Empress1

She is. Nice skin.

And Dre and Bow don't do that anyway. And Jack and Diane are really old enough to putter around a resort by themselves. They could go on the water slide alone. Actually at their age, I'm surprised they wanted to hang out with their parents at all.

I liked that Darnell mentioned a sliding scale. A lot of mental health practitioners don't even take insurance. I'm the opposite - my last therapist was a Black woman, and I was only looking for Black women. (Most of my doctors are Black women, on purpose.) Sometimes I was there to talk about racism and/or sexism and I felt like I needed someone who could understand my specific experiences.

Randall was watching The Great British Baking Show, which is an excellent choice when you want something to calm you down. In their little feety pajamas! Too cute. Yep. He may or may not have been violent with her, but he's definitely emotionally abusive at the very least. I thought that was really telling (and shitty of Jack). Randall has always had to be the "strong one," and no one can or should be strong all the time. That happened to me too. I went to the RA like "Um, so I slept through that last night. Just a heads-up." He winced. The talk between Darnell and Randall about Black men needing help sometimes was so real. There's still a stigma against therapy in the Black community, especially with Black men (see: having to be "the strong one"). I thought it was very moving for Darnell to reach out to Randall like that. (I thought it was interesting that Darnell's religious leader referred him to his therapist - often in the Black community we're told that faith is a substitute for therapy. "Talk to God about it, you'll be fine.") I was also really moved by Randall reaching out to Kevin ... and then some months later they're not speaking.

I'm with you, and with Dre. The kids' grandparents live with them. They can watch the younger kids for a couple of days. Dre said the kids need for THEM to have a strong relationship and he's right (they DID almost get divorced). Ditching their kids forever is not a good look, but taking a weekend trip every so often is fine - and I think necessary. They have financial and family help resources that many parents would kill for; I think they should take advantage every once in a while. I don't necessarily think that Bow's mom guilt is something she should just accept. Diane was being a huge brat. I wish I WOULD have told my parents, who were taking me on a luxury vacation, "nice job picking a flight that gets in two hours early," or yelled at a pianist across a resort restaurant. That's just bad behavior.

So this episode cemented for me that they totally only give Lola a husband to keep the "will they or won't they" out of her friendship with Mark. Now they've established that she has one, they're happy ... and he never has to appear on screen. (The actor was on 9-1-1, and I remember because it was one of my favorite scenes. Athena, a cop played by Angela Bassett, was hooking up with him and got herself stuck in her own handcuffs during their tryst. She had to call her friend Hen, a paramedic, to get the keys. Hen absolutely fell the fuck out laughing when she showed up. The whole scene was gold.)

I've spent my whole life in big cities with large Black populations (my high school in particular was in what was then a predominantly Black neighborhood, though there are more white people there now) but I went to predominantly white private schools (all the way through grad school) and there were a LOT of micro-aggressions from both students and teachers that it frankly took me years to untangle. And that was WITH having pro-Black parents and grandparents that were there to reinforce that I was NOT "less than," that I was just as smart and deserved the same opportunities these white kids had (as I'm sure you know, the message Black people often get at such institutions is that you don't belong/don't deserve to be there - sometimes folks are bold enough to say it to your face), and exposure to Blackness and Black people through other avenues. Andrea said she doesn't care about race when it comes to her kids, but what she's actually saying is that she doesn't care about Blackness when it comes to her kids. Lamar made a point about diversity and its value and she shut it down saying she didn't care about that - the implication was that whiteness is better and she didn't feel like diversity was necessary.

I rewound that a bunch of times. Grover has gotten less annoying in recent episodes. I liked that too. The pastor was played by Victor Williams, who I know as Deacon on King of Queens.

It is. I assumed that she was starving herself or purging what she does eat (I can't imagine that binging in county is possible, but I wouldn't really know), and the powers that be in jail interpreted that behavior as self-harm/suicide attempts. I remember an episode of Intervention in which the addict was an Indian man who was adopted by a Mormon family and they lived in small-town Utah. He was the only person of color, like, around. The family was VERY white (fair, blond) and the Indian man's skin was dark. Growing up, the family kept insisting that the Indian boy was "just like them" and he was like, but I can SEE that I'm not; my skin is brown and yours isn't. And of course what the family meant was that they loved him as much as they loved their bio kids but what he wanted was for them to acknowledge that he was, in fact, different, and they just staunchly refused to do it. And it fucked him up and he descended into addiction. And that was when the message he was getting was "we don't see color [which is part of why that message is so wrong]," not "white people are better than Black people," which is what Andrea seems to believe. Andrea says Mormonism is a part of her history and that's not wrong (I would love to know how that happened), but she also seems to completely dismiss the idea that she and her kids are Black and there's a rich history there too.

That short rib looked delicious. I'd have tried to salvage what I could. That was a terrible wig they had Debbie Allen in.

Right. It's not the lack of praise*, it's the ... abuse. Expecting your assistant to track your menstrual cycle is bonkers. She doesn't even know one of her employees' names, and the company doesn't look very big. If you have to have your employees stay late on no notice, you apologize and thank them for it - and having your employees stay late because you're avoiding your boyfriend and not because you have actual work to do is bullshit. If you want your staff to stick with you for any length of time, you have to give them reasons to do that beyond "well, I pay you, so ..." Like, are there opportunities for growth? Does Brianna even know what her employees' aspirations are? She leads by fear. She's a terrible boss. (Not to mention didn't she almost run the company into the ground?) Also, people are going to leave. It's just part of the cost of doing business. *I had a boss who was effusive in his public praise of me and I actually told him to stop because it made me uncomfortable. It was 100% about him, not me - it was his way of saying "Look at this awesome hire I made!" If you want me to feel appreciated, pay me more.

I howled when that doll went flying. I knew it was going to happen but it was still great.

With Elisa Marie's natural intelligence and Debi Mazar as her aunt/guardian, in ten years Elisa Marie is going to fuck EVERYBODY UP. When Elisa Marie told Tommy about her mother's death and Tommy said his mother was a junkie too, Elisa Marie replied "I know." I died. Like, the hair braiding can't cover up the fact that Kate thought a favor meant an 8-ball or a gram. Also, Kate is going to be back bugging Tommy for money the second whatever Ghost left her runs out, if she doesn't OD first. It's all going up her nose.

Black people were denied the priesthood in the Mormon church until 1978, and they justified this by saying that Black spirits were less virtuous than white ones. There's a lot of stuff at the link. The LDS church was, as you say, racist as all fuck and specifically anti-Black. Andrea does come across as self-hating.

When Nancy said "I know, but this is fashion," I howled. Like, you could see all their sisterly relationship in that exchange. That coat was dope and she made it in a day! I really liked Marquise's look, including the styling - I loved his model's shoes. I thought Elaine handled Sergio very well. Like, yes, this political issue is important, but as for the garment ... Dayong's model's lipstick is perfect - I gotta look up what it is, although she and I have totally different skin tones. Loved the top, didn't like the skirt. I liked the suggestion of pairing the jacket with a slim pant. Chelsey's mama told her to win, and she did! I love it. I might start keeping a glasses tally for her. I've counted four pairs so far, I think.