Midnight Cheese

umbelina, they told Paige after having the example of the kind of emotional strain the 'truth' - or a truth-lite variant - can put on a teenager and the kind of distortion wrought by immaturity, as Jared's cause became his sexual devotion to and crush on his handler, and not his devotion to his family of origin. They had every reason to think longer and harder about younger, more vulnerable Paige, and decided not to do so. They had every reason to think longer, harder and clearer about the kind of burden they were putting on Paige, and decided not to do so. The idea that they explored all four corners of what it would mean to protect Paige more is, at least to me, absolutely not borne out by the writing or their actions. Elizabeth immediately warmed to the idea and started working it. To me, filaments of the arguments against Pastor Tim are misapplied - not writing of you personally - because it puts a parental duty on a person who is not her parent. Her parents betrayed her. Families - responsible families with a recognition of the dignity of each person in it - often decide that grown talk is not for young folks. They betrayed her by putting an unearned burden on her. They betrayed her by asking her to carry that weight with respect to Henry. The immorality and cruelty of that blows my mind. You don't place your burden on a more vulnerable person if you have any scrap of decency. You don't build a sense of 'family' by jumping your kid in, via lies, lies, lies and illegal international travel, to meet a grandmother connected to you via DNA and nothing else, and then saying, 'we're good, right?' once you're back at Dulles. What I appreciate about 'The Americans' and how I perceive it to be written is that the immorality and amorality comes home to roost, always. (I am waiting for Stan's reckoning. I suspect it'll be broader than losing Sandra and having to date dingbats like Tori.) I don't root for this because of some twisted idea about 'karma' or somesuch. I do because I think in some of the conversation, the fact that Paige was treated with more dishonesty by her own family than either Nadezhda or Mikhail and is critiqued for a 'betrayal' is profoundly disturbing, so it makes a certain degree of sense to me that chickens are flapping and coming to roost at the Jennings' home because of what the Jennings parents did. The idea that Paige deserves adult-like scrutiny for her 'choice' to try and find a little oxygen in the air by sharing a tragic piece of information with someone who actually does care about the state of her actual soul is just ridiculous to me.

Why would it occur to Pastor Tim that he threatens Paige? He never betrayed her at the got damb cellular level, and IMO her parents did. They did burden her, they did abuse her trust and strain her soul, they did all of these things! Further, they did have a choice even when the initial pressure was put on in re the second generation illegal program -- they could've explained why they felt Paige was not ready and continued lying, as they are incredibly sophisticated liars who lied seamlessly until then, and said that the issues between them were marital in nature, and held off until Paige had more years, more development behind her. He is supposed to suss out that she's at church too much when she's got Philizabeth's knee in her back to spy on them because of her 'choice' -- wow, what a choice, to vent the cruel pressure put on her by Philizabeth - to go to a source of comfort and plead for help? Am I seriously the only person here who sees massive absurdity, not in a ha-ha French farce way, of insisting that Paige 'created' this situation by going to her pastor? I'm an agnostic on a good day but to all that is holy, the fault here ain't residing in Paige to me at least! "She asked for the truth." "Your entire history, identity, and security is a lie, we have abused your trust your entire life, and are affirmatively working against principles and philosophies instilled in you your entire life and celebrated by your not-home nation, every friend you've ever had, and your still-innocent brother for whom you have a new and perverted duty of care to lie to continually. Welcome to the liar's club, but not in the Mary Karr way." Hm. Pastor Tim has his issues and they are significant (we are likethis with the money issue) but the fundamental original sin isn't his, nor Adam, nor Eve's. The brutality of the Soviet system is writ small into how they treat Paige now that she has partial knowledge of the truth.

