S02.E05: He Said, She Said

[Cosmocrush]

Cosmocrush, Mehran had mentioned the businesses a couple of episodes ago and Tori said something in her TH about letting them slide because of all the drama surrounding the cheating, etc.  As I recall, Mehran was trying to get an idea on what to do about those businesses.  I do remember him working with her in the past on her jewelry line.

Thanks psychoticstate.  I do remember that conversation now but didn't pay attention to what she had let go.  Huge mistake on her part, in my opinion.  It's one thing to tie yourself in knots over marital problems but when you let it get in the way of your family's financial situation (or in this case, use it to keep your family in the black) it's another.  She should have skipped the show and focused on some of her 695 businesses.   Something tells me either it wasn't doing that good (as in she'd already lost interest in it) or her financial situation isn't as high pressure as she'd have us believe.  

 

Anyone know what Mehran does for a living?   I hope he has more than a few joint ventures with Tori. 

[Armchair Critic]

It's one thing to tie yourself in knots over marital problems but when you let it get in the way of your family's financial situation (or in this case, use it to keep your family in the black) it's another

 

And that's why I have no pity for her supposed money woes. When crap happens most people pick up the pieces and go to work and take care of business. I know it sucks to be cheated on, but you can't drop everything just to wallow in it, especially when you have kids to support.

[mywinston]

Setting aside the alternating hilarity and fuckery this show serves up on a weekly basis, I just have two quick things.

Mehran, tell her, girl. He straight up told her he had no respect for her and to get her shit together.

When they visited the guru and he immediately asked Dean to describe Tori and Dean launched into that bullet pointed list of ridiculousness on cue, did I hear correctly? Did he say 'physically...ew.'?!

[Persnickety1]

Speaking of the inheritances for Tori and her brother...

 

Does anyone know if there was some significance to the amount of $800,000?

 

It's just a rather odd number, as opposed to rounding down a tad to $750,000, or, conversely, up a bit to an even $1 million.

 

I've always thought that was such a random figure for Aaron to come up with and if there was a particular reason he had for choosing that amount.

 

Yes, I clearly have too much free space in my brain because I tend to think way too much about meaningless little trivia such as this.  

[Cosmic Muffin]

I've wondered that too, Persnickity1. I believe that in the Jewish tradition 9 is an important number, so people will give gifts of $18 (1+8=9) or $90, rather than $20 or $100, but Aaron didn't leave his kids 900,000 so I don't know. Eight is the number of prosperity in Feng Shui but I don't see an older man whose mind is going a bit deciding to use Feng Shui to decide how much to leave his kids.

 

What we know and Tori probably doesn't is that no matter what amount she had been left, she would have blown through it by now. Also, she always whines about being left nothing, but she doesn't mention the trusts Aaron left her, which provide money over time but don't allow her to loot them.

[GaT]

Speaking of the inheritances for Tori and her brother...

 

Does anyone know if there was some significance to the amount of $800,000?

 

It's just a rather odd number, as opposed to rounding down a tad to $750,000, or, conversely, up a bit to an even $1 million.

 

I've always thought that was such a random figure for Aaron to come up with and if there was a particular reason he had for choosing that amount.

 

Yes, I clearly have too much free space in my brain because I tend to think way too much about meaningless little trivia such as this.  

My brain & your brain should get together & rent out all the extra space because I wondered the same thing. Is it an insult of some kind? "Ha, I'm not even leaving you a million!" but then I would think he would leave her $999,999 or something. $800,000 is just a weird number, but I would take it. :-)

[JenE4]

That session with Guru Singh was fascinating--I mean the process, not Dean's sobbing specifically. In one session I think they got deeper and more out of it than 20 years with Dr. Wexler and 3 months in in-patient treatment! That was something when Guru Singh was saying that Dean is good, very good (or something) and Dean looked up and said the guru's face transformed and the guru said "I know." What the---?! It's like they had some transcendence of seeing each other's souls or something! Very intriguing! More Guru Singh and less Dr. Wexler!

Re 15 in 6th grade: After he said that I assumed his mom got ill when he was in 6th grade and that's when his life changed, and then it was a few years struggling with terminal illness before she passed. But that's just speculation to make sense of it.

[TheRealT]

When they visited the guru and he immediately asked Dean to describe Tori and Dean launched into that bullet pointed list of ridiculousness on cue, did I hear correctly? Did he say 'physically...ew.'?!

