LibertarianSlut

I’m going to give this telabortion a chance. If I make it beyond two episodes, I will have considered it to be a successful season, what with Bravo’s track record lately. I’m not a big Jackie fan, judging from last season (I’m not a fan of any of theirs). Her tiny back tattoo looks horrible; I can’t believe she opted to put what looks like dirt onto her body permanently. I’m not anti-tattoo; I’m anti-ugly tattoo. Jackie’s twin boys look sooo much like Evan. Her face looks crazy hopped up on fillers, especially in the talking heads. Someone should tell Jackie that trying to kiss Teresa’s ass, running up to her and telling her she is going to set her up with someone in DC, was nauseating. Jackie clearly realized going up against Teresa for an entire season wasn’t working out, so she started her second consecutive season kissing Teresa’s ass in such a cringeworthy way, like the lame girl at school trying to connect with the popular one. Guess that didn’t turn out so well... Melissa, for the first time, looks every minute of her age. Hair is too dark, and greasy, for starters. She’s always worn a lot of makeup, but this shit has been positively spackled on. Color me shocked that she didn’t get pregnant/have a baby in the off season! She looks like a skinny, drawn Kim K, but significantly older, not just one year. Did Joe Gorga get shorter since last year? Will he ever stop with the faux outrage that his homely daughter might have a significant other? This has been his shtick since he joined the show—his daughter will never date, cleaning is for women, Joey and Gino should bang everything that moves, etc. Oh, I am laughing! Margaret, I don’t care how much you got your boobs done, you shouldn’t go braless. I can’t believe the ambiguously accented Lexi is back in the opening of the first episode—ugh! Also, Margaret broke a record by saying “by the way” within 30 seconds of beginning filming. Joe Benigno, like Joe Gorga, is another short, drunk, broke prince. Michelle, the realtor, looks like Lizzie from RHOC, and is so pretty. She looks the way Melissa (and probably the rest of them) think they look. The only looker on this cast is Dolores. Teresa’s face is continuing to slowly melt down into her neck, and that’s with the good lighting. Mwhahahaha, Teresa spreading rumors about Evan cheating straight out the gate—gotta say, it’s not undeserved IMO. Jackie started out last season gossiping about Teresa cheating on Joe, going out to dinner with Melissa and Margaret, saying that she thought it was true and Melissa of all people had to basically tell Jackie, “you can’t say that about my sister-in-law” Turnabout is fair play. Not to mention good TV. Remember last season when we said that it was cute that Bill Aydin got so drunk at the Jersey Shore because he never acts that way? So....guess those days are over. Nice open shirt photos with the potbelly, class act. I am so bored of Margaret and her unfinished home. They tried to peddle the bullshit that Joe didn’t want another contractor in the home, because she cheated on her last husband with the last contractor, until it came out last season that she is just flat bankrupt and broke. And Margaret and Marge Sr—the cheater and the woman who habitually dated married men—can miss me with the faux outrage that someone said Evan may—gulp—be cheating. If they really didn’t believe he was cheating and they had respect for Jackie, they would not give it light or air on international TV until Jackie showed up to give the storyline, because if it’s so untrue on its face, why talk about it? I don’t talk about aliens coming to visit me at night because it doesn’t happen. Also, someone needs to tell Margaret that having a perpetually unfinished home doesn’t make her eccentric, it makes her look cash poor and unprepared. Dolores is kind of a beautiful woman, and I hope she’s getting all this cosmetic surgery just because she’s on TV and she wants to look great—I hope she doesn’t have some kind of body dysmorphic disorder like Frank. Frank Jr looked refreshingly less roided out in this episode which is kind of a relief. I thought he was going to explode with the way he’s been exponentially growing these past years. Glad to see he began to reverse that. Jen has definitely lost weight since she joined the show, but those plaid pants are not her friend. Not in that size anyway. Not yet. If Jen’s storyline this year is going to be her parents, kind of like Dolores’s parents were her storyline last season, I am going to fall asleep. I hope she says “shut the fuck up” to Teresa’s face this season, instead of just in a talking head. If Evan’s not cheating—and I don’t have an opinion about whether he is yet—this shouldn’t be such a big deal. Also, lol to Jackie trying to break the fourth wall by saying she doesn’t want rumors out there about Evan because “this is a small town.” Ok, none of them live in the same town, except Teresa and Melissa. Jackie lives in Tenafly. Teresa lives in Towaco. This brilliant woman, who is a lawyer (!!!), and loves to use her words to best people, might want not to try to pull the wool over our eyes with bullshit now. I love how Jackie characterized Margaret to Teresa as a “neutral” party, and then proceeded to go to Margaret’s home to talk mad shit about Teresa, and Margaret added fuel to the fire with her sympathetic nods and jokes about drowning Teresa. Wasn’t Margaret the one who threw it out there in Mexico that Jen’s husband Bill sleeps in his girlfriend’s bed? But she’s breaking out the vapors now. Cool. I’ll never be Team Jackie again (well...never say never). But I’ll never forget how last season her storyline out the gate was all about how offended she was that Jennifer did an Instagram post doing an impression of Jackie, and Jackie called it bullying (though Teresa got a pass, even though it was at Teresa’s behest), and her faux outrage about her great family wealth coming to light (when she was the one who put it out there), culminating in that lunch in the Hamptons where Melissa From The Block shouted “this motherfucker is winning” about Jackie, and threw some gang signs her way, which culminated in a Cheshire Cat grin from Jackie. That whole scene permanently made me dislike both of them intensely. Margaret is no picnic either. So...according to Jackie, she did Teresa the favor by inviting Teresa to Evan’s birthday party?!?! Um....I think Teresa did the favor to Jackie by showing up to Evan’s birthday party, which is the reason the party made it to air. This is Teresa Giudice, the one who got the entire second half of last season’s finale devoted to her visit to see Joe in Italy. Jackie needs to stop acting brand new. This isn’t an ensemble cast, no matter how much we want it to be. This is Teresa’s show, unlike any other Housewives franchise. Teresa’s status as top dog on this show (whether we like it or hate it) makes Bethenny Frankel, formerly of RHNYC, look like a shrinking violet. Jackie, if Teresa is so bad, why did you kiss her ass all of season 10??? Methinks someone loves the camera. I can’t believe Jackie is talking to Teresa about “evidence.” Lol. Teresa said all of this because of “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” Teresa doesn’t give a shit about evidence, come on! Teresa doesn’t get over any motherfucking thing. If Jackie doesn’t realize that, she’s not as smart as she thinks she is, or would have us, believe. My main question to Jackie is, if she is so much smarter and better at this than Teresa, why does Teresa keep beating her at this Housewife game? Ho-hum to Jackie saying she heard that Gia snorts coke at parties. Gia’s an adult and she signed up for this show. It didn’t have an iota of a ring of truth to it, and even if it did, would it be front page news that a college girl in the Tristate area does some rails when she goes out? Jackie could have done better. She could have said said that word on the street is that Teresa has gorillas as ancestors. That would have been something that might have gotten people talking... Jackie lost that argument as soon as she said that she won, and she was living the life that Teresa wishes she lived, because Jackie doesn’t get it. (I actually think Jackie lost the argument when she started talking, with her shaky voice, basically begging Teresa to take back what she said—this is Jersey, where weak doesn’t work). But, shaking voice aside, I don’t think it’s even remotely true that Teresa wants to be anything like Jackie. I think Teresas wishes that Teresa was living the life of Teresa Giudice circa 2008. Jackie and Teresa are so different that I can’t imagine Teresa being jealous of Jackie. There’s a difference between hating a bitch and being jealous. But this is who Jackie is—she thinks that because she is skinny, a bottle blonde, has a few coins to rub together and habitually writes a Carrie Bradshaw-like column, that people are all jealous of her. Hmmm. First of all, she’s not pretty. Second of all, she doesn’t have a personality to write home about; she’s abrasive. Third of all, she’s socially awkward. Teresa and Dolores will never be jealous of that shit. I could see Teresa being jealous of Melissa back when Melissa was arguably hot and she and Joe were flossing like they had some cash. None of these bitches are ever going to be jealous of Jackie, save for Jennifer and her weird obsession with Jackie’s money (and speaking of “evidence,” I think there is as much evidence that Jennifer has as much money as Jackie as anything else, and Jennifer actually played herself on that issue). Wow, dare I say this was good, actually great? Despite the novel I wrote, I am speechless. Team #Let’sKeepThisLevelofDramaAllSeason.

As far as circumcision goes, I guess I’m a hypocrite, because I get on these show people for having all of this sex and children out of wedlock, yet I think it’s loony not to get the kid circumcised simply because I think it makes his penis look weird and might give him problems getting laid in the future, like when he’s in his twenties, even though I don’t think people should make sexual decisions based purely on cosmetic reasons, so I see where my logic fails. I just wouldn’t want my son to have a penis that looks weird to his peers. If my daughter was born with giant labia or something, and I could get that taken care of with a very routine procedure, I would do it in a heartbeat. I can’t base it on anything totally logical, yet at the same time I am really glad my husband is circumcised, and I wouldn’t send my boy out into the world a different way. 🤷‍♀️ It’s the most interesting topic to visit the show this year, IMO, that’s for sure. It doesn’t have me throwing up my hands saying, “why don’t they just do [x]?!?” It requires thought and discussion. Show, I see I’ve underestimated you!

