MrSmith

Of course I jest! And don't call me Shirley. :)

Well, since you've all but admitted to drinking vodka while watching this show .... it's the vodka influencing your judgment! :D

There. That's better. Personally, I haven't read the Bible in two decades. I'm a Deist for several reasons. The shortest answer is just that I consider a lot of the details and specifics other sects concern themselves with to be irrelevant and distracting complexities. I've experienced God's intervention on a few occasions across my life, and so I have to be to some form of Christian because His existence is irrefutable from my perspective. At the same time, I don't really feel the need for what I've referred to as "irrelevant and distracting complexities", instead opting for a much simpler approach to life: If either the outcome of your actions will harm anyone or the potential for harm cannot be accurately and thoroughly assessed, choose a better course of action. And if there are no better alternatives, you'll have to accept the consequences and do what you can to undo the harm caused. I can't subscribe to the LDS religion because of all the made-up stuff in the Book of Mormon. We've had missionaries or whatever you call them come to our home on a number of occasions in a few different cities. The last time I interacted with them, I willingly listened to what they had to say, read their book, and countered with my own world view (a slightly longer version than what I've summarized above). Eventually, they saw I was not going to be moved and stopped coming by. Currently, we have some coming to our home when my wife is home during the day. She tried to scare them off by telling them she's Wiccan and then asking questions that she found online that were supposed to scare them off. So far, she has roundly failed, but at least they won't come in the house when I'm not at home. Of course, a 180 pound Irish Wolfhound will scare most people, even though they're super friendly.

Well, in a rental, it's normally a little different. You normally can't paint and are stuck with white or beige walls. In our situation, the landlords allowed us to paint. Of course, they couldn't really deny us when they let the last people paint and the last people had some truly garish colors on the walls. Your idea for how to handle the budget sounds quite rational and reasonable. So, it's only natural that the Browns would never employ such a scheme. Either they've never heard of the adage "From each according to his means, to each according to his needs" or they've simply decided that's some religious mumbo-jumbo that just doesn't fit in their faith. I'm a subscriber of the second theory, not the first. Just for the record.

Meri, her Christmas tree, and her house. Where to start? Let's start with her house because that's the thing driving me the most crazy most recently now. WTF is with the all white? And those venetian blinds are hideous. We have some in the house we rent, and my wife has covered all of them with attractive curtains (which varies room to room, but here's a sample): Her house is just so awfully decorated. I can't understand how anyone can stand to spend time in it. It looks like all it's missing is the padded walls and it would be a full-service insane asylum. And then to see that awful Christmas tree in front of those awful blinds. It was almost like "Look at how much money I can spend on a 12 foot Christmas tree and yet I can't afford to put any money into making my house a home!" Her posts about her Christmas tree are so vomit-worthy. Complaining about how much work decorating a 12 foot tree is? Really? Most people cannot afford a 12 foot tree and also don't have a house with a ceiling high enough to have one, and you're doing to complain about how much work you've imposed on yourself by wasting money on buying a 12 foot Christmas tree? Good luck with that. And the pictures of the finished product are no better. That tree is so busy and so bright. I certainly wouldn't be able to relax and enjoy the feeling of the approaching holiday and the year winding down around that monstrosity. This is our tree for comparison: I think there's something deeper about all of this that bothers me than what I'm currently able to articulate. I'll have to have think about it when I have time and see what I can figure out. I just know there's something less tangible and more ephemeral that's bugging me about this. I just don't know what.

And the second one in from the left looks like she's 5 months pregnant.

There's also Deism for those people who believe God exists and yet don't subscribe to any particular denomination's world view.

We still haven't gotten to watch this episode yet. We were out of town at Thanksgiving and my wife was out of town the week before that. So, we're still catching up on our shows. However, whenever I think about Scientology or see "COS", I always think "Cult of Scientology". And I would like to apologize in advance that I still enjoy some of the movies Tom is in. In my defense, we don't pay to see very many movies, instead waiting for them to come to HBO or another premium channel. So, while the studios are still making some money off us for those movies, it's considerably less than if we went to the theater. Though, we did pay to see the Jack Reacher sequel in theaters.