He said "physically ill," which I thought was weird at first, but I have an acquaintance who reminds me of Tori a lot and she is a hypochondriac and a big part of her hypochondria is monitoring whether people believe that she is really sick. She has ever shifting illnesses that are chronic and debilitating, but only seem to prevent her from doing things that she doesn't want to do. It's a big deal for her that people believe that she is sick and are sufficiently sympathetic and accommodating. The slightest indication that someone doubts the legitimacy or severity of one of her health problems sets her off. I could see Tori being the same way and it being important to her that people who are "on her side" fully accept that all of her maladies are real. I noticed it when Dr. Wexler said something about Tori getting sick whenever she has to deal with stressful things when she was talking about Tori missing her meeting with Charlie. I don't remember exactly how she worded it, but it struck me that Dr. W was being careful not to say "Tori makes herself sick" or "Tori convinces herself that she's sick" or anything that would suggest that the sickness wasn't 100% legit. I would guess that Dean is trained to talk about Tori's "health issues" as if they are fully certified by 6 different teams of doctors on 4 continents.

 

I was curious about how much the Malibu house that Candy bought for Tori cost since it's part of the "nothing" that Tori has gotten from her parents. Turns out that it cost $2.4M, so Tori's "nothing" is a minimum of $3.2M to those of us who go by actual dollar amounts. Furthermore, in this article Tori is quoted as admitting that she owes Candy even more money than that.

 

But why doesn’t she just ask her millionaire mom, Candy, for help? Spelling says she already owes her a lot of money. And, she says, she’s too proud to accept assistance yet again.

 

The article also reports that Candy paid the rent another house for Tori after Tori moved out of the Malibu house and put it on the market to move into an expensive rental 7 months later, right before her problems with the Finn pregnancy.

 

Before long, however, things got even more complicated when Spelling was hospitalized with a dangerous condition, placenta previa, during her pregnancy with son Finn. Doctors told her she needed to stay closer to the hospital, so her mom, Candy Spelling, broke out the checkbook to help her pay rent on yet another home they couldn’t afford.

 

In this article Tori says that her reconciliation with Candy (during which Candy bought her the house) was spurred by Liam and Stella wanting to spend time with their grandmother.

 

Spelling added she’s rebuilt bridges with her mother Candy, as the reunion was spurred on as her children Liam and Stella began growing older and asking for their grandmother.

 

“Now they ask for her,” she said. “They want to be with grandma.”

 

So, yeah, Tori is a train wreck and a liar. During the last few episodes, she has said repeatedly that she got nothing from her Dad's will, that her parents haven't given her anything, and that Candy hasn't given her anything. Dean vowed on his AA/NA sobriety that Candy hasn't given them any financial assistance. Yet, Candy has given them more than $2.4M (I would guess over $3M at minimum) and Aaron willed Tori $800K (in addition to whatever money and gifts he gave her on top of the role on 90210).

Edited November 23, 2014 by TheRealT

[Lexie]

Their biggest was not teaching Tori the value of a dollar and not saying no.

 

I think they did try to teach her the value of a dollar, by charging her rent to live in places they owned.    She has complained about that before.    You can only do so much for a person.   I'm guessing that she would have had access to the best financial advisors but instead she handed her debit card over to her boyfriend at the time and they blew all the money.  

Edited November 23, 2014 by Lexie

[ChristmasJones]

My other issue with Tori's narrative of what a terrible mother Candy is/was is that she is guilty of much of the same or worse with her own kids and she doesn't seem to think about that at all. Tori sees herself as an amazing, loving mom who will always be super close with her adoring kids. Anyone who's not as delusional as she is can already see that that's not likely. She is featured doing a lot of emotional damage to her kids every week on the show where she is exploiting their family problems for all the world to see. She's incredibly self-involved and ignores her kids' physical and emotional needs to focus on her own endless drama all the time. I wonder what the kids will have to say in the future about her frequent hospital stays during which she often insists that Dean stay with her while they are left at home with neither parent? I wonder what they'll think about her frequent emotional breakdowns in front of them? I wonder what they'll think about being kept away from their grandmother because of Tori's feud with her?

 

Tori feeling/thinking/perceiving/believing (take your pick) that her mother was terrible and Tori being deluded about her own deficits as a parent, to me, are things that I would expect to go together. People that have been emotionally damaged in childhood (or in other ways such as through various traumas, mental illness, etc) are often quite unaware of how damaged they are. That is really part and parcel OF the dysfunction - the lack of awareness of it.

 

What is sad is that Tori is UNAWARE of the ways she is letting her own children down. Whatever role her terrible mother played in her dysfunction, or didn't, it is sad that Tori is either unwilling or unable to see how her own dysfunction affects her own children. And this is a good example of how problems get passed down from generation to generation.

 

I do not think she is rare in this regard.