Ramona deserved and deserves a continual reading for filth, 24/7, 365. So even though it made everyone visibly nervous, I was giddy that Dorinda Went There. Ramona can get all wordIcanttype-y about John, she has criticized him non-stop in TH's and in filmed conversations, and this is behavior going back years, and this isn't even getting to how ankle-rolling-eager Ramona is to out the dirt on everyone else, on camera, be it true or false - she has attacked every single person who has ever been on the show excepting Carole and Jules! That beast's right to show glee or smugness about anyone else's choice in partner should've ended probably around 15 years ago, because I'm sure that's when everyone east of 5th and north of 59th streets knew Mario was uh, dating. Ramona never stops hurting people and never will, so besides the obvious pain of her never, in all likelihood, finding a 'deserving' Mario replacement (yay!), she NEEDS to be read. I know a Ramona-type in real life who is a monster and a nut and is despicably cruel in public social situations. She is FINALLY getting back what she has dished out for years - there was a collective snapping where people just couldn't take it after many moons of cruelty. It's really a lot for people to bear and I guess I fundamentally disagree that Ramona is anything but ill-intended. She's not a truth-teller, and she likes to hurt people, and the person telling the truth there? Was Dorinda. Even if Mario wanted to eat his cake and have it too, I think he decided it was worth it to split because Ramona is for all of his own faults vicious. I thought Jules having her husband beard her eavesdropping, with him as her willing co-conspirator, was adorable. I think she's suffered a lot and has not a strong enough love of herself, but I like her. I like her rough city-girl voice, I think she's stunning if terribly thin, and I actually like her makeup and flove her hair and casual style. (And I think her kids, especially that tiny baby girl, are so cute). And honestly, she and Michael have the best vibe of any couple I've ever seen on this franchise. They are comfortable and seem to be actual best friends. He's also a bidnessman but not a jerk to her (Josh Taekman), their relationship was based on years of friendship, I don't know. They seem real and compatible and like they would naturally be a good team.

All of the LVPisms about will I, won't I? return, crack me up! She's done it so often, and I read those kinds of social media messages in her accent and encourage all snarkers to do the same. It gets hilarious to think of her with her 2-pound lashes on, whispering, 'Shall I endeavah to retuhn?' She is traditionally the most dramatical of drama llamas when it comes time to re-up. We know her satin-covered rumpy will be sitting in a velvet chair for her THs next season every season that this show exists.

I thought Ramona's set of her 50 closest girlfriends looked, as a group, somewhat scary. Made me sad. Aging is fucking rough but dammit those Dr. Sharon Giese, Dr. Terry Dubrow procedures don't really come close to working if 'looking younger' is the goal. In that crowd, based on their dress and makeup and hairstyles, Carole and LuAnn (probably closest in age to Ramona's friends) looked so incredible; Jules and Beth are much younger of course than Ramona's bistro bitches.

Instinctively, watching LVP talk about her boyfriend, taking a pause, wiping her eyes - I felt there was a lot of falseness there. Not that I doubt that the two incidents occurred - though her phrasing there and seeming to take a beat to recount them seemed odd - but I felt, instantly, total doubt that she was feeling what she was IMO mightily striving to show she was feeling in order, again IMO, to put the kibosh on the other Hos and Andy coming after her. She seems, again just IMO, drawn as a moth is to flame to being in the right and rather a perfect victim when it suits her. At moments, to me, she positively luxuriates in being a victim. Mileage certainly may vary! Please don't come after me for 'doubting victims' because that is not what I'm saying, and that kind of swarming would be unnecessary and untrue. I still think LVP is critical to this franchise, I think an LVP and Kyle 4 Eva season tends to be a pretty entertaining season....but I doubt a lot of what I at least feel she puts out there. And I don't care for Eileen or Rinna, for the limited amount it may be worth and think they could be gone with no loss at all to RHOBH. Actually, take Erika too; I can't stop reading Ronnie K.'s recaps, and if I have to read another flight of fancy where he imagines a post-coital scene between the Girardi's, I'm going to need Lacuna, Inc. to obliterate my memories.

We're not addressing the same 'fault.' I've written several times and stand behind my point that Elizabeth is the one retrofitting Martha into a role she was never playing, and my point has nothing to do with Philip, ultimately. Elizabeth helped game Martha and is insistent that any conversation re Martha go her way - Elizabeth's way. I think we need to just YMMV this one.

