S03.E05: Rule #99: Cook Naked

[chick binewski]

Quote

Abby hosts a party for the baseball team's parents while trying to keep her relationship with Coach Mike under wraps. Jo indulges Frumpkis' plan to drum up business for the bakery. Barbara gets more than a new stovetop when Phoebe brings in contractor Darrell to remodel her kitchen.

Edited February 9, 2017 by chick binewski

[chick binewski]

My topic-starting skillz are rusty but it might not matter b/c I'm not sure anyone is watching!

So the writers still hate Lisa Edelstein, no? The goofy why won't they be friends with me when I show up at the ballpark in a tube top is too much, but I am glad they gave her a chance to act when she found out about coach.  

I don't understand why they're wasting Delia (DUI is her story line?) and Phoebe, who is doing something stupid & reckless for reasons which aren't clear. I did like Barbara having a separate subplot (with Theo yay).  I did not like how Zooey took her mother's advice because it seemed so out of character.

Finally, to anyone who did actually see the episode - what was with the lingering shots on plates and cups and hands and french fries? Did the folks behind the camera doze off or did they think they were giving it an art house feel??

[bichonblitz]

All I know is I would like to slap that annoying smile off Edelstein's face. That constant smile! No matter if she's happy, sad, bitchy, pre-menstrual or just got laid. Ugh!!!

So Barbara with the bad wig is going to get it on with Theo? And all that talk and disagreement over what kind of stove she wants or can't afford? These writers are something else. 

Jo and her daughter finding her ex passed out on the floor shitfaced drunk...Um... that would be a dealbreaker in my book. You don't pull that shit in my house and worse yet, our daughter finds you like that?? No way. Get out. For good. 

[Pickles]

Was just coming here to post the same thing about the constant smile on Lisa Edelstein's face. What is that??

Apart from Barbara, these women are all pretty much anorexic skinny (my opinion). Scrawny. So, what is Barbara supposed to be to them?  Oh, we are all such cool women that we have allowed a fat, black friend into our group? I don't really get it. I feel like Barbara is the token "normal" person. Do you see what I am trying to say? This show appears to be trying so hard to be so hip and edgy and "cool". It is painful.

[bichonblitz]

28 minutes ago, Pickles said:

don't really get it. I feel like Barbara is the token "normal" person. Do you see what I am trying to say? This show appears to be trying so hard to be so hip and edgy and "cool". It is painful.

They are failing miserably at being hip and cool. And who the hell dresses up in 6 inch heels and designer fancy schmancy clothes  for a kids sports party? Oh, Abbey and her lawyer friend, of course. No wonder she fits in nowhere. 

[Michichick]

Barbara is the token "normal" person and was the token black person for too long. At least they're giving her a love interest now. I had to stare at him a bit before I realized it was Malcom-Jamal Warner. He looks good!

@chick binewski the French fry shot really stuck out to me. Very weird and I was wondering why the fries were significant.

I wasn't wearing my glasses while watching so I have no idea what any of the various text messages said. Can anyone clue me in or am I going to have to rewatch this shit show? I feel like I missed a lot. Was Phoebe blowing off a text from her husband? I still think she's going to have an affair with that woman.

[John M]

I hate every single one of these women with a passion, even Barbara on occasion, they are all such horrible, horrible people but not in a good or funny way.

[NutMeg]

I think all of them are flawed but I understand them all because I know them all. The Abby perm smile I know from a friend who's half Thai, her mother drilled in her that whatever what, she must smile (I'm not saying it's always how it is, just how it is with my friend), so my friend who has a wicked sense of humour jokes about how she even has a smile ready for if she was ever desperate enough to crawl up and die. 

More worrying is a case I heard from my mum, her best friend from university had to bury her dad that she loved more than anyone else. She wore her prettiest dress and smiled the whole time.Years later, stricken by cancer she told my mum that that was what her mum had always told her to do, look pretty and smile. I find it tragic, because while she was the golden child with amazing looks (she modelled and still looked good enough in her late 40s-early 50s to get a pass with all kinds of agents - traffic, airport, etc.) she ended up having a particularly shitty life.  