Edited November 23, 2014 by ChristmasJones

[tabloidlover]

Honestly, I believe no matter how much money Tori was given, it would never be enough.  She's been give a full on sum of $800,000, a career, a $2.4 million home, a trust fund, and who knows how many "little" hand-outs over the years.  Yet, she is still the poor little victim being screwed over.  Until (and I have serious doubts it will ever happen) she decides to put on big girl panties and grow the FUCK up, it will never change.  And it's very sad, especially for those 4 innocent kids.  If she really can't see the impact her selfishness/narcicism has already had on them (especially Liam and Stella), I don't see a lightbulb going on over her head ever. 

Edited November 23, 2014 by tabloidlover

[Lexie]

I think Tori just has it in her head that she's used to a certain standard because she was so rich growing up, and it hasn't dawned on her that she's not wealthy to that extent anymore.    And won't be.   Neither Tori nor Dean are ever going to be making the kind of money Aaron Spelling did.   And instead of acknowledging that and adjusting her budget accordingly she just keeps on blowing money.    She's excusing her part in the money stress that is a big part of her stress supposedly, and focusing on shit like what Dean is doing to create boundaries for Jack, and what Dean is doing.   She should work with a professional to live within her means (which is far from poor) instead of trying to micromanage Dean and obsess over whether he should believe Dean's version of what happened in a marriage that ended nearly a decade ago.   She should focus on doing something productive instead of carrying on about things like what did Dean really mean when he told her to microwave the potato a certain way, and what was the real story behind the love letter to Mary Jo.    

 

Personally I don't think his marriage was as bad as he claims, and I don't believe for one second that it's normal to write a love letter fawning all over your spouse if you are on the rocks.   

[JenE4]

Did anyone else notice Dean's hair--or lack thereof--when he was crying with his head down at the guru? He has a perfect thick hairline, but when he was bent over, you could see that he was completely bald under the tuft of hair. Hairplugs!!

[chlban]

Speaking of the inheritances for Tori and her brother...

 

Does anyone know if there was some significance to the amount of $800,000?

 

It's just a rather odd number, as opposed to rounding down a tad to $750,000, or, conversely, up a bit to an even $1 million.

 

I've always thought that was such a random figure for Aaron to come up with and if there was a particular reason he had for choosing that amount.

 

Yes, I clearly have too much free space in my brain because I tend to think way too much about meaningless little trivia such as this.  

I can't answer the question, but thought I would mention that in Chanel surfing the other day I caught Randy on Oprah's "Whatever happened to" show. Seems he is living in Oregon., married with two children and working as a "life coach". So, OK, that particular profession is a little new age, touchy feely for me, but the overwhelming thing I got from the interview was that Randy was really pretty darn happy. Oprah did ask about his "meager" inhertiance and he responed very honestly, IMO. Would he prefer to have been left 8 million? Heck yes, but he was grateful for what he received. He had  not one bad word to say about his mother, father or crazy sister (the adjective is mine, not his). He insisted that although he and Tori have busy lives that keep them from seeing each other that often, he considers them close. I felt that answer might have been a bit dishonest, but I was imporessed by his kindness. 

 

I think this show has harmed Tori more than she can possibly realize and I have to wonder if people close to her are being honest with her, or if she is just so delusional that she will not listen. I consider the delusion option to be very strong. There is no inidication that Candy was physically abusive mother. She may well have been critical, she may have been more aloof than Tori would have likes. She probably made mistikes. In other words, she is like mos parents, IMO. Human and flawed. My own mother was critical. Well, actually the woman I always thought was my mother who turned out to be my biological grandmother, but no one told me and I only discovered it at the age of 58 after mom/grandmom and sister/biological mom were both dead.  So, guess what Tori honey, we all have our crosses to bear regarding our childhoods. But most of us choose not to let them rule our lives.

 

I see Tori as a selfish little brat. I also find it ironic that she likes to whine about Candy when it is very clear, and caught on tape, that she herself is a horrendously bad mother. Putting her children through this freak show is reprehensible. I was always pretty "meh" about Tori Spelling, but I now detest her.   

[Lexie]

I think this show has harmed Tori more than she can possibly realize and I have to wonder if people close to her are being honest with her, or if she is just so delusional that she will not listen. I consider the delusion option to be very strong. There is no inidication that Candy was physically abusive mother. She may well have been critical, she may have been more aloof than Tori would have likes. She probably made mistikes. In other words, she is like mos parents, IMO. Human and flawed. My own mother was critical. Well, actually the woman I always thought was my mother who turned out to be my biological grandmother, but no one told me and I only discovered it at the age of 58 after mom/grandmom and sister/biological mom were both dead.  So, guess what Tori honey, we all have our crosses to bear regarding our childhoods. But most of us choose not to let them rule our lives.

