Mothra

Everything you say is absolutely true. Taking care of a medically-needy (and we really don't know Babs' current condition, and no one can predict how long she will be able to do for herself whatever she is able to at this moment--she's had two strokes, and they all must live in fear of the next one, or ones; the American Heart Association says that one in four people who have a stroke will have a second one, and Babs has already had two) is extremely expensive, no matter how willing and able family members are to help out. At some point, which may be sooner than anyone expects, she is going to need some level of skilled nursing care (an IV to keep her hydrated, for instance), and that doesn't come cheap. Care in the home is much more expensive that care in a facility, and no one wants to put a loved one in a nursing or even assisted living facility until there's no other choice. They probably do have excellent health insurance, and investment income, and Glen surely has a pension (you young folks have likely never heard of that wonderful thing) because he started working so long ago. It's probable that they do have enough money to take care of Babs at home, but that doesn't lessen Glen's worries. I think the fact that he is willing to continue such a vicious commute speaks not to a reluctance to stop working but to a fear of cutting off an income stream which he feels might stand between Babs and the poorhouse.

I find myself cheering for Density. I want her to march right up to that altar and lay out for Sarah just how much money Shawn owes her and to tell Sarah that the baby she's carrying is Shawn's. I love this crazy woman. Two pregnant women, one in a wedding dress, facing off in front of a priest or whatever--what could be better? Will it come to fisticuffs? God I hope so. And I'm in favor of whatever Kelly wants to do to shrimp-brained Shawn. Maybe she could hold him down while the two pregnant women duke it out. Maybe she has some kind of common-law marriage rights just because she bore six of his children, and the marriage to Sarah will be invalid. Maybe the ceremony will take place in the emergency room. Shawn needs to be neutered ASAP. We haven't seen enough of his kids to know whether he passed on his derp gene; the two we've met, the one who was in the army and the young woman who came with her mother, *seem* fine now--but have they met their soulmates yet?

I think that Glen may be terrified about how he will pay for long-term care for Babs, in assisted living or some other arrangement. Their children, neither of them, could realistically move in and manage the day-to-day health care needs of a lady who has already had two strokes over the long term, as her condition inevitably worsens and she needs more sophisticated help. My father continued to work long past retirement because my mother had Alzheimer's. A financial planner was able to set his mind at ease, and only then, at 82, did he retire. I suspect Glen is worried about Babs' long-term care more than he is about being at home with her once she's out of the hospital. I think he can rely on Whitney and Hunter to help out there.

I worked in a rehab hospital in Philadelphia in the 1970s and was responsible for running the prosthetic clinic. My experience was very different from what you describe. We didn't see people until their stumps had completely healed, so there were virtually no infections with the prostheses. Aftercare, assuming the prosthetic was fitted properly in the first place, mainly consisted of replacing worn-out equipment. Most patients were able to resume the lives they had before the amputation, only without the symptoms and pain that made the amputation necessary--which were mostly open wounds which would not heal in diabetics. I remember a 90-year-old lady who went back to her third-floor walkup with two artificial legs! She was exceptional. These days, with things like the "blade" foot for runners, I suspect prosthetics are more comfortable and versatile than ever--you may even know someone who has a false leg but not realize it. What I have said refers to lower-limb amputations (since the patient's problem was in her feet). I don't know what the state of upper-limb prosthetic science is today; I do know several upper-limb amputees who prefer to use the old-fashioned hook instead of a fake hand. Since Olmstead syndrome is caused by genetic abnormalities, so that cutting off the affected parts won't work, amputation might not work, either, because the genes involved will still be active in the body and may express themselves in the palms of the hands, essentially the same skin as we have on the soles of our feet.

That was an awful affliction, wasn't it. At the end, when she showed Dr. Sarah her healed feet, it looked to me as if the horny calluses were growing back, right through the mesh of transplanted skin. As I watched that poor woman crawl around her home, I wondered if it wouldn't be better for her to have below the knee amputations and to be fitted with prosthetic lower legs and feet. As I understood it, and I could easily have mis-heard, this is an auto-immune situation; in other words, it's not something that can just be cut off--it's part of her system to over-grow skin on her feet, leading to the calluses. If that's the case, it seems to me (and I'm not a doctor--I just watch them on tv) that amputation might be the best and really only way to go to give this woman permanent relief. Well, I got off my duff and looked Olmstead Syndrome up on the NIH website. Here's what they have to say about how you get it: Olmsted syndrome is caused by genetic changes (DNA variants) in the TRPV3 and the MBTPS2 gene. Many different forms of inheritance have been reported, although many cases of Olmsted syndrome are sporadic (a new case in a family). Diagnosis is based on the symptoms, and genetic testing can be helpful. So it's not auto-immune, but it is the result of genetic mutation, so it would still not be something you can just cut off. Gene therapy, which is it seems as million years away, could probably treat this awful condition.

