GuiltiestPleasures

She really does *not* get it does she? He's not doing surgery if he thinks she has an active drug abuse issue!

Though it's hard to be excited for two hours of watching an addict slowly destroy her life.

Hello all - I made it or the actual live-chat for once! What other imaginary *painful* health issue do you think Angie will diagnose herself with on her quest for meds? Eating habits were yummy pasta with a sausage tomato sauce. It was VERY good for something so simple to make.

You win closest to the second weigh in for sure!

Are we not counting Samantha's surgery from the first episode because she didn't actually earn it from Dr. Now? It does seem like she should get partial credit at best.

I think that the issue Kanae had and part of the reason "do your own research" may not be all that helpful is that the vast, vast majority of weight-loss material on the internet is intended for people who are much smaller and healthier than these poundticipants. Heck, half of it is just fitspo targeted at people who are already a healthy weight. Like Kenae' who "knew" that losing 100 lbs in two months wasn't healthy. She's right...as long as you don't currently weigh 600-700 lbs.

Alert, alert - she needs to start "taking care of herself" and she came to that conclusion without even writing a letter to her Mom or something. (Ahhh, never mind, while I was typing she brought up her therapist.)

I haven't eaten in FOUR hours so hopefully that will make a difference. Oh honey, no. That's like the weird excuse so many of them use about car rides causing swelling (though kind of in reverse) but one very, very brief fast will make no meaningful difference on 600+ pounds.

I think she said she was 34? Whatever it was, it was surprisingly young.

I'm saying 649. She seems pretty tall and the weight is (relatively) less dramatic looking than some poundicipants.

Between the real flatware and the relatively nice house and her mobility, I'm hopeful too. But the show has psyched us out before so let's not get too excited. That's a truly enormous amount of pasta and frozen garlic toast.

Can we keep the teasing about the beard to a reasonable level - facial hair due to PCOS isn't exactly her choice. But good lord, this woman's life has been difficult. Unfortunately, an enormous amount of Chinese food is not the solution. Also, I wonder why she feels the need to blame her interest in women on her history and not just that she's bisexual?

Not only are you not weird - you are absolutely correct. It is incredibly inappropriate for Robert to have his child sleeping with someone who is essentially a stranger to him. Even if nothing ever happened, it models really, really bad boundaries to the little boy as he grows up. If, god forbid, child services ever got involved in their family somehow, they could actually find that this living situation is unacceptable and force Robert to find a separate sleeping situation for his son. In fact, in evaluating a foster home, most child protection agencies won't accept sleeping on the couch as a solution for a child - they have to be able to provide a bed for the child (not necessarily in their own room but certainly not in the room with the parents). I know that lots of cultures co-sleep either because of necessity (generally poverty) or out of tradition. And I know that Bryson (is that his name, I keep forgetting) is still fairly young, but if he announces to a teacher or other mandatory reporter that he is sleeping in the same bed with his "new mommy", they absolutely are risking having a DCF case worker showing up at their door. Also, Robert is just one more of these guys who lied through his teeth about the lifestyle he could provide for her so that he could get this beautiful/sexy/provocative woman to come to the US ... and then is shocked and amazed when she continues to BE a beautiful/sexy/provocative woman when she arrives in person. AND he seems to expect her to want to be a stay-at-home mom (at least until she gets her work permit) who scrimps and saves and is content with whatever he gives her...which appears to just be "America." I have no doubt that she is using him but HE was using HER too and the main difference seems to be that she was entirely upfront about who SHE was while he lied constantly and is now upset that she's angry about that. It has the same vibe as Jorge/Anfisa or even Colt/Larissa - the women are made out to be the evil gold diggers but really they are just expecting to get what was promised to them! Honestly, I have little patience for either of them, but I think Robert is especially awful.

Yeah, so I did some googling and it seems like the only boiler plate questions that apply for the Fiancee interviews are: "Do you work" or "Have you have been convicted of a crime". I really do think that the question specifically about prostitution must be based on at least some suspicion on ICE's part. I don't think it's just a standard part of all the interviews. That being said, I can believe that the ten year mark is just a boiler plate amount of time. But regardless of the ICE questions, I still think that if she really did work as "more" than a model, then the odds that Juliana was trafficked as a teenager are really high. Which seems like a crappy reason to deny someone a visa. Someone in another post said they think TLC would never have allowed them on the show if they believed she had been trafficked as a child but I don't believe that for a minute. Because she and Michael aren't going to budge from the position that she never did that kind of work while viewers will be split in their opinions and will delight in the "scandal" - it's exactly the kind of BS that TLC producers live for.

Sure, there is a sub-set of sex workers who really enjoy their work and do it willingly. But there are many more who are using it as a way to escape grinding poverty, feed a drug habit, or for other depressing reasons. But, in this particular case, we're talking about Juliana potentially being trafficked as at least a teenager if not a pre-teen. Children cannot consent to sex work and even if they could, no 15-year-old should be handed around to dirty old men. It isn't the same thing at all.