mamadrama

The main difference between what they were doing and BDSM is that true BDSM is a mutual fetish (not really the right word, but it's late) and willingly carried out by both parties in a safe and comfortable environment. There are rules involved. Both parties derive something pleasurable from it. What Keith was doing was sadistic-the women weren't getting any pleasure or satisfaction from what was happening. I think Mark was also embarrassed. By Catherine "outing" him with that story it belied his *good guy* persona. Throughout this whole thing he's tried to come across as a good guy caught up in a bad situation. A good guy who was blissfully unaware of what was happening. That story made him an active participant. My 9yo watched with me and she was PISSED over the little example of Keith yelling at the woman and not reacting when she yelled back. "That's not fair," she said. "He jump scared her. He didn't act scared because he knew it was coming when she yelled at him!" She didn't understand the rest of it, but she got that. So they spend most of the training berating women for wanting to be "protected", yet STILL call the men's group the "society of protectors"? Huh. 🙄

In the beginning I think he was fixated on any woman who would benefit him, regardless of age or physical qualities:Nancy, Clare Bronfman, Susan, etc. Many of those women had been with him for years. However, Catherine came along much later in the game. 2012, I think? By then he'd moved on to Lauren, Allison, and other women who haven't been mentioned in the series yet. He was also getting into the underage stuff. He was able to be much choosier than he was in the beginning. I think he weighed risk vs reward with Catherine. Bringing in someone who already had an established career was risky enough.

In general I agree. Why does it almost always seem like the foreigner has to move here? I can see it in Sumit's situation. If he has no real career to abandon, his family wants to disown him, and all he really cares about is Jenny (who has a daughter and grandkids back in the US) then I could see him preferring to come here. When my husband and I were getting married and we had to decide which country to live in, we had the discussion about which one of us had more ties to our own country. The US won for personal reasons, but we did seriously consider the UK because that's where we were already living. That's generally a discussion most of us have. Someone is going to have to leave everything behind.

Yes.

Nobody puts Bab- Anyway. I think she's trying to call him "Bibi", which must be a nickname because his family did the same and people do it on social media (and did long before the show). But yeah, it sounds like "Baby" from her and it's weird.

Thanks! I'm enjoying yours, too. ♥️ I hope he's getting good therapy alone and that they're getting couples therapy together. When my husband and I watched this episode together I told him that I most likely wouldn't have stayed with him if I'd been Bonnie and he agreed. Mark has no trouble seeing the problems with DOS, but beyond that I think it gets gray for him. Considering his past, if dude's not getting help then he'll be on the next train to Cultville the minute another shiny one in the name of "self help" rolls by. I struggle with some of the people who thought Keith was "helping" them by literally encouraging them to quit whatever it was they wanted help in. So Allison Mack, in the prime of her acting career, in a business that regularly casts out women once they turn a certain age, thought the best way of moving forward in her career was to...stop? In an industry that has thousands of women waiting in line, ready to take someone's place the minute they misstep? Sarah, too. "Here, let me help my acting career by devoting my entire life and all my spare time to taking classes, earning sashes, and mind fucking other people..."

She talks about this at length in her book and it's briefly touched on in the Lifetime movie (if you can get past the superwoman tropes). In the beginning I think it was Catherine that they were recruiting. (Probably not specifically, but they were looking for Hollywood people.) Basically, Catherine remained cynical and questioned a lot of the material even as she sat through the classes. The proctors saw that. They wanted to go after women who were more malleable, hence India. Also, and I mean this in NO disrespect to Catherine, but she was too old for Keith's harem. She came along during his young waif period. The older women, like Lauren, who were still there had been grandfathered in.

Keith: I'm unconventional. No, you're not. You're a manipulative asshole just like the assholes who came before you and the ones who will follow. You clearly have a hatred of women. The only thing that's special about you, other than your ability to fuck with people's heads, is that you were able to find funding. Watching Mark lose his shit over the dog bed, and then trying to pretend that it was BONNIE he was concerned about, was one of the best parts of the series-followed closely by Mark quietly losing his shit when Nippy was talking about how they were both at fault. It's obvious that Mark still feels above all of this, even though he was literally one of the high ranking officials. At least Nippy can admit it.

