Spectator

It is rather sad (and pathetic) the way Meri’s face lights up whenever she feels even a sliver of hope that Kody even notices her. Watch her face when the host tells her that Kody was once considering reconciliation. You could see the excitement and hope in her face. Then again, look back in the season and notice her reaction whenever they all had their stupid family circles and Kody turned to her for her thoughts (it was plain as day that Kody was just feeling cornered in each of those moments and just wanted his lapdog wife to back him up in whatever hairbrained opinion he had just expressed, knowing that she was forever desperate to please him). Each time she giggled awkwardly, like a little girl who has a crush on the unattainable boy in school. Even though Kody was using her in each of those situations, Meri was gitty with excitement. I think she’s so damaged from that catfishing thing that she’s willing to accept such a terrible and humiliating situation, begging for scraps from an asswipe like Kody, because she doesn’t think she can attract anything or anyone any better. I’m hopeful in a few years she’ll be look back and question why on earth she put up with what she did for so long.

In my dream world, the best payback to Kody and all of his assholery over all of these years would come in two parts: 1. Sister Wives is cancelled. The producers must recognize that one of the biggest draws to the show is watching Kody’s entitled, selfish, boorish behavior and how much he favors Robyn and her family and how remarkably unaware he is that virtually all of his actions are utterly abhorrent. Now that Robyn is essentially all that’s left (sorry Meri…facts), there’s not much of a show left. The end. 2. Christine and Janelle get their own show, “Ex-Sister Wives” and Kody, Robyn and Meri are never featured and are not part of the contract in any way. I would love to see the two of them thrive without Kody. I would love to see them experience life surrounded by people who truly love them. I would love to see them make money and not feel oddly compelled to turn it over to Robyn to pay for her mansion and staff. And lastly, I would love to imagine Kody watching them from the sidelines as they thrive, while he continues to to struggle financially with his 1.5 wives, wondering how on earth his “patriarchy” fell apart so rapidly despite “all the sacrifices he made”. Sweet justice.

and then there were three…well, 2 and a half (sigh)

Colt’s ability to make money on Only Fans simply confounds me. (I hid it as a spoiler in case anyone just ate and didn’t want to vomit it back up)

I found Tiffany’s comments about how she had never stood up to Ronald up until the tell all and how she had been quiet for seven years to be just plain bizarre. Unless my memory is deceiving me, I remember her as someone who was CONSTANTLY speaking up and speaking out, making demands (demands which Ronald never seemed to meet), relaying ultimatums and airing her grievances. Constantly. So her strong behavior on the tell all just seemed like more of the same. Honestly, I don’t have a whole lot of sympathy for her. She had warning signs galore with Ronald and she chose to ignore them all and charged full speed ahead with him (and sadly, embedded Ronald into her son’s life as well). Then she expressed shock and awe whenever he would do or say something she didn’t like (even though his behavior was totally predictable based on his past behavior). Then she played the victim every time. Over and over and over again. If you run with the bulls in Pamplona and get trampled then decide to go back the next year, only to get trampled again, can you really keep blaming the bull every time???

Agreed…because stuff like that doesn’t get edited out we have to sit through three tell-all episodes. Yep. And all three of them, at least at some point this season, mentioned that they might not have been over their ex yet. The Single Life doesn’t seem so “single”.

Natalie is falling victim to something I’ve seen happen with so many women in my lifetime. She was offered a “boring” life in a boring town but with a pretty decent guy, yet she was not satisfied and yearned for more excitement. So she left in search of an equally devoted guy but with a more exciting life in a more exciting location. But sadly, that is a tall tall order. I’m not sure why - perhaps those guys have more options, romantically, and thus may be less likely to be as committed to one woman, or perhaps in their more fast-paced, more competitive career tracks, they are almost forced to be more selfish in order to succeed and thus they don’t even know how to put their partners ahead of themselves. I don’t know. Whatever it is, finding that super exciting, super good looking, super successful guy that travels the globe, drives fancy cars, and dines at the best restaurants but who also is head over heels in love and willing to drop everything at a moments notice for his love is like finding a needle in a haystack. There are plenty of exceptions, of course, but if I were forced to categorize men into just two buckets, a shocking amount would fall into either the stable, loyal, tolerant but dull bucket (Mike) or the flashy, unreliable, selfish and heartbreaking bucket (Josh). Trying to get flashy Josh to also be stable and loyal can be like trying to squeeze blood from a stone. I wish her the best of luck if that is the path she chooses.

