LibertarianSlut

I agree with my fellow posters that you should start at season one, if you can. I figured since this question was posed, maybe there was a time constraint involved. I mean, if it was up to me, during this quarantine, I would watch all Housewives franchises (including Miami!) from season one to the current day, but there is only so much time in a day unfortunately. If you can’t start at season one, you can start at season three. This is the season that Melissa (basically as a completely different person) comes on with Joe. I think season seven is another good place to start. It is post-prison Teresa, and a huge cast shakeup. If you really have a time crunch, you can start watching at season nine, which introduces two new women, comprises the entire current cast, and crazy Siggy is gone, who is irrelevant at this point.

I kind of have a rule that I won’t listen to podcasts about reality TV anymore, otherwise I would just have no intellectual pursuits left in my life whatsoever, but I’ve been sleeping odd hours right now, so I decided to try it out and...love! I love this entire podcast, not just the way they describe “Schwartz’s passive-aggressive machinations” (which is now my new favorite phrase), but calling out the show in general for all its bullshit, which I think Watch What Crappens shies away from, which turns me off. Sexy Unique Podcast has so much more sophisticated analyses. They made a really good point that the show is suffocating under its own weight, because it has to be about VanderPump basically Ruling, week in, week out, so we can never, say, go on Scheana’s fertility journey with her, which I commented last week as the most compelling part of the show right now. And no one will be honest or analyze what’s really happening in their lives; they will just be brutal about petty things, because that’s what drives a storyline. And storylines preserve jobs. I love how they have Beau’s number too, with his “toxic” “underground superiority, entitlement and arrogance.” How did they get inside my head?!? (Except they’re way funnier and more perceptive). This podcast will really “go there.” It’s controversial, and I’m pretty much only interested in controversial stuff. Thanks for the suggestion. Ben and Ronnie have work to do, I think. I also think if I continue to listen to this podcast, I might start really hating the show, when now I only marginally hate it. They just pull back the curtain and I’m like, “whoa, dude.” Which brings me back around to Schwartz, so I’ll end here.

Katie says she can’t eat pizza, because she’s getting married. Fourteen seconds later she’s dipping pizza in ranch dressing and shoving it into her maw. Great follow through there. Scheana, Dayna has no Duty To Warn if she goes on a date with Brett. You guys aren’t friends! And you made sure of that when you told her at the beginning of the season that there’s something about her that irritates you, so wank off. Charli says in her TH that she has learned that men in LA don’t consider a vagina to have a face...as opposed to all those guys from the Midwest or south who think vaginas do have faces? Beau—ugh, you’re 40, learn how to pick up the telephone and ask a man a question. I have never heard such an affected stutter in my life. (I have no idea why men ask their girlfriends’ fathers if they can marry them anymore anyway, especially this girlfriend—she’s been out of the house for 15 years, and has lived with two guys that we know of. I think the jig is up). Does Lisa have a relationship with Caesar’s Palace? I didn’t quite catch it either way. I heard her garden bar in Vegas is bombing—never any people there and it closes super early. That wasn’t LVP’s bra in Schwartz’s suitcase—she would be lucky if that entire bra covered one of her breasts. Those sliding rocks are an entity unto themselves. I thought the conversation between Kristen and Scheana was sweet and heartfelt. I forgot that they were good friends for awhile. I could see their friendship working so much better than Kristen with the witches of WeHo and Scheana being the mean cheerleader to a bunch of 22 year olds. Ariana’s got some junk in the trunk. Where did that come from all of the sudden? Stassi looked very pretty this episode. I wasn’t a giant fan of dressing up like a nun. I thought it was in poor taste, but what else is new on VanderPump Rules, and specifically, this wedding? James, Dayna, Raquel and Brett went to the Pig & Whistle! Any Chinatown fans out there? Brett has a mom thing going on for Lisa? Just like Schwartz was/is in love with her too, right? No one is paying lip service to the boss, no one at all. Plus, wouldn’t it be more of a grandmother thing? When Dayna said Lisa had “a phat pussy,” I was all set to agree, given the FUPA Lisa flaunts regularly, but when Dayna explained what she meant by it...mmm, not so sure. She does herself no favors by wearing skin-tight clothes with the cleavage constantly on display. She’s a zillionaire. She can’t find someone to give her styling tips? Stassi and Beau were so cute ordering room service in posh English accents! False. Once again, Lisa is the den mother, ordering people to clean up their hotel rooms before they check out, as if there is no housekeeping. I would so much sooner have just put that shit on my credit card in order to get her to leave me alone. And the Scheana look-alike just happened to be in the room causing all kinds of shock and awe! Did two single people In which we have nothing invested possibly have drunken intercourse when they were in Vegas? Oh, I am titillated! 🙄 Cliffhanger: Are Bub and Bubber actually married?? Oh, wait, I don’t care at all!

Why does Maci have a huge wall in her home covered with sculptures of the capital letter “M” all over it? If that “M” is for “Mom,” that is literally the most basic thing I’ve ever seen. My mind just picks up on stupid shit when I watch this show, because the format is so boring. It’s just a bunch of scenes of people reflecting on and reacting to things that happen off camera. I’m fascinated that people who are not generally attractive, interesting or intelligent get paid to just talk on TV. They’re not teen moms. They’re just lightly to highly dysfunctional young-ish moms. I think working at a cheer gym would literally be one of the best things Mackenzie could do for herself. And the viewers. When Josh talked about himself possibly “hafta” traveling for himself, was he talking about the rodeo? Is this asshole still actually on the rodeo circuit whatsoever? 🤦‍♂️ OMG, Matt didn’t feel like his “love language was being understood” by Cheyenne? How does he say that to friends with a straight face? And did we get to see this gem live? What happened—she’s withdrawing affection this early into the relationship? That seems a little passive-aggressive. It seems a little like someone possibly wanted to be single in Thailand... I don’t really blame Ryan for his reluctance to be around Maci with the restraining order that prevents him from talking to her or Taylor. I think the whole idea of Maci being able to unilaterally lift a restraining order is strange in the first place. Your position is that this person is so menacing that you need to power of the state to interfere with their access to you...except on certain days of your choosing, when you think they’ll be just fine? Huh? I think Ryan just doesn’t want to see Bentley, which sucks, and which is why he was late, but he should have just had Mackenzie set up a party for Bentley where Ryan could attempt to have normal human reaction without worrying that he would be the first one to be blamed if any shit went down. @druzy, lol, you beat me too it, but if Ashley has a job and pays taxes, why didn’t she just take the fracking drug test that would have kept her out of the courtroom in the first place? Of course Catelynn is ok if she moves in—free child care/storyline!! How is Amber, a repeat violent domestic offender not going to jail for any length of time? And she’s complaining about it! Just go to jail then, bitch! I give up. That courtroom artist must have been an Amber fan, because he somehow managed to sketch Andrew as fatter than Gary, which, lol. I don’t care if Gary wakes up at 6 am and chops wood until 6 pm every day, at which point he goes home to feed and clothe orphans, he just looks so unhealthy in the La-Z-Boy tilted back like that all the time in front of the cameras. Why doesn’t he sit up like a normal person while he is being filmed? Is it an air passageway issue? If it is, brother may really want to look into that while he has insurance. If he doesn’t have a medical reason, and he’s just happy to film like that, yikes. He doesn’t have a PR person to warn him he looks about 30 lbs away from My 600-lb Life?