You know shit's gonna be extra crappy when they start bringing up the Standford prison experiment...

Yeah, if there's anything My 600lb Life has taught us...

I'm gonna take a gander and say no... But I can't snark about that. If I had a Hollywood plastic surgeon offering me free surgery a la Larissa I'd have shit done as well. I'd love me a tummy tuck.

I don't think she ever wanted kids with him. She's a grandmother who's already raised her kids and now she's raising theirs. I haven't believed her from the start. I'm 40 and my kids are 9 and 13. No way would I start over this late in the game. She either strung Michael along or the whole thing was made up for a narrative, but his family isn't in on it.

It's like that Golden Girls episode where Rose, in front of Blanche, says, "In my experience the people who talk about sex that much aren't really having it."

I don't normally have a problem with people schilling sex toys or talking about their sex lives. Sex toys are a business. Just regular people making products that help regular people experience pleasure. A lot of them go hand in hand (or something in something) with safe sex. When I teased my 73yo mother about being sponsored by a vibrator company on IG her response was, "So, uh, you get a family discount on those things?" My problem is that I don't see this as Whitney actually caring about women's sexuality, responsible sex, etc. She's doing this for the same reason she refuses to wear appropriate clothing out of the house, the way she makes people touch her "beg", her sexually charged "jokes", and how she makes socially awkward references to her sex life around people who obviously don't want to hear it-because I think she ENJOYS making people feel uncomfortable. She seems to think she's such a desirable nymph that everyone and their brother (and sister) want to sleep with her. Over the years I've really started to think that she has an unhealthy obsession with sex. I feel like she became mentally stunted at around age 16 and now she's forever stuck in that high hormonal, boy crazy timeframe.

I'm with you. I think assuming that the foreigner is just in it for the green card is failing to take in a lot of the other benefits that such a relationship can offer: 15 minutes of fame, extra cash (money that can go far in some of these places), potential sponsorships...Not everyone is hellbent on coming to the US (especially right now) and even before the restrictions were placed, it was still hard for Nigerians to get their visas approved here. Angela and Michael have been doing this for years. If he were just in it for the immigration then he'd probably have expedited the process by breaking up with her and finding a woman who appeared more legitimate (ie, someone closer to his age). I still get asked if I'm "sure" that my husband didn't just use me to "get to America." I'm pretty sure...If he did then he's terrible at the con-we've been married for 15 years and living in this country for 13 years and he's still not an American citizen...or maybe he's just working the long con! 😉

Nancy oughta get a hell of a sentence for her part. Alas... And he apparently wasn't even good in bed. This wasn't a case of Al Pacino as the devil, she doesn't know what hit her, shit. Of course HE had to orgasm, because his semen had special powers, but her satisfaction was rare and she wasn't allowed to complain.

I haven't seen possessive behavior like Angela's since middle school. It's far beyond jealousy, it's abusive. I know we say this all the time but if that were a man throwing things at a woman and using threatening behavior whenever she looked at another man then all hell would break loose.

James gained 100 in a month but Sean gained something like 200 in a month. It was insane.

This was boring.

When I first started writing novels in my late teens/early 20s, my biggest problem was that I wanted to show EVERYTHING. I couldn't just let the character end chapter 3 by having a revelation and then start chapter 4 with that character kicking ass with their newfound knowledge. Nope. I had to have them getting the revelation, eating dinner, changing into pajamas, going to bed, waking up, having breakfast...I couldn't wrap my head around having my character going from Point A to Point B without all the unnecessary filler. This reminds me of that.

It's screwing with me to see Kalani and Aseulu getting along.

Crap! I may be getting her confused with Lisa. Awful older women running after nice young African men are starting to run together.

They don't always make you lose weight first, but mom did have to meet with a dietician twice before they'd schedule the surgery.

Yep. If she has any health problems that can be tied to her weight (type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, etc) and she goes through the counseling process there's no reason why it shouldn't be. Even my crappy policy will cover 60% of it.

She works full-time as a hospice nurse. She probably has good insurance. My mom's gastric bypass was fully covered.