JoannKBC

Bravo to Janelle for "I just don't like them." It's really not that deep. I gave a double take at Kody saying that he had not talked to Christine for two years, and then later saying he is still not talking with Christine. Has he not been having any visitation with Truely for two years? Or is he somehow arranging visitation with his minor daughter without talking to her mother? It's just weird.

My head hurt trying to figure out what they were all dancing around not talking about. Christine said she didn't want to throw Meri under the bus by talking about something. Then Kody said he didn't want to rehash some big thing, some big change that Meri had. He said to "go back and watch the episodes" and that he and Meri will always disagree about what happened. But then Meri also said she didn't want to talk about certain things. Can someone fill me in on what we are supposed to read between the lines?

I found it very odd and sad that Robin's reaction to Kody telling her that Aspyn asked "Why don't you like me?" was "Well, she was just being confrontational." A normal human with empathy might have said, "Oh, that's horribly sad that she feels like her own Dad doesn't like her. What can we do to make her feel loved?" It was just such a weird reaction.

True. Though I was pleasantly shocked to see Kody demonstrating a modicum of self awareness. He is starting to admit that he was an asshole and that he was lashing out and lying about never loving them out of insecurity and defensiveness. He is still in denial about many things, but that at least seemed to show a small amount of growth.

Well, he chose the right wife for someone who needs a lot of attention. At least he finally admitted that about himself.

Yes! She said she & Kody wanted to focus on "the family" and that Janelle & Christine were focusing on the "kids who moved away" - as if they are not a part of the family! That stood out to me as a horrible thing to say. I would never consider my adult son who doesn't live at home as less a part of my family than my teenager who does.

The dressmakers only having 45 days to making Christine a fully custom dress I guess explains the end result. That's not a lot of time. Brianna and Aurora having a have a big conversation with their Mom to tell her they want to go to church was weird. These girls are in college. Can't they just...get themselves to church?

Janelle was the bookkeeper and tax preparer, which is different from the person who is ultimately making the final decisions about how and where to spend the money. That said, I think Janelle is downplaying her role a little, in that Christine, Meri and Robyn were not even privy to the books, and Janelle at least had access to the full picture of the family's financial information, if not the ability to override Kody's control over it.

I thought Paedon's theatrical exaggerated reaction to the engagement video was hilarious. He was just pointing out the ridiculousness that Christine would think this was a surprise she was springing on them. They've moved in together. They have told everyone that they have been looking at wedding venues and they're getting married. "We're engaged!" is not the shock you think it is, Christine.

I could have sworn that Christine had mentioned in some past episode that Truely was autistic. But as I google it, I realize that never actually happened. Truely did wear a shirt for an autism organization in a couple of episodes, but that doesn't mean anything. Gwendolyn has spoken about being autistic, so the shirt on Truely could have been because of that connection.

"We're not engaged yet, but we need to book the wedding venue..." Um, what? You've said you want to marry him and he's said he wants to marry you. You've agreed to want to have a wedding. You guys are engaged. I don't know what formal process Christine thinks engagement has to be - for her, it probably has to include an element of surprise, a photo shoot and a diamond ring - but someone should break the news to her that she's engaged.

That's what she needs now. But I think she did need polygamy when she had young kids, because she wanted a big family and she wanted a career, but she did not want to be a single mom raising a bunch of young children. She wanted and needed someone to co-parent with her in a situation where she would still be head of the household. That's why I think she appreciated polygamy for at least part of her life. It's funny now she says she doesn't want to be married because she wants her independence - Kody was so oppressive that she can't even seem to imagine a husband who could love and support her AND encourage and enjoy her independence. This was so weird to me. If this is his logic, would he also say that it's his fault if someone does or doesn't love him? I don't think so. He sure doesn't take any responsibility for the wives and children who don't love him anymore.

When Gabe mentioned that Savannah wants her brothers to walk her down the aisle when she gets married, my thoughts immediately went to Garrison. What a tragedy.

Good point! At the time, he said over and over that he had no obligation to his adult kids and once they were 18 they didn't need to be living at home. But now that some of Robyn's kids are over 18 he's changed his tune on that one.

I think she knows deep down that it's bs. She knows the kids are mad at him because of his actual actions. But she has to walk on eggshells around Kody's fragile ego so she tells him that the kids have been fed misinformation and would come around if they knew the truth. That's the only story that seems to get through to him a little, so it's the story she keeps telling him.