Yes, it’s a horrible idea! I think if they’re not really married yet, they should take this opportunity to cut and run. I have been re-watching from the beginning (I’m on season four) and I realized I loathe Schwartz. He is such a wimp and a baby. He can’t work a job, he says modeling is his “bread and butter” but says in the next breath that modeling has never been very successful for him. He drags his feet on marrying Katie, giving her a ring on a string, when there is film of her specifically asking him not to (!). The second worst thing about them for me is that Tom fucking went down to a pet store and bought a what appeared to be a mixed breed dog (when there are so many dogs that need homes that are being euthanized and pet stores purchase dogs from puppy mills). What is the absolute worst is that Katie and Tom think it’s ok to full-on talk baby talk to each other. It is one of the grossest things I’ve ever had the displeasure to witness, and I could never be around them in real life. They will be in a serious, adult discussion about cheating or commitment or Jax talking shit about Katie, and suddenly they will lapse into Katie saying “buuu” and Tom responding with “booo” and then they move on as if this is acceptable or ok for adults to do publicly whatsoever. I am watching the episode right now where Schwartz takes it to the next level by getting “Bubba” tattooed on his ass. I guess they literally take it to an art form when they put pictures that read “Bubba” on their walls What the fuck is that? Is it supposed to be funny? Or ironic? Or clever? Or show us some insight into their nightmare relationship? There is zero appeal to Bubba, in any form. I understand that Katie becomes full-on psycho hose beast as the show goes on, and she’s already showing Mean Girl signs between super early seasons and season four, and I know it’s going to get 1,000 worse, but I think Katie got the shit end of the deal with Schwartz. He’s not a man; he’s a shlemiel. I have no respect for him. I have no respect for Katie for being in a constant vacant dream-like state where she is only functional and articulate when she’s telling someone off. It’s a very unsettling combination. I don’t think they should get married, and I think they can both do better. Together they are worse than the sum of their parts, which is kind of hard to accomplish...but they managed! 😒

That was such a funny moment. I also loved when Issa first sat down with Condola, Condola complimented her on her shirt, and the awkwardness that ensued about her dead grandma, complete with, “I try to keep things nice,” and the water spilling down the front of her shirt. The TSA guy was funny and new. I don’t really see a problem for Issa vis a vis Condola dating Lawrence. She’s had two other major guys since Lawrence, and she broke up with him. I’m sure there is unfinished business, but that didn’t ping with me very hard, because that is the past. What really gripped me was the Molly/Andrew story. I don’t think she’s right, but I see her side, which really made it good storytelling. She was never really into him in the beginning, right? But their chemistry was popping at the bowling alley, and she probably made assumptions, and when he said that he was free any day except Friday, I knew exactly what was coming, and I felt the ice go through my veins, same as Molly probably did, but she went ahead and asked, probably because she was hoping it was something else, and now she knew that he was dating others, and she had really no one else to blame for getting the info but herself, but... Molly is a beautiful woman. She is written to be the whole package, except for some neuroses only her friends know about. She is in her mid-thirties, so she’s been in the grown up dating world for 15 years. For a lot of beautiful, successful women, men just want to date them and be in their presence, and there are men who are willing to sort of pre-commit to you. It’s not as explicit as a handshake deal, but a guy who may not be as high as Molly’s level might have the attitude of, “please just let me be in your presence. Please just give me a chance. I am so deeply in like (some think it’s love, but that’s for another post) that I won’t date anyone else, even though you can, just so long as you give me a shot.” It’s not overt, it’s implicit, and Molly probably subconsciously put Andrew in this category, because she’s probably experienced it half a dozen times before. I’m not saying she’s right or entitled to keep Andrew off the market, I just think that she may have been right in knowing enough about herself that she can’t handle Andrew dating other people, now that she likes him, but she’s too proud to ask him not to date others. I mean, what is she going to do, ask him to cancel the date and only date her? Then if they had a future, she might forever wonder if she strong-armed him into commitment. I think—and I understand this is a huge stretch—Andrew should have been intuitive enough to realize Molly really liked him in the moment, and offered to cancel the date with the other woman and ask her if she wanted to be his girlfriend. If he likes her enough and he sees an opening, he should take it. I empathize with Molly, because I don’t think I could have kept seeing him after I knew we liked each other and I knew he was on that date. On Friday, I would have been a basket case, wondering, “What are they doing right now? Are they laughing? Are they kissing? Are they having sex? How much money did he spend on her?” I feel like all of the anxiety that was put on the Issa/Lawrence/Condola situation hit harder with Molly, ironically. Then again, I come from a family where a close relative met her husband when he was on a date with another woman, and I guess I don’t see anything wrong with leaving a date if you think you have a partner for life waiting in the wings. The heart wants what it wants. I am here for Issa, obviously, but I don’t think she was being the best friend when Molly really wanted to talk to her about Andrew at the market, and Issa just shrugged it off with one line about him making her happy, and what’s the problem? What Molly deems a problem may not be what Issa deems a problem, and vice versa. I kind of wished Molly hadn’t texted Andrew, because it gives him all the power, but I sympathize with where she was coming from. If it were me, I would probably take some time, calibrate, and meet him at a very casual meeting place when we were both sober, and I’d be very honest about what happened, and tell him that we can continue to date casually, but I’m not going to consider him a serious contender, and I’ll kind of date him while I find my Mr. Right if he’s up for that. And if he’s not, we can both move onto other people. I know it sounds like a bizarre position. I think in a perfect world Molly would be cool enough to let him date others, and see what happens, but some women are just not built to do that. I don’t think Molly’s reaction was further outside the realm of normalcy than the way that Issa still has such intense feelings for Lawrence, or how Issa went to look for Nathan at his home last year when he stopped texting her. I’m not judging any of it. These are all very realistic stories. I just think that Molly’s story rang so true and it was more familiar to me as a woman than anything I’ve seen in a long time.

Oh my gosh, this birth got me so agitated, and I am so upset with the Browns! But before I talk about the epic muck up that was the birth, I need to comment on a few things: Why are Kody and Robyn trying to qualify for a loan now? They had 60 days. They’re so stupid. Their theatrics are so boring. Where have I gone wrong in my life that every Sunday I eagerly await watching an unattractive couple apply for a personal loan? Kody, the prince, has to make an effort to look in on his minor children “almost daily” when his wives are away. What an overachiever. He was talking to Gabe as if he had positively just met him. “So, uh, Gabriel, is it? You’re planning on going to college? This year?” Good talk, dad. Christine was so ignorant in asking “what do monogamists do?” without any guile with regard to getting a woman through a birth. She does realize that when Maddie is giving birth, she doesn’t have to be worried that Caleb won’t make it because he’s courting his fourth wife, right? She doesn’t realize there are literally limitless combinations of friends/family/staff to support a monogamous couple having a baby? I’m not even sure if she considers Maddie to be “monogamous,” because her mom is polygamous with her dad. This is how intelligent and worldly I find Christine. Maddie described herself as “fat and bitchy.” Who knew she had a crystal ball?! She is so ignorant—she doesn’t want to have a baby at a hospital, because “hospitals are for emergencies” and “births aren’t emergencies”? A.). Sometimes births are emergencies, as you will soon find out b.) the emergency room is for emergencies, and the maternity ward is not located in the emergency room, dummy. I am kind of concerned that Maddie isn’t aware of these basic facts. Maddie doesn’t want them to “strip her membrane,” which, I’m not even sure what that is, but Maddie says it’s painful, so she doesn’t want to do it, because she doesn’t want any “unnecessary pain”??? Baby girl, you are pretty much begging for pain that is unnecessary by giving birth at a birthing center, hel-lur... The birthing coach—Lydia?—She was just as bad as the woman from last week. I am really skeptical about their credentials. They just leave everything up to the mom-to-be and they’re hesitant and they have no answers or plans other than patting her back and giving her damp cloths. In other words, their approach to birthing is like Kody’s approach to...everything. Christine was more useful. She should have just had her at home. I felt like Janelle had just as much trouble getting across the birthing center’s parking lot as Maddie did. Kody has officially eclipsed Caleb as more useful in an emergency. Caleb was more concerned about breaking the speed limit than being there. What a wussy; I cannot stand this man, and any reservation I had about why he got along so well with Kody have been cleared from my mind. So...baby didn’t have enough oxygen, and mama was in shock, but they wasted precious time waiting for the dang ambulance, when everything that they needed would have been at the hospital. Does Maddie still find the hospital unnecessary, or have we learned something today? Janelle is just a liar. They took Evie to the hospital “for a precaution” but she stayed three days? I file lawsuits on behalf of hospitals, and NICUs are so expensive. The room alone for the baby is $15k a night for one of my clients. Doctors do not admit someone for three days for “a precaution”. Janelle is just trying to cover her daughter’s selfish ego. Before the birth, they knew the child was missing bones but they didn’t know it was FATCO until after she was born, was what Maddie said in a talking head. So they didn’t know that the lack of oxygen wasn’t related to the missing appendages until after she was born; they just knew she was missing bones, which, I’m just a lay person, but I would think if my unborn child was missing bones, she might have other parts of her that were missing or underdeveloped, such as pulmonary function. Ergo, have your high-risk baby in a hospital next time, jerk. They got very lucky. I guess...that’s it? No Meri for the finale. How fitting. I guess I’ll just see these losers again in a bunch of months when they are holding their hands out for some TLC stymie cash. *It’s Easter, so I managed to go this entire post without one swear word. Who knew it was possible not to cuss out the Browns on a weekly basis?!?*

