jpc1

Jessa's knocked up now. They need expanded income. Scrub more toilets, Bin! Josiah's courting. Marjorie v2 is doomed To sloppy seconds.

Just a couple of minor observation from today's episode (conflict between train-wreck daughter and grandma who has custody of the daughter's two kids): (1) Amanda the skank (the train-wreck daughter) has an accent that's like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. On one of the videos that Grandma sent in to $hill, SkankManda keeps yelling over and over again "Give me my phone!", except she pronounces "phone" like "phain". I've only ever heard this verbal pattern - pronouncing long-o as if it were long-a - in women, and only those at least 15 years younger than me (I'm 46), but I don't like it. (2) Show of hands: Who thinks SkankManda really has prescriptions for the three non-marijuana things her drug test from $hill popped for - Adderall, Benzos, and I forget the third but I'm too lazy to go back and rewatch? Awfully suspicious that she couldn't manage to produce the prescriptions in response to $hill's "last-minute" (translation: probably 4 weeks prior to taping) request for them. And while we're on the subject of drug tests, how deluded is SkankManda (along with hundreds of $hill's other guests) to believe that popping for marijuana constitutes "passing" a drug test? Sounds like wishful thinking to me. (3) As soon as the last-10-minutes makeover segment started, I punched out. Did that ultimately devolve into RobinBot pimping her snake oil - I mean skin-care products?

PTSD is a hell of a thing according to ML - trauma from the war causes Richard Mulligan to get addicted to mor-PHEEN and off himself; trauma from being nailed to the roof of a shack on a hobby farm by a "scraggly, disgusting, broken-down alcoholic" (thanks, RA) causes Carrie to develop speech pathology, wet herself regularly, and fall down a well. I think ML should have written a Little Therapist on the Prairie into the show: "Tell me about your mother, Caro-linn. Did she always seem a little - how shall I put this - stiff to you?" I swear, it just writes itself.

I can see that. She also reminded me of Jenilee Harrison (Cindy on Three's Company, Jamie Ewing Barnes on Dallas). Not unattractive at all - until she opens her mouth - but definitely a hard 40! I like to snark on $hill as much as the next commenter here, but I've got to say I thought he handled this one pretty well (other than making a 2-parter out of it). I hope the parents get some help too. They seem like well-intentioned people who have been way out of their league for a long time in terms of dealing with someone as damaged as AngrySallyStruthers. They take the bait way too easily and allow interactions to turn into shouting matches, much like the first 1.5 hours of this two-parter. AngrySallyStruthers only started to become responsive once $hill shut the parents up.

I'm 20 minutes in to today's episode, and I have two initial thoughts: (1) As insufferable as Tanyadawn is (and she is severely insufferable), she never had a chance!! Between s***shows of MisfitMom and AuntieAwful, how could any kid have turned out OK? And, as BusyOctober said: Even divided into two words would be OK - "Tanya Dawn". (2) Where does Tanyadawn's Latina accent come from? Neither MisfitMom nor AuntieAwful have one. Is it fake? Also, she seems to be going for the duck-lipped Ariana Grande look. Am I right?

I agree, but even at 1/4-speed BitchBoyBo was still able to say that, of course he didn't mean to run over the man in the street, as though his being too plastered to form intent somehow makes it OK! In the same vein, I marked out when $hill called out MorphineMom for saying that the car "wound up getting totaled", like it magically totaled itself, instead of BitchBoyBo doing it. (I know that this week's episodes have been reruns, but it still seems like $hill has been a little less likely the last couple of months to let slide some stupid things that guests say and a little more likely to call them out for it.) Overall, I just noped the f out to this whole episode. Not a good time to elicit sympathy from me for a drunk driver. My 15-year-old niece's boyfriend was killed by a drunk driver two nights ago, and my niece is so distraught that she had to be admitted to the hospital on suicide watch last night. So right now I'm thinking that a bullet to the head might be more appropriate therapy for BitchBoyBo than wherever $hill is sending him.

I completely agree. Sh**tyShawna reminds me of my ex-sister-in-law (wife's brother's ex-wife): verbal abuse toward my two nieces, some physical abuse, some drug and alcohol use in the presence of my nieces, schlepping off domestic tasks - including feeding, bathing, and dressing the younger children - onto my older niece. (There were younger half-siblings from a subsequent relationship.) The difference between Sh**tyShawna's situation and my ex-SIL's, though, is that whereas JackassJames high-tailed it 1,600 miles away for a job and left the family behind, my BIL documented the abuse, went to court, and got full custody of his daughters. Shame on JackassJames for effectively abandoning his daughters like that. Shame on him for being abusive to his wife who, being excessively stupid, cowardly, and arrogant, didn't respond in the right way to being abused but rather retaliated against the one person who was powerless, the daughter. Shame on $hill for not reporting these two boils on the collective ass of humanity to CPS. There's nothing that says he can't do both: offer them therapy at Onsite or whatever the name of the place is that he's pimping today and at the same time file a report. In fact, given the smirking throughout by Sh**tyShawna, I'm guessing she's not going to take the therapy very seriously. Why should she? She's just skated by with no real consequences. Maybe she'd take it a little more seriously if her kids were taken away and demonstrating a positive therapeutic outcome were one of the many boxes she was required to check off in order to get them back.