I blame Elizabeth for indulging in some serious bullshit regarding Martha. She's been derisive, nasty, and competitive, and she was operating with complete information and Martha wasn't, and she's kept her family, while Martha's lost hers (I refer to her parents, not to Clark/Philip). It's self-indulgent and mean as hell and terribly, cruelly unfair. I don't care about her feelings in this sphere, but the cheese stands alone. YMMV.

It's interesting. On some level, the show is about false union, whether that's in a marriage, or holding a country together, if barely. Not just the dream-state/nightmare state that marriage can be over the course of a long marriage. (Whether the marriage is 'real' or not, arranged or not, legal or not.) Impressing Paige into service and subsuming her daughter's Paige's individual personhood, character, soul, into an imagined and distant collective near the point of fracture and implosion is an unbelievably brutal act. Arguably, it's the act of all parenthood. But Elizabeth knows the falsehood: she knows Paige is on some level a native-born American. I mean, she knows it beyond the descriptive, legal reality of that state. Brutal but not heartless, I will give you that. It's all wrong-hearted. I will never agree with analogizing between Martha and Gregory and the ironic use of 'agent' and the concept of 'agency' is why. Gregory WAS an 'agent' with 'agency.' Martha on a certain level was not. And Elizabeth is why. When we destroy others - and with less of the unassailable right that E and P have in raising and on some level, at least temporarily destroying Paige - we don't get to sit back and define them as 'simple' (Zhukov's dog) yet maintain they had 'agency.' The word choice is deployed with typical 'Americans' perfection. And it makes me loathe Elizabeth. Lisa and Martha cannot with any intellectual honesty be called agents in the vein of Gregory or Fred (season 2). Pawns, sure. The word matters to me, a lot. "Agency" is an illusion (hey hey, David Copperfield) as even Elizabeth knows, post-EST. Having her sell it is repellent, at least for me, even recognizing the why of it all.

Yes, AliShibaz, I agree - the disappearing American woman (who may not really go away after all: one can hope...).

Amazing episode, amazing thread as always. I'll just post my feelings. I swear I'm not a chowderhead, and love nuance and this show for how well-written it's been from the start. I have to say, agreeing of course that Elizabeth was formed by excruciating circumstance into who we see, that I can't stomach her. Well done, writers. (Not being sarcastic). Her complete buy-in, if out of necessity, to the absurdity of insisting Martha was an 'agent' just as Gregory was - when he knew about Philizabeth, whereas Martha knew Elizabeth as 'Jennifer' and her own parents were seduced by the whole Westerfeld clan at her wedding, and her rants against Paige have finally put me where I simply can't abide her any longer. Yes, she's been used and brutalized by her country, but her own brutality towards weaker people is repulsive and utterly unconscionable. Yes, these are scenes from a marriage (and could even end up like 'Scenes from a Marriage') but the analogy of foxhole buddies holds for me. Her view of others -- the scorn and contempt towards Martha, whom she helped destroy (I remember well the scene about 'who wears the pants?' when Philip fretted about Martha wanting a child -- as they talked about a honeytrapped woman in the home they share with their living children), towards Irina, who lost Misha/Philip, it's all well beyond the four corners of any assignment to any mission. The need to maintain her superiority over Philip - okay, maybe it's the result of still processing Timoshev's rape. I must say, at this point, I don't curr. Elizabeth's just such a shit.

I totally agree with all of this, jinjer (and love your posts). In the past I've found Sonja incredibly classist and mean-spirited ("for the masses, not the classes," her 'advice' to the much-derided Cindy Barshop about how 'girls' enter the social scene when her own was old-school courtesan style) but she's sorely needed in the cast. Bethenny, Carole and Ramona drag it down with unnecessary meanness. Carole's super disappointing, dudes. I fell for her a little bit and feel snookered, because she's one grimy assjack who is as or more looks-obsessed, I'm convinced, than any RHo anywhere. Aren't I damned dope?