Now that Kandi broke her schedule down to Kenya, it’s my firm opinion that Kandi doesn’t spend enough time with her family, and if she was a man, I’d be saying the exact same thing, or worse. Someone made a good point last week: if Riley and Ace don’t feel like she spends enough time with them, why is she bringing in a new baby? When Kandi first came on the show, the way she described having Riley was strange, but I wrote it off as her just being nervous, but I found myself thinking about it again: She said that she had Riley several years back when she was very famous and it was fashionable for a rich, successful woman to have a child on her own. I don’t think that’s a healthy outlook, and I feel like she’s repeating it with this new baby—“baby by surrogate” is just another thing to check off the chit list of something she’s achieved in life, not because she is so moved to grow her family. She has two days to spend with her family, but Don Juan wants her to host something, so she does that instead? I think it’s bullshit when she says she has a lot of responsibilities. So many people bite off more than they can chew, not because they need the money, and she’s one of them. I think a lot of it can be chalked up to FOMO, she also wants things how she wants them, and she’s very comfortable in the limelight. It’s selfish with regard to the children. Todd is on his own. I’m not very sympathetic toward him. Neither Kandi nor Todd wanted to put away Todd’s hookah and two dozen bottles of hard liquor before Machel came over? They’re obviously not Kandi’s, because she has nothing to do with smoking or drugs. They’re obviously not there for display purposes, because they were placed there so artlessly next to a sink. I dunno, I don’t think it’s a good impression to give off to the viewers or a professional visitor. I wonder what Freud would say about leaving things out in the open for the first time that I can remember for the therapist to see... Todd is in complete competition with Kayla for Kandi’s coin and it’s disgusting. “Fuck that shit” about her birthday?? I know this opinion doesn’t share wide support, but I feel like that’s the way he would be talking to Kandi as soon as the green stopped pouring in. My view on it is that Kandi and Kayla are both adult women, and if Kandi wants to give her some money, she should. Todd called himself “cheap” at the beginning of the ep, when he was walking the grounds of the baby shower. Dude. True story. Machel sounded exactly like Lennox Lewis, like a 3/4s British, 1/4 American accent. That was all I could think of when he was speaking. That, and that he seemed like a very decent therapist, and I wish they would all start going to see him, Porsha first. Cynthia fashions herself a businesswoman, but she’s asking Mal if she’s offering an “incenative” deal? I’ve never did think there was too much brain wattage going on there, and I’ve noticed it’s on a downward trend since she joined the show. Even if Noelle’s not in school, at least she’s doing something, and at least Leon is laying down the law. OMG, Porsha and Dennis still haven’t decided on a living space and they share a child and they’re engaged? Holy shit. I feel like I fully watched this fight play out already a year ago with Porsha’s spin-off. Dennis, you should be crawling on broken glass to be back in “the marital home.” IMO, if he’s living separately in the city, he’s still cheating. I think she would have been better off having the stupid baby nup with that guy Todd who was decent looking. I can’t even stand to look at Dennis in his tye-dyed t-shirt with the cannabis leaf on it. I don’t know how Porsha puts up with him. He’s ignorant and gross. I find it so strange that Nene and Gregg are both native English speakers, have enough income to live in a mansion, he is educated (?) and was an earner when this show began, she is at least sharp enough to have been able to hustle up jobs in Hollywood and entertainment (and I have a feeling there’s a book in there, but I’m too lazy to google it)...yet their son needs subtitles and has no ambition whatsoever. And he’s not a one-off, because Bryson ain’t lighting up the world either. Last I heard of him, he was stealing razors out of Wal-Mart. What ever happened to Nene’s granddaughter, or do I not want to know? I assume her mom—Bryant’s baby mama—won’t let her film. Maybe Nene should spend a little less time on cocktails and fashion and figure out where she went wrong with her kids, and whether that can be righted at all at this point in time. Same for Gregg. Worry less about your sex life and more about your kids. Kenya is the only one who is keeping her wits about her and keeping healthy boundaries with Marc. That relationship was (is?) so unhealthy. He can pay for movers to move his shit though. I don’t know why Kenya was even touching it, unless she was looking to tamper with it a little (which should never be done on camera, obvi). I never met my in-laws? I wonder how your $5,000 suit got all those bleach stains. You didn’t like either of the ties I picked out for the charity benefit? Guess what, they all got ‘misplaced.’ I wouldn’t go full Angela Bassett, Waiting to Exhale, but I’d manage to passively-aggressively destroy a few choice items, because I’m petty like that. Glad to see Eva for the first time for what feels like all season. Her new home is pretty nice, although it’s kind of a Mc-something (it’s not even quite a McMansion). Very generic craftsmanship. Eva seems like a good mom though, and it’s nice to see. I don’t think she’s putting that on for the cameras at all. I was glad not to have the friends-of this week. I’m glad Nene and Eva had to pull a little weight for their gigantic salaries, and the women who don’t have peaches just weren’t part of the narrative. I would generally like friends-of to be relegated to parties and major group gatherings. I always feel, with friends-of, if Bravo didn’t think they were important to cast as full-time, why are they such a big part of the story? So that was a nice change this episode. Just the original recipe cast. Finally next week is the finale! I feel like I’ve been riding this ride for a year now, and, like the Disney Teacups, it’s making me kind of nauseous.

I meant “take the world by storm” in a positive way, so though I strongly disagree with the example put forth, I agree with your point. Though I don’t think I commented on relative ability or inability of anyone but young, beautiful women, so, I didn’t think I had to qualify my statement with regard to all people. I thought it went without saying. But to clarify my view, here goes: I think all people can be successful and all people can be jacked up, regardless of their demographic. I think Abraham Lincoln may have said that once. 😄 But...that’s not what the young woman on Jeopardy! said. I can’t put words in her mouth, nor do I want to. @Kyanight I forgot that a lot of sheiks were polygamists! Good point. Also ironic. I guess I liked the spirit of what the young woman said—the ambition behind it. I liked that she had a plan, even if it was a naive one. It reminded me of the clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson, who said a bad plan is better than no plan at all, so I guess I hope she continues to study Arabic, which is a very important language, but tightens up her plan. I can use the advice myself! 😉

