Dani-Ellie

You know, I honestly don’t care that realism went out the hole in the plane with the bee cloud. That was a ridiculously fun hour of television.

The cannibal mom story was part of the demon-induced book Kurt was writing last season. He’d given Kristen a copy of it to beta for him and the girls found it. When they made the video, one of the Ls brought up that it wasn’t their story to make a video out of, so they gave Kurt his due credit as the author.

I've read one of hers (Never Lie) and did not care for it. For me, the twists in this one felt unearned, like they were there just for the sake of being there. There are ways to do unreliable narrators that don't feel like a cheat but this was not one of them. Incidentally, I had the same problem with The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides, which the internet in general also seems to be wild about. Maybe I read too many thrillers but I've seen the same things done in much better ways.

This is a show that has a demon literally burrowing a hole through a dude (a hole that only certain people can see), throwing out organs, and filling said hole with rocks. Said demon was also lured out of said hole by mini marshmallows. Oh, and Ben's sleep paralysis demon has a retainer. I think realistic and normality went out the window a long time ago.

"Bob the Built Builder" is the exact kind of wacky I expect from this show. As is Kristen singing a song about various sex acts in the presence of priests who may or may not understand English. It also amused me far more than it probably should have. I also got a good laugh out of Ben teasing Kristen that she's much more Catholic than she pretends she is when she was fascinated and a little giddy at seeing the remains of the Cross. If I recall correctly, Sheryl is still trying to deliver Kristen to her bosses. Getting Kristen to meet Baby Antichrist and now telling the girls that Baby Antichrist is their brother is part of that somehow. (I also kind of caught my breath at the pride on her face when Lexis realized the baby just wanted to be held. Lexis is the one they've been trying to turn so, yeah, let's not have her bond so much with Brother Antichrist, plzkthx.) That said, the girls were breaking my heart with their questions to Kristen when they were driving back from dropping Andy off. And when Lila was asking what it was called when you only have one parent. As far as I'm concerned, Andy can't die, if only because I don't want these sweet kids to have to lose their dad. I also would not be opposed to a spinoff of the Bouchard girls just doing their Bouchard-girl thing. They're among my favorite kids on TV and I love when they get their own stories like this.

I have so missed this show and its sheer WTFery.

I still have my childhood copy of Wait Till Helen Comes with that exact cover. It was my favorite book throughout elementary school.

I finished The Vanishing Hour by Seraphina Nova Glass over the weekend, and while the story was good, the book itself could really have used a stronger copyedit. I caught a few misspelled words. At one point, a character mentions hearing canned laughter from a rerun of Ghost Whisperer (which was, y'know, a drama); all TV references change to The Golden Girls after this one mention. The most egregious one, though, is that I caught the POV going from third person to first person (or first person to third person) at least three times. It's almost like she'd started out writing in one perspective, then changed her mind and didn't catch all the instances of the perspective when she swapped it over. It's a shame, too, because the story was intriguing but the mistakes were distracting. I can read past misspellings and even some mild grammar mistakes but the perspective changing for a paragraph (or even within paragraph) takes me right out of it.

So, why am I not surprised that when Michael tries to shade the Mans family for taking Natalia in, he only ends up shading himself? "She had $500 on her food stamps card and they bought food!" ... What else were they supposed to do with it, Michael, go to Vegas? "They had her social security check signed over to them!" Well, why were you getting it in the first place, Michael? If she's an adult, shouldn't the money be going to her? At least the Mans family could actually use the money for her care instead of dumping her in a second-floor apartment in a rough neighborhood and fucking off to Canada. "You moved her in ... you met her three days ago!" ... says the man who took this child into his home sight unseen through a very clearly shady adoption across state lines on 24 hours' notice. I have never before watched something that has filled me with so much rage. The Barnetts are terrible, horrible people and the fact that no justice has been served for this little girl is infuriating. Natalia was failed at every. single. junction, and I still have two episodes to go!