I see Tori as a selfish little brat. I also find it ironic that she likes to whine about Candy when it is very clear, and caught on tape, that she herself is a horrendously bad mother. Putting her children through this freak show is reprehensible. I was always pretty "meh" about Tori Spelling, but I now detest her.

 

I completely agree with this.   And seeing Tori let it all hang out really makes me think Candy was  nowhere near as bad as Tori says.   The woman takes offense to a suggestion on how to make a baked potato.    She totally blows things out of proportion and constantly thinks the slightest thing is a personal attack with an ulterior motive.   Even if her mother wasnt perfect (and no mother is perfect) Tori had a pretty great life--she never knew poverty, abuse, she lived a lifestyle that the vast majority of people will never have, she was given a career, a hit show, come on.    I haven't read all of Tori's books but I do remember her bitching about petty shit like being dressed in pastels and having to wear a bob haircut.   Ooooh cry me a river you spoiled bitch.    There are kids out there who are hungry, no heat in the winter, no coat or warm clothes, abused in different ways, never even knew their father, sitting in foster care, etc.    She really needs a reality check instead of a bunch of ass kissers who are willing to entertain her crying over nothing.  She doesn't have to stay with Dean, it's not like she would be homeless or something if she left him.    Every time he says something like why are you with me or I'm not the one for you she gets that look on her face like she can't believe he is even saying that.   She isn't going anywhere, she just wants to torture Dean for being a bad boy.   And I think Dean knows that too.   

[gigi1701]

Me, too.  In fact, I would beseech any fans of cheesy craptastic Lifetime movies to check it out.  I guarantee you'll have fun snarking on it.

The best worst movie ever made.

Here's the full version:

(You're welcome)

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I did, I did watch it all. The only talent was the actress playing Tori's mom. Good thing I had an stiff drink in my hand the whole time.  At least I got some pleasure from the drink.

 

So that is Tori's claim to having a movie and TV career. Good lord, I was never a fan of Dean's until I watched him on a couple Food Network cooking shows, he seemed really happy and in his element. Now he gets to be the forever bad guy, or so Tori wants us to believe, but he is very good with his kids, he made a major mistake (or several) and he is paying, he is. My mother was a "victim" like Tori, nothing in the world would make her happy and everyone's attention always had to be on her misery. It will bite Tori in the end, it will, I have seen it with my family. 

 

Dean should leave, take the kids and be a single dad, that is his only path to peace right now. No amount of money is worth this hell he is in.

[Cheetosandchoc]

What. The. Fuck. Is. This. Show. I was watching Sisterhood, and hoping for a glimps of next weeks episode and this come on my TV. I don't EVER want t see that man cry again, EVER. Gd help me I cannot stop watching this.

[Miss February]

I liked how Tori kind of included all of us in the scene where Dean had the flowers and note awaiting her.  When he mentioned the note, she looked at the camera knowingly, as we had all just seen the scene with her and Mary Jo and Dean's note to MJ.  Tori broke down the fourth wall, and I liked it!

[missy jo]

Mother, May I Sleep With Danger? is a favorite of mine

 

The pinnacle of Lifetime movies for every reason ever.

 

No one is the villain of their own story, so I'm sure that the truth of the situation between MJ and Dean is somewhere in the middle. Having said that, it's in Dean's best interest to have told Tori, "Oh my marriage is all but over," etc.

 

And despite everything, he and MJ still have great chemistry together!

 

What. The. Fuck. Is. This. Show.

 

Either the best or the worst show ever.

Edited November 29, 2014 by missy jo

[jonroyce15]

I saw Guru Singh's face morph, too. Into Dennis Hopper.

 

That part took the cake for being the weirdest shit of an already weird show.

[ShaNaeNae]

I just saw this episode and Tori's narcissism was on full display.

 

She goes to dinner with her friends. They started talking about how she's always got the babies and how they aren't there eating with them.  It was the perfect segue into mentioning the kids. She ignores anything said about her kids and goes right into, "so I met with Mary Jo the other day".  

 

Then, she brings the baby who is sick to her bed.  First, I thought it looked totally foreign to see her carrying a kid.  But while sitting with a sick Finn, she starts pouting. Dean asks if she ok. She starts with "I'm just really worried about..." and I was thinking she was going to say "I'm just really worried about the baby since he's sick".  But no. She says, "I'm just really worried...about what you said in the therapists office. All about her.  Everything is about her.

 

Regardless of what douches they are,  Finn sure is adoreable.

 

My life has been made watching Dean cry like that. Another uncomfortable moment I feel like I shouldn't be seeing.

 

I'm about done with this show. Why would I want to watch someone go to unlimited counseling sessions in any shape, religion or form?

Edited December 7, 2014 by ShaNaeNae