So Carole and Bethenny are doubling down on social media after the show airs. They are such fucking assholes. Go, Jules and Lu.

Actually, I think I agree with you thinking of how Philip interacts with Sandra. I guess maybe I'm thrown by how, on reflection, Philip and Elizabeth seem to have nothing deep between them excepting Paige and Henry. I'm not explaining it well but season over season, despite things like Philip making sure Elizabeth got to see her dying mother, I just feel like there's very little there at the deepest levels. I absolutely do not think they are wildly in love, certainly not Elizabeth, and I can see that in other deeply repressed characters elevating loyalty to a different social construct (e.g., those in The Remains of the Day).

I was really unsettled by the entire episode, but thought the doom that Gaad quietly described was absolutely devastating. I know Martha didn't set out to loop a noose around his neck or her own, but damn. Fantastic episode, fantastic season. I agree with so many opinions here. I do think/feel that were Philip allowed to be Philip and not Philip/Clark, and were he not a father, indeed he might run away with Martha. I have been more of a Philizabeth fan than some across the web since season 1, but there is something repellent and infuriating about Elizabeth's jealousy of Martha, and the kidney-punch she gave her. Elizabeth was slightly mortified and angry when she saw how beautiful Annalise was, but whatever her own deep psychological issues, she's been part of the absolutely soul-destroying con against Martha from jump. I feel nothing for Elizabeth with respect to this element of their spycraft, certainly no pity whatsoever.

I hate being addicted to this show. Everyone's said it best but hot damn Bethenny and Carole suck, as individuals and to the power of Greyskull when they unite, and the gossiping about Jules not eating at Jules's home, in front of Jules, was just beyond. That is Ramona Singer-level twuntery. Be better, competitive, faux-concerned, skinny bitches! I completely agree that they both buy into this facially insane (in both ways) idea that you can skinny your way into looking young - uh, from behind. Maybe. All 3 of them are extreme, even for NYC. Ramona leaving for Manhattan for 'date night' - ha! Ha, I say! I'm a mean mug and she's so horrible that I'm kind of like, if you say so. "High school lover" anecdote aside, I think she's a fake and lonely and deservedly lonely and yes I know Mario is awful. But still. How on this Earth or any other planet was John's zip-up Snoopy-style or something to critique? Beth is reeeeaaching. And failing. She set up a great party and f'ed it to the summit of Everest with the attitude and even if she wanted to slam John, what about Dorinda and her other guests? If Skinnymess isn't happy, ain't no one permitted to be happy. I think the way to work it is to drink everything, eat everything, and keep at the far perimeter of the miserable skinny fools with mic packs sticking out of their skinny backsides. Jules and her husband seem happy, and he's cute and seems to take things lightly. Good for him. Carole talking about John like he's Quasimodo come to life in 2015 is a whole lot of nonsense from someone who looks like the "Saw" puppet. No, ma'am. Sorry! No, miss. LuAnn was a terrible fool about the Adam situation but in her defense, if it was a situation and her niece, Nicole, felt hurt, I'm sure it was amplified by all of Cool Carole's 'I don't care' talking heads. When you 'win' someone, you don't TH all cutely about it, that's just bitch-assed. I'm not saying Carole's a Becky, I think her hair is good and all, but you don't IG cutely after something to grind your heel into someone's pain, publicly. That's disgusting. I haven't read "What Remains" but the consensus has been that it's exquisitely written and shows someone with real depth. WTF is wrong with her?

Thanks for posting, Umbelina - I think Carole looks adorable in her suit. That's all I got. B really went there, holy schnikes, with the coke talk. Hot damn. She's so fucking tacky and plays a mean game by her own set of rules. No doubt she'd go postal were anyone to accuse her of HGH or Adderall abuse. bosawks, thanks for having that kind of real talk about B the POS and her 'special needs' comment. B is beneath contempt so much of the time.