This season is turning out to be not as good as the past three, and I think the reason is that they’re doing so much filming before the babies come, and that is why we are stuck in this loop of talking about showers and “gender reveals.” Usually there is at least one baby to come along early into the season, and we can see that angle of it. Fail, show! Reanna & Taron—It’s so convenient that Covid happened, because now there is an excuse to keep Taron out of the delivery room, because she can only have one person there, according to her mom...except those were the exact same conditions the doctors put on the c-section before Covid, and it was a problem for some reason then, so I’m not quite sure why it’s not a problem now. Stupid storyline. Can Reanna not give birth naturally? Something pertaining to a surgery? They have only mentioned it about 300 times now. Taron is a real prince. He thinks he has “a right” to be in the hallway looking in at the baby being born during a pandemic when the staff members don’t think it’s safe? It’s not all about you, Taron. And I have a feeling that he wouldn’t be so hard pressed to see the baby born if no one was stopping him. He only claims to want this so much 1.) because it’s driving his story on TV; and 2.) it is the forbidden fruit. Ok, so we finally get to a birth, and they don’t show the epidural or anything about the urinary catheter? What’s the point of a show about birth...if we can’t see most of anything pertaining to the birth? I hate when they do that. I’m officially bored. I wish they had picked another couple who was delivering at a hospital where cameras were allowed for the birth. Myrka & Ethan—so many subtitles. They’re three weeks shy of pregnancy, and only now is she trying to learn how to push? If it were me, I would have been on that immediately, because I would be so scared. Ethan seems really checked out. I can’t believe how much older the two of them look for their age. If I saw them on the street and I saw his male pattern baldness and her mature features, I would have no problem thinking they were a couple in their thirties. Jesus, these people never learn! Myrka doesn’t “want crap” from her mom about having a baby, the baby that her mom did not have her to have at all?? Then I have a wild idea—don’t call her when you think you’re going into the hospital, especially considering the fact that she couldn’t even be there if she wanted to be! Fake drama for a story. Le sigh. Jenna & Aden—more subtitles...what is wrong with these people?!? Oh my God, pasta versus sliders, I’m on the edge of my fucking seat. What kind of accent does Aden possess? When I can understand him, he talks like a valley girl. Ew, I can’t believe these two uglies had sex. Together. Lilly & Lawrence—I’m just going to say it—after seeing the flashback, Lilly looks like she’s been hit with the ugly stick over the past two and a half years. She’s gross. A lot of it has to do with her stupidity mixing with her ugly though too. Lawrence is a real prince too, telling a woman who’s already had a baby that giving birth doesn’t hurt, that it’s mind over matter. I would put good money on what would happen If his fat ass got a kidney stone—would he go to the doctor and get morphine, or would he just use his mind to control the pain? And she doesn’t believe in circumcising her baby? IMO that’s bananas. The father should get a say in this. How come last episode Lilly was so excited about her relationship with Lawrence, and this episode she is sighing and not knowing how they’re going to overcome their parenting differences. My wild guess? You’re not. You’re going to split up and have yet another baby with another guy, and that will be “almost perfect”...until it’s not.

Reanna gives birth during a pandemic. Jenna and Aden fight over the baby shower. Tyra has a little too much fun on her cheerleading trip in Miami, Florida. A debate over circumcision makes Lilly and Lawrence's family dinner awkward. Original airdate: 1/31/2021

WOW, the episode where they went to Charleston jumped the shark. It was so contrived, such bad performance art. They could have ended the show after six episodes, rather than have Kane and Kevin travel across the country and pretend to try to learn Vietnamese and pantomime knocking on doors in order to harass some guy who they think is Kim’s biodad...the hell? The guy is entitled to privacy; did that ever occur to these busybodies?? If it was a woman who had given her baby up, I don’t think she’d be treated so insensitively. Double standard much? We’re really supposed to believe the detective found only biodad’s new wife’s number and no more? So stupid and I just don’t care. I am horrified over this development, as well as plenty more badgering, chiefly by Anna, of Kelly about Andrew. Epic fail. The only bright spot in the episode was Kim’s stepfather. I am now completely convinced she has special needs (no snark) and it’s nice to see that she has people supporting her. Kane is putting on that Kermit the Frog voice, right? That episode was supposed to end on a cliffhanger?!? Joke’s on them, because I do not care. This isn’t the find your bio parents hour, this is Bling Empire...but with no bling. Very disappointing. I’ll halfheartedly tune into the finale, but I don’t know if the show can recover from this. That scene with the Confederate Battle Flag was like something out of Borat. Just insanely stupid and based on a completely different premise from the show’s original trajectory. Two thumbs down.

That is what I was thinking. Christine would probably have to sign off on a million documents, but she seems like she would ultimately do what her husband wants her to do if he flashes enough cash. I’m not sure why she’s so vehement about not having another baby if she doesn’t have to carry it. If it’s a time commitment, don’t they have a zillion dollars, and can’t she just hire round-the-clock nannies? I’m only through episode six, so maybe more will be revealed to me, but I love Anna. Love her. She can do no wrong in my eyes (though I don’t love her home as much as some; I like a much more modern aesthetic). I want to see more of her kid and her kid’s girlfriend. Anna is just so cool. Nothing gets to her. She shows up at bowling and gets a strike. She doesn’t wear a bra to yoga, when Christine shows up in a belt that looks like it cost $50k. Nothing ruffles her feathers, none of her reactions are disproportionate. She could really do her own show. I think Christine is a necessary foil to create a little drama with Anna. I loved the Anna/Christine disagreement about the oldest jeweler in Paris, because both women clearly had a serious opinion on this matter. I also loved when Christine noticed Anna’s Dior and asked if it was this season. Toto, we’re not in Real Housewives of New York City anymore, where two women are arguing about whether one knows where the social register is located—this is real wealth! A lot of this show seems staged, but it also seems like the cast is in on it, so it doesn’t bother me. Christine is good for her wealth and fashions, though I think her husband Dr. Chiu is one of the oddest/least attractive people currently on TV...and Baby G is his spitting image! I don’t know why men think everything has to be pulled so tight and why they think it looks so good for their eyebrows to be Botoxed to high heaven all of the time. I also gave him major side-eye when he told Kelly to sit on the vibrating seat at his medical party, as it will make her “va-jay-jay tighter.” Um, no it won’t. I can’t believe he made this as a medical claim. I’d never visit his practice now. Kane seemed great at first, like he was so rich that he DGAF, and was just happy to be a side player in everyone else’s drama, however, as of late, he has gotten too squealy and he is too “oh my God” about everything, and it’s getting annoying. Like, “oh my God, Kevin, you’re wearing underwear to pray?” He seems to do that at least twice an episode. I did like his joke that it appeared that Jaimie’s stylist had died on the day they went to the beach. I’m not sure what the point of Jaime is. She’s much younger than the rest of them, and rarely gets any lines, but I find myself wanting her to show up, because I also think she is legit rich, but she seems a bit like a nonstarter. Speaking of nonstarters, can we talk about Guy for a second? He came on the show to find a penis pump (and I don’t even know what that is, other than what I saw on Austin Powers; why don’t they explain) and throw it out the bathroom window to ridicule Anna? I certainly could have done without that... Kim, I have found, is a big disappointment, and very dull. She never expresses an original thought, and seems to have a hard time keeping up with the storyline, of which there is little. All she does is say she wants to meet her biological father. Nothing to see there. It surprises me that she’s a famous DJ. She seems like someone who doesn’t have a creative bone in her body, and just listens to Basic Bitch music 24/7. I liked Cherie a lot, and I thought it was so interesting that she was willing to give birth on camera, and I was here for her story, and I think Jadore is adorable, and kill me, but I actually love the name, but...she really lost me when she began to sincerely believe that her mom had been reincarnated through her baby. I can’t even begin to speculate how much that could fuck a little kid up, if he hears it sincerely and repeatedly. I was so disappointed in Kane for advancing that idea and pretending to give it serious thought, and I gained a lot of respect for Jessie when she called him and he was basically just like, “are you dreaming or something?” At least the kids will have one sane parent. Kevin is probably the worst character for me. He is constantly reassured that his birth parents would be so proud of him and how he turned out, and his mom says they missed out, etc. Why? Because he is an arguably good looking, extremely insecure man in his thirties who moved to LA to go on a self-esteem journey and doesn’t have an original thought and doesn’t seem to do anything? Why is he so obsessed with his abs? He’s not that ripped. Walking along the beach with Kelly, he didn’t even have a six-pack. But of course he had to jump into the ocean naked, in a desperate bid to show us how hot he is, because that’s all he has. I think Kevin thinks that his looks entitle him to things, and access to people like Kelly. When he said that Kelly needed some Asian dick (the implication that he was going to be the one to give it to her), I thought that was such a creepy statement. The subtext to me read, “we’re both Asian, we’re both hot, and I’m a few years younger than her, so she will obviously be into me and I can find self-worth in rescuing her from the evil Andrew.” It’s like...Kelly doesn’t need rescuing, bra, you do, because you have no idea who you are, you seem to be in love with your mom, and you seem to be unaware of your sexual orientation. He totally got played by Anna, when she wasn’t even trying to play him, with the clothes. If Kevin didn’t want to accept gifts because he didn’t want to be indebted to someone, then the answer is easy—don’t accept a gift. Don’t pretend to skateboard all the way into Beverly Hills to pretend you are uncomfortable with the gift, because you don’t know what kind of quid pro quo you’re getting into, only to wind up (spoiler alert) keeping the gifts (because he is completely materialistic) and doing Anna’s bidding against Kim because she was fighting with Anna. My husband was watching this with me and he asked me if Kevin knew Tom Sandoval from VanderPump Rules, and I said he either does, or if he doesn’t, they will meet and become best friends and mutually gush over each other. Newsflash Kevin: being comparatively poor is not a character virtue. You can get your earnest expression off my TV at any time. Kelly is cool. I really like her, although once I started paying attention to her, she doesn’t sound interesting when she speaks, unlike Anna and Christine. She has no insight into her or Andrew’s behavior—just basic views about the human race. I think she’s pretty and I think the fact that her white dog is named Kilo is funny and I think she’s good for the show, but she’s not a lead. I don’t care if she winds up with Andrew, because while he is absolutely horrible, Kelly had every chance to get rid of him. She had Anna’s support. She had the therapist basically break them up, she had the opportunity to use Kevin as a rebound, and she did none of that, she just took Andrew back, and she is entitled to bad treatment, if that is where her comfort zone is. She is obviously attracted to Andrew in a way that she’s not attracted to Kevin and she’s fully grown—she’s 35—so she’s acting on her emotions and she’s allowed that. He’s not hitting her, he’s just scum, and no one can ‘make’ her realize that, and to the extent they keep trying, they look like meddlers. Kevin on the beach, demanding details about whether Kelly had hugged and kissed Andrew, well after Kelly had friend-zoned Kevin, was just as creepy to me as Andrew. Well, I still have two episodes to go. I really like this show. They seem to avoid so many of the reality TV cliches. The fights don’t run the show, the money does. I like that it’s only eight episodes, and I’m not sure I’m hoping for a second season. Maybe they can go elsewhere if they want to do this again, like, find wealthy New Yorkers. I wouldn’t want to see any crossover with any Housewives franchise though; those Housewives are too poor and stupid for these people, especially Anna. I think the job is complete: the people of Bling Empire’s stories have essentially been told, and it is very good. I can only imagine a second season would drag down its legacy, though I wouldn’t mind an update in the blogs here and there!

