Empress1

Yes - I had the same “how did we get here?!” thoughts with both Danielle and Chelsea. They both just invented stuff to be mad about. Honestly, if the roles were reversed and Jimmy was telling Chelsea he didn’t want her seeing her friends or going out, people would be calling him abusive and saying he was trying to isolate her. That spaghetti strap cowl neck shirt she had on in the wedding dress scene was not flattering at all. That’s not a good look for women with chests over a certain size (and I count myself among them).

I thought so, or that she thought it would be cute to wear it. And/or that she hoped HE would think it was cute to wear it. Which he did not.

Agreed. I find the drunken “wooooo girl” thing to be pretty annoying. Emily may not yet realize that it can be, particularly as she gets older. Brennan has been shown to be embarrassed by it (she was drunk and twerking at Michael and Chloe’s wedding and Brennan was cringing), so the “life of the party” thing isn’t working on him and never has.

I think dating apps have damaged dating, and I say this as someone who uses them. There might be someone better a swipe away, so why bother doing the work to improve a situation when you can just end it and get back on Hinge? Now, I think these couples are fundamentally incompatible in many ways so they SHOULD break up (there is nothing but animosity between Emily and Brennan, they needed to split up weeks ago), but in general I think dating apps and social media have damaged our attention spans, and that plays out in dating.

A bean pie is a custard pie in which the filling is made from mashed beans - navy beans, I think. They’re commonly associated with Black Muslims' cuisine. Members of the Nation of Islam commonly sell bean pies as part of their fundraising efforts, dressed in suits and bow ties (bow ties have been associated with the Nation of Islam since at least the 60s) like the one the sub wore. So the joke is that the sub was dressed to sell bean pies.

That was gold. “Grand rising brother, sister … ma’am.” And the first thing I thought when I saw him was that he looked like he should be selling bean pies, so I fell out when Barbara said it. The show took a similar approach with Jacob’s sexuality. I like the way she show has handled these issues - they’ve been non-issues. With Jacob, I think the thing was that Janine was the last to know, not that he was gay - she thought they were closer than they were and was upset about that, but she didn’t care about Jacob’s sexuality at all.

I don’t even think it was that nice. I think it should be expected. I don’t give him much credit for that. Of course he stayed with her in the hospital. Where else was he going to go?

He lied to his mom about what happened, I suspect (like AD said, ain’t nothing to talk about at 5 AM; if they’re standing on “he didn’t come in the house” it’s probably because they had sex in the car), and he for sure lied to her about telling Laura right away and his mom was still like “Boy, you stupid. You’re about to get dumped and you deserve it.” Even with him making himself look as good as possible in this situation, she was having none of it. I wonder what she thought when she saw the episodes.

That’s a classic move. It’s also an asshole move. “I don’t want to be the bad guy so I’ll get you to dump me and that lets me off the hook.” Yuck! Yeah, I think it was the spelling of the last name, not the gender identity, that mattered here. It was interesting to me that Janine mispronounced the name when she read it. I’ve come across the Geoffrey spelling many times, but I guess Janine hadn’t. I howled. I also cracked up at the mention of Cruise Barbara.

They got married at 18; they could have just grown up/apart. I think that’s what she said in the pods, although she doesn’t think she’s clingy so grain of salt. Yet and still: I don’t like Laura but Sarah Ann and Jeramey riding jet skis together in Laura’s face minutes after she and Jeramey broke up is very low.

I did too. Very. Nobody asked her and even if they did, that’s a situation where a polite white lie is in order. And I’m mindful of the fact that a few of Emily’s friends called her self-absorbed at the beginning. I don’t know if she’s negative but I’ve never thought she was particularly nice. She and Brennan bring out the worst in each other - he can’t stand her. It’s painful watching Becca beg Austin to care about her. It’s good, I guess, that she (finally!) realized he cared more about how he looked on TV than he does about her.

I don’t like Laura; she gives me mean girl vibes. But she cleared Jeramey. “Go kick rocks with open-toed fucking shoes.” HA!

She cracked me up. “You’re lucky it wasn’t me … I could have told you [you were going to lose her over this] but you didn’t ask me!” I snorted. And she 100% didn’t buy that they just talked and he gave her a ride home, and he also lied to his mom when he said he came home and told Laura what happened right away. He’s a weasel. AD’s mom was so great! I loved her framing of when a relationship ends - just because a marriage or relationship ends before someone dies doesn’t make it a failure. Clay is probably like one relationship away from being ready, and I think he knows it. I did like how clearly AD communicated that she couldn’t date him if he said no at the altar (and I think he will, to be honest). Chelsea told Jimmy’s parents that they hadn’t had fights - girl, please! I have no idea how they got into the fight they got into - she expects him to never go out, at all? He showed his face for an hour at a birthday dinner. What is the problem? She should cringe watching that back. Jimmy needed to really call her bluff during that fight and end it, honestly. “You don’t want to be with someone like me? You get your wish. It’s over. Sorry it didn’t work out.”

Supposedly Amber, the other one Matt was interested in, was and remains in a relationship. She left the show before the proposals because she and her man agreed that she would. This season is a mess.

Sorry, typo. Austin and Becca were fighting.