I'd be afraid of her rage issues and complete lack of accountability for what she does, since mid-30s isn't all that young. When I think of young, I think of that football player Porsha was unsuccessfully attempting to sext and present as her man until he noped on out of there. Maybe Glen Rice Jr. is single, I think he's young, he's a sportsman which seems to be a sweet spot for Porsha, and they'd be a hot couple up until the sirens start wailing in the distance.

Bethenny and Ramona are so gross. Dorinda can't handle her distilled potatoes but damn! Such bitchery over nothing. Bethenny spent a little while shoving her businesses in folks' faces, and Ramona, on-air, interviewed college-aged girls for an assistant's position and made cruel comments about the skin of an applicant, offering unsolicited acne advice. But they think they are better than John, with their harsh accents and neediness and screeching about Skinnytwat this and TruReNEW&A***l for fucking ever? Noprah to that. Nope. I'd bet John and Madame Paulette's is better-run in every way, with minimal employee turnover. So their arrogance and high-handedness is just bizarre. I thought Carole's '5 summers' comment was a little funny and self-deprecating about her remaining bikini years and the fact that Adam wants kids. She's being realistic about their particular relationship. She seems like a romantic with her feet on the ground. Ramona, good god. Okay. The boobs look gross, those eyes are looking yanked, her styling is off and she is a HAM as often as not. The shit with deliberately bringing up the Viagra comment on camera three separate times (Sarabeth's with Bethenny, phone with Bethenny, at the Gansvoort during the bra party) is so bitchassed with a side of twuntery. She worked *hard* to make sure that she would embarrass someone she's been pals with for 20 years. She's such a fucking asshole. I need Dorinda to 'party' (and honestly, Bethenny is such a snatchmonster! The bitch needs to start wiping her nose and winking when she says 'partying' because WE GET IT, Dorinda and John use drugs. We get it, we get it!) and spill allllllll about Mario and Ramona. I mean, we already know it - Ramona is miserable because Mario finally decided an expensive asset-split was fucking worth it to chew his leg free from the bear trap and go and do what he wants. But I need it in detail on camera, just as Ramona does to people she claims to care about. Scumbag foobmonster.

What was the false accusation that Yoyo put on Ken? That he shoved her when he merely put his hand on her shoulder? I see all of these particular Housewives as liars when it suits them. Perhaps Kyle is in some ways an exception. I certainly don't expect Lisa to forgive Yolanda, but Ken is IMO ridiculous with how eager he is to get into the fray with the Housewives bullshit, and when these always-stupid arguments get going, people seem to see red and exaggerate all over the damned place. But I digress - what exactly did Yoyo say about Ken?

I've been sick and thus on a TV bender. Kathryn has her problems but Thomas, Whitney and Patricia, the queen of the old-school nosejob (I wonder if she married before or after her final surgeries, because nastiness and breathing through her nose are the only skills she has ever had) are total human garbage. I'd fully believe Whitney and Thomas have, to use Whoopi Goldberg's parlance, rape-raped young women before. They are predatory scumbags and Thomas has had now with 2 babies the chance to be less of a soaked loser after a slap on the wrist prison stint where a less-privileged man would still be wearing orange. But nope, nothing takes, and it never will because muffucah is old, old, old. And an alcoholic who stalks women, some of whom are likely underage. Yet people take up for him! And act like the early 20something woman bedeviled him, like 30 years of sex left him not knowing how condoms work, despite the fact that K. has pretty obvious emotional problems and a fuckton of pre and post and partum-partum hormones while on this show is at fault for 'ruining him.' No ma'am! And that 'ma'am' is not for Patricia - Mario Buatta can decorate her houses on her dead spouse's scratch but she is nothing and raised a son with the charm of a burst-open air sickness bag and has all the ladylike charm of my dog when he's having big GI issues. Of course I love this show.