Was Jen wearing that same Versace print that Jennifer Lopez wore as a dress in 2000? I hate when they take a glam squad with them on a trip. How much work does it take to look as mediocre as Jen? The NoMad Hotel appeals to me not at all. A bathtub in the bedroom is not novel or appealing. The steam alone would be a nightmare. Wow, two weeks in a row that Heather disappointed in the fashion arena. What was with the late Elvis crushed velour suit that made her shoulders and everything else look like a linebacker? She was so self-conscious in that outfit, and it was so obvious because she was twisting her arms around herself to hide her body. Why do people think it’s cool to go to Vegas and wear tacky, unflattering shit? Her hair looked horrific too. Girl, run a straightening iron over that tangled mess, and even out the color. This woman is a salon owner? And this is her camera-ready look? Then a skintight leather jumpsuit over a white tee? Three strikes over the course of just over two episodes, you’re out, honey boo boo. I take back everything I said about her knowing how to dress her body last week. Maybe she used to know how to dress her body, but she got a heavy case of amnesia. Why is Jen so invested in Meredith and Lisa not forgiving Whitney? Everyone in this group—especially Jen and Heather—is so insecure that someone is going to—God forbid—like someone else and therefore side against them. It’s so immature. I don’t know why Mary isn’t filming with the rest of the cast anymore, but I think it’s a really good thing. Now that Mary has been removed from the situation, there’s no more scapegoat and everyone is showing their true colors. I cannot believe Jen’s attitude is that, if Lisa forgave Whitney, then it stands to reason that what Whitney said about what Mary said about Lisa is true (I can’t believe I just typed that crazy sentence). But it is so sad how Jen treats life like it’s a zero sum game, and anyone’s friendship gain is her loss. Heather has expressed the same exact sentiment in the episode with the bathtubs—that she wanted shit to go down at her good friend Shah’s birthday party so that Jen would side against Lisa and Meredith and with Heather. This is so irreligious. Meredith won the season for me by walking away. Lisa, by choosing not to walk away, looked like a drama-seeking jerk, but I think she’s the best or the worst. This is some of the worst acting with some of the worst storytelling I’ve ever seen. The big secret that came out about Jen was that Jen told Whitney that Lisa was talking about Whitney? Ok...I’m sure Lisa was talking about Whitney. They’ve been on the outs for several episodes now. Lisa doesn’t really like Whitney. Ho-hum. But then, in her talking head, Lisa converts the message from “Jen said you were talking about Whitney” to “Jen is going to come for you.” How did Lisa get there from here? She sounds really dumb. She’s trying to create something from nothing, and they’re all biting. I know I complained about it last week, but I renew my objection to Whitney’s outfit in Vegas. Bitch couldn’t be bothered to throw on a cute cocktail dress for dinner? She really had to wear the same faded Mom jeans and skanky top that she wore to the racetrack to a lounge? This is the furthest thing from aspirational I can possibly imagine. Meredith pulled some shady shit there by shutting down all the gossip about the other guy she was seen with when she said that she and Seth had been separated so long and so much that of course they’ve seen other people. Nope. Got to check your storyline, girl. The storyline was that—she and Seth were! Separated! <insert Macaulay Culkin face from Home Alone here> and everyone was supposed to be so shocked and awed, including her best friend, Lisa. So to switch stories midstream makes me really feel like Meredith is spinning yarn. If this was such a nontroversy, it should have been Meredith’s party line from the beginning. Fucking amateurs. I can’t believe Mary is filming an ensemble reality show from her closet. Why didn’t they just cut her the way they cut Danielle from RHOC season nine before the season aired? This is absurd. So, now that Mary is gone, everyone is circling the wagons against Jen? Jen is crazy and she appears to have a problem with alcohol just about every episode, but everyone was kissing her ass in the beginning. She’s always been like this. It was ok for Jen to be a psycho hose beast as long as it was against Mary? This is like that war confessional “When they came...”. To apply the wisdom of that to this show, I would just say, when Jen was raving to everyone who would listen that Mary was “a grandpa fucker,” her behavior should have been arrested then. But everyone sat at Meredith’s birthday party and Mary’s Louis Vuitton earbud lunch and let Jen chew Mary out and they placated it. Either Jen is toxic or she isn’t. I saw it right away, and I would have had very little to do with her ever. What I wouldn’t do was make her my friend, watch her hate on Mary, nod, not care, but have a cow as soon as she exhibited that exact behavior that I have always known she was capable of toward me. That’s such weak sauce. What Heather was doing by confronting Jen in the hotel room like they were brand new wasn’t quite gaslighting, it’s just so fucking inconsistent that I think it would make anyone bananas, when Jen’s relationship with sanity is already hanging by a thread. Why poke the crazy? Because the reality show trumps everything, even basic human kindness. Jen’s assistant #2—heaven help him—looks like a thin Albert Manzo. Maybe this is where he’s been when Caroline thought he was at the Brownstone? I’m quite grossed out by the unholy alliance of Lisa, Meredith and Whitney. The two brunettes don’t like Whitney and vice versa, but now they are all up each others’ asses because there’s safety in numbers. Such a poor showing of adult behavior. I hate psychics. They give bullshit a bad name. All I’ll say about that, is that at the psychic, Jen’s kelly green Girl Scout uniform (?) looked like it was trying to make an exit from her body more desperately than Coach Shah when the bitch has been doing shots and is possessing a blunt object. Jen completely talked about Meredith’s marriage, specifically the idea that Meredith was cheating on Seth, as did Whitney. Why does Whitney get to skate and add fuel to the fire??? Does Whitney not remember snowmobiling, when Whitney approached Heather to speak about Meredith’s marriage and Heather completely shut it down? Every single one of them trusts Whitney??? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. This better come up at the reunion. Welp, that was it for me. An extended episode that gave us nothing? Fuck off, Bravo. How many times are they going to rehash the Jen drama? She’s a destructive person!! I said last week they got exactly 12 episodes to impress me, they didn’t get the job done, so I am going to sail on over to Netflix to watch Bling Empire, a reality show where people not only have two quarters to rub together, but they are filthy rich. They are also allowed to say “fuck” and show nudity. And the cast is so much more freaking likable. This group is pure trash, save for Meredith’s one moment of sanity by disengaging. That was all I got from 44+ minutes of nonsense and antics. I’ll be back for the reunion for reasons I should explore with a mental health professional. I am so sad that I am going to miss the finale, where it appears Heather’s dubiously valued business reopens at a brand new location, the atrocious pink dress Heather should have taken out back and shot reappears, and—gasp—everyone confronts Jen again! I’m not sure I’ll ever recover from the devastation of the loss.

I appreciate the interpretations, and while I agree completely with the logic, I don’t think Liliana used the right terminology, is all I was saying. What is true is that Liliana “kicked out” Myrka for breaking the rules (more about my interpretation of that below). What is true is that Myrka knew the rules and chose to discard them, and for that there were consequences. So I think it is fair to say that Myrka got herself kicked out. But Liliana saying that Myrka kicked herself out just doesn’t make sense to me. She was either kicked out, or she left of her own accord, whether she was pressured or not. But I don’t know how someone kicks themself out of a dwelling. It’s like saying a person fired themselves from their job—not that they quit or that they got fired. It makes as little sense to me as saying “gender reveal” for “sex reveal” and “whenever” instead of “when”. I understand the sentiment the person is trying to convey, but if they’re saying it wrong, I point it out, just because that’s how I snark. I’m over it though. For this week! I think we read the same laws and we agree on their interpretation. Myrka’s mom is not legally allowed to kick her out, but Liliana is allowed to consent to allow Myrka to live elsewhere. This is just my opinion based on the show—I’m not saying it’s fact—but I strongly believe that Liliana did not “kick out” Myrka in a legal sense, thus she did not do anything illegal. It’s frustrating that they haven’t spent time to flesh this out more, but I think it’s unlikely (not impossible, as people do illegal things on TV all the time, like Robert Durst admitting to murder on the documentary about whether he murdered people 😦) that this is what went down, given the resources that the state affords minors who have been “kicked out.” What I think happened was that Liliana figuratively kicked Myrka out, if you will. It is like when a man cheats on his wife and she tells him, “don’t come home.” He has the legal right to go home, but he doesn’t, because he feels that he is not welcome. There’s not really a legal remedy for hurt feelings, so this isn’t negligence if my theory is right. Unless Liliana was extremely verbally abusive under the roof of their home, I don’t think the social workers are running in to save Myrka from what was, in all likelihood, a frosty reception from her mom, which they are both calling “kicked out.” But I don’t think the girl was out on the street with nowhere to turn by a long shot—I think as soon as that pregnancy test lit up with two pink lines or whatever happens, Myrka said her mom would kill her, Ethan’s parents swooped in, Liliana agreed to the arrangement, and the story, which is likely much more complicated and interesting than they’re making it, got boiled down to “my mom kicked me out when she found out I was pregnant” and since everyone is agreeing, because no one is really thinking about it carefully, we’re only getting a half a story. While I’m speculating, I’ll repeat my speculation from earlier this season that Ethan could perhaps be not as interested in the fairer sex as other young men, so it would make sense that his parents saw this as an opportunity and jumped on it, and now that it’s turning out to be something other than sunshine and roses, they’re having buyer’s remorse and complaining that Liliana has to pull her proverbial weight, when all Liliana is legally required to do is meet her daughter’s basic needs, not her granddaughter’s basic needs. And when they stepped up to take care of Myrka’s basic needs, Liliana was taken off the hook for that as well (according to the law that I read), so I am really not sure what Ethan’s family is complaining about. Is it less than ideal that Liliana isn’t there to ooh and ahh? I dunno. It’s my opinion that it’s less than ideal to celebrate an unmarried 16 year old getting pregnant, especially when she has no money, and no discernible skills. If they’re looking for people to blame, they should blame these foolish 16 year olds, which is the hard thing to do. They might look to themselves and why they were so lax with the rules. It’s hard to look at ourselves and our failures, especially when we’re acting in a gregarious manner. It’s easy to blame the (grand)mother who is refusing to show what the others deem the appropriate emotion for their foolish choices. I got nothing else. This show is making me stupider. ETA: they’re not sure who the father is with Reanna and Taron, not Ethan and Myrka. (What ever happened to that storyline anyway?)

