[16 And Pregnant - General Discussion]

The point is I did what I had to do to protect myself. You see these girls riding with friends to go get their nails done. Ask a friend for a ride to a free clinic. Check a bus schedule. It's a lot less complicated than a baby.

 

Very true, but nobody on this show, certainly, has ever given one thought about how complicated a baby will be, much less compared that to anything else. 

 

And the landscape has really changed in the last couple of decades.  I just checked in Texas, and was shocked at the number of Planned Parenthood locations that have closed, especially in the wake of the anti-abortion bill that was passed.  El Paso, Amarillo, Lubbock, Midland/Odessa--all closed.  Texas is 750 miles wide, from Louisiana to El Paso.  Every remaining PP location is on the north-south line from Oklahoma City down, or east of there.  Nothing whatsoever in the panhandle, west Texas, or El Paso.

 

The closest PP to someone in El Paso (population over 1,000,000) is in Albuquerque, about 250 miles away.  Same for Amarillo, except you can choose to go 250 miles to Albuquerque or 250 miles to Oklahoma City.  The closest PP to Midland/Odessa is 300 miles away, in either San Antonio or Dallas.

 

I'm sure there are free clinics, but the thing about PP was that they actively wanted you to be on birth control, and a few years ago I noticed they had started dropping the requirements for a physical exam before getting it.  I don't think free clinics (which from my experience are pretty dismal places, especially compared to PP locations) would have that same focus.  All of which can be pretty intimidating to a teenager sneaking around.  To me, PP = welcoming arms.  A free clinic = somewhere you can get birth control, probably.

 

Yeah, condoms abound, but I would never consider myself to be protecting myself from unwanted pregnancy by using one, since it's not 100% in my control (I can insist on it, but I can't know what's happening with it every single second), and the failure rate is quite high compared to prescription methods for me.

 

Not that any of these idiots even remotely think along these lines, but you know how people are always pleading, "If even ONE life can be saved by [insert inconvenience to many many others]" -- it's a shame that someone who might have been inclined to get a reliable form of birth control is thwarted to this degree.  So yeah, we thwart that behavior, but sometimes reward the bad behavior with TV stardom. 

[S10.E05: Andi Et Les Beaux]

JJ readily admitted that he may have misheard, but Marquel chose to believe the worst.

 

My recollection is that it was only in his talking heads that JJ was shown admitting he may have misheard.  I didn't see him admitting that to Marquel. 

 

So it's possible that Marquel got "he said blackies," while we got, "he said blackies, or black guys, something something I was drunk but not that drunk."  And I think there's a huge difference between the two, and if it was the latter and they didn't make it more clear that Marquel thought it was the former, they did a big disservice to him by airing his reaction to something different from the "knowledge" that the viewing public had.

[S01.E03: High Plains Hardware]

As others have mentioned, color me surprised at Joe and the random dude hooking up.

 

When Joe started kissing the guy, Mr. Outlier exclaimed, "The pie maker's going rogue!"

 

The Gremlin was such a horrid little car.  My friend had a mint green one we unironically called "Grim."  You could clean them by just opening the doors and spraying with a hose.  But what a handy shortcut for evoking a certain time period.  Assuming there would be even one still running by the early 1980s. 

[S05.E10: Savon]

I really dislike having individual threads because I can't tell these people apart.  Was it Savon who, when applying for a job was asked, "What kind of position are you interested in?" and she replied, "Something relaxing"? 

[S01.E02: FUD]

What bugs Mr. Outlier is that they bother to have jargon and then get it wrong.  "Multiply by eight or right shift by three" should actually be "left shift by three."  Or something like that.  If they have somebody who knows enough to write even an outline of a sentence like that, why can't they get it right? 

 

Plus he explained to my noncomprehending brain why the characters' whole approach doesn't make any sense.  This show should be right up his alley (young computer nerd in the 1980s), but he's on the verge of being out. 

 

Me, too, because:

 

(1) The girl looks and acts just like Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica, which I couldn't stand because of Starbuck.  (Plus I hate science fiction.  That said, when the Pie Maker had his shirt ripped off, I said, "He's a cyborg?!")

 

(2)  Boz Scaggs' "Lido Shuffle" came out in the mid 1970s.  I suppose that the guy could be still listening to it in his car, but my understanding of using music to lend authenticity to the setting of a show is to use music that was current in that period. 

 

(3)  Was the lighting budget $0? 

[S05.E10: Savon]

When Savon and LaDonna were discussing abortion, I think Savon mentioned money as the reason she couldn't get one. If I heard that right, it's especially tragic. All of this misery could have been avoided for $500.

 

I was only about 1/10 watching.  I did hear her say that the guy who got her pregnant (who I think had other kids! why why why did she even give him the time of day????  What is wrong with people?  There should be no way for him to get ANYONE pregnant unless he has a 10-foot dick) told her to get an abortion, and then she said something that made me think she was thinking along the lines of, "You're not going to tell me what to do." 

[S05.E13: That's The Way Love Goes]

Jenelle's best outfits are for court appearances and not for her career.

From what I've seen, Jenelle's career IS court appearances.

 

I wish Barbara had not taken Jace, and forced Jenelle to deal with the consequences. Maybe that'd mean Jace in a foster home or something, but now look at where they're at.

I know foster care can be horrible, but it's not 100% guaranteed it's going to be horrible.  You could see from the very beginning that Jace's life was going to be horrible, either with Jenelle (for obvious reasons) or with Barbara (because she won't cut Jenelle out of their lives and doesn't look like she's be a very effective parent even in normal circumstances). 

Makes it interesting with respect to the new tot.  Jenelle clearly can't take care of it, and Barbara shouldn't take care of it because I doubt she's going to spontaneously develop a new set of parenting skills, making the new one just Jace 2.0.  Which is horrible.