amarante

This endless kerfuffle about the text is as boring and stupid as Lucy Lucy dog idiocy. Kyle is loathsome but the text is completely innocuous. It wasn't picking sides or asking PK to spill dirt or tell him she would be his "spy". Much ado about completely nothing - and that doesn't exclude Boz either who is acting as if this innocuous text is some kind of smoking gun. On a completely trivial note - the idiocy of giving a 16 year old a new expensive car. My friend's kids went to one of the exclusive private schools in Los Angeles and almost every kid got an expensive new car at 16 and they all had accidents. My friend who could afford a Porsche gave her girls the used Lexus boring sedans and when they had their inevitable accidents it was no big deal. It also sometimes ends in tragedy because fast cars - especially large SUV's can be more difficult to maneuver in terms of safety than boring sedans.

You were correct in that stepping away from Potomac is the "healthy" thing to do but since Karen is not "healthy" I don't believe that was her motivation :-) I am not sure who might have any kind of sway with her since she was delusional enough to go to trial knowing what was contained on the tapes AND spending the entire season telling people that she would be vindicated - the implication being that she was not drunk and maybe had a glass of wine or equivalent and was targeted for driving an expensive sports car.

Cynic that I am, I don't think she stepped away voluntarily. BRAVO - as she usually does - allowed her to do a face saving release in which she says it is a "personal" decision yada yada yada I think it is because of her mysterious timing of the rehab. Probably a refusal to schedule an interview after getting out of rehab as Teresa did when she got out of "camp". And of course how could she possibly return to the show without acknowledging the videos - the women would not have missed that opportunity. Karen still has not acknowledged that she was drunk in a straightforward admission of guilt and remorse. Watching last night's show the utter hypocrisy of targeting Mia for lying when Karen has been deceptive the entire season. And probably throughout the show based on what some of the women allude to in terms of her drinking and her affairs. Not that I am defending Mia but just that the scene of Karen confronting her on her "lies" was insane when Karen knew what had been taped by the police/

Prefacing this by saying that she is a fool not to realize that you need to document the terms of the financials and child custody even if your divorce is the friendliest. She also seems extremely confused as there is no reason for her to get alimony as that is generally a thing of the past. She would be entitled to a lump sum based on finances during the marriage. Assuming there is significant wealth, Arabella should be set up with a non-revocable Trust so that there is no ability to have her cut off later. I do agree that when there is really significant wealth - more than enough for everyone and their grandchildren, people are generally "fair" to their biological children and even grandchildren. Squabbles are when there really aren't the kinds of "unlimited" resources so one person getting more means another would be getting significantly less. I don't know if her ex has that kind of wealth. If he does come for "old money" or had lots of money when married it seems very odd that there was no pre-nup.

Having a child when a rich older man marries the second (or third, fourth or fifth etc) trophy wife is standard operating procedure (no pun intended). These people are wealthy and so having the child is no kind of financial burden and effectively they have all the fun parts of having a child again because they have nannies and staff to deal with the unpleasant realities of raising children. It is also a sign of virility to keep birthing children into old age. I think most older women with children are much more hesitant to want to start having a child again. If you don't use a surrogate - assuming you actually can bring it to term - the pregnancy is much more dangerous and hard on your body.

I also didn't get the "horror" To me the text seemed the normal fairly neutral text you might send to someone when you learned of the divorce. I assume that the assurances of not discussing confidences was THOSE IN THE PAST. PK and Maurcio had been good friends and still are. I am sure that Kyle was sometimes around PK without Dorit when PK was with Mauricio and over the years Mauricio would have shared stuff about PK and Dorit he had observed because that is normal stuff shared by spouses. And the second paragraph indicated that in the future she would send memes and jokes - which seems to me a normal way of saying that their contact would be limited in the future for whatever reason. I doubt that Kyle really wants to hook up with PK - who would? He has no money and he isn't that attractive physically or even charming. I genuinely don't understand why you can't maintain a casual "friendship" with both parties in a divorce.

I agree that the misogynistic element is there but it is the completely idiocy and boring nature of these scenes which caused me to fast forward I can hate watch misogyny like the way the lawyer is portrayed as an unrelenting bitch but I have absolutely no idea why anyone would think the scenes of the mother and daughter being ludicrously over-sexualized are of interest to anyone. Seniors at a strip show - boring and ridiculous with the added stupidity of the football player willing to strip for the sake of I am assuming a blow job. Anything involving the Lolita daughter is offensive - and not because I am a prude but because I truly don't believe that a teenage girl would be acting that way around her father OR his middle aged roommates FFS. I have no interest in seeing anyone being tortured. It doesn't move the plot forward to actually watch it as it could effectively happen off screen which would enable interesting plot points to be developed which actually need to be on camera.