So, let me get this straight, Michael. Natalia is a somehow an adult sociopath smart enough to figure out how to pose as a small child (not even a preteen or a young teenager where she would naturally have a little more independence, no, a small child) and game the system to get herself adopted into a family to terrorize them but also dumb enough to tell doctors and nurses and EMTs all about her plans to murder her adopted family and admit that she's reading a Bible so she can "get rid of these evil thoughts" on camera? Make it make sense, dude.

I went down a rabbit hole when this story initially broke back at the tail end of 2019 and even back then, I fully believed Natalia was indeed a child when the Barnetts adopted her. I am about 30 minutes into the first episode of this documentary and I am already so angry. Those pictures they showed of her smiling? She had baby teeth, for crying out loud. I don't believe the Barnetts that she was fully developed down below (which I feel icky that the nature of the private parts of a child is even up for discussion) but even if I did, y'know, precocious puberty is a thing that exists. Also, if Therese (the other girl with the same kind of dwarfism as Natalia but maybe not because Michael called it one thing and Therese's mother called it something different) was 6 when she met Natalia in 2010, how is she 14 when this documentary interviewed her? Unless they interviewed her in 2018, the math ain't mathing. But honestly, let's Occam's Razor this entire story. Which is more likely: that a psychopath managed to fool everyone and get herself adopted out as a child for the sole purpose of terrorizing the Perfect American Family, or a couple adopted a traumatized child with an attachment disorder?

I've gotten the occasional tonsil stone (mostly during asthma exacerbations when I'm using my rescue inhaler a lot) and while I've never had any near as big as portrayed on the show, yes, you can feel them and see them. I've never bled with mine, either; they're not attached to the tonsil, they form in the little pockets on the tonsil and can be dislodged fairly easily with a gargle or a cough (or a Q-tip if a cough ain't doing it). I called the crypto bro being a crypto bro the second he whined about his hard drive being tossed. Jee tucking the ring in to bed in the dollhouse made me giggle. That little actress is adorable and is doing a fantastic job! I mean, I'm sure they're just letting her do whatever she wants in the scene at this point because she's still a little young to really be taking direction. Whatever they're doing, though, it's working.

*raises hand* I was just shy of 17 when this movie was released. (In fact, going to see it for like the fourth time in the theaters was the only thing I wanted to do for my 17th birthday in March 1998, haha.) I was very much the target audience for the love story aspect of it and it got me hook, line, and sinker. My first viewing, after the kiss on the bow, I leaned over to my mother and whispered, "I want to rewind it and watch it again." When it was released on VHS, sometimes if I wanted to watch it but didn't want to cry, I'd just watch the first tape. That way for me, Jack and Rose both got on a lifeboat and lived happily ever after. I was never really a Leo fangirl but I was totally a Jack Dawson fangirl. Because I didn't think it was too much to ask for a guy to change my life in three days and save me from a maritime disaster. :) To this day, Titanic is my favorite movie. I went to the theater last weekend and my obsession has been reignited. Partly because I remember how it made me feel when I was 16 but also because I find Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio so utterly charming together that their energy is infectious. I found myself grinning like a doofus during my viewing last week pretty much up until the ship hits the iceberg and shit gets real.

Not sure on the exact timeline but Laura had just turned 7 in season 1. The first episode features Laura's birthday and Laura says as much when she's talking about having the dream about her teacher punching her in the face ("I'm seven years old and what's the point!"). Lexis is 9 as of the djinn episode because Kristen mentions her age while telling Mathilda that her daughter has the same tea set. Lynn is 14 as of the last episode of season 3. Lila is the only one whose age hasn't been expressly stated (if I'm remembering all this right) but there should be a bigger gap between Lila and Lexis than the gaps between the other girls because Kristen has a miscarriage between them, which was what led her to RSM Fertility. I'd probably put their ages as the start of the series as: Laura, newly 7; Lexis, 8; Lila, 10 or 11; Lynn, 12.

There were no fake phone 911 calls, just a lot of fake employee call-outs so Josh would have to cover a lot of shifts during the prime nuttiness of the Santa Ana winds since he always bragged about not having to work during full moons, another time for prime nuttiness.