Those injections GG and Destiney got looked so painful, especially in the lips. I’m surprised GG was so excited for pain. She was so afraid to let the surgeon cut out the stitches for some RA surgery she had a few seasons ago. I remember it, because she said she was so scared that her vagina was feeling hot, and the male doctor just all deadpan said, “that’s not a place you should be feeling anything right now.” It’s funny because I think women kinda know what she’s talking about... I generally can’t stand Tommy anymore and I think he’s an embarrassment, but that line he got off about people no longer hanging out with OJ was pretty funny. If Mike wants to know what ‘being employed’ looks like, he can look at Nema. But for some reason he thinks he’s better than Nema. That montage of MJ and Reza fighting and making up was everything. The sit-down was pretty good. It was so funny to hear Reza saying, “do you mind if I wear glasses?” in his wobbly voice. So...I’m finally getting my answer as to why Reza was mad at MJ—because Destiney said that MJ knew Adam was cheating on Reza. I don’t know if I would even put that under the umbrella of a “reason.” It doesn’t make any sense. MJ owned that conversation because she kept her cool. This is a new-level MJ. I’m not sure we’ve seen it before. Maybe she’s not in love with Reza anymore. Maybe this is what she’s like when she’s sober. That passive-aggressive jab MJ got in about Reza having body odor was Advanced Reality Show. That suggestion will remain in the air forever, simply because the attempt to disprove it draws more attention to the possibility that it’s true. In The Road To Wigan Pier, George Orwell, who was a socialist, argued that socialism won’t work in England until the middle class are willing to come to terms with the stench of the poor (I don’t know anything about the veracity of these claims, as I wasn’t alive in 1930s England, but my point is that there’s a huge stigma about body odor in the west). So I was all for MJ suggesting Reza had bad hygiene, because that’s the type of low-ball social politics Reza would have used if he would have thought of it first. Sam is attending the Daryl Philbin (Office reference) breakup school—he is being a pig so that she will break up with him, and he won’t have to be the bad guy. That was gross, even for Destiney to endure. Why would Mike ask if MJ knew about Naked Jenga and inappropriate texts? Who cares what she knew? It’s what she said or did. It’s whether she lied. It’s not about what she knew. It’s about whether she was spreading it. Mike can’t even ask a proper question. His message was that he wanted to know who he was hanging out with, and he didn’t want to hang out with anyone who wouldn’t come to the group and tell them about these allegations. But...why would MJ tell the whole group that Ali was spreading info about Reza and Adam? Wouldn’t that be gossip? I am so confused. If MJ would have told the group that Ali had info about Adam cheating on Reza, she be excoriated for rumor-mongering. Mike just saw an opportunity to jump on a high horse, so he said something high and mighty that sounded good in the moment, but made no sense. Probably trying to impress Paulina, whom I didn’t even recognize. She looks unique in braids. Notice how Adam was conspicuously absent this whole episode? He has a lot of responsibility to bear here. GG is so jealous that she’s not Reza’s number one anymore, and I’m here for it! I guarantee GG wasn’t following doctor’s orders by gorging herself on food and alcohol approximately a week after her surgery, so my sympathy for her is minimal as usual. She has such a hard-on for MJ that is even less explainable than Reza’s hard-on for her. I don’t know why. Who is Reza Farahan to cause everyone to want to do his bidding? I thought this episode was good. MJ > Destiney all day!

Good point that perhaps my ambitions for Ysabel were a little...ambitious. I was watching the Jeopardy! College Tournament and there was this really super cute blonde Ysabel type from Missouri, who represented Ole Miss, and she was also a little on the larger side, like Ysbael, but she was full of confidence, and she said during the little interview segment that she was studying Arabic so that she could marry a rich sheik, and I was like, “oh my God, that’s so awesome, she’s so awesome for shooting high. Ysabel should totally do this!” And it was only in the aftermath that I said to myself, “girl, what are you thinking? This teenaged girl is on national TV for being brilliant; why do you assume everyone can do this?” And, so yeah, I see your point. I may have been projecting onto Ysabel’s ability something I wanted her to have, in the absence of evidence that she had it. I get this from my dad, so I know I am guilty of thinking that young beautiful women can take the world by storm, when in reality some of them can and some of them are just young and beautiful, and some of their lives become horror stories, just like any other segment of society. I just hope she doesn’t become a sister wife!