Moriah likes to perform. She wants to be a singer, which she does poorly because her voice is so weak and untrained, and now she's found she likes to do ballroom dancing, which is another performing activity. She's also exploring pole dancing, which she seems to take to like the proverbial. Being seen and appreciated by an audience is what floats her boat, and good for her if she can find a way to support herself that fulfills her. She, it seems to me, has always wanted to be seen and admired, particularly by men. She's the one of the sisters who consistently overdid makeup, setting the gun to "whore" and not just to try out different looks. She's the one of the sisters whose asscheeks hung lowest from their short-shorts. So. Hannah or whatever that oldest one's name is drank the Fla-Vor-Aid (look it up; it wasn't Koolaid) and moved away, laterally, poor Lydia in her prayer closet but also really kind of a bitch in a classic passive-aggressive way, Moriah who wants to be a Whore on Parade--what will become of the younger girls? They seem wholesome enough now, but the scales have fallen if you know what I mean and they are onto their mother's perfidy. Maybe the big changes that have occurred, changes in their parents and in their older sisters, that they will somehow--what? Get to attend high school? That is my dream for them, especially since no one seems willing/able to school them at home any more (if they ever did). Get those girls to Cairo High--Go, Egyptians!!!

Kim needs to live at home to be there for the little kids, but Lydia (who has a full-time job) has to do the home-schooling? And that "friend of the family" was their real-estate agent. They apparently have no friends. What, exactly, is Barry's "side?" He explained what Kim had told him about his shortcomings as a husband--you can tell she is sure he is bad-mouthing her, and she is straining at the bit to bad-mouth him--but there really isn't anything to tell other than that Kim doesn't want to live their life any more; that Barry isn't filling her Love Tank; and she has decided that all the shit rules she imposed on her children were simply "overprotection." If she were a real woman, she would tell her family that she has realized that she made big mistakes in decisions about how they should grow up, that Barry supported her through this, but now that she has figured out (partly through observing her children who've flown the nest) what she wants her life to be, she can't stay married to Barry. She has to be free to have a dance studio and drink tequila. Anybody could understand that. And yet, there is Lydia in her Prayer Closet, with letters to god pasted on the walls.... How do you ever fix that damage?

I think Kim is envious of the lives she is seeing her children living once they leave the compound. If they had followed their programming, they would all be Lydias, but there they are, out living real lives, not paying any attention (except not looking at lady parts at the strip club) to the strictures they were brought up to respect. They are discovering all the things Kim and Barry (but mostly Kim) kept from them, and now she wants some, too. Suddenly it's OK to eat sugar--think of all the years Kim must have lusted for sweets! She's a heavier woman who must have dieted like crazy to maintain her weight all those years, and now here are her kids eating sugar and *not* blowing up into zeppelins! And alcohol! And fun! Maybe it's too embarrassing to invite Barry along for her freedom ride--it would be a confession of failure, in a way, for her to suddenly embrace all the things she so rigidly said no to. Or maybe now, seeing her newly toned body, she feels she can do better.

Maybe Barry could lure Beth back into his embrace if he offered to foot the bill for plastic surgery to turn that frown upside down. Poor Beth was born afflicted with a mouth that turns down at the ends, giving her a constant sour, dissatisfied face, no matter how happy (as if she could ever be happy) she is. And she accents it with that terrible lipstick job, so she might respond to the offer of an appointment with an aesthetician. Opportunities for crossover with Teen Mom but whoops wrong channel. Lydia should spend more time in her closet talking to the holy ghost. I think she is angling for Max for herself. What a shitty sister she is, whether she has Max on her mind or is trying to be The Best Christian in the World (Mrs. Betty Bowers would destroy her with a glance). She has no business "forgiving" Max--nobody but Moriah, apparently, even knows what he did! I have to love me some Micah at the strip club.

Hey, yeah--when are we going to learn what Nick has thought up? When I'm not working, my thoughts run to I wonder if my husband found that last piece of pie I hid in the back of the refrigerator. Sometimes I cogitate on whether I should bother folding clothes as I take them out of the dryer or just cram them into the basket and fold them as I put them away (ease vs aesthetics; always a philosophical nut to crack around here--I wonder if there are any cashews left?).