Good point. I’m no Texas family lawyer, but I did a quick search, and it looks like it’s not legal for a parent to kick their minor child out or fail to meet the minor’s basic needs in the event that the child becomes pregnant. It is considered neglect to do this (no mention of a responsibility for a parent to care for a minor’s child, so that checked out). The mom can allow the minor child to live somewhere else, as she did, but if Ethan’s parents had taken Myrka in without Liliana’s consent, they could be on the hook for kidnapping (which clearly isn’t the case here, but I just included that part because I think it lends credence to the idea that this entire thing was a voluntary transaction). So, this is just my opinion, but I don’t think Liliana “kicked out” Myrka in the sense that she changed the locks while Myrka was gone, or ordered her off the property with threat of force if Myrka didn’t vacate the premises. It took me less than a minute of google searching to find alll of these numbers to call in Texas if you are a minor and your parent does something like this, so if the girl was really in a bind, she could have gone to a school counselor or just done a google search like I did. I think Myrka was happy to have been “kicked out.” I wish, instead of having nine million “gender reveals” and baby showers and fights about same, this show would explore interesting things, like what actually happened between Myrka and her mom. In this episode, they made reference to it, and Liliana told Myrka that she didn’t kick her out, that Myrka kicked herself out, and that makes no sense. They could have/should have fleshed it out more and taken a little time away from Ethan’s parents bitching about Liliana, or Tyra bitching about Alex or Taron bitching about having to sit in a car for a few minutes. My opinion is that Myrka got pregnant (more or less on purpose), Liliana made it clear that their home would become a hostile environment, so Myrka moved in with the middle-class family of the homely boy she’s screwing so that she could watch TV on 60” flatscreens instead of scrubbing floors and taking care of her brother. Again...IMO, not a Liliana problem. It’s not Liliana’s problem that Ethan’s dad opted to work two jobs so that he could literally be Captain Save A Ho. Agreed. Last night especially, she looked positively porcine in the nose. Pregnancies can really fuck up a woman’s face, though (I think Bethenny Frankel’s jaw quadrupled in size when she was pregnant, and then scaled back to its former size of merely ‘huge’ after she had her baby) and Reanna looked like a really cute girl in some of the pre-pregnancy pics they showed. But people also filter themselves to high heaven in their Insta pics, so maybe she is just an ugly girl. There’s nothing special about them. They’re so boring.

Lilly & Lawrence—I forgot what a stupid bitch she is. She admits she received sex education, but she wasn’t paying attention and didn’t realize how easy it was to get pregnant? She and I come from the same state (not to say all curricula throughout the state is uniform, but I’ve never heard it go down any other way), and in elementary school, we had AIDS education, and in 10th grade it was already old hat when the gym teacher would pace in front of us like an obese Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, shouting in our faces “It! Only! Takes! One! Sperm!” Lilly’s dumb, and her mom is dumb to raise Aaliyah, because it fostered the behavior of...getting pregnant again! I hate her voice, I hate her tattoo that says “Aaliyah.” Why doesn’t she go after the first baby daddy for child support? Is it because her mom and stepdad take care of everything for Lilly, so it doesn’t matter to her where the money comes from? Lawrence grosses me out. He is “pretty sure” he slid up on Lilly’s Snapchat story? Aside from the fact that I am grateful that I am not entirely sure what that means, is that his way of saying he was cyberstalking her, because she was a Q-list fame whore? What does he do? He isn’t missing any meals, especially not at Lilly’s mom’s house. I don’t know who is dumber, Lilly or her mom. If Lilly’s “almost positive” that she and Lawrence will never split up, and she’s 19 and he’s 19...why don’t they get married? Or why don’t they mention the option? I don’t believe for one second that she missed one pill and doubled up the next day a bunch of times. From what I understand, there is still over a 90% success rate for preventing pregnancy for people who actually do that. I think she took the pill intermittently until she/they decided it was time to get pregnant again to get some fame, and then she stopped altogether. She’s 19. If she didn’t get pregnant again, she might have to get a job and make something of herself. Why do that when there’s a TV show to film with the guy who slid into your SnapChat? Myrka & Ethan—I hate her saying “coochie.” Literally any other euphemism for the vagina would be better. God forbid a woman who is having a baby should call her vagina a vagina. I have a feeling, from the way Myrka speaks, that this is just the first “unexpected” baby in a long, chaotic succession of fathers and babies and she doesn’t think there is a thing wrong with it. Virtual strangers supporting her is a-ok for Myrka. She probably looks as it as a boon, which it is, but pump your brakes, stupid. You’re gonna come up short someday when you’re not so cute and your ta-tas are not so high. Earth to Ethan’s dad: Actually, Liliana doesn’t need to “pull her weight” with regard to someone else’s pregnancy. She clearly doesn’t need to, because she’s not doing it and the world isn’t stopping. Maybe Ethan’s dad should focus on Myrka and Ethan pulling their own weight. This baby didn’t come from the stork. It came from people who knew about protection and chose not to use it...because they knew you would support their stupid choices, you walked right into their stupid trap, and it has nothing to do with the other grandmother, unless she gave Myrka IVF against her will while she was unconscious. Given this is not a soap opera, that scenario is highly unlikely. Tyra & Alex—is she really blaming the rain for not seeing her baby, like this is 1842 and she’s taking a covered wagon over a bridge? She really slid downhill for me from last season. Last season she had normal human emotion. This season she seems so cold and jaded. Alex is walking on eggshells, but that’s who he is. He’s spineless. She’s going to get bitchier and bitchier, and in response, he’s going to retreat like a turtle into his shell, and this viscous cycle is going to make them both hate each other and themselves. It’s sad. He’s about the flip the fucking table over? No, he’ll never flip the fucking table over, he will sit there and take it for the rest of his life, and Tyra doesn’t respect that. He could use a decent haircut too. That only worked for Kid N Play. With regard to Alex’s grandmother “just barging in” on Tyra and Alex, I despise parents (and grandparents) who “bust in” on teenage/adult children of the opposite sex hanging out, like the mother in Manchester By the Sea. If you don’t want people having sex/having oral sex/making out in your house, have the balls enough to say that they can’t be in a bedroom with the door closed. Barging in constantly is just horrible manners, it sends mixed signals, and don’t the adults in the situation feel the slightest bit like they’re going to walk in on their daughter giving a blowjob or something? Do they not care? Reanna & Taron—I felt like this is a retread from last week, except with masks. She’s clearly getting a c-section, but the staff was obligated to inform her that the procedure for getting the c-section would be different because of Covid, which is not something I expect any of these people to grasp. Nothing is going on with these two. The mom’s voice is so annoying. Another group of people who can’t use anatomy properly. Why can’t these people say “anus” in a medical situation? It’s not her butt; her buttocks were not moved. They tell us this every episode and it makes me crazy. I have a feeling that this couple was only included because the girl is so young and the couple have fair complexions and they are semi, sort of good looking. Change two of any of those three factors and they would not have made the cut. They give the same stuff every week. They’re mildly unhappy, they argue, they sulk, lather, rinse, repeat. Total bores. Oh, no Jenna this week. She was missed sorely—said no one ever.

Myrka attends her last sonogram appointment alone due to COVID-19; Reanna’s planned C-section may be in jeopardy; Lilly is pregnant with her second child; Tyra and Alex go on their first date in over a year.

Agreed re Coach Shah. I don’t doubt that NCAAF head coaches make millions, though Nick Saban is the only one who comes to my mind. But a cornerbacks/co special teams coordinator in the Pac 12, such as Sharrieff? 🤔 His tax bracket from that salary is probably closer to mine than Nick Saban’s.