Exactly. I'm convinced that to people like today's loser couple, it's all about "Look at me!" Being pregnant and having a baby makes them the center of attention in their own world. They make decisions on whether to have kids and how many to have based on their own feelings, not the best interests of the actual or potential children. It's the same reason why today's SoldierPunchingBag would never leave DeskJobDouche, no matter what. It would never in a million years occur to her that the example they set for the child(ren) outweighs her own felt needs from the relationship. It's all "ME ME ME ME ME ME" for the both of them. Disgusting.

I'm not so sure desperation is 100% of it with SoldierPunchingBag today. I think she has other motivations for tolerating the abuse: She thinks it's a normal part of a relationship. In one of her taped pieces, she said something like, "People in relationships fight. It's what they do." On stage, she said to $hill something like, "People yell and scream at each other." I think she knows there's something wrong with the degree of abuse, but I don't think she realizes there's anything wrong with the existence of abuse. She uses it to get things that she wants from the relationship. I have no doubt that she can and does wind up DeskJobDouche into going upside her head. Bad on him for lacking the impulse control to stop from doing it, but I think she knows exactly what to do to get a violent reaction from him. Why would she want a violent reaction from him? Because she can milk the apology train. She said at one point, "We have a great relationship. He's a great father." What she probably means by that is, "He lets me have my way on just about every point of controversy between us because he feels so guilty over the last can of whoop-ass he opened up on me." Also, as long as he's hitting her, her mom will be a fierce ally. The mom can't be easy to get along with. Neither can SoldierPunchingBag, for that matter, and I would imagine they've been at each others' throats all her life. Now, though, they have a common enemy. When $hill asked her early in the show whether what DeskJobDouche had done up until now crossed the dumpability line, she said, "No," emphatically. When he asked her whether anything more DeskJobDouche could do would reach that line, she said, "I don't know," but it seemed to me she wanted to say, "No." I think she was being totally honest. I think she sees the occasional beating as the price of poker for having the rest of the relationship go the way she wants. Recall that the title graphic of the episode was, "My Daughter's Boyfriend ..... ," so clearly the mom was who wrote to $hill asking for help, not SoldierPunchingBag. I don't think she sees that much of a problem. When $hill started to get on her case about her responsibility to the child and to the child's mother (herself) not to put up with abuse, I think he cut bait quickly because he could see that the logic was right over her head. Bottom line: the biggest victim here is the child, with two grade-A douche-canoes for parents.

Holy cow! Is PsychoEx on today's ep from another planet or what? Seriously, something is way off with him. I mean, I guess it's been pretty common through the years for $hill to have ex-husbands or ex-boyfriends on who have way-off-base accusations about how slutty, drunk, mean, or terrible the ex-wife/GF is, but I don't know that I've ever seen one with as slow an affect as today's PsychoEx. Seriously, I thought he was at risk of falling asleep on stage. Usually these exes are hyper and loud. This one seemed like it would take him 30 minutes to answer if someone asked him his name. He looked physically not-right, too - sunken eyes, pallor, at least 20 years older than NotSlutMom. I also can't imagine him on active duty in Iraq - I mean if he pulled guard duty on a perimeter 1/4 mile outside of base, an insurgent could be all the way to the base door before PsychoEx even choked out the first syllable of "Halt..........Who..............Goes.............There". I guess they figured if he ever got captured and the bad guys were trying to interrogate him they'd fall asleep waiting for him to say something. $hill obviously was SO done with PsychoEx from the opening bell. He didn't even get the cursory "Thank you for your service" that $hill usually gives even to the scummiest ex-soldiers. $hill's tone throughout was one of barely-concealed mockery. Not unprecedented from $hill, but highly unusual. He also gave him a generic offer of "some help" - he didn't even merit a trip to $hill's Super-Duper Double Diagnosis Center or the PNP center or any of the other rackets facilities $hill usually pimps. Because I have an irresistible urge to be an equal-opportunity nitpicker, I've got to throw the flag on NotSlutMom for finding fault with PsychoEx for trying to disrupt "Cayden and I's bond." Come on, kindergarten teacher! It's "Cayden's and my bond." That's just one of a limited number of grammatical crash-and-burns up with which I will not put!