All of these men are pussies. All of them. They are dick-driven, which should cancel out being pussies, but what drives dicks anyway? Gross Dreck does not deserve Lea--Lea, get your fine ass out of there, pronto--and Dddddaannnnniellle wants her around only to torment Robert. Dddddannnnielllle needs to find Dreck a new, dumber honey, one who does not have career plans but who (to please me) is 5'11 and has enormous tits. One who is desperate for a miniature cowboy with a horse face who just wants to get laid--as which one of these guys doesn't. The Guy Who Bought a Boat is good for a laugh, and the one seeking a Filipina (Prince Torian?) has an interesting partner, Tosha, who seems real interested in getting someone to help carry the load.

And another thing: since having a dance studio and teaching ballet has been a suppressed desire of Kim's all these years, attainable only by breaking up her marriage and throwing her husband out of the house, why wasn't she giving ballet lessons to her children beginning in their childhoods? She's so passionate suddenly about ballet--why wasn't she able to express this side of herself by passing her passion (or pashing her pasion) to her children? They were home-schooled; why wasn't ballet part of the curriculum? Not that I'd want to stay married to Barry, either, but really, she needs to come up with a better story

I did a little searching myself, and it appears that someone (or ones) on reddit saw it. They pronounced it more of the same "we were going through a tough time, I kissed a girl" shit. No information that, imo, would warrant all the gnashing of teeth Max's sin seems to have evoked. I think maybe this show is realizing it has to be sensational to sit at the popular girls' table.

Has anyone seen Max's video confession?

I have officially given up. I fell asleep and missed plot points. Normally I'd rewind and catch up, but it seemed too much trouble--the kiss of death. Carry on Irma; I'll miss your catsuit.

ICE CREAM? Kim is really working it, isn't she. And if her flexible schedule is the only reason Lisa should live in the house, why doesn't she just make herself available when a parent is needed and Barry can't be there? I think the kid is right: if she's the one who wants out, why doesn't she get out? Barry is a worm, but Lisa is a snake.

I'm torn. I *think* I find this funny as hell. We'll see.

I'm not sure I'd want a second season, either. This just seemed perfect (or nearly so) within itself. I'd like to see more shows created by this crew, for sure. And for toughness, for sure Mrs. Eaves takes the cake, but what about Bobbi, sitting there in the damn closet for god knows how long with a plastic bag over her head? No credit to the baby because *of course* drowning isn't in his vocabulary. Edited to add: Plus: the twins who played the baby so perfectly will be a year older, and who knows how they will turn out? They might not look so identical as to be usable, for one thing, but more important, will they maintain that deadpan yet somehow malevolent look about them? They might grow into happy, gurgling little bundles of non-stop giggling--perish the thought! And who knows if such a pair of perfect miniature thespians could be found, so you probably can't risk replacing them with a new set of twins. Who know what little scenery-chomping hams you'd turn up.

I loved the underwater sequences, just visually if nothing else. I noticed that she was "Mrs." Eaves with no mister, but it didn't really bother me; I finally assuaged my concerns (such as they were) with the idea that it was a sort of honorific Mrs. rather than a literal one. I think she didn't get so involved with any of the previous mothers because none of them got the idea of what the baby was after--Natasha was determined to give the baby what it needed and so was in more spiritual danger than any of the earlier victims, who were all in physical peril--maybe there wasn't really any way to save those women? But the baby not only took over Natasha's soul--he took over her mind so completely that she was willing to commit murder(s) for him, even murders of people she loved. The one thing that did bother me, that I haven't been able to explain to myself, is the role of the baby's father. Did his repulsiveness have anything to do with how that baby turned out? I guess you could make the case that the repulsive father was so totally repulsive that there's no way in hell *anyone* could give him unconditional, boundless love, and that was his contribution to the baby's genome. Overall, imo, a glorious series and one that left me with a smile. Agree with posters who said "like we didn't see *that* coming" when the baby survived and crawled on in search of a new mother. As for deeper meaning--well, for me, who cares?--but the utter neediness of the baby and the total control of his mother's life was reminiscent for me of the first six months of my first child's life, when I sat rocking the little bastard for hours, him clean and fragrant, fed and happy in my arms while I sat there with baby shit caked in my hair, BO to kill a horse, and practically peeing myself because I didn't dare get up to go to the toilet because if I stopped rocking he would cry. My poor husband would come in after work to be handed that baby when all he wanted was to sit down with a martini but instead was greeted by a hysterical, filthy woman who ran out of the room sobbing as soon as he got home.