^^^ Thank your for writing this. It inspired me to get my angst off my chest about this telabortion. This is the worst show I’ve seen in a long while. I only watched it because the Netflix show I wanted to watch—Baby—was in Italian. Why is everything so goddamn dark all of the time? I can never see anyone’s face or anything that goes on. They’re doing it on purpose to set a mood. The mood they are setting is “bad,” because the viewer doesn’t know why it’s so dark or why they can’t see anything. Nothing ever happens that would or could or should happen in life. It’s just a series of destructive events which set off a series of terse responses. Has there been one smile on this show ever? This was like a Lifetime movie stretched out over 10 episodes—bleh! The dialogue is horrific. No one—no one—let alone a high school student who doesn’t seem all that academically inclined, has as many quick lines or rejoinders as Beth. Beth is such a poorly written character. She is not written like a human, she is written like Freud’s idea of the id. They all are horribly written. Addy’s mom is a cop who is always around, showing up in her police car only at the most convenient/inconvenient times, having side conversations on the clock and the taxpayer’s dime, and never does her radio go off. But back to Beth. The actress is Australian. And she’s 23. Is this what she thinks Americans sound like? If we were all that nasal and awful, stretching every syllable to the limit, I would have emigrated a long time ago. The actress playing Addy is 24. She doesn’t look a day less. I don’t know why they can’t cast high school age girls to play...high school age girls. What is this, the eighties? Even Tacy—the “fetus”—is 21. Takes me completely out of the story. Is this all being done in the name of T&A? Do the show runners think the natives would get restless if we had to go but one episode without a glimpse of Beth’s struggle-B-cup-at-best cleavage? Also, this was filmed in Canada, and once I realized that, it was plain as day. If the show needs to film in Canada for the tax break or whatever, why didn’t they just make this a Canadian story? Sudden Grove. Nice name of a town. There is just a whole bunch of other various stuff to me that makes no sense. Beth’s mom is a drunk who apparently has no earning power, and she can’t pay the mortgage. So...why not put the house up for sale and buy something that isn’t apparently 5,000 square feet? Why not move to the apartment building where the marine lived? No one’s reactions are authentic. If Collette French (which seventh grader came up with that name?) can’t go for several hours without nicotine, she’d either step off the property or she’d be vaping. No staff member habitually smokes cigarettes in American public schools in 2019. She’d be fired in a hot second, maybe even be brought up on charges. I read on the internet that the actress who plays Colette went to Yale for theater...then why the hell can’t she smoke a cigarette convincingly? Instead of smoking, she waves around an unlit cigarette (just in case someone was confused about her stress level), sometimes attempts to light it, sometimes succeeds in lighting it, and every so often manages to take one puff. I haven’t gone to Yale, and I know what a high-strung smoker looks like: They suck that thing down to the filter with enough force to suck a golf ball through a garden hose. Who the hell takes care of Collette’s baby on the regular? Even though Collette is only the cheer coach, doesn’t she arrive at school at like 7 am? And her husband has a full-time job. And they can’t afford their lifestyle, yet when Collette bitches about how much things cost, she never mentions daycare. When Collette’s husband was out of town, who was watching her baby? She sure as hell wasn’t, as she was having a breakdown whilst telling Addy that she needed to stay calm. There is just nothing I buy about this show. Nothing. I’ll keep it to the last episode, because this is the thread for the last episode, but I could go on for a year: the cheerleading uniforms that they wear to school that are up to their See You Next Tuesdays—no. Beth grilling a Marine in the middle of the school between classes while he is seated at a desk and she is standing over him in aforementioned slutty cheerleading outfit like something out of a bad soft core porn and not one of the dozens of people walking by even looks their way, except, of course, Addy—no. I don’t even buy that Collette would have worn heeled boots to the pep rally. I think she would have worn an athletic shoe in case she had to assist with something. Another thing that bothered me about that strangely pitch dark pep rally—Beth’s dad was sitting with Collette’s husband, and mentioned something about the girl’s mom whose teeth got kicked out under his breath, and the mom, who was like 10 feet away when this was said, heard it fully and responded to it, but then two seconds later, the three of them are sitting in the same exact bleachers with the same exact acoustics and they are speaking about confidential things at the exact same volume...and, of course, no one overhears them. Why did no one on the set say, “hey guys, we need to reshoot this scene? It’s totally inconsistent.”? I don’t care at all who killed that marine. What I think is funny is how gothic, yet upscale, his apartment building was, when it was painted as a dump, given the way the people on the show treated it. Also, the marine across the hall (the marine with all the facial hair) was squatting in the model apartment. What was going to happen...when they showed that model apartment? Or when the utility bill came in for that apartment? How did Beth gain access to what was now a crime scene? I would think there would be extra protection there just so that someone like Beth couldn’t get in and do exactly what she did—tampering with the scene and learning secrets of the investigation. This is certainly not an exhaustive list, but my final quibble with this episode will be the way the police spoke to Collette about the way she hit the pole. If they thought she had done it on purpose—which happens more often than people like to think—the cops would approach this as a mental health matter and ask her privately, “Mrs French, are you on any type of medication? How are things at home?” There is no way in hell—other than to advance a plot—that the police would be retreating into the night, case closed, only to stop on the lawn and say, “hey Mrs. French, could have sworn you did that on purpose! Peace out!” Just terrible, terrible storytelling and dialogue. And, hey now, I was under the impression that Addy’s mom was the only police officer in all of Sudden Grove, given that she’s heretofore been the only one on the scene for anything that’s ever happened. The oldest age I think I could have sat for this thing without losing my patience and my mind would likely be...16. But this was clearly intended for a wider audience, so how about not insulting our intelligence at every single turn? I wouldn’t even care if there was no sex, murder, or drugs—those were the most boring parts to me. I would have been happy to see them cheer, sort of like that other Netflix show, Cheer. And they did do some talented cheerleading (although there was almost no tumbling at regionals, which was strange), so why didn’t they focus more on that, and have the drama be focused on the head games that “Coach” plays with the girls, mostly at practice and at games, with a little bit of a side mystery that keeps the show moving forward? I’ve seen a lot of mediocre shows pull that off a lot better than this. Despite my qualms, the acting and cheerleading were decent. The plot, the dialogue and the scenes were just so awful that I would have to be tied down to watch a season two, and even then I think I would screw my eyes shut and hum at the top of my voice, rather than have my disbelief so thoroughly suspended again. Netflix, I give this an F. And that is grading it on the dreadful Netflix curve!

Yes, I thought that was just me who saw that and ran for cover, but it also caused me to realize something—Heather may be the biggest Housewife ever cast, but she pulls it off fabulously. I think she’s bigger than Nene on RHOA season one and Caroline Manzo on RHNJ season one (I’m not counting the Housewives who were cast at one weight and then gained a ton while on the show, because that is a whole other category), BUT Heather dresses so well that even though it’s evident that she’s not small, there is almost never a “whoa” moment where flab is flying and things that should be covered are uncovered. This one time she tried on something ill-fitting—that pink monstrosity—it came right off (hopefully never to see the light of day again). I am not a Heather fan by any stretch, and I have been open about that, but so many of these Housewives across the franchises—thin and not as thin—can take a page out of Heather’s book when it comes to dressing their bodies.

Whitney’s behavior is really bad. I don’t like how overly familiar she is with people. She makes me very uncomfortable in the way she tries to control people (like Buddy having “a whole ass girlfriend”), she’s vindictive (spreading word that Ryan is a non-mask wearer because he isn’t doing her bidding), delusional (in her ability to think she is fit in any measurable way), and I think she is a major liar, to herself and to others, including the viewers, which is why I only half-assedly watch this show (and if it comes back for another season, I’m not watching unless there’s demonstrable weight loss when the show opens, not promise of weight loss). There are things that she has said about her world view on the show that make me want to lurch. I agree with everything everyone said that she didn’t want weight loss surgery; that conversation was a pretext to get all of her friends to tell her just how great she was exactly how she is. I was rating everyone’s responses for how closely they toed the party line, and Todd had to have come out on top with the line (paraphrasing): “So you’re going to get the surgery and lose weight but then have an identity crisis?!?” Lol Todd. Well played, Lemon. I think that Whitney would jump at the chance to get the surgery if it meant one surgery and she was suddenly Mila Kunis in Black Swan Likewise, Whitney would jump at the chance to get the surgery if it would make her look like Jessica, even if it meant she would lose the show, because that is how much better of a quality of life I think she thinks being thin is over being very, very, very fat (and she’s probably not wrong to the extent she feels that way). But she is smart enough to know (I think) that she would probably lose 150 lbs tops (and that would be with a ton of hard work and time in addition to the surgery side effects), and then she’d be, 5’2” and 175-220, which is a huuuge improvement, but still obese, and—this is the part that rarely gets mentioned—she would have tons of sagging skin that would probably have to be surgically removed, which is very painful, or she would just have to live with it, and—I’ve seen pictures of people who go to this length but not farther—she may not look much better at 5’2” and 175 with a shit-ton of excess skin, not to mention no reduction in stretch marks, cellulite, misshapen parts etc, than she does at her current weight. And I think this is at least 70% about looks. Regardless of whether Whitney talks about health, given the fact that she was a smoker, and the types of foods she does eat, I think she only pays lip service to health. So I think this is all a wash because weight loss surgery is not going to get her to that “perfect” 120 lbs she was (probably for five minutes) when she entered college and she knows it, so to hell with it, bring on the next “salad” and just revel in how “awesome” you are. Very fat women can get men. Very fat women of means can get even more men. When Dance Moms was on, Abby Lee Miller, who was close to Whitney’s size for a lot of the series, made no bones about the fact that she’d call an agency and they’d send her over a date. If men have no shame about doing that, why should women? If she is looking for someone to fulfill her emotionally, she might have to come to terms with the fact that the guy in question might look more like Buddy than Chase or Ryan, and who cares, if there’s no body shame, shouldn’t there be no looks shame? The problem is, Whitney wants to be super morbidly obese and be able to attract a guy with model good looks who likes her for her, looks and personality, and that’s not going to happen, at least until she ups her personality game, which she’s not going to do, because all she does is get positive feedback from her sycophants. And even with a great personality, people aren’t blind, and it might take her a very long time to meet a very hot man who is physically attracted to her. That’s life. Having said all that, I think the comments to her on the dating site were made up, because they didn’t ring real—if I recall correctly, they didn’t even show the messages. I think that is a really fucked up thing to make up, because it distorts the story. What is life like as a really fat, but supposedly smart, assertive woman who takes no crap (the person she is pretending to be)? I don’t think it includes a series of devestating critiques on her weight and body from guys who don’t know her from Adam. This is just pure dishonesty IMO. And I think it hurts fat women who are thinking of putting themselves out there, because it’s not a realistic reflection of how they will be treated. [edited to add—didn’t she cry “fat terrorism” several seasons back? They were going on a road trip and someone spraypainted “fat bitch” or something on the RV, much to her “surprise,” but the message was written on the sidewalk side, not the street side, and there were a bunch of other suspicious things about it that made it ring false? In the law, we call this “prior bad acts”, and if they’re admitted into evidence, the jury can weigh them to consider how likely it is that the defendant is repeating their bad behavior. My verdict? Guilty!] That’s where she’s wrong. And horrible. But I don’t think she’s 100% wrong about 100% of the issues. For example: Totally. Ryan and Jessica are both kissing her ass and trying to get her to team up with them because Whitney, not they, have the marketable concept, which is super fat woman exercising. There are a million fit people exercising who don’t have the following that Whitney does. That’s just the way it is, not the way I choose for it to be. It doesn’t matter if Ryan is doing all the work (and he is looking increasingly doughy to the point where it would almost look like two out of shape people training, which I think betrays the concept). This business relationship reminds me of that classic example of business operations that, even if it costs $30 to valet a car at the Ritz Carlton, the valet isn’t receiving that $30; the vast bulk of it is going to the people who had the idea for the Ritz, the people who built the Ritz, the people who set up the system, etc. So it’s not about who jumped on the bandwagon and picked up what was already a popular idea; it’s about the person who launched the popular idea. And if there is any doubt as to who has the power, it is removed for me when Ryan and Jessica are both cooing at her and kissing her ass. If their ideas were self-sustaining, they wouldn’t need Whitney. Ryan ought to be especially embarrassed for issuing that ultimatum last episode that if Whitney leaves Charlotte, that there would be no more BS Active, to essentially meeting her at a restaurant and cooing at her that he would just be tickled pink if Whitney would “sign something,” and it was crystal clear to me that if she balked, they would continue to operate from the split screen, or perhaps Ryan would travel to Greensboro. One should never issue an ultimatum that he is not prepared to carrry out, because that weakens that person’s word, and then no one is ever afraid to call their bluff in far more dire situations. Ryan should walk away with his head held high, and if she breached a contract, sue her. This is gross. Yes, this is plain as day that she is holding a grudge against Ryan as a proxy for Chase. And I can’t say I completely blame her. Collateral damage from ruined relationships is very much a thing. Where I take umbrage is that rather than being honest about her feelings, Whitney is making up every excuse under the sun, including the idea that Ryan is “very social” (aka he is trying to get everyone infected) instead of just saying, “I don’t want to see Chase, and, considering how painful that situation is for me, I don’t want to see Ryan. This is how I feel and I am going to get therapy about it, but in the interim, I am going to break off my business relationship with Ryan, and if there are costs to pay, I am prepared to pay them.” I wouldn’t hold that against her, whether this was scripted or reality or somewhere in between. Some people get divorced and find that they have lost friends that go back decades, because the friends chose the other spouse. I am here to watch a show about interesting, realistic scenarios, and people taking responsibility for their feelings and actions, not necessarily people who can rise above all pettiness and act like saints. So, if she went about this as an adult, I wouldn’t have a complaint against it, but she’s being a baby, and that’s what I don’t respect.

