jpc1

I believe his dad has a "florn" business.

I can't help but think of a quote by A Pimp Named Slickback in Boondocks: "But sir, this here is no lady ..... SHE A HOE!!!"

I believe you mean that you had one tiny li'l regg roll, ShortyMac.

Not Zachery - the older son who wasn't really shown in the episode.

You're right, Azubah, but your comment prompted me to realize something interesting: Almost all of the patients on the show, even the train wrecks like Assanti, Oww Mah Leg, and Hit Me Daddy, are capable of talking a good game, even though their actions don't come anywhere close to OK. Tamy, on the other hand, seemed utterly incapable of talking a good game. Most of her VOs have her droning on about how she just can't do it without James or, as you said, about what Zachery does for her, or something else that makes her sound petty, infantile, unsympathetic, and unlikely to succeed. But her actions were almost always spot-on. If you think about it, that's rare not just on the show, but in society at large.

They showed something in this episode that I don't believe I've ever seen: the patient committing a significant amount of time/effort to an activity focused on his or her child. In Tamy's case, it was the occupational therapy session for Zachery. MAJOR props to her for realizing that (a) her undergoing a majorly disruptive medical issue, (b) while living out of a hotel in a strange city, (c) without a car doesn't excuse her from her parental obligations toward her son. For 100% of the other patients I recall on the show who are parents of minor children, the children are at best peripheral characters existing at the very edge of the all-consuming (pun intended) drama of the patient's "journey", and at worst they're coerced into ass-wiping, sponge-bath-giving, eating-habit-enabling, Daddy-hittin', oww-mah-leg-powdering servitude. GOOD FOR TAMY for recognizing that Zachery has needs that are just as profound as her own and overcoming practical hardships to getting those needs met. Since I can't go even a single post without snarking on something, let me just say this: "Zachery"? Really, Tamy? Did you learn nothing from your own mother's horrible child-name-spelling skills. YOUR SON'S NAME SHOULD HAVE ZERO "E"s IN IT. Change the "e" to an "a" and use the savings to buy yourself a second "m"!

It's absolutely a control thing! Think about who has been the worst with the gratuitous nudity: James "Owwww mah leg!" King, Lee, Lisa,, and Assanti. These also top the "most controlling" list. For Christ's sake - King made his fiancee sleep on the damn ass floor instead of in a bed in the next room just in case he needed her to wipe his g-d m-f'ing ass during the night!

Of course, 'cause IT'S FRAAAAAHD!!!!! I fixed it for you, SeniorPatriot!

OK, here are a couple of things that bugged me about this episode (aside from the obvious): (1) It's clear that in New Jersey Kathryn was a co-enabler. (The mother was clearly the enabler-in-chief, but Kathryn was part of it.) It's also clear that once they got to Houston Kathryn did a complete 180. The amount of weight Rob lost in the hospital proves that. I don't recall Dr. Now giving a specific goal when he admitted him to the hospital, but assuming something similar to his other patients Rob completely blew the goal away. From that, I surmise that the "75 pound over next munt" he's told others factors in some cheating facilitated by the patient's companion, but that Rob's 200+ pound loss indicates absolutely no Kathryn-facilitated cheating. My point is that Kathryn must have had a shockingly clear come-to-Jesus moment concerning her enabling. I don't think there's ever been a more dramatic instance on this show of a companion getting as 100% with the program as Kathryn clearly did. My beef is that the episode didn't elaborate more on this. Had they done so - i.e. with a few extemporaneous confessionals from Kathryn, showing one or two scenes of conflict where Kathryn shuts down a request from Rob to help him cheat - they could have had a "how-to" manual for changing enabling behavior. (2) The testimonials at Rob's funeral (and from Kathryn's friend up-thread here) paint a picture of a gregarious, loving man. I hope (and presume) that's true, but if it is true I've got to say that TLC didn't give him a very good edit, because I didn't see gregarious and loving. When he got to Houston, especially in physical therapy before his lymphedema surgery), I saw determination and discipline (a rarity on this show to be sure), but I didn't see love. He said the right words in his voice-overs - "I know what I'm doing to Kathryn isn't fair to her.", "I'm so grateful for everything Kathryn does for me.", "Kathryn is my world.", etc. - but his actions didn't match, He seemed always to act like a douche to Kathryn. Maybe Kathryn's testimonial comes from an earlier time in Rob's life when he wasn't in such a dire condition, but the Rob I saw wasn't the same person as the Rob Kathryn described.

I completely agree with this. I have a question along those lines: Could Dr. Now have put him in a medically-induced coma for a time (a few days?) after the lymphedema surgery so that they could have not given him any opioids at all - i.e. until the pain would have been bearable without the opiods? I'm not trying to second-guess Dr. Now - I'm sure there's a reason he didn't do this (maybe they couldn't risk his lying in bed for even a couple of days because of pulmonary embolism?). I wish Dr. Now would have mentioned it.