I couldn’t help but notice the contrast between the two conversations Angela and Michael each had with their perceived “competition”. First: Angela rudely screamed at Michael’s female friend whose phone number happened to be in his phone. She was so aggressive the woman ultimately hung up. Second: Michael politely apologized to Billy for having to ask if he had a crush on his wife, knowing that Angela had feelings for him. He was admirably calm given the situation. The kicker is there was no gray area whatsoever that Angela had feelings toward Billy whereas there was zero evidence that Michael had any feelings for the woman Angela berated. Yet Michael was cordially inquisitive instead of being abusive and accusatory, the way Angela was toward Michael’s friend. We’ve all said it before….just imagine if the tables were turned and Michael admitted to having feelings for another woman and was planning to visit her, even if the trip cost them their marriage. There isn’t enough sh** on the planet to sufficiently hit the fan to adequately represent Angela’s reaction to any of that. It drives me crazy that she regularly seems to get away with her behavior without consequence. Why do either of these men allow her into their lives?

I’m still processing the latest piece to the financial puzzle revealed this week… Both Janelle AND Meri took the profits from selling their Las Vegas homes and dumped them into Robyn’s house, seemingly leaving nothing left for either of them to buy or build their own homes? Seriously? I REALLY wish the conversations that led up to that happening had been aired as part of the show. I cannot imagine why Janelle and Meri would have ever agreed to that. Kody and Robyn must had used some serious voodoo magic to get them to go along with their “Robyn gets everything” plan. Robyn gets the big house, Robyn gets a nanny, Robyn gets all of Kody’s time and attention (although, who would want that?) and the others were left with zero assets and nothing from Kody??? Didn’t they realize that if they depleted all the family funds on a house they couldn’t afford, Robyn’s mansion, they wouldn’t be able to pay off the land and thus they couldn’t build anything for themselves? Did they think more money would just materialize or that “never work Kody” would suddenly step up and start supporting his family? It just seems like all of Robyn’s expenses have made the family “house poor”, which is only further evidenced by the recent loans against Robyn’s house. Meri is a dolt living in fantasy land so my expectations of her have always been low, but I’m quite shocked that Janelle would put herself in such a weak position. I think Christine’s departure really woke her up to how stupid and trusting she’s been. It’s so unfortunate. On a side note, Janelle was spot on when she said she felt like Kody was using her to try to hang onto Christine’s house. Kody is all about Kody. Always. Janelle is finally starting to recognize that more and more and more.

Mitch lacks tact, for sure, but I actually think he’s a pretty decent guy (he has grown on me a lot since the beginning of the season). At one point when most everyone was sitting at the outdoor dining table and Justin was by himself in a lounge chair off to the side, Mitch excused himself to go check on Justin. That was very kind. I think he has a good heart, it’s just that he and Krysten were really mismatched (per usual on this show) and he had to work through a relationship that he knew from the start was probably not going to work. I have no doubt he’ll find a woman who shares his love for the environment and his love for surfing and they’ll get along like peas and carrots. I couldn’t believe when Krysten questioned (again!!) whether she should have given Mitch a chance outside of the show. It just reinforced that she’s never really grasped Mitch’s perspective on their relationship. It is crystal clear that he’s not interested in a relationship with her and he has tried again and again to tell her that in a kind way, but Krysten keeps misinterpreting every kind gesture as a reason to leave her door ajar for him. I applaud her commitment, but at some point she needs to see reality and just let Mitch go.