Of course the difference is that Sutton's husband was actually super rich and Sutton had married him when they were both young and he was poor - so she absolutely was owed equitable division of the marital estate since she had a long term marriage and had raised the children. I remember her advising another housewife of the need for a good forensic accountant as she had discovered all kinds of assets including the ex owning a sports franchise. I really can't get into the redemption arc for Erika - she is still fighting desperately to weasel out of compensating the victims. Was the song ever any kind of a hit for her - it's long enough after the release to have either flopped or not.

Not that Tyra Banks' show wasn't ridiculous but I did agree when the prospective models had no idea who some iconic models were. Anyone serious about a modeling career should be studying photographs and fashion but why should a nepo baby be expected to stretch themselves.

Of course he did it for the television exposure. He was on a show with two other decorators - it might have been called Million Dollar Decorators. This was more than a decade ago but I saw that it is streaming now. He wouldn't answer the phone for a two bedroom rental that needed furniture like the model who wouldn't get out of bed for less than $10,000 :-) My next door neighbor used him and it was a complete gut remodel and then incredible custom furniture and accessories. I took a tour of it and then when my friend was visiting ran into her and she graciously took my friend for a viewing as well. It must have cost well in excess of $1 million - probably more and this was a condo and not a house. The reality is that you can't get a good decorator unless you can spend a substantial amount of money because they can't make enough money advising someone on the purchase of some living room furniture :-) Boz lost it for me because what Sutton said wasn't 'weaponizing" Dorit's confidences. It was stating the obvious that anyone going through a really hard time is probably going to be testy and lashing out. Sutton was coming from a place where she was empathizing since she had gone through it just like her statement about the children was also just the truth.

She could hang on as the useful idiot at least for a few weeks. Also last season there were enough housewives so that they were able to avoid ouster for a bit except for Larsa and Pippen who were going to be the most obvious target.

I don't think every housewife needs a "story" if they bring it in some other way and/or aren't annoyingly hypocritical. I find Gizelle amusing and so I don't care what her "story" is. Her interactions with her girls are charming and lovely and frankly her stories are terrible - like that awful guy she was "dating" some seasons back. I remember a painful picnic or the ridiculousness of getting together with Jamal and the insanity of the restaurant he gave the girls. On the other hand the visit to the plantation with her father a few seasons ago was very moving although it's not a story. Robyn was just infuriating and boring. She might have had a story but not only didn't she deal with her true reality she actively lied about it - and then put it behind a paywall. Maybe the Grande Dame will do a podcast after stonewalling through the Reunion and charge people to hear how she feels after viewing herself on the police cam. Mia is playing three card monte with her life and expecting everyone to not remember what she said or did the day before. Very Trumpian :-)

Mia couldn't even muster up one fake tear when she was dabbing at her eyes. She should have rubbed the tissues with onion. At least Erika Jayne had that iconic scene when she deliberately didn't wear waterproof mascara and had black running down her cheeks in her discussion with Kyle.

Specific to the issue of sucking off, the UK version deals with this specifically and it is clear that there have been prior ghosts who they dealt with who were sucked off. Robin who is a caveman instead of a Viking in the UK version has seen this over the enormous amount of time he has been a ghost - others have been ghosts for a relatively short period of time as compared to Robin. There is quite a moving episode in terms of how the ghosts deal with a ghost being sucked off.

Gina probably was just a bit over the limit when she was stopped but did what Shannon did - and what most people do. They accept the plea and put it behind them with expressions of remorse and culpability. That Karen could have viewed the tapes and decided to go to trial is where she veered into delusional territory. And then the audacity of continuing to proclaim that all will reveal that it was a misunderstanding and she wasn’t drunk - let alone completely incapacitated to even walk. 😱🤷‍♀️

Shannon and Karen are probably equivalent in terms of finances at this point. There is nothing indicating that Shannon has money beyond the relatively small settlement from her divorce and whatever she earns through the show and the side gigs and social media Shannon didn't receive "special treatment" - She didn't have a particularly high powered attorney but she followed the completely standard advice of her attorney which was to accept a plea - do public service - do some kind of court mandated sobriety program. Karen - for whatever reason - chose to go to trial even after viewing the tapes. Nothing indicates that her attorney provided her with incompetent representation or that she would have received any better result if she had hired Boies or equivalent.

Bottom line is that religious beliefs impacted medical care and was determined by subjective standards instead of objective medical criteria. In terms of the show we “know” these nuns in terms of their portrayal but in the wider universe the bureaucrat was not wrong. 🤷‍♀️

Because woman were being discharged so soon, there is a law in which insurance must pay for at least 48 hours for uncomplicated vaginal deliveries and I think 72 hours for a C section. In the 1950’s women stayed for at least a week and children weren’t allowed to visit.