I finally broke down and bought Hulu. I figured $5.99/month was an ok investment for right now. So I finally got to watch season one. I guess I have a lot to say, so i broke it down into categories, because there is so much to process! Production/how this isn’t like real life After watching part of the interview with producer John Carr, up thread, and how Carr was vehement this was a “point and shoot” show that provided its own drama, I watched through that lens, and I concluded that he was generally lying. He might have been telling the truth about a few things, but the scenes were set up from the very beginning. On a related note, I think the production value was awful in season one. Stassi and Frank went to a club, and there is like 45 seconds of cheesy music showing Stassi and Frank like dancing and drinking and it looks so ridiculous, like some 2002 MTV reality show that lasted one season! I don’t doubt that what happened was real, but the scenes were set up. The one that stuck out to me the most was when Lisa was doing some mundane restaurant thing at her home, Ken says, “did you hear the news? Jax and Laura-Leigh were having sex at SUR.” Cue the rest of the episode to be about Jax and Laura-Leigh having sex in bathrooms. That didn’t happen through super clever editing, it happened because Ken delivered his designated line! There is also this scene where Lisa and Ken are settling in to watch Pandora’s wedding video at home when Lisa gets the phone call from Katie that there was violence in Vegas. We’re supposed to believe there were cameras at Lisa’s house that were going to film her watching a film of Pandora’s wedding for hours unless and until something happened?!? All of the restaurant scenes are so fake, as I’ve posted before, but for some reason I expected it to be more realistic in the real beginning. Nope. There’s one scene of Stassi arguing with Peter about cutting her when Peter has a full house, but Stassi wants to go home, so they go back and forth for like two minutes. The way it works in real life is that the most brave server will ask the manager to cut the floor, not just one employee (that’s not really a cut, that’s sending someone home), the manager will say they will cut the floor when the manager is ready, and the employee will scamper away. I also will never believe that sneaking Jax to Vegas for Stassi’s birthday wasn’t at least partially set up by production. It is very weird for them to be staying at The Hard Rock, going to the Chippendale’s show, but to go to Stassi’s birthday dinner at a Moroccan restaurant in a strip mall with a giant parking lot, and then go to a big club. One of these things isn’t like the others. If they had dinner in a casino, which is what they would have done IRL, there would be casino security all over the place, so the Jax/Frank argument would never have been able to go anywhere, and Chunky Sweater-gate never would have happened, so it needed to be set up. There’s also a lot of info to put a lie to the idea that none of them had money in the beginning—Stassi’s apartment (for which she only paid half rent; her dad paid the other half), Stassi saying she spends copious amount of money on clothes and brunch, Kristen objecting to Stassi breaking up with Jax, because they were like Ken & Barbie, and Jax would pick her up from her workouts to go to Palm Springs and Stassi’s ponytail would be bopping in the car and they were the perfect couple—none of this suggested poverty, although I can’t believe Kristen wasn’t embarrassed to say that on TV, lol! Lisa put herself in a really tough position by pretending to be this really tough HBIC, when she knew she couldn’t really discipline or fire them. She acted like this poor, put-upon businesswoman when the staff “ran off to Vegas” or had sex in the restaurant. I think it would have been a lot better of a look for her to just swing by the restaurant and not know what was going on. Also, when Tom and Kristen had that fight about those high school twins he fucked when they were in “the garden” (which I thought was the alley, as they were sitting on wooden crates), where does Lisa get off for yelling at Sandoval for having a conversation (not a fight, just an unpleasant conversation) with a server who started with him when she was at work and he wasn’t? I don’t even think Kristen should have gotten in trouble for that. She just told Tom she wasn’t happy, and when she walked back in, she had a puss on her face, and Lisa grabbed her arm and told her to shape up. All a server really has to do is look happy and pleasant around the tables. If servers got in trouble every time they looked or acted miserable when they couldn’t be seen, they’d all be fired. But I guess all this was to service some narrative that Lisa was the den mother, when they really didn’t need her in that role. They had Peter, Nathalie and Guillermo. I think the story would have flowed so much better if Lisa had taken a backseat and just came in to listen to gossip and grab a glass of rose every now and then, but then she wouldn’t be our Lisa, would she? I also don’t know if they shared tips at SUR, or if that was just a storyline, but that absolutely sucks if you have to do that. It becomes the prisoner’s dilemma for servers: do I report that $100 cash tip I got as $100 or $80, knowing my fellow server is probably reporting their $100 cash tips as $45? I thought it was terrible of Lisa and Pandora to gang up on Stassi for slacking on Pandora’s blog. Why couldn’t Pandora handle it? Is she not a businessperson? What is she doing with a business if she’s not? This is why I hate Pandora. She did this in subsequent seasons too—her “management style” is to just hammer at someone about how awful they are. Just fire the person if they’re so bad. Does she think there aren’t other women in LA who can’t/won’t blog about fashion for a pittance? There was a brouhaha about Scheana being sent home from work because Brandi was coming in, and Scheana was upset because she came to work and missed an audition. A very simple, easy solution to that would just be to throw money at the problem. Lisa could have just given Scheana a thousand bucks, but then I guess there would be no drah-mah if we engaged in problem-solving! I’m also not sure what the promotional photo shoots were about, if not for the show. Why wouldn’t they use real models? These are good-looking people, but they’re not the best of the best. Hooters doesn’t use photos of the women who work at their local restaurant; they use the best-looking Hooters waitresses from competitions across the country. If Stassi actually wrote Laura-Leigh a text that she should be afraid to come to work, she should have been fired. Even if she just created a hostile work environment, which she did, she should have been fired. What disgusting behavior. OK, the breakdown of the Jax/Stassi relationship: I thought Kristen and Katie were in the wrong for freezing Frank out. They could have either been civil to him, or told Stassi they weren’t up for celebrating her birthday in this way this year. And Stassi was under the (rightful) impression that Jax cheated on her, so she can have another boyfriend in the next minute after they break up. The way it was presented to them at the time—that she waited a few days—showed restraint, to me, if anything (I know something else came out later, but the info K&T and K&T had at the time made Stassi totally justified in getting a new boyfriend ASAP IMO). In Vegas, Schwartz so aggressive pouring Heineken right in Stassi’s eyes. I was really floored. I never believed Jax’s story that he didn’t cheat & impregnate a woman in Vegas while he was dating Stassi. Frank’s story was way too specific, and Jax never refuted it! All he did was tell Peter that it happened a bunch of years ago. I’m sure it did happen a few years ago—I’m just as sure it happened again. This is what happens when you have unprotected sex (listening, Sandoval?). It was so weird that Stassi and Jax never talked about it, even though Jax had been disappearing and (allegedly) sleeping in his truck for awhile prior to their break-up. Jax having unprotected sex with Laura-Leigh was more evidence that he was reckless. Then Jax lied to his therapist about it! Then, when all was said and done, he tells Stassi he “had relations” with somebody in Vegas, so it was all true all season. At the reunion, he said that the woman in question’s roommate called Jax after the fact and said the woman didn’t have an abortion and was never pregnant. Why would we ever start believing Jax now??? He’s completely crazy. I’m not even sure he’s human. Now, in Jax’s and Kristen’s defense, I think they slept together (when Jax was crashing on Kristen’s couch) while Stassi very publicly ate dinner at Villa Blanca with Frank. Are we supposed to believe they didn’t go somewhere after that and—to use Stassi’s favorite word—bang? So, what’s good for the goose is what’s good for the gander. You can’t claim a man when you’re fucking another one, Stassi, sorry! Stassi continuing to text Jax when she dumped him for Frank when he got with Laura-Leigh was so gross. She doesn’t own this man! I’m so scared of her. Beau, are you sure you’ve watched season one?? Like I already said, those texts that Stassi sent to Laura-Leigh were so gross and immature, and I’m so glad Stassi got “outed” for having sex with Jax after they’d been broken up and everyone made fun of her, including Laura-Leigh. It was a sweet comeuppance. Other On some post-season clip special, Stassi confided to Lisa that she had been wearing padded underwear with her SUR uniform, like an entire fake ass, so I have no idea why the bitches in season 8 are having trouble wearing regular underwear with the same exact uniforms. They just don’t want to wear underwear. Calgon, set you free! Scheana’s excuse for telling Brandi that Eddie bought her diamonds was so Brandi wouldn’t think Scheana was “a Tuesday night floozy” was disgusting. I thought the conversation was so that they could have a reckoning and be in the same room. Why would you ever tell a woman, under any circumstances, unless you were trying to hurt her, that her husband bought you diamonds? Every time I want to think Scheana is well-intentioned and one of the better ones, she says something awful and soul-crushing like this, and I get schadenfreude all over again that she’s now a divorced woman her damn self. I hope Shay’s off somewhere buying someone else diamonds and she knows about it. Whoa, a lot to get off my chest for 11 lousy episodes. I was just shocked at so much of it. What was most surprising to me was that the show was very slow-moving most of the time. It would be slow with them sitting in their apartments and—boom—some crazy info would be dropped, and everyone would go wild, and it was great, but then we would have a full episode talking about the fallout, which was so boring. I think season two was better, especially with the addition of Kristina. I was surprised she hadn’t been there since the beginning. I think the show may even be better now. They were so much more hideous to each other back then. Now they’re just garden-variety awful, but they’re not going around ruining lives quite so much. I don’t think Stassi ever had a beautiful face. The doctor definitely went too far with the chin implant, to the extent that I always thought Stassi’s face looked pointy and masculine, before I knew she had surgery. If anything, I would think she could get some of that chin shaved off. I see this picture where she looks so much better in the “after” (obviously), but I think it was due to weight loss, much better hair, better makeup, better brows. I’m not sure she needed this giant chin.

I come at the tattoo thing from a completely different angle from a lot of other people. It’s not a Boomer thing at all IMO. I am younger than all these women, and I tend to find tattoos on women distasteful, in large part because I pretty much don’t know a woman who doesn’t have a tattoo at this stage of the game—my mom (who is a baby boomer), my sister, my sister-in-law—they all have them, and I am so happy that I took the road less travelled and never marked up my body. It’s so common at this point that I feel like I’m making more of a statement by not having one. There is so much temporary body art and jewelry that I can use to express myself, if I’m feeling so moved (although I got a temporary tattoo of a bad-ass snake on my lower back in Cancun once, and it melted and ruined one of my favorite tops, so I just need to stay about from tattoos!) I don’t understand why someone like Tinsley would have her ex-husband’s initials on her body. Why wouldn’t a ring be enough of a commitment? I remember on RHOC when Tamra had her ex-husband’s wedding ring tattooed onto her hand, and her now-husband Eddie said he wouldn’t propose to her until it was gone, so she had it cut off! What’s the point of getting it in the first place if it’s about a lover, unless you’re going off to war or something? Now, I would never be rude about it to someone’s face. I think it was a little soon to make that joke about Leah’s tramp stamp and turning her around to remember her name. And to say you don’t speak to people with tattoos, as Ramona did, is so elitist that it winds up coming off crazy, but this is a show about women who show their lifestyles and give their opinions, so to say the ones who don’t believe in tattoos shouldn’t give their opinions at all because they seem out of touch seems strange to me. If tattoos aren’t a thing on the Upper East Side for a woman of a certain age, that would be something I find interesting, not something that I’m going to scoff about. I like having the insight from a sociological perspective. I also understand the idea of acting trashy from time to time as opposed to having a permanent brand of trashiness, such as Leah’s tattoo of her own name written in huge letters on her back. If someone wants to get drunk and sleep around and still not have tattoos, that doesn’t make them a hypocrite to me. A tattoo, such as Leah’s—as opposed to Tinsley’s, which is fine, even if I don’t get it, but it’s not trashy—is just there every time you wear a bikini or a backless dress for people to make inferences about you, whereas slutty or awful behavior can be forgotten or changed overnight and usually people have to find out about your life before they can find out about your behavior, while a giant tattoo advertises something to the world prior to anyone making your acquaintance. Maybe I have a slight hang-up about anonymity. In certain walks of life, I don’t want anyone knowing anything about me until I reveal it. Career-wise, I used to regret that my parents didn’t give me a gender-neutral first name, so that people wouldn’t know I was a woman until they met me, so I am aware that I may have a more hair-trigger reaction to a tramp stamp than someone else. One of my best girl friends of all time had a huge tramp stamp when we met at work in our college years, and when I saw it I just winced inside like, “oh, girl,” but on the outside I was impossible to read, like oh ok, check that out. I’m never going to say it’s nice. I don’t have to pretend to like anyone’s tattoo, nor am I going to put her down for having it. I have a feeling Leah’s going to have a hard time getting that thing permanently removed, and she’s going to wind up covering it up with a bigger tattoo instead. Surely I don’t condemn people with tattoos. It’s just strongly not my preference, and if I was on TV, getting paid to talk about my life, I would be verbal about it, the way I would be verbal that I don’t enjoy nose piercings, but I would never put anyone down or make them feel lesser than if they had those things. That’s just not kind. But just the way people are allowed to voice their opinion about their love of tattoos, people who don’t love them also have a voice. And it doesn’t make them old or out of touch at all IMO. It’s like debating art. I’m allowed to hate the Mona Lisa and love cubism, and someone else is entitled to feel the exact opposite of me, but one side shouldn’t put another down personally for how they feel. Either debate it in good faith or agree to disagree, no?