Completely agree. When they said bio-hacking, my wife immediately paused the show because she knew I was about to unleash a tirade about that. I'm so sick of people thinking "hacking" is bad unless it happens to have absolutely nothing to do with ... you know ... actual hacking. Made me want to punch those hipsters right in their douchey faces. And maybe I'm just not up on all the actual science behind nootropics, but I can't be the only one who views such products as being based on voodoo science. My least favorite "product" was PetPlate. I went on their site to see what it would cost to feed a 170 pound dog (we have an Irish Wolfhound). The prices are insane! $20 PER WEEK to feed a five pound or smaller dog! Anyway, buying a 91 to 100 pound dog package ($90 per week) and a 61 to 80 pound dog package ($70 per week) would cost us $8580 per year. Currently, we feed him a frozen, raw turkey neck every evening and he's got dry kibble to eat whenever he's hungry the rest of the day and that costs us $720 per year. This means PetPlate would cost us almost TWELVE TIMES AS MUCH as it currently costs us to feed our dog. I figure it's going to be at least that for anyone else. We feed a super premium, which means we pay considerably more up-front, but even people who still think grocery brands are fine would end up with a much higher food bill with PetPlate. My mother-in-law has a pug mix and she only buys a $20 or $30 bag of food every 5 or 6 months. I don't know much (ok, I don't know anything) about sous vide, but even I could see that product wasn't going to appeal to people in the way they think it will. If you want convenience, then you've already got a crock pot. So, why would you need their gadget? And if you're interested in sous vide for the way it makes you food taste or whatever, then - once again - you don't need their gadget. I thought their choice of steak done sous vide was very poor. That steak lost so much of its juices being cooked that way. When they said "And then you can sear it on the grill or your stove to finish it off", I laughed even before my wife could (who is the one who does nearly all the cooking in our house) because even I know that you sear the steak first to seal the juices in! If you're searing it at the end, you're doing it wrong. And if you know enough to sear it at the beginning, then why wouldn't you simply finish the steak on the grill or on the stove top since you've already got the grill fired up or made a pan dirty and heated up the burner? I found the couple to be very strange, too. I'm not entirely sure he's actually a person. I suspect he might be a Japanese sex robot that she hauls around to make her look like she's in a happy relationship and that is programmed to say other things to give the appearance of sentience. If he is an actual person, I'm surprised he didn't scream "IT'S PEOPLE!!!!!" and run away, given how stiff he was and how stilted and halting his speech was during the presentation. The skate board thing might turn out to be popular. I know younger people in urban areas are eschewing vehicles for other forms of transportation (bicycles, walking, public transit). I'm not part of that demographic and so I'm not sure how interesting something like that might be for someone that age. At $1400, I can't imagine it'll be all that interesting. It almost certainly won't be for anyone living in a place that regularly gets snow during the winter, since the skate board will be useless for 4 or 5 months every year. I also wonder what replacement cost of the battery will be when it's no longer capable of storing enough power to go the predicted seven to ten miles. Will the battery even be replaceable? Or will it be like the iPhone? Personally, I could see such a device being interesting to people who work on a campus like Google, Facebook, or Epic. It would probably be a good way to get around those places since they're large and your only other option is walking (well, probably also biking at Google and Facebook, but Epic's campus is almost 100% indoors since they're in Madison, WI). Anyway, that's pretty much my wife and my take on this episode.

OMG. I had to cover my mouth to stifle that laugh!

My wife watched Big Love. I tried and succeeded for a while (when Amanda Seyfried mostly left the show and Ginnifer Goodwin got that bob [hair style] I lost interest; I'm a man - sue me! :D ). Chargebacks for an MLM are a real bear. It's why my boss wouldn't let me off-load the storage of the payment information. Once they reach the threshold for chargebacks, they switch card processors. And they don't want to have to have their customers re-enter their payment information in order to continue billing. They rely on people forgetting that they're paying those fees and don't want reminders sent out for fear people will wake up and cancel. (I wasn't allowed to create a notification system to send payment confirmations or notices of declined payments.) Of course, off-loading the payment data storage isn't the barrier to switching card processors that my boss at the time thought, but neither he nor I knew that at that time. I'm still not sure why I wasn't allowed to at least encrypt the data within our own database, though. I was glad when I stopped working for them because it felt too skeevy and they [the Government] successfully prosecuted Madoff's programmers for writing code for a pyramid scheme. So, that all made me nervous and I was never so glad to quit something in all my life.