Wow Alexis. She threw soooooooo much serious shade toward Justin in that Afterparty show when she said ‘they “tried” to have sex but that “it didn’t manifest itself”. That comment was so below the belt, as we all noted at the time. So it was great to see Justin call her out on it in this episode. But then for Alexis to have the audacity to claim no wrong doing, and that if he interpreted that comment as her saying that he couldn’t get it up, then that was on him. What??? I’m calling BS. Massive BS! What the hell????? Who wouldn’t interpret Alexis’s comments as that???? What else could she have possibly meant???? And not only did she take zero responsibility for her words, she compounded the insult by blaming his supposed false interpretation on his own insecurities??? Jeez Alexis, if you’re going to insult someone on national TV, at least own it. But no, this is Alexis - she has such a lofty opinion of herself she would never admit she was wrong or mean or anything other than perfect. She is the queen of gaslighting. She sees herself as utterly perfect and has exhibited this sort of nonsense all season, so I suppose I wasn’t all that surprised by her response. But I was a bit disappointed when the other girls validated her - do none of the women think that insulting a man’s sexual performance is out of bounds? Ughhhh, the cast this season was just ROUGH! I’ve grown to dislike almost every single one of them (Alexis being at the top of the heap though). I thought that was odd too…I’m guessing he was saying that she smelled foul. I’m not sure why he didn’t just say that though.

Yep. Ummmm, how about that pole dancing outfit? I mean come on.

It’s so weird, right? I don’t totally understand their family finances, but it seems like Kody depleted the family funds to buy a huge house for Robyn, leaving nothing for Janelle. So in the end, it’s almost like Kody got to have his single home mansion dream, but instead of all of the wives living there, just Robyn gets to live there, and to hell with the others. Also, Kody’s moronic rationale for not selling off Christine’s parcel of land to pay off the rest of the property so they could start to build was so illogical. He said they couldn’t do that because they needed to keep it to keep the full value of the property. No shit Sherlock. But if you can’t afford the entire property, you might need to sell some of it off so you can afford the rest. It’s not rocket science. I think he sees selling off part of the property as yet another failure, and we all know Kody can’t tolerate validation of his failures. His ego regularly exacerbates all of his mistakes in life.

As I was watching Robyn and Meri hugging and crying after “the discussion” all I could think was that neither of them were truthfully crying for the reason at hand, the dissolution of Kodi’s marriage to Christine… Meri was crying because once again Kodi devalued her marriage to Kodi and she’s recognizing that Kodi doesn’t give two poops about her and whether she stays or goes. She sees that Kodi would never respond to her leaving the way he’s responding to Christine’s departure. She knows she ranks last. So she was crying about that. Robyn is realizing that the family really fell apart when she entered it and she’s processing the guilt about that. So she was crying about that. And Kodi was as pissed as he was because he can’t accept being rejected given how fabulous he thinks he is. He was doing an epic job of projecting when he blamed Christine for not putting in enough of an effort. Sorry Kodi, the problem with being on a tv shoe is your actions are documented, so we’ve all seen you phoning it in with Christine for years…you can’t lay this all on her. Not even close. The fact that he thinks she should have sacrificed her life in a loveless marriage to protect Kodi from experiencing rejection is truly shocking. His self absorbed perspective knows no bounds.

I totally agree. But I think I actually understood what Mitch meant when he said the two scenarios were different, he just didn’t articulate it very well. I think the thing with Mitch is that he hates waste more than anything else. So I think his frustration really stemmed from being gifted an unwanted shirt that he knew he’d never wear again, thus he saw it as super wasteful. So he wasn’t really mad about being told what to wear or how to look (which Kevin paralleled to what he did with Krysten), I think he was much more upset about the wastefulness of the new shirt. I bet if Krysten had told him to wear a shirt he already had in his closet, shirt-gate might never have happened. To be clear, I am not in agreement with Mitch’s priorities whatsoever, and I think he was wrong both times (he overreacted to the shirt and should not have dictated how Krysten should look) but I think in his eyes, the shirt was so wasteful, joke or no joke, that it was the ultimate sin. Bottom line: Mitch REALLY needs to lighten up a bit. It’s fine for him to have super strict rules for himself, but he needs to be a bit more gracious around others that don’t adhere to his lifestyle choices to a tee. Also, can you imagine trying to buy Mitch a birthday present??? Omg, the pressure! The likelihood of screwing it up and pissing him off by buying something wasteful (I.e. something he didn’t want) would be so high. Every single birthday would be another shirt-gate. Ugh.