The Independent article is infamous, as the journalist was found to have plagiarized lots of other work. However, the overall picture is beyond grim, and the HW's visit is part of that problem: there is very little preexisting what we'd call culture there, since it's like Disney for adults but with limited access to liquor. The emirate is sustained on trying to get Western business and tourists to come, and the hotels and restaurants are built and run on people who are in practical terms so grossly underpaid that months if not years of work are unpaid, have their passports confiscated, and literally cannot escape. So meals, rooms with giant fish tanks, mall excursions - most of what they did and like, since they are dull as fuck and want to swan around - are all part of the problem. It's not like a place with a 'dark side.' Everything they did, saw, enjoyed is part of the fundamental problem - not like going to parts of South East Asia to see temples and spend in hotels, bars and restaurants while worrying your tourist dollars support child sex traffickers when there is no direct connection, and where there you are seeing things, living in hotel rooms and eating meals built and prepped in real time by people who are being precluded from leaving by having their papers stolen from them, who cannot go to their consulates, and are trafficked to and from slave-level work in the areas beyond the falcons and ubermalls. Staying in that regime is the regime's literal business plan. There has been a massive, very well-funded effort to keep this from being a truly known thing. It's so fucked that there needs to be another word for it, and 'there's bad things happening everywhere' is facile as hell and doesn't cut it IMO. If any of the HW's looked into things, who knows if they did, read a bit and still enthusiastically went, that's a very telling thing.

The entire place is a lie on a scale different than any other place I've ever read about. Erica's hunties are very lucky - they and the Housewives must have been there around when Doughty Street and other lawyers prevented the extradition of a gay Briton accused of theft because there could be no assurance of his human rights while imprisoned awaiting 'trial.' Also around the time, I think, of their trip, the ruler's son died of a 'heart attack' (many, many reports of steroids, coke etc., since it's not super common for 33 year olds with tremendous $$$$$ and a rep for being 'sportsmen' die of a coronary event) and there were 3 days of quasi-mandatory mourning. What a disgusting fucking place for anyone besides the wealthiest emiratis and expats deliberately ignoring the reality for subcontinental workers, gays, the poor, women after being assaulted....I can't think of a place successfully courting movie stars to sell their (awesome-looking, I get that part) airlines and some of the wealthiest women in this country to ooh at their just-built-on-slave labor hotels. And the country and particular emirate has a literal P.R. shill out to shut down voices, and make the voiceless labor class disappear. That's a little Dubai rillness for Erika, who thought a roach on a caftan would be the 'reality' slapping the 'bitches.' I get the sense she knew or knows a little more about the underbelly of Dubai than the rest for some reason, and doesn't care. Who knows. Ugh.

I'm several days, episodes late and many dollars short, but holy and unholy hell, I've gone down a hole reading articles about Dubai and am genuinely, snark-free horrified and appalled by the showcasing of this place on my beloved shitshow of a TV show. (I was sick, watched 'Syriana,' thumbs up, and then a RHOBH repeat, and then...) Yes, I know one can't expect a bunch of materialistic, back-stabbing, bus-throwing-under Juvaderm and pink wine addicts to think about shit besides their own most selfish self-interest, and yes I 'knew' but didn't read much in terms of nitty-gritty detail and - this is a place fit only for the transactional Erika Jayne types. YMMV but I'm tossing in some links, some older than others, for any interested night owls. Grim reading. http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2007/nov/12/familyandrelationships.firstperson http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/11936981/Who-in-their-right-mind-would-want-to-visit-Dubai.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2859734/The-Dubai-DON-T-want-tourists-Photos-desperate-conditions-endured-migrant-labourers-forced-work-50C-heat-pittance.html

Trooper, I am pretty sure I know your store and I live a neighborhood away and I saw someone with their dog two nights ago in a grocery store. I have a dog, a dog who does not visit retail businesses with me. I thought I was straight-up hallucinating seeing a 30-year old blonde with no issues, no service vest (fake or not) or anything carrying a Baby-the-dog sized dog as she looked at the Amy's frozen foods. You cannot cure entitlement besides full-throated mockery and fines and stuff but I was super surprised and underequipped. You guys are right that Carole should've keep her tiny ass outside with her fecal coffee cup and sweetie pie of a dog.