Most parents, if their kids didn't want anything to do with them and were badmouthing them, would ask themselves, "Where did I go wrong as a parent? How did I raise kids who would have so little respect for me?" But Kody seems incapable of introspection and assigns himself absolutely no responsibility in any part of the situation. I guess in that way he is admitting that he was not a father to most of his children and did not have a hand in raising them or any influence on them. Because he seems perfect fine with calling them awful people on television.

Good point. If Production really cared about protecting this woman's reputation, they would have respected Jimmy's wishes and edited it out. Beyond the fact that it might be slightly embarrassing for Jimmy's friend, is there something more serious at stake? Was this woman married when they slept together? Or were they working together or something?

The Trevor part was hard to watch. He seems like he has some mental health issues he needs to work through and as badly as he behaved, it was not fun to watch him get humiliated on TV. I hope they had someone walk him out and keep an eye on him afterward. We got some closure around Clay & AD, but I wish they would have asked him outright why he didn't share his doubts clearly with her before the wedding. Why let AD go all the way through with it, pretending you were going to say yes. Even all the altar he was smiling and joking like he was going to say yes. But he knew he wasn't ready. He explained clearly why he said No but did not explain the timing. I think Production doesn't want to admit that without some No's at the altar they don't have a show. Jeramey and Sarah Ann seem awful but Laura is unnaturally angry about it. Move on. You dodged a bullet. Johnny didn't fully explain his position on the birth control argument but I got the sense that he's one of those guys that doesn't think of condoms as birth control. He thinks of them as STD prevention, but then once you & your partner test as having no STDs, you ditch the condoms and rely solely on the woman's birth control. Chelsea seems to have gained a little more self-awareness about her own insecurity and delusions after having watched herself on TV. I wish they'd talked to her and Jimmy a bit more. The conversation with Jessica just went on and on. I'm so bored of her story and everyone raves about how fantastic she is but she showed her mean girl colors when she ripped into Jimmy about what a mistake he made by not choosing her because she was so much hotter than Chelsea he was going to choke when he saw her. I guess she's apologized since for that rant but you know it's still there in her.

Based on Christine's awkwardness when David was telling this story, she may have been telling everyone the I-pursued-him story when in reality David's daughter encouraged him to put himself in Christine's path (she said she was using a matchmaker - he or his daughter could have figured out who it was and signed him up) so she could stumble upon him.

Yes, this! Either it was never properly tailored, or it's possible she got the dressed fitted too early in the process and then lost some weight. Because that dress desperately needed to be taken in. It was practically falling off her by the end of the night because it was too loose.

Was anyone else weirded out to learn that David's daughter had scoped out Christine as a potential wife for her Dad before they had even met? She was so excited to find out that Christine had let Kody because that meant that now her Dad could try to date her. And it seemed like she had hinted that she thought Christine was a great potential match for her Dad even before Christine had left Kody. It's just got to be weird going into a first date with someone who has already watched a huge chunk of your life on TV and already knows a lot about you.

I don't think it's weird or a bad sign that Christine's daughters don't want to consider David their stepfather. My father's been married a few times, and I call the wife he married when I was 5 my stepmother, but I call the wife he married when I was 21 "my Dad's wife." No reflection on how I feel about the person.

This was so delusional! Even Suki was giving him the side eye on that one. I also raised an eyebrow on his statement that "That's what men do when we get together. We complain about our wives." Is it, really? If so, that's a pretty sad statement on who his friends are and their marriages. I think he assumes that all men low-key hate their wives, and so therefore his marriage(s) are normal.

I was so confused by Robyn's statement that she couldn't be happy in her marriage/family until all of Kody's ex-wives told her to her face and off camera that they wanted her to be happy. What in the world?!? If I were Kody or her kids I would be insulted by that. Also - Kody has been talking so much about how Christine has been bad-mouthing him to their kids and turning their kids against him that I was waiting for some bombshell of what it was she had said to them. But instead, his "evidence" was that dinner table conversation when they were talking about how Kody had told Christine he was never attracted to her. That is not Christine badmouthing Kody, that is her just repeating what Kody himself has said to a National Television Audience! If he doesn't want his kids to think badly of him, perhaps he shouldn't be an asshole on television.

This is just anecdotal, but I have noticed in all of the divorces I have been around, women tend to say "It was good once, but he changed" and men say, "It was never good. We were never actually in love." It's just so common. So it's interesting to be that it's really no different in polygamy. Kody is trying to convince himself and everyone else that he was never actually in love with any of his first three wives, and its was never a love marriage.