Oh. My. God. Lularoe is an MLM? I did not know (or catch) that before. So, if it's previously been said, I missed it and appreciate you saying it again. NEVER TRUST AN MLM COMPANY. I'll explain. First, though, I don't know if I said it in this thread or another and so I'm going to say it again: I do web development. If I said it in this thread, I apologize for repeating myself. Now, on to the explanation (and I apologize for how completely off topic this going to go).... I've worked for MLM companies (as a web developer, not a sales drone). You cannot trust the people who run those companies. You cannot trust their technology, either. Especially don't trust the technology. NEVER EVER GIVE THEM PERSONALLY IDENTIFYING INFORMATION, such as your credit card number, your social security number, and so on. If you can avoid it, don't even give them your home address or your home telephone number. Your data is not safe with these people. They don't care about security (or, if they do, they only care because of how visible they are to the government and state Attorneys General). Sleep soundly at night certain in the knowledge that all your information has been hacked, because it will happen. The very first company I worked for as a web developer was an MLM. When I started working for that company, their billing system was screwed up. It would repeatedly bill some customers, not bill other customers at all, and it would correctly bill others. (Customers == sales drone) The determining factor on the repeated billing was whether that customer had ever had their monthly charge declined (and how many times it was ever declined). So, if they tried to bill a customer and failed and the second attempt succeeded, then the next month the customer would be billed twice. If they had multiple failures (even if there was no successful billing event), the next month the system would try to bill them that many times. The same was true for customers who'd successfully reversed the charge. I can't remember the condition required to cause the system to never bill a customer. That one was a little more arcane and less straight-forward than the repeated billing problem. On top of that, none of the following personal information was encrypted/hashed*: Credit card numbers. Credit card expiration dates. Credit card CCV (CVC?) numbers. (The three digits on the back of the card.) Usernames (for logging in). Passwords (for logging in). Social security numbers. That covers most of the really sensitive personal information. This company was, in the end, hacked at least 5 times and I know the database was copied in full each of those times. I was not responsible for the servers, though I know that some of the breaches were because of bad web site code - some of which I was able to address before I quit working for them. (Of course, at the time I didn't know very much and I might have been responsible for some of the vulnerabilities.) Anyway, the credit card information was stored in four or five different tables in the database (for those who don't know, a crude analogy is to think of a database like an Excel workbook where each table is a sheet in that workbook), which is just bad for many reasons (some of them technical). Eventually, I was able to get my boss to let me store the credit card information in just one table, but I never could get him to let me encrypt it or - preferably - off-load the storage of that data to the credit card gateway. Likewise, I could never get him to let me encrypt the SSN or login information, either. And all of that is not unique to that company! The next three that I worked for after that all were the same: I wasn't allowed to off-load the storage of card information and wasn't allowed to encrypt any of it. I eventually quit working for the first company because I got a "real" programming job with a "real" (non-MLM) company and because the owner of the company owed me more than 10 grand. I pretty quickly ended my employment with the other companies, too, over the security issues. So, if you know anyone who's going to get involved with an MLM (and assuming they cannot be dissuaded), they need to get a Federal Tax ID and not use their personal SSN. If they already have a Federal Tax ID, they should try to get one specifically for this purpose. (I'm not sure if that can be done, but they should try.) They should never use their actual credit or debit card number. Instead, get either a reloadable card from somewhere like Wal-Mart or just buy a Visa or MC gift card and use that. As for their telephone number, try to get a telephone number just for this purpose, too. Something like Google Hangouts. Of course, make sure their login username and password are totally unique and unrelated to any other username or password they use anywhere. Anyway, sorry for all the off-topic-ness of this post. I just felt the need to share all that. *Hashing is sort of a one-way encryption, which means the original data is lost once the hash is done. It's a bad analogy, but it's the best one I've got. True encryption is reversible.

I don't dispute that this may be the case. I haven't watched for a few seasons and am just getting caught back up this season now. Could you provide more information about this, please? How do you know (or why are you of the opinion of) the bolded parts? Thanks!

Yes, I would have. Apparently, I have not clearly stated that position and I apologize for communicating imprecisely. Definitely I would have dressed up for such an occasion. I dressed nicely when I was around my future in-laws while dating my wife (prior to engagement) and usually also while we were engaged. (It was a longer engagement and so that wasn't always true as the wedding date approached.)

@laurakaye I agree and I would also like to hear more about their early years. The benefit to them of discussing those times on TV (other than the benefits of generally honestly discussing those early times) is that doing so would humanize them more and it might make them more likeable. And they certainly need to be more likeable, even if they'll never meet most of us ever in their lives.

I definitely agree (though my previous posts may not have sounded that way). He definitely doesn't know his potential in-laws well enough to be slumming it around them. Especially when he's there to ask such an important question. I mean, even after 21 years (of combined dating, engagement, and marriage) to my wife, if I had something important to ask my in-laws, then I would be sharply dressed for it. And that's without even the merest possibility of TV cameras around!