I think it was interesting that Leah said she moved to Connecticut when she was 13? I thought last episode she was born and raised in Chelsea. And she was kicked out at 17, but went to an all-girls Catholic school on the Lower East Side? The plot thickens. At least she’s not saying she was “raised by wolves” (yet)! Oh my God, Leah was having a shit time because her kid had a bad day at school?!? This is going to be a long season if we’re bringing in Aviva-level sensitivity here (“I don’t need a Xanax; I just need my husband!!!”) So Tinsley doesn’t know what “touché” means? I totally expected it from Sonja to be rude and ungracious in someone else’s home to say something they said is wrong when it’s not, but I didn’t expect it from Tinsley. I didn’t know Tinsley’s ex-husband was named Robert Lee. Is he from Richmond too? I thought they met at boarding school, but I don’t know his origins. Oh my God, Ramona is so crazy! She was so nice that I didn’t even recognize her, to just snapping and saying she doesn’t talk to people with tattoos and making other people clean her house. Is she actually crazy? I can’t account for this behavior, the way I’ve sort of been able to stitch it together in the past. Wow, I feel like there are going to be a lot of good fights this season between Tinsley, Sonja, Leah and Dorinda. Especially if Leah stays sober and can step to Dorinda like that...this is literally the first time I’ve been excited about the new season. Fighting about who said what about a tattoo and how others perceived it is why I watch. The heavy drama of ghosts of former ex-fiancées pulling a Housewife toward death because she ate some miso soup may finally be a thing of the past. Why is Sonja so jealous of Ramona? Because she divorced well aka she has clear running water in her pipes? Does anyone know why Luann is pretending not to drink? I thought she was pretty much counting down the days at the last reunion. Who is she trying to impress, her kids, so they won’t sue her again? This was a cute episode. I liked that the biggest problem in the end was Ramona being too social. I loved that Leah seemed to be truly over the tramp stamp comment with Dorinda, and expressed the same to her at dinner. They were keeping it light and moving, and next week looks amazing!!

So, is Tinsley telling the truth about Scott, as she said in one point of the first scene, or is she withholding information, because Dorinda’s been a bitch? Either one would be fine, but I wish I knew which version we were getting. I thought an arrangement could be anything. If Scott and Tinsley are not together, but still see each other and still communicate, and Tinsley is still upset about the break-up, that’s not an arrangement? Does an “arrangement” have to involve cash and/or gifts? I’m actually confused about this. Ugh, kill me, I agree with Sonja about beautiful women and tattoos (and I think Kelly said it’s like putting a bumper sticker on a Bentley a few seasons ago, so kill me twice for agreeing with both of them). A tattoo of your own name on your lower back is...probably something Leah should definitely get removed. I hate when the women on these shows talk to their staff as if they’re their friends, the way Bethenny did all last season and Dorinda and Luann did in this episode. Don’t they know how desperate it makes them look? Their staff are being paid to be nice to them, and they’re a captive audience. Why make them do more than their jobs? Wow, Ramona ordering a Diet Coke with Lu and offering her the room with the private entrance? I have never seen her this gracious. What’s going on? My hunch? Ramona’s trying to “make it nice” for a new season. It’s another renewal. Ramona’s property looks great. I don’t love Luann’s house in Sag, the way I never loved her house in the city. Too small to be aspirational. Holy shit, Countess! It was rude of Ramona to give you a basement? She’s always been such a jealous bitch about Ramona’s property. In season 10, when Ramona was so proud to reveal her redone Hamptons home, which was gorgeous, Luann was gossiping about it to someone else, saying “there was not a flower to be seen.” Luann, your home is like 1,200 square feet. Jealous much? Dorinda’s hair looks like the Little Dutch Boy in her talking head. She’s coming apart at the seams. It’s probably a combo of alcohol and lack of funds.

I hope I’m not being too didactic here in pointing out that only one of them (Ramona) is in her 60s. The others are 54-56, so they are more like 10 years younger than Tinsley. I do think you are right in that they are jealous of Tinsley’s comparative youth, though, and the fact that she has money is tied in too. I don’t care about the handbag lines in Asia—I don’t think the woman had to work a day in her life, whereas the rest of them have had to hustle for at least a part of their lives. I think, related to Tinsely’s wealth, is that Tinsley isn’t like them, because she’s been very spoiled and pampered. This is the part about which I sympathize with the co-stars. Tinsley has lovely manners until she’s drunk or upset, and then she just doesn’t know how to handle it and she falls apart or gets really mean. I think her co-stars have minimal sympathy for this frail personality when they are, as Bethenny once said about Dorinda, “broads.” It grates on me so much when Dale chides her and Tinsley goes “Ma-au-um!” the way a 12 year old does. Her hypocrisy is annoying—she doesn’t want to talk about money, because it’s déclassé, but she basically spent season 10 gleefully making her “mugshot” aka her arrest her storyline. In season 11, Tinsley scoffed at Luann for worrying about what Page Six said, when Tinsley said she only worries about herself when she is on the cover of The Post...never mind the fact that it was a huge season 9 arc that Page Six was saying Tinsley was an ungracious houseguest. I hate inconsistency. It makes me feel like the person I’m dealing with has no inner compass, and I make them background noise. The way she fell on the floor when Scott came to visit, the freak-out at the circus, the fact that she called 911 when her dog was dying, taken as a whole, were so babyish to me, but when she is mean—which manifests in her jumping aboard the mean-girl train instead of facing someone sober and one-on-one, as she did to Luann—I’m like... Call it schadenfreude, but I’m really glad she’s not the “young one” on the cast anymore. Leah is in her thirties. I hope it bothers Tinsley that she’s no longer “the baby.” Maybe it’ll cause her to grow up a smidge. I know I should feel bad about the fact that I feel good about this, but I don’t. I see Tinsley as kind and gracious 70% of the time, and the other 30% is ugly. Let’s see her have to deal with something really difficult, which we’ve never really seen, which most of the ladies have had to endure, and I predict the ugly side will be right up there on the surface with the best of them.

I think—don’t take this to the bank—Aviva was fan-girling Carole about What Remains at a party, so, yeah, basically talking about being a widow, and Carole interrupted her to ask Aviva if her tits were showing. I can’t remember, because I haven’t seen the season in at least five years. I just remember some parts of it so vividly because I hated S4 so much that it made my teeth chatter, and seasons five and six were so good and different to me that I paid really close attention, seeing as how I felt the greatness of the show was in peril (and unfortunately I think I was right. I think season 8 was the last really good season).

