S04.E03: Meet the New Boss

[Scarlett45]

Quote

Mariana goes under cover at Revitalize Beauty; Dennis encourages Davia to try something new; Malika has her first day of work with Lucia Morales; she and Angelica take their relationship to the next level

Air Date: March 23, 2022

[Brian Cronin]

My wife won't let me watch the show with her if I make fun of Mariana, so I was very good and did not make fun of how insanely stupid Mariana's plan was....while watching it with her, at least. 😉

[circumvent]

The new guy story is boring. There is a certain mystery on his sister disappearing but I am not sure why he can't just ask people if they knew her. silly plot.

Is "decency code" something that an LA school district actually has? Punishing a teacher because students saw something she didn't advertised is a bit too far. Is she a full time teacher now? Because teachers have unions and terminating her contract for the reasons they described would likely violate the terms of her employment. 

Mariana is back getting herself into trouble. I don't get why the writers insist on those plots. Meanwhile, her cohorts are doing what? Sulking the loss of the app? How do they live just waiting for something to happen?

Malika's story is interesting but I don't think they will go the direction I would like to see, which is to show how some "activism" organizations are just a bunch of people sitting behind desks asking for money and doing absolutely nothing to listen to what the people they claim to be fighting for want. Door to door activism is what brings change. Marches and protests are great and sometimes even move the needle a little bit but it doesn't last.The rest is a lot of talk, and nothing really moves forward. a critique of "woke liberalism" would please me very much but I will not hold my breath. 

[KaveDweller]

7 hours ago, circumvent said:

Is "decency code" something that an LA school district actually has? Punishing a teacher because students saw something she didn't advertised is a bit too far. Is she a full time teacher now? Because teachers have unions and terminating her contract for the reasons they described would likely violate the terms of her employment. 

I  don't know about a decency code, but I do know some teachers and former teachers who have told me they have to be super careful what they post on social media or they could lose their jobs.  I also recently read about a teacher getting fired for reading a book called "I Need a New Butt", so I think they can fire teachers for plenty of reasons. I actually thought that was the most realistic thing that happened since back when Davia posted that Fat Bitch video I thought it was insane for a teacher to do that.

I don't get Marianna's plan. Signing the non-compete seems like a really stupid thing to do, especially after all the trouble she went to to get back in with her partners. Also, I thought that woman just stole their idea. How did she get their hands on their code? Mariana's team hadn't written the code back when they pitched to the boss there, and even if they did, surely they wouldn't be dumb enough to hand it all over to someone without a signed deal. Seems like the better solution would be to create a better product and get it out their ASAP. And take to social media to talk about the other company stealing from them. It may not be enough for a legal case, but they just need to convince their audience.

I'm enjoying new guy. I guess they are having him replace Callie in the role of fighting for the little guy, since he let the homeless kid some stay with him.

[bybrandy]

I'm fine with the new guy and his homelessness angle ad maybe I could see in the first wee he thought the people were sketchy, but surely at this point he has to think they aren't a cult or murderers, right?   If nothing else show somebody the bible and ask who the girl is because you want to get it back to her.   

Mariana is serious kind of dumb.  And the Bulk Beauty girls were really struggling without Mariana so how exactly they are going to triumph once Mariana can't come back and work for them?!?!??! 

14 hours ago, circumvent said:

The rest is a lot of talk, and nothing really moves forward. a critique of "woke liberalism" would please me very much but I will not hold my breath. 

Because that is woke white liberalism and Malika doesn't hang with those people.

[circumvent]

16 hours ago, KaveDweller said:

I actually thought that was the most realistic thing that happened since back when Davia posted that Fat Bitch video I thought it was insane for a teacher to do that.

I don't know why I am surprised that this stuff happens in the US.

 

10 hours ago, bybrandy said:

Because that is woke white liberalism and Malika doesn't hang with those people.

Not really. See BLM (the organization, not the movement), its founders and some supporters who made money by using the names of murdered black people and didn't really help the families of the people they exploited. They wrote books, gave lectures. At least one became a slumlord type, with several rental properties and is on the wrong side of affordable housing  and rent control in NY. One of them was in this show until recently. Liberalism (as in neoliberalism) when it's the woke type is a real "don't see color" example. 

 

Edited March 26, 2022 by circumvent

[Zima]

Don't get me wrong, I really appreciated seeing both Davia and Marianna looking great, and exuding confidence in their skimpy attire...but we couldn't get so much as a shirtless Gael this episode? I wanna see some scantily clad men too, Good Trouble! 

Edited March 31, 2022 by Zima

[Tattooeddancer]

On 3/25/2022 at 10:46 AM, circumvent said:

Is "decency code" something that an LA school district actually has? Punishing a teacher because students saw something she didn't advertised is a bit too far. Is she a full time teacher now? Because teachers have unions and terminating her contract for the reasons they described would likely violate the terms of her employment. 

At least one teacher in my town was fired for posting a pic of her enjoying a cocktail on Facebook. Because teachers aren't allowed to be people, apparently.

[amarante]

It is unlikely that a teacher would be fired in Los Angeles for the social media. There wasn't anything sexually provocative like having genital pictures etc or having bigoted posts or memes etc.

 

[possibilities]

Davia wasn't a teacher in the union, though, was she? She was in a program like "Teach for America" I think-- where they brought in people outside usual channels, to teach in underserved schools. 

I don't know what Los Angeles schools are like, but there are lots of incidents of teachers being fired elsewhere, for things the admins don't like about their personal lives, often things I consider to be perfectly normal, mild, and inoffensive. I don't find Davia's story to be interesting because I can't stand how the actress is constantly being asked to weep and be pathetic. I think it is counter to the supposed message of her character, which is that she's self-loving and body-positive. They've totally undercut her original characterization as a liberated self-loving person by subbing in all the crap about how she's got low self-esteem and doesn't know what she really wants in life.

[KaveDweller]

21 hours ago, amarante said:

It is unlikely that a teacher would be fired in Los Angeles for the social media. There wasn't anything sexually provocative like having genital pictures etc or having bigoted posts or memes etc.

 

I think the problem was that the students saw it. It used the terms "bitch" and wasn't she dressed kind of sexually proactive?  Parents could complain about their kids being exposed to that (although most kids have likely seen much worse).

Plus, her school wasn't happy with her for participating in that program she was involved in with the other teachers. So they just wanted an excuse to get rid of her.

[amarante]

I realize that teachers are fired in places for conduct - hell there are places that ban innocuous books.

But Los Angeles isn't Podunk Texas and so the level of her conduct would probably not result in her being fired - it simply didn't rise to the level of offending normative community standards.

This is essentially a soap opera and various unrealistic plot devices are used in order to get characters involved in certain situations even if the plot has no basis in reality or the people are acting in a way that makes absolutely no sense - as is the current Mariana idiocy of her "infiltrating" a software company in order to prove that they somehow stole IP when the IP isn't particularly unique nor is the App particularly unique or doing anything that others in the beauty business aren't already doing. Not to mention that she is effectively setting herself up for being unhireable based on real charges of corporate espionage. 

[possibilities]

My take, which admittedly the show did not explicitly tell us, is that they were looking for  a way to get rid of her ever since she went to bat for the students who were being threatened with expulsion due to bullshit reasons. They TOLD her not to support the organizing, and she did it anyway. So, since she was easy to fire without due process because she's not in the union, they decided they could get her on the "morals" charge, and it would be hard for her to fight it because then she'd have to show the video even more to people who might not be sympathetic.

Edited April 11, 2022 by possibilities