For me the best part of "Intervention" is watching the interventionist work with the addict's' family (read enablers) and encourage them to set and hold to bottom lines. Many an addict on "Intervention" has been kick-started into getting clean by the realization that Mommy Enabler or Daddy Enabler now are willing to let them live under a bridge or in a flop house or wherever instead of being a party to their using. I think a similar approach would work wonders here. I say bring in JVV or Candy Finnigan for an "Intervention" crossover. "I've been here since yesterday. These folks love you like crazy, but they feel like they're losing you, and they want to fight to get you back. So they'll say what they've got to say, you'll say what you've got to say, then we're done, and we'll go get a pizza while you stay here and eat two teaspoons of broth and a piece of lettuce."

I'm only halfway through the Lisa episode so far, but I've already got two nominees to go on the all-time quote list: First, the obvious one: "Hit me, Daddy!" Then, one that I feel will be underrated: "It starts NOW!" (Danielle to Lisa when Lisa futilely demands a Coke right after the Skype call with Dr. Now by claiming that her diet doesn't start until "tonight".) My all-time gold-medal nominee, though, is James K., but not for "Owww muh laig!", nor for "But it's frahhhd!", nor even for claiming that with all he had going on he just hadn't had time to get to a follow-up appointment with Dr. Now. Rather, as he was about to be discharged from the hospital after his heart-failure episode, as the nurse pulls the tube out of his neck, our hero shouts, "Am Ah gonna bleed out?" Absolute perfection!

I'll take the opposite side - I think Assanti was incrementally less loathsome than Lisa. Lisa has held multiple children and grandchildren hostage to her addiction, which in my book (I'm not a lawyer, so this is a moral rather than a legal judgment) is egregiously abusive. Assanti appears to have one child-abuse victim to his credit: his brother. So I say they're close, but by a tiebreaker in the category "quantity and egregiousness of child abuse" I give the 600-pounder gold medal to Lisa. Her podium speech will start with, "Hit me, Daddy!"

Also, just to prove that I'm not all-snark-all-the-time, Danielle gets major props from me! She's so over Lisa's act, and she actually asserts her independence by going back to Alabama to take a job while Lisa is in purgatory slumlord Dr. Now's rental property. And a job as a teacher, no less! It's remarkable how well-adjusted she is, given the train wreck that was her upbringing. I think Danielle and L.B. should go into business together and subcontract the dietician/psychologist (Danielle) and physical therapy (L.B.) work for Dr. Now.

My God, y'all! I just got to the point at which Herburt shows up in Houston. I honestly thought that the rendering of his name as "Herburt" instead of "Herbert" up-thread here and on the live thread was poking fun at his dumb-as-a-stick ass. Then the caption came on and I realized that's really how it's spelled!

I thought it was "Hit me, Daddy!" Hell if my damn ass knows what that was all about!

The dissonance is stunning: On-screen Lisa acts like she's meth'd out half the time, but in the voice-overs she sounds like she's a couple of drops of IV morphine away from comatose! I wonder if there's an element of bipolar disorder here, where we've happened to catch her on-screen on the manic side.

I think it was that too, plus some turkey sausage because, you know, we've got to watch the fat.

High AF when the army of paramedics is hauling her attitude-havin', plate-steckin', bidness-gettin' Froot-Loop-eatin' hongry damn ass out of her trailer.

"I don't have no portion size. I like to steck (stack, I guess?) mah plate an' git the bidness!" This is going to be one for the ages.

For exactly this reason, BIG props to L.B. for getting Momma to move her (damn ass) self back to SC. From my experience in watching a loved one recover from addiction to alcohol, one of the hardest decisions she made in her recovery was to physically (and emotionally) distance herself from her brother, with whom she was always very close, when he wouldn't abstain around her. Not easy to do, and not easy to have to deal with the guilt-trips from other family after having done it. That L.B. did it with Momma and flat-out thrived after she left showed me that he's made of pretty strong stuff - definitely not what I expected 15 minutes into the episode! By the way, can you imagine if Princess had dragged Assanti's ass out to that track and made him go a couple of laps like L.B. did at the end?

That must be it. I'm southern enough that I should have gotten that myself. Maybe I should get myself a damn ass watered down beer.

Sorry to show my ignorance, but what's the FLORN business? That's a new one on me.

As L.B.'s mom would say, those were some nice looking damn ass tomatoes!

"If I knew that a trip to the grocery store was gonna make you feel this way, I woulda went my damn ass self." "Just stop at the mailbox and let me get the damn ass mail." Keep it classy, Mom!