Yeah, I got that. This is what I wrote up thread: Sure, Dorit’s face and body were paid for, as were Tinsley’s. I’m not really as concerned about how they got there as much as I’m commenting on the relative levels of current beauty between two, let’s say, “well-cultivated” women of comparable age. I continue to be surprised that Tinsley gets attention for her beauty, when I think she should get more positive attention for her posture and fashion. I bought Dorit up as an example of “this is what I think is more beautiful” of a woman of a similar age, not because I think either are runway models. I think Tinsley was beautiful 10+ years ago, but I think they all—Ramona, Luann, Sonja, Dorinda and likely Leah—were “beautiful” at some point in time. In season 12, it’s my opinion Tinsley has a small, hard face. That’s the only point I wanted to make with the comparison.

I don’t think Raquel should have to give up drinking because of James either. I just have no idea why a significant other wouldn’t give this up—at least in front of their partner—if their partner has a problem with substance abuse. Like I said upthread, it’s either not a big deal, or it is a big deal. If it’s not a big deal, there should be no reason that Raquel shouldn’t stand by James in solidarity and only have cokes. My dad stopped drinking with my mom both times she was pregnant, because it shows support. If it is a big deal, then she really shouldn’t be drinking around him. This nightclub lifestyle may be what James does for right now, but it may not be what he does as he remains sober, because he may realize it’s not a healthy environment for him. There is nothing more boring than going to a place where everyone is drinking when you’re sober. This is why I’ve always been willing to pitch in for a cab, rather than be a designated driver when I used to go out with friends. It’s so boring, and there is so much FOMO. Plenty of people enter AA as a bartender, or in some other occupation where the booze flows, and as they start to work the steps and see that’s not who they are, they wind up becoming...I dunno...ranchers, or something that has nothing to do with drinking. And I’m not sure James’s age would put him in contact with alcohol. I think it is more the life circumstances that he created; life circumstances that he can change. If he were to get really invested in sports or church or something, he wouldn’t constantly be around alcohol. I dunno, I just have a different view about drinking-related activities than probably a good portion of the world, and that’s: if I’m not drinking, I don’t want to be around drinkers. I find them extremely dull. There will be no point in my life where I’m going to “get my shit together” enough to find buzzed/drunk people who are who-whooing about shots not dull, unless I’m in there doing it with them. I think the vast majority of people who are sober who say they are comfortable around excessive drinking are lying and are just trying not to be a buzzkill, which is why, if someone around me gave up drinking and I cared deeply about them, I would stop drinking around them completely, even if they didn’t ask, because that’s just the right thing to do. The fact that James said he was uncomfortable means I give no passes to people around him who say they love him who drink around him also. If Raquel can’t or won’t abstain, I don’t blame her—she’s young and she wants to have fun—but I would look at this as a deal-breaker, and we’d probably go our separate ways. (I don’t think Jame’s casual buddies should abstain every time he’s around—that would be absurd—but I think his significant other, who is there through thick or thin, should do what he does, and James can make it up to her by doing what Raquel does, such as, I don’t know, waking up early to go to yoga or something. And, if he’s serious about his sobriety, which only time will tell, James will slowly but surely move on from those people who drink around him and move toward people who have similar goals, if he wants to stack the deck in his favor and not make the next 50 years of his life hard). I’m not confident James is going to have long-term success with sobriety this time around, probably because he’s trying to live a drunken man’s life as a sober man, and that is one of the hardest things I can fathom.

Yeah, I agree. One thing that contributes to this theory is when Stassi and Beau were at Jax’s wedding and Beau said (kinda bitterly) that there’ll be no kids(!) at their wedding. It caught my attention, because he was vehement (for Beau). I tend to agree with him, as my husband and I both really didn’t want kids at our wedding, but we’re both not fans of kids. Stassi loves kids. Hmm...

I am so tired of watching Lisa discipline her employees. The problem, if I understand it, was that Danica, as assistant manager, for some reason, had two tables of her own, and she charged them each additional money that Guillermo had to call up and apologize about. In the restaurant industry, doing that even once is a big mistake. Huge. So, that is the issue. Stick with that and discipline her accordingly. If she pushed her ex in the restaurant or if she was rude to Richardson at TomTom, then this is a pattern and fire her. And if you’re not going to fire her, make her account for the problems of the night before. But don’t throw everything at her but the kitchen sink because you think it makes for good, realistic TV. It makes for neither. Schwartz telling Katie “don’t be a social justice warrior.” Two weeks in a row I love him! But then I hate him all over again when he apologizes and does that mumble “Bubba” or more like, “Bu...” to Katie though. What the fuck is that? How has he been doing that for eight years on TV and living with himself? What is wrong with just saying “I’m sorry” in a normal voice? These man-children do my head in. Doesn’t Lisa know how rude it is to summon someone to your table at a restaurant when you both “happen to be” dining at the same place as someone? She can go over to their table and make two seconds worth of small talk and then move on. Anything else, especially given her checkered relationship with Kristen, is insufferably rude, but that’s Lisa. She never disappoints! I couldn’t give a shit less about Beau’s proposal to Stassi. I find them very boring. And I find his attempts to ingratiate himself with his co-stars cringeworthy. He is such a beta male. Was he crying at the restaurant when he thought he was hurting Stassi by not proposing? He couldn’t be like Jim from The Office and when the idea of engagement first came up, and tell her, “well, that’s coming,” and then ask in the next 3-6 months? There is something very wrong if a couple is fighting about getting engaged. How can Stassi (and how could Katie in the past) beat their partners into submission about asking? There’s something extremely unhealthy about that. When they finally do get down the aisle, they won’t feel like they’re dragging a dead body with them? You know who I definitely don’t want to spend the rest of my life with? Someone who isn’t completely down with spending the rest of their life with me. If I even had to hint at my husband to propose to me, we never would have gotten married. What a thing to grovel about. I get that there have to be two vacations a season, and they already did Miami, so they’re due for either Vegas or Mexico, but Katie and Tom don’t get another wedding in my book. Are people supposed to make a big deal over again when they’ve already made a giant deal because someone made an error with the license? Give me a break. They get one bite at the apple. I love Dayna and Brett pretending to negotiate a relationship. You guys are doing this to make Max and Scheana feel bad, and to make drama, and let’s not pretend this is something that it’s not. They’re both such corny disappointments. Get off my screen. And...Brett’s gorgeous? Do I need glasses? 🧐 And if Max is pretending that he cares about Dayna/Brett, he’s completely acting. Raquel won’t give up drinking with James? I’ll never understand that. Either drinking isn’t a big deal, in which case Raquel should not drink around James, or it is a big deal, in which case James, and Raquel as his partner, should change their people, places and things in their environment to enable to make this transition smoothly. This nightmare scenario of going to clubs when James says its uncomfortable reminds me of The Sopranos, when Christopher Multisanti came back from rehab and everyone he knew expected him to be normal around their round-the-clock drinking. I called them idiots then, and I’m going to go ahead and call James’s and Raquel’s behavior naive and kind of dumb too. Lala, who has supposedly been sober for close to a year at this point, is still white-knuckling it at a bar, telling someone she’s going to “get white-girl wasted on Diet Coke.” How embarrassing. Why, at this point in the game, would Scheana tell anyone but her diary that she cares about who Dayna dates? It’s made her look like an asshole all season, over and over. She has zero self-awareness about how pathetic this is all making her look. She wants to have a single best friend who is a guy? She gives platonic girl friends everywhere a bad name by crying when her guy friend kisses a female. Scheana should focus less on manipulating other people’s relationships and more on her science baby. In fact, Scheana’s egg freezing is probably the most compelling thing about this show right now. The info and the pictures of the injections were definitely the best part of this snoozefest of an episode. I think we need a little more Kristen, less newbies, less Lisa, and, it’s definitely time for another vacation, but not a do-over wedding. Come on Bravo, we viewers are getting wedding fatigue syndrome!