I found that episode to be far more nuanced and not sappy at all. I think it is a good illustration of how the show has become more one dimensional as it moves further away from reality. I realize health care - especially for poor communities - is complicated but I can’t really disagree with being suspicious of health care for women being administered by a religious organization. At least in the USA religion has been used as a way of depriving women of choices versus a secular organization like Planned Parenthood. 🤷‍♀️ As I recall even the free thinking nun of Nonatus had issues with the pill being prescribed for unmarried women. Of course in that episode even secular medicine wanted to limit its use.

Absolute shade and worse to Karen because Ray doesn't need the level of "caretaking" that requires 24/7 intensive care. He doesn't have Alzheimer nor is he immobilized with his diaper being changed. Not moving parents to live with her - or any other child is quite a bit different. Nothing indicated that her parents weren't fairly independent and they had a life down there with family and a support system. My parents didn't move in with me when they retired but had their own social network. When my father did eventually move into a very nice retirement place where he was happy as a clam with his new friends - a man with a good head of hair is never lacking for female friends. :-)

This is not damage control as this is the statement made by an attorney whose client is still pursuing other "options". At this point Karen would be preparing for the sentencing portion and/or pursuing some form of agreement. However I think she will do some time because the purpose of accepting public service and a stint in rehab is a carrot that is held out to avoid the expense of trial and the burden on the court system which wants to utilize limited resources in which there is actually some reasonable doubt. At this point they need to make the punishment worse than if she had accepted a plea deal. The hubris of the Grande Dame.

Add this "anvil" of a storyline to the rest of the stupidity. I believe the mother had Asian DNA - probably her father since presumably her mother was Caucasian which is why she gave her away when she saw what she looked like. There have been a few storylines in which the mother was either a prostitute; woman of low morals :-) or somehow wound up with a multiracial baby. I could be wrong but I think there was even a storyline in which a woman had an affair with a man who was a POC and her husband who was an older presumably infertile man accepted the baby without question - although that could have been a different sappy English show. Because the mother had Asian DNA the yellow skin was just viewed as natural. But the storyline existed in order - I suspect - to set up the "new" Nonatus which is viewed as important to providing health to those who are falling through the cracks of the impersonal St. Cuthbert but will not be overtly religious in terms of nuns. I don't know how the nuns will feel about it but at least in the Catholic orders in the USA most nuns had given up the traditional garb and just wore modest regular clothing if they were in the community as opposed to being cloistered.

I am very glad to know that my Scroogian view of this episode seem to be universal and not because I am a damned to hell irredeemable reprobate. And I should add that I avoid all Christmas specials and movies like the plague but I have a soft spot for the English shows that are essentially period pieces like this And All Creatures but I do have my limits. Just stick a fork in the ridiculous plot line of Lucille remaining in Jamaica while still married. Everything prior to this idiocy characterized her as extremely religious who loved Cyrill and so would not have stayed in Jamaica - or at least both of them would have discussed his moving back to the Caribbean. Nothing before portrayed Reggie as anything other than a rather high functional person with DS. Even a child would have either gone to someone at the terminal OR looked for a policeman or even a woman who looked trustworthy and asked them to phone - because Reggie would certainly have known his phone and address. Most children are taught that in first grade and Reggie functions at a higher level or he would have been given a card with contact information and explicit instructions.

I like Jon Hamm but he is really just Don Draper with a Southern accent and essentially calling it in. I assume he found the material as uninspiring as I do. This episode was profoundly ridiculous Nothing has indicated that the wife and daughter have any kind of altruism such that they would spend an afternoon in an assisted living facility and the wife would actually come back Nothing indicated that the widow disliked her husband and therefore would immediately find Cooper so irresistible that she leaped into a deep relationship. The sexual banter between Billy Boy and daughter makes me skin crawl. I don't know what kind of obscene male fantasy thought up this creature who seems to be acutely aware that her sexuality is her main weapon but who seems to derive some kind of perverse satisfaction in pretending that strolling around in underwear in front of old men is not disgusting - I can't imagine any emotionally healthy 17 year old who would want to turn on the male roommates And who didn't see some kind of issue arising from the unfair settlement being handled by Cooper which will then cause issue between father, son, Monty and the law firm.

I am not comparing Jay/Sam's relationship to that of Samantha/Darren because Jay and Sam have a very modern relationship and she is in no way "the little woman". Not revealing that she was a witch is really no different than hiding any other amazing talent a woman of the 1950''s might have had. And once she revealed it, Darren didn't think it was absolutely fabulous but essentially forbade her from using it at all.