LOL! You know, I lived in a town like that just a few years ago. And it really was a "one horse Podunk town"; the population when we moved there was just over 1300 people and by the time we moved away it had sunk to just over 1100. And it did have one bank, six bars, and zero stoplights (it was in Wisconsin, which explains the number of bars). The ladies in the bank actually were always dressed very well and exactly like I remember tellers dressing when I lived in Milwaukee and Minneapolis. I have to say I still miss living in that little town, too.... This made me actually LOL. Thankfully, there aren't many people in the office, yet. Last Thanksgiving (2015), we stayed at my brother-in-laws and I didn't even get out of my pajamas on Thanksgiving. (No reason to. We weren't going anywhere, but I did take a shower!) Of course, I have no hair (been shaving my head for almost 20 years and, even if I hadn't, I would be by now) so I don't have to worry about how my hair looks. :D But I do remember making sure I looked presentable early on during my relationship with my wife. We're more than 20 years along now and so that's less of a concern. :)

This is a generational difference, then. I can see looking well-dressed when you're first meeting them and while you're getting to know them, but as you and they get more comfortable around each other there's no reason you have to continue to be dressed in your "Sunday best" just because your in-laws are around. I slum it when we're staying with my in-laws and my wife slums it around my parents. The reverse is also true: My in-laws are comfortable slumming it around me and my parents are comfortable slumming it around my wife. Of course, when it comes to my parents, they're weird to start with and so that might not be a good metric for this discussion.

I disagree that he came off as real (at all!) with his concern for Mykelti. If he was really concerned for her, then he wouldn't have "given his blessing". And he certainly wouldn't have blind-sided Christine that he was going to give his blessing. The concerns he voiced in his Talking Head segments and in private conversation with Christine were never aired to either Mykelti or her fat girly-man. The stuff he brought up in his TH's are legitimate concerns. So, why didn't he say anything about those things to Mykelti and her fa --- err fiance? Instead, all he really talked about with them is "don't have sex" and "don't get married so soon after Madison does". One thing that really bothers me about all his "don't have sex" talk is this: If he raised his daughter with his values, then he should not have to say "don't have sex" and he should not have to worry about it - at all! The fact he felt he needed to say "don't have sex" to them multiple times tells me that he knows they didn't instill their values into their daughter. And if you know that, then saying "don't have sex" is completely pointless because either she is going to have sex or she is not, and either way there is not one damn thing he can do about it. I disagree that he was trying his best with Meri or wanted to make things right. Meri has told him on more than one occasion that she needed him around more. After the catfishing thing broke, then she pushed him away. And either way if he knew his wife better, then he'd be able to figure out what she needs and he'd be able to give it to her. But: He doesn't listen to her. What she says isn't important enough for him to remember. He doesn't spend enough time with her in order to get to know her well. They do not have open lines of communication. They are not able to be unreservedly honest with each other about what they're each thinking and feeling. All of those things mean that, essentially, they're strangers who share bills and sometimes have sex. When it comes to your third paragraph, I think you're completely spot-on. The only thing I disagree with is that I don't think she initially signed up for a polygamous marriage. From everything I've heard, it seems like they got married monogamously and he later decided he wanted to be polygamous. Otherwise, that last paragraph is 100% gospel truth as far as I can tell.

Let's hope! I don't think humans are wired (mentally/psychologically) for polygamy. I dated a girl (for a very short time) who subscribed to polyamory. I was out as soon as she explained the concept. I'm just not the "wife sharing" type of person.

Well, I hope that was not the case. If it is, the level of disrespect and lack of empathy/care for Meri is more than I can wrap my head around. Looking forward to seeing more of her. I'll have to ask my wife about her and how she reacts to Kody.

Does this make him the smartest member of the Brown family? Certainly he gets my vote! :D

LOL! Love this. We should change it to "parisoners", though. Much more accurate in conveying the idea of "parishioner"/"prisoner".

I have not read the book, but I have heard about the things you mention. The whole "seed bearers" thing is crazy. That definitely shows how fear and brain-washing/indoctrination can make people willing to put up with crazy things. I'm not prone to violence, but it seems like sometimes that's what's required to correct a situation.

Absolutely. Several posters, including me, have posted about his (and hers) sense of entitlement. Other posters have mentioned they got a controlling vibe from him, as well. I did not, but maybe I'm just dim in this regard. :)