Watching the Afterparty for this episode and apparently Austin and Emily fought (to the point if her threatening to leave) over him playing music while he was brushing his teeth. He notes that his dad and uncle are both Deaf so he may have been playing the music loudly. I was thinking “like literally Deaf or is he joking?” and then Keisha asked “are they clinically Deaf?” I was glad she asked! Keisha’s pretty good at this. (They are both clinically Deaf. Austin mentioned cochlear implants.) Also Emily has been tanning and has on bubblegum pink lipstick to match her dress, and it’s not a good look.

I’ve been the first person a guy has dated after his long term relationship ended, a few times, and it’s never gone well (it’s now something I screen for*), so it would give me tremendous pause to get engaged to someone who was two months out from a relationship in which he was engaged, owned property with her, and was raising her kid. He hasn’t done anything wrong if that’s the timeline, but I wouldn’t want to date him. And if Laura doesn’t know about this timing, that’s not cool. *I met a guy on an app who it turns out was TWO WEEKS post breakup from his ex of six years, who had a kid he’d been a stepparent to. They were still living in his place. I just point blank asked him if he was cheating, because TWO WEEKS, and they still live there?! He said no, they were moving out in another few weeks and then sent me a video of an empty room a couple weeks later, which I guess had been the kids? Chile … anyway, we never made it off the app.

A lot of stuff is coming out on social media about season 6, in addition to what @snarts posted about Jeramey. Grain of salt:

I would eviscerate someone who woke me up three hours before I had to get up, for any reason except a life-threatening emergency. I’m dead asleep, have to be up at five AM (which for me is really hard, even if I went to bed very early) and you’re trying to make out? Get off me! I have a friend who once wore two different shoes out of the house because he dressed in the dark because he got up much earlier than his wife and didn’t want to wake her. That to me is romantic, not a dude rousing me from REM trying to feel me up.

Laura said “Ain’t nothing open past 2 AM but legs!” HA! I know that’s right. I don’t like Laura either, but even without the location tracking, I’d tell him not to insult my intelligence by saying you were in a fucking parking lot until 5 AM. Exactly.

Literal laugh out loud. She is. I became aware of her when she posted a video about when a friend invites someone else to hang out without telling her and it made its way to Twitter. Her “oh!” reaction is a meme. People were talking shit about her being on the show, but Quinta got her start in Buzzfeed videos. Issa Rae started on YouTube. I loved that the FADE … administrator, or whoever, was mad at Janine for subjecting them to Tariq. Jacob vaping was pretty surprising! Jacob with the many multi-step carrot cookies.

I think I called him “unserious” on social media, and I stand by that. He just seems like he’s not out of his party/hookup phase yet, which is fine - but not when he’s engaged!

That man really just picked a fight for no reason, made no move to comfort her while she was crying, dumped her, made her hug him so there was “no beef,” and then got up and left her sobbing. “This isn’t gonna work. Bye!” That was insane. Brittany deserved better treatment than that. Kenneth being a villain was not in my bingo card, but here we are. I suspect that AD got in his head about race and he realized he didn’t want to marry a white woman, and he took the first exit he could find. Good guy to be around? Yes. Good husband? No. He cited Diddy as his relationship model, who was sued by his ex for cruelty and abuse, settled the case in A DAY so he very likely did some shit, and admitted to treating his other ex, Kim Porter (RIP), like shit. His father made him an accomplice to cheating and clay has said out loud that he’s not sure he can be faithful. He needs to work aaaaallllll that out before he tries being in a relationship, let alone a marriage. AD said she painted her nails with red flags and like … girl. He’s going to cheat on you. “You’re clingy and since we’re talking, I don’t want to have sex.” OUCH. But also … she is clingy and insecure as FUCK. As he said, working from home means working - just because he’s home doesn’t mean he can love on her all day. And it might be cute to playfully say “you didn’t kiss me today, I missed you!” and plant one on him, but that wasn’t what she did - she was legit mad! Had him out here counting kisses, like, what?! Amy and Johnny are the only ones I see it for, and I wondered why condoms weren’t mentioned. I wouldn’t get a vasectomy if I knew I wanted kids (a reversal isn’t guaranteed to work, from what I understand), and I also respect Amy’s decision not to take hormonal birth control. But it seemed like condoms were a pretty big omission. I think in a show-provided place.

Becca is 32, Austin is 31. Becca turned 32 during filming, so she and Austin were the same age when they married. And Becca’s health issues don’t seem to slow her down much - the sickest she’s been was whatever stomach ailment she had on the retreat. I think Becca’s neediness is in part due to knowing Austin doesn’t like her That Way and really wanting him to, and clinging to the hope that something might be there since he continually says he’ll “try,” but like … try to do what? Nobody wants pity attention. He does show her affection, which I think keeps her hope fires burning. Austin doesn’t seem lively or overly fun to me, and a party girl in her 20s like Emily doesn’t strike me as a match for him either. Austin seems nice and pleasant to be around, but not like a partier. I find Chloe to be kind of annoying with her therapy-speak.

Aside from the “identifying as a white woman/Black man” thing (y’all just are those things), I think Brittany handled the race topic very well. She didn’t shy away from it and asked what he needed to feel secure. When a man tells you he’s afraid he’ll hurt you, let you down, whatever, he is going to hurt you/let you down. When someone tries to warn you away from them, you should ALWAYS listen. Clay’s not ready.