I totally know what you mean by this. She’s ginormous, I mean, that’s a fact, but there plenty of other people out there like her. When Whitney was reading those “dating site comments” someone apparently commented that they never saw someone that big, and my husband was like, “...has that person been to a Wal-Mart?” (Even whilst ackowleding the comments were in all likelihood written by producers). I come from a very looks obsessed family (unfortunately) and when I was younger, my mom and grandma would sit by the public pool and scoff quietly about how fat the local mothers were. My grandma had three categories, the only one I can remember was “bulldogs” (and that was the nice one!), but my point is that most of these women by the pool were only regular or morbidly obese, not too many up in the three hundreds, but there were enough that were up in the three hundreds and not particularly tall (and this was in the nineties when the population was thinner) that I’m not sure Whitney’s weight alone garners her a TV show. Fat and fabulous would be one thing. But since there’s no fabulous, we can cross that one off. So just fat? She’s need to gain at least another 50 lbs to get a TV show just by virtue of her weight condition. I know Whitney is hated and Chrissy Metz is adored, but if I look at nothing but their sizes, Chrissy is significantly bigger than Whitney at this point, and I would venture to guess that, even adjusting for height, Chrissy is at least 50 lbs heavier than Whitney, probably a lot more. I would watch a show about Chrissy just navigating life at her size. Whitney needs to deliver more, because while women her size are not quite a dime a dozen (thankfully for women), she doesn’t strike me as anything bigger than jut a super morbidly obese woman, and that’s not TV-worthy. Just to put it in perspective, Whitney is not close to 600-lb life, and those people only get an episode! I ran the numbers just for fun and at 5’2” and 380 (her highest reported weight on this show) her BMI would be 69.5. At 333 (her last weight that we saw, IIRC) BMI is 60.9. If I’m applying my opinion and not going by what the show tells me, I would probably split the difference and say she’s 350, so BMI is 64. Conversely, even if a woman is very tall—say, 5’10” and 600 lbs—that tall woman’s BMI is a whopping 86.1. The tallest person on 600-lb life was, I think, Doug at 6’6”, but he didn’t start at 600 lbs, he started at 684, and Whitney would have to weigh over 430 lbs to come close to Doug’s BMI. The upshot here is that if she was going to actually get the WLS (and I’ll save for another post why I don’t think she’s actually considering it) her current BMI is above 50, which makes her a candidate of the duodenal switch, the Mac daddy of bariatric surgeries. Tons of long-lasting/permanent side effects, but people are supposed to be able to lose 70-100% of their excess weight in one year. I’ve never seen it performed or the outcome with my eyes, so that would be a show I would watch with enthusiasm (which is another reason it’s never going to happen on this show 😃).

I think Whitney would fit in much better on VanderPump Rules, not even as an OG cast member, but as one of those new second-rate cast members from TomTom... That was all I could think when I saw her in the TH with the high pony and the grey (?) blush. I felt like Whitney was getting paid good money each time she referred to her sister by the nickname “Shay.” Is she trying to make “Shay” happen as some kind of friend-of? Whitney, stop trying to make fetch happen. Thanks for the sanctimonious speech, dubiously sober Whitney’s dad. Did I hear correctly that he deigned to have a roommate? All signs point to recovery now! Heather has no game. She looked really large and gawky as fuck twerking into the restaurant, not to mention awkward. She was judging her date for not drinking alcohol, but hasn’t she spent the entire season crying about how she is judged because she does drink? This is what I mean when I say Heather is painfully unaware. Oh, and here she goes referring to herself as “a Mormon girl.” Nothing in that phrase is correct. She’s not Mormon and she’s not a girl. What is her hang up? She is so into labels. Eleven episodes in, I have absolutely no idea who Heather is, other than a timid, sheltered ex-wife who is clueless about anything outside of her comfort zone and compensates for lack of identity by pretending to be a really naughty girl. 🤮 I can’t stand the bitch, but Whitney looked 1,000x better with her Vegas hair. It upgrades her from VPR to Housewife status...until she opens her mouth again. Her outfit for racing was terrible though. Nothing was working with the mom jeans and the top that showcased the pasty shoulders. The brunettes are old enough to be Whitney’s mom (Meredith) and older cousin (Lisa) and they put together looks so much chicer. Whitney looks like she shops out of a catalogue from the nineties (I would say Sears, but Sears has cute stuff). And she couldn’t be bothered to get a spray-tan while she was at the salon getting her hair done, when she is supposed to be wealthy and there is no sign that she has a job other than to be pretty for this show? What the hell kind of name for a hotel is “Nomad”? Lisa and Meredith...zzzzz...it’s funny how quickly they can shut Whitney down without even batting an eyelash, and that’s about all I got for them. Way to go Whitney by throwing Heather under the bus for Whitney’s own irresponsible tongue yet again. Heather can miss me demanding to know from Jen when she (Heather) hasn’t been on Jen’s side in favor of Whitney. How about...last episode at the outdoor bathtubs when Heather took Whitney’s side against Jen and Heather waited until Jen ducked away to tell Whitney that Whitney was wrong? Heather has a selective memory that I’m not here for. Now that they are in Vegas, the Hotwives comparison is not even a comparison, it’s life imitating art. Did anyone watch that? It’s a parody of the Housewives. They spent an entire season arguing about someone saying “calm down.” Is that not the exact same thing as spending a season over who said “afraid”? Jen is a drunk with a platinum American Express card. Doesn’t make her any less of a drunk. So...next week is not the finale? Well, it’s the finale for me. They get precisely 12 episodes to make no impression, no more. Given that they are well past Valentine’s Day and there has been no mention of Covid, I am now firmly convinced this footage is at least two years old. I’m trying to remind myself why I give a shit whether Whitney was fighting with Jen, when I quit Potomac in large part because their footage was a year old, which is far newer than this. How can they possibly do a reunion about two-plus year old beefs that didn’t even amount to anything in 2018? And I think there will be a reunion, as Andy features them on his horrid live show pretty much every week that I refuse to watch. If they were trying to bury this thing with no reunion, like they did with M2M: LA and Southern Charm: NO, the RH SLC wouldn’t be on WWHL. Grrreat. I’ll watch next week and come back for a reunion just out of morbid curiosity for what they could possibly fill air time with, and then I am dunzo unless this show manages to do a 180 and become interesting and good over the course of one episode. 🎱 is telling me...don’t count on it.

I beg to differ. From my subjective experience, 10 year olds are playing with Barbies and watching Disney movies, and at 15, people have complex relationships, sometimes romantic, sometimes sexual, taking PSATs and begin to seriously discuss college. I think a 15 year old acting like she’s 10 is dysfunctional on a level somewhere between a 10 year old acting like a five year old or a 20 year old acting like a 15 year old. It’s not normal, or to the extent that is is considered the norm and/or accepted, I think someone in the teenager’s life should intervene, not co-sign it as all being well, because at least the cognitive functions of the person in question are within a half a decade of where they should be. 😳 I guess now I can see why her mom does get so frustrated. I don’t know that I agree that it has “nothing to do with hormones,” though I suppose Reanna is throwing a fit chiefly to maintain control. And this may be where maturity does come into it—she doesn’t realize that the court can just force her hand, the way a 20 year old might, and she doesn’t realize that giving up custody a substantial portion of the time to a person just as adequate at this as she is, who is also the child’s father, is probably the best thing for all parties involved, unless and until there is ample evidence to the contrary, such as abuse. I sympathize with the idea that Reanna is mad at Taron for having sex with someone else, but I don’t think that fact alone makes him an unfit father and she’s either going to learn that the easy way or the hard way. Or at least I hope she’ll learn. I’ve heard horror stories about cases being dragged through the courts for years, allegations of abuse, false restraining orders, etc, and sometimes the non-custodial parent just gives up on their kid, and there are times I can’t blame them. This is all very sad. Pivoting to Myrka, I think her mom would have ‘let her’ have the baby and give it up for adoption, so long as she didn’t have to care for Myrka when the baby was being born, or support the pregnancy. Liliana has already compromised on some issues, so Myrka could have probably rolled the dice on this one and came out alright. I’m not saying she should definitely give up her baby, because that is a personal choice that involves many factors, but I’m starting to come to the conclusion that Myrka rejected adoption, so then it became this false equivalency of the mother who wanted her daughter to have an abortion “or else,” but it is very strange that this option hasn’t been broached once. All it would have taken was one talking head about why adoption is not a viable option. I understand that is a tall order...for a reality show about unwed teens who have unexpected pregnancies. It reminds me of that old trope on scripted TV when a kid is going off to college and the parents don’t have the cash on hand to pay full tuition and it is all, “oh no, what is going to happen??? Will we have to sell our house to avoid our child’s future in tagging cans at K-mart?!!” As if there are not student loans or community college. It’s incomplete storytelling, thus it is bad storytelling. Does anyone else find it a bit much that every time Myrka and Ethan get screen time, there is this furious rush of flamenco music with some women chanting “they call me fuerte!”? And whenever Reanna and Taron come on, they get a country song, when there is nothing particularly country about them?

