the marathon and am currently under doctor's care. But I want to know something: Are braces the new swooping false eyelashes? or are swooping eyelashes the new braces? And where can I get me some? My son wore braces (not for cosmetic reasons--poor child took after his father's side orthodontically) and it seems to me he didn't wear them for more than a year. Am I still hallucinating? I kind of see the appeal: when women are very thin, their teeth do take over their faces, so maybe having braces is like wearing veritical stripes, but good god the nuisance and discomfort! Easier, I would think, to lose some weight and achieve the same effect. And why doesn't Whitney get herself some braces? Will Pedro's sister wear hers forever?

I have worked for an accountant in my long and storied career, and it might surprise you to know how many old folks, once they've paid off their mortgages, have a net worth of a million dollars or more. I look at Stan in his sad little house and think about his bragging that he is a millionaire and smile. Old people who have paid off their mortgages and their car loans, who have no more college tuition or other expense of children, especially old people who benefited from 401K plans or other saving plans where employers matched employee contributions, can easily rack up a net worth of a million dollars or more, and I guess that technically makes them millionaires. I suspect this is the kind of millionaire Stan is, as opposed to the kind of millionaire who, in addition to all that stuff, has a million dollars in liquid assets and could write a big check without flinching. Stan has oversold himself to What's-Her-Name, and now he is suffering for it. Old folks who brag that they are millionaires do not necessarily have a million dollars to spend on hair weaves.

This is all my fault. I was trying to be funny. I don't really think anyone, doctors or the state or the Flying Spaghetti Monster ought to deny Whitney the opportunity to become a mother. And I don't think anybody has expressed that *seriously*. But I still think anyone who aids and abets her in this enterprise ought to be ashamed of themselves.