To be honest, that statement by LtColPushover sounded just a little bit gaslight-y to me: "I can't be really abusing you, because you'd be completely f'ed up if I were," can lay the groundwork for under-the-radar, but still abusive, stuff. That being said, I defy any DA to find a jury of 12 men and women anywhere that would convict him of anything if he just offed her. She's that obnoxious. I wonder how much of this is at the feet of PassiveMom. $hill said that LtColPushover had served 7 tours in the Middle East, as I recall. I'm guessing each tour lasts a year, right? That's almost 50% of Madison-aaaah's life that he's been out of sight; probably well over 50% once you factor in the time preparing for deployment and the time to re-acclimate upon return, and if he's at all typical there's surely a sizable helping of post-traumatic stress he has to deal with. That means PassiveMom has to have been the only regular authority figure in her life - LtColPushover couldn't be much more than a Johnny-come-lately stepfather to her. Madison-aaaah alluded to a threatened separation between the parents and sneered at PassiveMom for not following through with it, so I'm guessing that she's absorbing a good bit of PassiveMom's passive-aggression toward LtColPushover, adding her own resentment at his extended absences, and amping it up several orders of magnitude in order to produce the trainwreck we've seen the last two days. The only one who came off looking good here was (believe it or not) $hill. LtColPushover was too busy trying to win an argument with Madison-aaaah, PassiveMom was off in her own world, Grandma didn't have much to say, and only $hill seemed to be prepared to lay down the law to Madison-aaaah.

I have serious mixed feelings about the mom. There's no question that she's a victim of her stepfather, and of her mother - there's no way in hell that OstrichGrandma didn't know exactly what PervStepGrandpa was doing. But when she became a mom herself and handed her own kid over to OstrichGrandma and PervStepGrandpa, she traded in her victim card for a perp card of her own. She's a victim, yes, but that shouldn't get her a pass from $hill for her own culpability with respect to her daughter. $hill should come down on her just as hard as he appears to be coming down on OstrichGrandma. I guess we'll see tomorrow.

Sometimes. When the crime is simple drug possession, I get it. When the crime is more serious, and there's a real victim, I'm not sure that you often see rehab as an alternative to jail. That's almost beside the point, though. It's on the judge to decide whether the law allows, and he or she deems appropriate, rehab as a substitute for jail. It's not on $hill to decide that.

I skipped part 1 of PsychoBrittany yesterday, but I watched part 2 today. Here's one thing I don't get: The big stick $hill wielded to get PsychoBrittany to sit down and talk to him was the threat to call the 5-0 to have her picked up on her two outstanding warrants if she didn't. If PsychoBrittany has a warrant out for her arrest, she's a fugitive, right? And if $hill knows she's a fugitive and not only doesn't turn her in but instead orchestrates her being whisked off to $hillCronyRehab (I'm too lazy to rewatch, and I don't remember the name of the one that got pimped today), isn't he guilty of aiding and abetting or obstruction of justice or something like that? Or was his pronouncement that "The last place you (PsychoBrittany) need to be right now is in a cell" so profound and authoritative that any judge in the nation would say, "How silly of me for issuing that arrest warrant! I know now that PsychoBrittany needs FakeRehab instead. I'll cancel the warrant immediately! All hail $hill! Related rant: I don't care that being in a jail cell isn't what's best for PsychoBrittany or some other lying liar who lies and who perpetrates a fraud on the courts of law of our country to advance those lying lies. The people at whose expense she lies are hurt tangibly by it, and all of us are hurt by how her actions undermine public confidence in the efficacy and integrity of our courts of law. It's rightfully deemed a crime, and the people have a right to require that she be punished for it, and if that punishment delays for a few months (or years) her going to rehab to get better, that's just too damn bad! /End rant

You'd think that, while $hill was spending 10 minutes berating TrashyMom for being so demanding to the producer, he might have at least mentioned that it's probably not a good idea to let SkankDanielle NOT FREAKING GO TO SCHOOL!! Maybe if she'd get her faux-"street" a$$ into school she'd learn the difference between a host and an audience. Also, I wonder, if I had been present at TrashyMom's moment of screaming glory, she would instead have screamed at me, "Jew! You belong in Jew! You're a Jew!" The whole show was a total time-kill in order to get to the last 15 minutes so RobinBot could have some face time.

I'm going to be very charitable to Dean and suggest the possibility that he said he went back into the house to "get some leaven" rather than to "get some lovin'". I wouldn't put money on it, but I wouldn't rule it out either. "Leaven" seems like one of those Bible-y words that someone living on Linda's farm-of-craziness might use.