Jo, well, I once was married to an addict (who got sober, but still, the process is not fun, and the resulting person in this case was not either), so I get her frustration and wariness, I love almost everything about her, I still wish she had taken a chance on that British guy whose name escapes me right now but I do understand why she chickened out.

Delia acted like a soap opera character last season and is now paying the price, but she seems to be paying her dues, doing her work even while her image has been darkened a tone or two within the firm.

Phoebe's is another messy situation that I've seen in real life. Maybe she'll screw up her marriage because money is all important to her, and maybe she won't. Both scenarios have been seen to happen.

As for Barbara, she strikes me as a woman who was very bitter and unhappy until she met Abby and al., and who's now slowly opening herself up to the world and other people.  She's a bright spot here, probably the most emotionally honest of the bunch.

I know this show has awful ratings, and it's by chance that I discovered it (was it ever promoted big time? I hardly ever watch TV so I may have missed it). My question - and it's an honest one, not a snarky one, I swear, is for the people who keep watching but hate it: why do you keep watching? want to see it the bitter end? hoping for bad things to happen to the main character (or others)? other reasons?

I'm asking because I'm really interested. I've dropped shows when I got bored with them (TBH I was't that invested in them) and I sincerely want to understand the dynamics that can make you keep watching while disliking the plot and the characters. Thank you in advance for your answers and I hope you understand that my curiosity is in no way a critique (I'm a writer and as such I always crave understanding of what is most foreign to me :)...). 

[luna1122]

I keep watching even tho I hate these women most of the time and I can't even answer why. I am unsure. It's kind of the same dynamic I had/have the SATC and 'girls'. I don't really like ANY of those women consistently, tho I do sometimes, but I watched/watch every single episode, often multiple times, and hung/hang on til the bitter end. I LIKE the shows, despite being so annoyed by the characters half the time that I want to throw things at them. I'm generally not into S&M but apparently I am when it comes to certain television shows.

I like the actors, I think they're all attractive and talented, so there's that. I have always liked Lisa Edelstein, and I sometimes like Abby. She didn't bug me nearly so much on this episode, tho I just can't with her aging, weird, desperately inappropriate outfits most of the time. I dislike how immature the characters all are, and this comes from someone who is about their age but still feels about 27 and still acts 14 half the time. They just all seem emotionally stunted and deeply shallow, and I really wouldn't like to know any of them. Yet I feel compelled to watch weekly.

I love that the 'face' chick (nadia Dajani)  from that one episode of SATC is now one of the baseball moms here, the slightly less judgey one who found Abby n the coach making out. Not good that Coach didn't tell get around to telling Abby he's still living with his wife.

I was certain Phoebe and her new rich friend (whose name I should remember, since she invokes it every three seconds, but don't) were about to start macking, and think it's probably on the horizon.

I don't know what all the little random shots of French fries and cups and gift bags were about either. Just strange.

[TVForever]

23 hours ago, Pickles said:

 

Apart from Barbara, these women are all pretty much anorexic skinny (my opinion). Scrawny. So, what is Barbara supposed to be to them?  Oh, we are all such cool women that we have allowed a fat, black friend into our group? I don't really get it. I feel like Barbara is the token "normal" person. Do you see what I am trying to say? This show appears to be trying so hard to be so hip and edgy and "cool". It is painful.

Thanks for this. Because this thought has been in the back of my head since the character was introduced. I like Barbara, but I preferred her as Abby's boss at the website. Ever since they've brought her into the girlfriend group, she's felt like their "project", the scholarship kid at the prep school who the cool group lets in because they felt they " should". This would have felt much more organic if she were another super skinny , sorta wealthy, socially-connected clothes horse like the others, who also happens to be Black. 

Instead, they're falling into the old trope of putting the woes of a middle-class single mother with not quite enough money, not quite enough time with her kid, who also loves to cook, onto the shoulders of an overweight Black woman. Why? She treated the others to breakfast because she got a little raise at work, and the others "applaud". Yay!

What were the writers' intentions for this character? Because she deserves better.

[voiceover]

Well, Barbara did get "better" than the other 4 this season -- the only sexy, sweet scene with a man so far.

Damn, Malcolm has aged well!  He went through kind of a dumpy phase, but he surely has come out purty on the other side.

I want more of this relationship, which probably means he was a one & done.