Jenna & Aden—Jenna’s mom was so pretty, and her dad’s not bad-looking either, even though he kind of looks like a thumb. How did Jenna get...so fug? Ok, I have to call out the show for some false drama, even though I have opined in the past that this show seemed organic, I think there is such a premium put on these baby showers so that the audience can have something tangible, instead of...an online argument, but it’s not working. The problem is that it’s not interesting, because it’s not necessary. A lot of women don’t have baby showers at all. Jenna’s dad and Jenna’s mom both don’t want to be present at the same baby shower, and they are both willing to host one of their own for her, so there’s not really a conflict. Good try, Jenna, by saying she wouldn’t know which baby shower to invite Aden’s family to, but that’s not hard—she can just invite them to her father’s baby shower, since he appears to be the custodial parent, and the one with her mom can be more intimate, if she has to have two. And she doesn’t want “two of everything”? What a problem! Get a registry, bitch! Jenna, you lie, your mom doesn’t want to be a part of it—you want her to be a part of it. Does Jenna understand footage? Her dad is so much better of a person than me. As soon as she threatened to balk from the baby shower, and then to remove him from the baby’s life, I would go upstairs, disassemble the crib, hand her the parts, and tell her she is free to bring it with her to the place where she raises her baby, as I’m not going to be in her or her child’s life, so clearly she won’t be living here, not because I am throwing her out of the house, but because she won’t let me around her child. I understand hormones are raging, but this bitch is so out of sorts because no one ever told her “no,” and that can be solved quickly if her dad actually loves her enough to show her where her place is. She’s not in a position to dictate the terms of anything to her parents. Where does she get off? Why doesn’t Jenna just let her dad throw the baby shower for this one, let her mom throw the shower for the second kid, her dad throw the shower for the third kid, etc, and by the time she’s 20, they’ll be even at two each? I am just not biting on these storylines. This isn’t interesting. Last season, the drama between Max and Chloe and whose family would be able to attend the baby’s baptism was much more interesting, because there is only one first baptism. A baby shower just doesn’t pack the same emotional punch. Myrka & Ethan—I really don’t care. I’m not sure what they’re fighting about. The online post was only shown for a second, so I don’t know what it said, and I certainly don’t care enough to figure it out. It all seems so unnecessary and immature, and, yeah, drama to make a show. Reanna & Taron—I don’t understand why Reanna doesn’t want to share custody. Taron seems like he would be as decent a dad as she would be a mom, so why not give up the baby half the time so you can live freely a few days a week? I would think the other teen moms would jump at this prospect. I think there’s something wrong with Reanna. Not because she doesn’t want to share custody, but she just acts like she’s 10 in the way she speaks and refuses to communicate. Tyra & Alex—it seems so dysfunctional that the baby moves every time there is a social shift in one of the households. Baby is with Alex’s family, Alex’s mom’s boyfriend moves in, baby moves in with Tyra’s mom, Alex’s mom’s boyfriend leaves, baby moves back to Alex’s...holy shit. Tyra is sounding so selfish about going to “my ami.” If she’s not getting paid to go there, or if there’s not a scholarship contingent on it—or even if there is—who is taking care of her baby? Unless there is a really well-designed plan in place and plenty of money to throw around for au pairs and nannies and plenty of resources to vet strangers coming into the child’s life, I don’t think the parents should be off globe-trotting when their child isn’t even in a stable home. I would say the same thing if it was the father going off (though I might even be harder on the father, because the guys tend to be less articulate, which makes me impatient). Speaking of “my ami,” I am really not convinced Tyra knows there is a place called “Miami”; the way she pronounces it makes me think she thinks it that everyone has their own “ami,” like it is a self-designated special place, and Tyra is going to her “ami,” thus when she speaks it is “my ami.” Just me? Probably. I feel bad for the child, I don’t feel bad for Alex. If he’s “not a little-ass kid,” as he asserts (though I beg to challenge that assertion), then he should advocate for himself. Until he does this, he is going to get walked over. He should do it for his kid if not for himself. Why do these people on this show—first Reanna and then Jenna’s mom—say “whenever” instead of “when”? It sounds so trashy. Reanna has said several times that she needs to get a Cesarian because “whenever I was younger, I had surgery,” and now Jenna’s mom is saying, “whenever I was married to Jenna’s father.” Where did this new blight on the English language come from? Ugh! Speaking of ugh, next week is Lilly. I see the stupid and useless train is pulling into the station.

Lol, thanks! Love your posts too!! Thank you much. Oh man, I quit the show just so I wouldn’t have to watch these awful people be so cringeworthy, so I haven’t been paying much attention but as far as Austen, I think he is more or less a regular guy, and since he is a victim of Patricia’s snobbery, I generally take his side, though I’m not exactly sure why he’s on TV. I think Madison has shown that she is basically a trash heap of a person, often masquerading as someone else, often masquerading as exactly who she is. I gotta take off or Leva giving me a bee in my bonnet will cause my downfall. 💕

I don’t think it’s “whataboutism” to call Leva out on falling short of her own standard. That’s calling out hypocrisy. If Leva wants Kathryn to dance on the head of a pin because of who her ancestors were—something Kathryn can’t control—but Leva, a Caucasian woman, is perpetuating stereotypes about Chiquita Banana, a woman/figurehead who more than likely had the blood of indigenous people of the Americas running through her literal or figurative veins, that’s fair game. This is my problem with Leva: I can’t understand why Leva, who is Caucasian by race, but has dark hair and eyes and a darker complexion than some others (not unlike many Italians) gets an audience to speak on behalf of black people. Since society has rejected the idea that someone can refute allegations of racism by saying, “I have black friends,” then Leva doesn’t get to sit in a position of unique authority because “[she] has black family.” I find no internal logic in the idea that non-black people who associate with black people or study black history should refrain from offering an opinion on black issues, but Leva believes it is encouraged for non-black people who have black people in their families to sound off on black issues, and that anyone who doesn’t listen and agree with her is running the risk of being labeled a racist. Huh? Someone needs to articulate a coherent standard, because the rules seem like they were made up by Dr. Seuss. I’ll take a shot—each one of us is empowered to be non-racist. It’s almost crazy enough to work. I respect your opinion to draw any line with which you feel comfortable. My opinion is that drawing a line between “people of color” and “white” for purposes of arriving at a judgment is just as arbitrary as drawing a line or no line between black Americans and Caucasian people of Iranian descent (ie Leva). Speaking of Leva, I don’t see any evidence that Kathryn’s ancestors were even preoccupied by Leva’s ancestors, let alone had enough ethnic beef with them to alter the course of their society in any fundamental way from thousands of miles and continents away. I would be interested in what Leva’s claims, if any, are how Leva’s ancestors suffered under Kathryn’s. I also need to unpack this “person of color” thing a little bit, because I’m not sure what it means, but it comes up a lot on this show. Every person who has melanin in their skin is a person of color, so we’re all “people of color” (except some albinos), so clearly this term doesn’t have a genetic basis, it has a cultural one. I haven’t seen evidence that the term “person of color” is anything but a phrase that attempts to lump all non-white people into a group, even when they have nothing in common except for the fact that their skin often (but not always) has a darker—in some cases, very slightly darker—hue to it. There is no good argument that I’ve heard to advance that a Hungarian in the Steppes, a Japanese girl living in Tokyo and a black American living in Seattle have compelling common interests, priorities or goals that a Belorussian-American and a black American who are both in tech don’t share because the Belorussian is considered by most not to be a “person of color”. It’s my opinion that it’s counterproductive to humankind to group people by immutable characteristics, as opposed to shared values. I mean, isn’t that exactly what Leva is proclaiming to rail against? Does she not see that the notion that one person meeting a certain threshold of natural melanin in their skin, should get “x” treatment from society, but if another person has to sit in the sun for a bunch of hours to get their skin that color, should get “y” treatment from society flies in the face of everything she purports to stand for? That is one of the strangest set of standards I’ve ever heard, especially in a place where I thought the goal was to seek equal treatment, regardless of race. The Sami people—the aborigines of Scandinavia who are extremely pale with blonde/white hair and blue eyes—have been marginalized and have said to have been the victims of “racism” in Scandinavia, and they generally have as close to no “color” as albinos. If the Sami have been mistreated—and they have—is there no call to action, because they ostensibly have no color? That is how the logic of Leva’s argument flows if I follow it through to its conclusion. Here’s an elephant in the room: it’s ironic where folks like Leva want to draw the timeline. Two centuries ago, international slave trade was banned in the US. A century and a half ago some white Americans (and some black Americans) held black people in slavery in certain parts of the US. Less than two centuries ago, Iranians were still “importing” white slaves. Slavery wasn’t banned in Iran until 1929! Does Leva wish to speak to this? [edited to add—given there is at least as much evidence that Leva’s ancestors committed violence against Kathryn’s ancestors as there is the reverse, by Leva’s standard—not mine—Leva owes Kathryn a major apology, and Kathryn should feel free to use public and social tyranny against Leva repeatedly and indefinitely until Kathryn is satisfied with Leva’s apology]. I have wracked my brain, but I can’t come up with a good reason why slavery in the Americas is Leva’s cause celebre, when she is silent on the matter that de jure—not de facto, de jure—slavery (of whites and blacks) was occurring in her home country, until the Great Depression, except that one buys her TV time on Bravo, and the other might only get her a segment on PBS. One allows her entree into Charleston high society and publicity for her businesses, and the other doesn’t. If that is not cynicism and hypocrisy of the highest order, I do not know what is. The thing I find most disappointing is that it took me an entire season—only about half of which I watched—to realize just how absurd Leva’s entire raisin d’etre on this show is. I mean, I’ve taken a stab at it a few times, but now that I’ve really thought about it, I have to question why I didn’t realize any of this earlier. I simply wasn’t paying enough attention to this hoax she was running, and I think I have some thought exercises to do. Well, I got to hand it to Leva for something—if she hadn’t been so deeply offensive, intellectually bankrupt, ambitious to get her name in lights, obtuse and shallow, I may not have quit watching this horror show several episodes back.