I agree, too, and I keep thinking that if I had something seriously wrong with the skin on my face, something wrong enough to affect the way I was living my life, the last thing I'd want is *anything* that called attention to my face, and like you I'd worry that I had some kind of infection related to a piercing. Plus, this piercing was in her nose, where snot is bound to get on it throughout the day, and wiping or blowing your nose would, it seems to me, spread whatever bacteria you have in your sinuses, no matter how careful you were. I guess Dr. Emma knows best. If she's not concerned about that nose ring, I shouldn't be either. But still.

I feel cheated that we were not privy to Dannnnnnielle's Awakening. How did she come to the glorious recognition/awareness/epiphany that what Bert needed was another sister-wife, one who was already in the US, who could intimatize with Drek all day long, who might even be able to "make babies" (GAK) before she, Bert, could? Did D. sit up suddenly in bed in the middle of the night, perhaps in a cold sweat, with the plan in full laid before her? Was it a visit from Jesus--He certainly owes her one. Or, as I hope happened, she and her mother put their heads together and worked this out? The big tits and the new hair color may just be preparatory to D. cutting out altogether--with a guy who's at least 6'2'' and has better-fitting contact lenses (she could use a little help herself, actually, with her lenses). Maybe all will be revealed as the season progresses. I honestly don't give a tinker's shit about any of the rest of them. Further along, we'll know all about it.

Watching this wee show, as well as others like it, has made me so much more compassionate toward people with what I had always considered just "bad skin." I've never been an unkind person--at least to my knowledge--toward people with bad acne, say, or rosacea, but I did buy into the idea that those big red noses resulted from alcohol, or that a better diet or hormonal treatment would clear up acne, and now I know better. It's stupid that it took me so long to understand; we've all known for a long time that fat people *know* they are fat and are dealing with it the best they can, or as they wish--why did I need exposure to Back Stories to understand that about bad skin? The lady (Min or something?) with that dreadful scarring! She looked so much better and was so much happier after Dr. Emma's treatment, and I hope continued work on removing/remediating that scar tissue will continue to help her. The makeup the technician applied was awful, I thought, troweled on, I guess to try to smooth out that sort of ledge on her cheek, and I think had I been the patient, I would have figured out something else to do about it. The color wasn't even right. But overall, what a successful treatment. I do appreciate this show because it's made me a kinder person and as a bonus introduced me to unimaginable things that can go wrong with human skin.

The worm turns. I hope Garrick tells Bert she needs to pray to be delivered from her jealousy, like he did Dannnnnielle. And I wonder when it occurred to Dannnnnielle that satisfaction was within her grasp. That must have been an epiphany worth noting in the Bible. Smug little horse-faced Bert "confessing" to Dannnnielle that she and Drrrrek had been "intimate" before inviting D. to join them in bed, especially after D. had expressed how comforting it was for her to have been able to be in bed with the two of them without Intimacy--what a little shit. And we learn that the horse-faced boy is 5'8" which D. has to assure him is Normal (and it may well be the average height), and is concerned about it--icing on my cake. FWIW I've dated men shorter than me, and fallen in love with a couple of them, and *they* were never concerned about how tall they were. It's one thing to be short and fine with it and quite another to be short and fret about it--what a turnoff. Even if the guy loves walking in the rain and pina coladas. Ohboyohboyohboy.

I absolutely *wallow* in this show, I love it so much. So the baby is searching for what none of his "mothers" has been able (or willing) to give him--unconditional love--and so he has offed them, one by one, and moved on. What a kid! Mrs. (and I too question "Mrs.") Eaves believes this is all because of a curse she put on Jack, the baby's putative repulsive father (I was disappointed that the dying man wasn't very repulsive at all), based I guess on the fact that Helen, whom Mrs. E. loved, was kind of forced to marry him and again I guess forced to bear his child. So Mrs. Eaves cursed Jack with ?a baby whom nobody could love? Why did Mrs. Eaves want to kill the baby not too long ago but now want(?ed?) to immolate herself with Jack, never mind the baby? I guess when she learned that Jack was still living killing herself along with him was a more satisfactory way to end the curse--if she had killed the baby but (unknowingly) left Jack alive, would the curse have been lifted? I bet not--and was there really a curse, or an effective curse, to begin with? I wonder these things, and you know what? Even if my questions aren't answered, I'll still have found this a wonderful, satisfying series and be glad to have seen it.

I think the baby's powers came from his creepy, repulsive father. Helen seemed pretty normal to me, but that guy's weirdness knocked my sox off. I'm not trying to find meaning or metaphor in this series, which is new for me--I'm usually Mrs. But What Does the Dog with the Broken Leg *really* symbolize--but enjoying it as if it were a Victorian ghost story. I love it. I don't care what The Mother stands for; just give me more!