I love Cheyenne trying to do damage control: “everyone knows [Amber’s] wrong.” Then why did you go to court in support of her? We all knew she was wrong as soon as it broke. I’m sure distancing herself from Amber has nothing to do with this business where she’s profiting off of her daughter’s illness, or this new business she’s trying to start. 🤔 I couldn’t be less interested in The Challenge. It feels like (because it is) MTV cross-promoting another show. I’m not buying Cori’s bullshit this week. He’s going to cheat on Taylor, and if she has nothing to say about it, I guess I don’t either. At least the conversation with Taylor (if you can call it that) didn’t seem scripted. The conversation with Cheyenne had clearly already happened off-camera and they were just reenacting it. Cheyenne is way too much of a control freak to just roll with Cori and his bullshit Challenge antics. Oh, yes, Catelynn’s self-pitying story of the week—the PTSD that Amber’s audio caused—is “so traumatizing.” She’s profiting off “working on herself,” when she seems like a pretty normal person to begin with. She has no incentive to heal, and every incentive to wallow in self-pity. She would have exactly nothing to offer the show without beating the mental health issue to within an inch of its life. People can grow and still work a job. She’s sending a trashy message by doing nothing but sitting on her ass whenever she’s not on vacation or in a therapy session. So Amber is avoiding spending any time with Leah when she’d previously committed to showing up? That’s being a deadbeat mother, pretty much by definition. I love that Gary is the smartest person in the room, even when he says Amber needs “to have some liability there.” Gar, do you mean “accountability”? I smack my head. I don’t think Gary (or Kristina) are harmless though, or saints. They’re enabling Amber’s dysfunction by being on the show. Amber can find someone else to, or—God forbid—make her own telephone call to get her own damn counseling, but I guess whatever keeps Gary in his La-Z-Boy, tilted back at the perfect 45 degree angle 16 hours a day, works. Good job on the birthday present, Josh. I notice you didn’t spend any actual time with your wife on her birthday until the evening, nor did you arrange for childcare, which means Mackenzie would have been a single mom with three kids again on her birthday if Angie didn’t agree to watch them at the last minute. Well, in his favor, it’s not like Josh can “engage in inappropriate” with his wife and children present, so I should cut the man a break for multitasking. Tyler stuttering and seizing up in indignation over a dish sink about all the people online who didn’t support his wife’s support of domestic abuse was everything. Rhine’s Mackenzie is one of the people on this show I can actually stand. I don’t know why. She’s enabling terrible parenting and bringing more children into a drug-fueled family. Maybe because she is too dumb to realize how bad this all is? She just seems like she is very ignorant about all the damage she’s causing, compared to Maci, who has been a smooth operator the whole time, like she knew just how close she was to working at Wal-Mart for the rest of her life if this show didn’t fall into her lap. Are they just going to keep on pretending Rhine wasn’t just this side of passed out when he couldn’t seem to drink from a bottle or eat food with a fork at the end? When he sat his ass on the sink and started yelling, I completely expected him to lose his balance and fall backward out the window. That would have given Tyler and his manic dishwashing a run for its money as best part of the episode.

Yes, I think this is an accurate interpretation of the situation. In addition, I think all that we needed to know about Whitney and whether she wants to rear children is what we learned when she met with the adoption expert—she told Whitney her BMI and her history with mental illness would pose a problem from adopting a Korean baby, but that there would be absolutely no problem to get a baby from Georgia if she paid for a woman to get pregnant and give the baby to her—it would be completely legal and above-board. So...rather than capitalizing on this opportunity or asking how much it would cost (I’m sure that between the show and her parents, she could afford it), Whitney just concentrated on the negative and took the opportunity to harp on the stigma that South Korea brought onto her because they think she’s “too fat and crazy” to adopt. But not one word was mentioned about the way that should could get the baby. So this tells me all I need to know. If this show goes on a few more years, they may have to bring a baby in for a storyline, the way that she’ll have a wedding if this show stays on long enough. But a baby is not something that she wants, that she can’t have. It’s the exact opposite. Everything else is a storyline, far as I’m concerned.

Hmm, I think you may have a more generous view of GG than I do. I don’t think she felt sorry about her past, I think she felt sorry about what happened to her, (in her mind) as a result of past actions. She was sucking on that joint pretty hard and she kept getting up when Nema kept telling her to stay down, so I’m not sure she was even taking responsibility for her health after all this happened, even though she wasn’t done trying to get pregnant. I’m not making a moral statement, but I am only following GG logic—if she thinks her miscarriage is “karma” for her past of abortions, and she thinks her miscarriage was bad, then it logically follows that she thinks that it was wrong that she got multiple abortions in the past. But she never said she was sorry or that she wanted to repent or do right. She just kept saying, “this is karma, guys, this is karma” which was just a report to her friends that she felt like she was being punished by some deity. I don’t see any more maturity there than a 14 year old telling her friends, “you guys, I’m grounded, did you hear me, I’m grounded. I got caught vaping and now I’m grounded.” Like, ok, what do you expect your friends to do in that very awkward situation—assure you it’s not karma and that you did nothing wrong? That’s not taking responsibility for anything; that’s her looking for people to tell her she’s wrong about the karma, and she’s totally alright with the gods IMO. As many people said upthread, GG probably shared about her abortions this season in the first place, because she knew it was coming out, so she got ahead of it in a way that MJ didn’t. That may be savvy, but I’m not sure it’s a sign of respect or remorse. Again, not saying she did anything wrong, but if she thinks she did something wrong, there really are a lot of ways to get through something really personal without putting your friends on the spot to either tell you that you’re alright, or stay silent and look like selfish assholes on camera themselves. I think if people are going to say that Reza shouldn’t talk about MJ’s abortions on camera (and he shouldn’t), then maybe GG should use discretion as well. Not everything has to be shared. Not everyone is going to see youthful decisions the same way. When I was in Catholic school, our nun mentioned to our class that one of the services the nuns had done was bringing women who approached them who had abortions on a retreat so that the women could name their babies and send, I think, balloons up into the air for them (I guess this was before the environmental stuff). No one had any judgment about the women as our Sister recounted it, and I think it was kind of a beautiful story. I think if GG wanted to do something like this, whether Catholic, Muslim, secular, whatever, that would show me that she reflected on her former decisions and was growing from them. Ideally, she would do it privately, but if it had to be on camera, I still would have respected it more than the path she chose. Panting to anyone who will listen, “this is karma” when she doesn’t know how those people feel about her decisions or karma puts people on the spot to absolve GG of something for which they can’t absolve, and sympathize with something with which they may not sympathize. I actually think doing this was a self-centered display, much like the rest of what GG does. It had a veneer of appearing mature, but when I broke it down, it struck me as really immature. This GG thing reminds me of the girls and women who have come to me from the time I was a teenager to this day who tell me all the reasons they think they’re pregnant when they don’t want to be, so that I can refute all their reasons and go through the whole song and dance and say, “well, did you have unprotected sex on your fourteenth day? Oh, it was your tenth day? What are you worried about?!? Your period is only six days late? My period is seven days late and I’m not pregnant—you’re fine!!” They’re not coming to me because they’re sorry; they’re coming to me so I can tell them—as I always do—“oh, you are so not pregnant, based off what you told me!” (So far I’ve always been right. Maybe I missed my calling). I just don’t see anything mature or grown about these scenarios. Sometimes I feel like a jerk for entertaining them, especially with the same person more than once. I imagine that some of GG’s more mature friends, like Nema, Shervin and Sara might have felt uncomfortable if GG approached them about her “karma” in such a pandering way. Reza will kiss her ass and tell her she’s fabulous because they’re on good terms for these five minutes, and that’s all that matters in his little world; Destiney will always cry and hug you as if life were a passion play, and Mike will spout some words of wisdom and forget about it all because he has to check Instagram, but more thoughtful and deliberate people might resent being put in this position. And I don’t think that fits into GG’s equation at all.

Oh, like he can try to throw them out of the family? That is a problem, especially given that most people who apply to college are minors. And God knows Christine isn’t going to pretend not to see that acceptance letter in the mail and go tell Kody all about it. That is tough. Her best bet might be to lean on her older siblings in support for breaking away from Kody and Christine. There were also those really sweet young women who rescued other young women from polygamy on that show Escaping Polygamy? Ladies, where are you? Someone needs your help!