Whitney started that shit at Shah’s party all on her own; Heather delivering the message because Whitney lost her words was neither here nor there. Whitney tried to start something, it backfired, and now she’s engaging in revisionist history. Heather sounded crazy to me saying that she wanted things to pop off at Coach Shah’s party, so that Jen would ostensibly side with her and Whitney against Lisa and Meredith, in a war that I didn’t even know was occurring. Didn’t all these women go snowmobiling happily together like two episodes ago? When did the schism occur? This feels so much like people trying to make a franchise happen that isn’t there. Either that or I fell asleep during one of the episodes and missed something. Both are highly likely. Let me get this straight—Whitney’s excuse for telling Jen bad things about Jen’s friends at Jen’s husband’s party was because Jen is calm around her husband? Alrighty, what is her excuse for telling Meredith at the party that Jen was gossiping mad shit about Meredith at same party? This whole “who’s afraid of Jen?” storyline is going absolutely nowhere. This is the RH SLC version of RHOC’s “sad” and “depressing” about Gina’s home and RHBH and who was “glam” and for how long. Who actually cares whether Lisa and Meredith said “afraid” with regard to Jen off camera?? Not me! It wouldn’t be an episode without Heather’s poor me tour. Glad we got that out of the way as to what a dutiful wife she was until the rug got pulled out from under her with her divorce Zzzzzz...shades of Sonja Morgan... So Meredith’s storyline is that she and her husband are <drumroll> staying married? I wonder if there was a single viewer who was like, “Today’s Wednesday, Salt Lake City is on—I can’t wait to see if there is going to be resolution between Meredith and Seth!” This show clearly has no footage left to give. They spent an eternity driving to the spa, showing up at the spa, looking around the spa...this is the chief reason I stopped watching RH Atlanta—I clocked the time they spent on FaceTime and driving to events, and when filler moments like these started to dominate the episodes, I stopped watching. This one is not far behind. Just...end your season when you run out of story. Not a tough concept. Holy cats, Whitney, you are a perfectly pleasant looking woman, but your body is not—I repeat not—thong ready. I can’t unsee that. I hate Heather as the mediator between Jen and Whitney. They are both grown women—let them hash it out. I don’t like two against one, even if it is freaking Jen, and, to add icing to the cake, Heather admitted Whitney was wrong when Jen was out of earshot! These are just two cousins who do each other’s dirty work. What is this, summer camp? It’s not Whitney’s fault that Jen threw the glass, but she was out of line at the party, drunk and gross, and I don’t know why an apology wasn’t coming off her tongue forthwith. OMG, Heather is such a child, worrying that Jen is going to go with Meredith and Lisa!!! I also wish she would stop referring to herself as a “girl.” Heather is teetering on the precipice of being as damaged as Jen and Whitney. I have to reluctantly side with the brunettes. They are dull as dishwater, but they don’t carry on like assholes. I can’t say the same for the other women. The brunettes are so much more composed than the others, and I appreciate that. The rest of them are so damaged that it’s not even entertaining. Alrighty Jen, as if your husband is going to break up with you on camera. He is a public figure and the savviest person on this show by far. He was going to say all the right words, put on a sympathetic face, and when the divorce papers come, he’ll be out of state “recruiting” and she’ll be served with process while she is skiing down the side of a mountain. He is not brand new. That was rough to get through. Not one redeeming moment. If week 12 is not the finale, I can’t promise I’m hanging in for more. I simply don’t care. Next week looks very dull too. Only these heifers can make freaking Vegas dull.

I stand corrected, and thank you for pointing this out. I also wrote that she was 31, and she is apparently 36, so that’s what I get for not paying full attention and letting the voice distract me from the words. I am still doubtful as to Tiffany’s story. I do not believe that she did not know “a lick of English” when she entered first grade. She mentions that her parents were helicopter parents, and by her own account, they had been in the US for approximately four years prior to her arrival. Based on the limited evidence available, I think it is more likely than not that they sent her to school knowing at least “a lick” of English, even if it was less than conversational or fluent. I think she is exaggerating and my opinion stands that she is an unreliable narrator, whilst acknowledging that I misstated a fact. It is also impossible for me to find her hometown online. All news outlets are reporting that she is from “a small town outside Beijing.” She came here in the early nineties. That was at a time that Deng Xiaoping had his Open Door policy, and English was being taught and encouraged in China. It is my theory and my opinion that Tiffany is purposely trying to create a narrative that she didn’t know “a lick” of English upon entering the first grade, and part of her narrative is to be vague about her hometown, so that no one can fact-check the likelihood that English was taught in the schools or elsewhere. Considering this is an opinion, I am open to the possibility that I am wrong, and if facts arise to the contrary, I will concede that I was wrong. I don’t have an agenda other than the truth, so it’s easy for me to admit when something I said or did was wrong. But people like Tiffany who seem steeped in an ideological narrative that certain groups are victims stand to lose their reputations and sometimes their careers when they are wrong, so they will defend the prevailing orthodoxy even in light of contrary facts. I don’t respect those people.

Ok, but Tiffany is talking about institutionalized racism, not random acts of racism, which occur everywhere in this world and across time. If a patient actually looked at her and said within her ear shot that he wanted a doctor who didn’t have COVID, and she wasn’t taking it out of context (which I don’t believe; she hasn’t exhibited herself to be a reliable narrator—she came here when she was two, but didn’t know a word of English until she was six? Get your facts straight) then she would be well within her rights to say “that guy’s a [bleep]” and move on. But to use words to the effect that we are living in a particularly racist time and that certain races need to stand up, she needs to point to the empirical evidence of institutional racism in 2020 US. The problem with this assertion is that it doesn’t exist, so people like Tiffany who are more interested in being professional victims rather than looking at the hard data have nowhere logical to go, so they use rhetoric instead. If Tiffany can point to the institutional injustice that is currently being visited upon her, I would be happy to join her shoulder-to-shoulder and demonstrate against it. I won’t hold my breath. The empirical evidence shows that Asian and black Americans have been breathtakingly successful, and have overcome tremendous obstacles. Just one example is the way that black people’s literacy within two generations of slavery was higher than the literacy rate in Albania. That is a remarkable achievement. Asian-American achievement is too staggering to get into more than I already posted up thread. I am very suspicious of people like Tiffany who want to downplay the facts in favor of some intellectual notions that have no relationship with reality when they are actually tested.

I can’t take the uptalk and the dry crying and hand holding histrionics that went on between Tiffany and Brandi at the beginning. Also, what is Brandi apologizing over if she only made a video of herself “and [her] squinty eyes”? If she thought she was being racist, she should own it and apologize, and if she was actually doing a video about her squinty eyes, that would be the same as doing a video about her high cheekbones or her big lips, and there would nothing to apologize over. Brandi needs to pick a lane. Or, even better, shut the fuck up about it completely! I officially dislike Tiffany intensely. I cannot relate to what she said about this country being in a racist time and Asian people and black people needing to stand up. To what time and place on earth is she comparing this to? 1860? 1960? Malaysia? South Africa? Bueller? Anyone? (Rhetorical question, because I have my mind made up that she is wrong from the scholarly reading I have done for the past 15+ years, so no one’s going to change my mind, especially not some silly 31 year old woman-child who will tell her sob story over and over, but, no, it’s not pity or accolades that she’s looking for at all. Nothing to see here, folks! Passive-aggressive asshole). If someone made a crack at work about her having the coronavirus, I’m sorry, but that’s life. Every single racial and ethnic group has experienced some form of discrimination and stereotyping at some point in time. I’m reading a book about this history right now that has 63 pages of footnotes alone. I have a degree in this. The fact is that Asians have been some of the most successful, achieved people in America’s history by a lot of metrics. As a group, they have better test scores and are more likely to get loans than white people, and the empirical evidence points not to any racial or genetic advantages; it’s because of good habits. Tiffany thinks she can sail onto a reality show and tell me differently?!? I have to laugh at her hubris. By telling those stories, Tiffany was trying to draw attention to poor me, poor me, and I detest that narrative. Yes, she has a great house with a fingerprint lock on the closet, but that is not sufficient for a good Housewife. Her voice and her attitude cancel the whole deal out for me. My husband (who is Asian and born in Korea—not that this matters to me, but it matters to some people for some reason) watches this with me and he said that if Tiffany had been his doctor at any point, she would no longer be his doctor once he saw her on TV, because he thought her display of wealth on TV was too crass for a doctor. It is also his opinion (and mine, but for some reason it is in vogue for my opinion to be cancelled because of my cosmetic makeup) that Brandi posting that video however many years ago was not an act of bullying against Tiffany in any capacity, contrary to Tiffany’s assertion. The closest anyone came to bullying this episode was Tiffany intimidating, threatening and coercing Kameron over the chicken foot. She’s a horrible hostess and seems like a horrible person for anyone who has the displeasure of knowing her. Real diversity would be diversity of opinion. If Bravo thinks race is so important, then the honest thing to do would be to cast two Asian women, one of whom feels like Tiffany, and one of whom feels otherwise, but this is a toxically shallow show on a toxically shallow network, so there is no surprise there that the prevailing school of thought is that cosmetic diversity > intellectual diversity. Is it too soon to miss Leeanne?? I am so interested in Kary’s daughter’s opinion on Black Lives Matter. <hard eye roll> D’andra doesn’t know what is inconsistent between being Christian and going to a shaman? Has she read the first commandment? OMG, was that elastic around the waist of D’andra’s jeans at Tiffany’s house? I don’t know whether to be mortified or to give her a virtual high five for going there. Ok, that just about did it for me when Tiffany said that white people “need to be cultured up.” The racism is not even what offends me—the snow job Bravo is attempting to do on us with this season by beating us over the head with Asian culture because it wants to rehabilitate this cast for what Bravo considers a cast with a racist reputation is beyond the pale. Hey Bravo, I have an idea—grow a pair, and if you think Brandi is racist, fire her or give a press release this this is a candid reality show, and you are just a vessel for airing real women’s opinions, some of which may include prejudice. But beating the viewer over the head with political correctness because of Leeanne’s and Brandi’s alleged mistakes? Homey don’t play that. Hey Tiffany, some people think the term “lazy Susan” has sexist and racist connotations. Now that we’ve gone down the politically correct rabbit hole, i guess next season Bravo is going to need to cast a woman named Susan who can pull Tiffany aside and “share her experience” (without wanting to make a big deal out of it, of course!) This Kafkaesque nightmare that Bravo is self-imposing is, quite frankly, very boring. Well, I’ve had more than enough of a lecture masquerading as entertainment for a lifetime. Not to mention the parts that weren’t about race were like watching paint dry. I’m not terribly interested in consuming chicken feet for what felt like 6,305 segments. This show is bad. Kameron, good luck with the home, Stephanie, good luck being a generally pleasant person whom I’ve grown to like and with your awful husband. Kary, Brandi and D’andra, go fly a kite. Tiffany, best of luck to your husband and kids; you are an exhausting woke scold of a person. Peace out dolls, and, it’s not a moment too soon that I get this hour free on Tuesday night again! 💋