redwhirlwind89:
I haven’t even hit the ‘play’ button and I’m making a prediction.
The preview from last week’s episode, straight from Guantanamo’s torture stash, promised a lot of Anna ‘opening up’ (her MOUTH, perverts…oh wait…her OPINION ON THINGS, perverts) and some footage of Jessa’s baby shower. I’m willing to put any and all money I have at stake that approximately one quarter of the runtime will be devoted to Anna, if that. The rest will be about stroking Jessa’s ego and party planning. Double or nothing their wedding-planner friend with a flamingo fetish pops up. You know, the one who thought serving guests ice cream sundaes in a parking lot on a cold November day was a great idea for a wedding reception.
And I’m going to calculate the time to prove my hypothesis. Oh, I just know it is going to be proven!
I can tell just from the intro that I am going to regret this more than the time I suggested my friends and I make a drinking game out of Labyrinth. I only wish I COULD be hungover for two straight days after this. It’d be less painful.
The first segment begins with Anna calling Josh finger-raping his baby sisters ‘wrong choices.’ Regret levels rising already.
Anna reveals that this whole time she’s been sequestered with her in-laws…talk about a frigging nightmare. She then discusses about how she knew from the get-go that Josh was an incestuous child molester before she married him, as did her parents. The obvious thing to say here would be that Anna’s an idiot for sticking around after such a huge reveal…not to mention agreeing to have children BY him, which are equally endangered by his presence.
But honestly, I feel as if not enough blame is being pointed at HER parents. She’s a girl in a patriarchal cult, so every move she made before her wedding day was dictated to her by her father (who, if you watched their wedding special many years ago, may know as the guy who believes that Jesus turned water into grape juice…the Kool Aid man and Jim Jones would be proud). What decent parent on Earth would tell their daughter to go ahead and marry an incestuous child molester? What the actual flying furry fuck, Mr. Keller? Way to choose the best for your little girl.
In the middle of the segment, Anna gleefully tells Baby Meredith that they are going to go shopping. Not again. NOT A-GODDAMN-GAIN! ZEUS, LOKI, AMUN-RA, ISANAGI, GREAT SPIRIT, WALT DISNEY, NEIL PATRICK HARRIS, YAHWEH, ANYBODY WITH ANY GOD QUALIFICATION, I WILL SELL MY SOUL TO YOU, JUST NOT ANOTHER SHOPPING MONTAGE!!! PLEASE!!!!
Oh, wait, we’re still not done with Anna’s ‘confessions.’ Nevermind.
While watching this, something seemed vaguely familiar about Anna’s mannerisms, not only in her speech patterns, but also the way she used her facial expressions…and then it hit me. The eyes. The crazy eyes. Michelle Duggar’s crazy eyes. She has perfected the hypnotised-Duggar eye bulgies. God save us all. The transformation is complete.
I’m mentally noting to subtract 30 seconds from my timing of Anna’s segment, as they HAD to bring it back to Jill and Jessa. As per expected, Jill cries tears so fake you can see the expiration date stamped on each one as they are squeezed from her ducts. And Jessa shows about as much emotion (fake or otherwise) as a Sears mannequin. Their talking heads are both pretty much expressions of fear that they might otherwise be cuckolded and there would be nothing they could do about it except remain sweet…and possibly move in with your batshit in-laws.
What Anna says, in my feelings, is genuine. Her voice gets more choppy and stressed as she continues being exploited and forced to rehash the painful situation so her in-laws can pocket the profit. It’s actually quite painful to watch, especially as she begins blaming herself, specifically mentioning that if she let her real feelings guide her actions, she only would have made ‘things’ worse. Guys, let me take a moment to give some very rare, genuine pathos to this woman, forced to marry a sex criminal by her parents, bear his children, leave behind all she knew to follow him to DC so he could hire hookers and help run a hate group, then forced to come live with her asshole in-laws so she could be exploited by them and constantly reminded that her own feelings regarding her most intimate companion’s brutal betrayal of her don’t matter. And she is twenty-seven years old.
And goddamnit, I bet every sex predator and porn addict wishes he could choose his own rehab facility like Josh got to. What a spoiled brat. Anna emphasizes that her reason for not leaving Josh is her vows. That’d be nice…if Josh hadn’t already broken the hell out of his own. If you and your friend order a pizza and promise to split the check, you don’t split the check and then let the other person eat the entire pie. You have to assert your right to half of that fucking thing. You made as many sacrifices in order to have it on your table, and you are entitled to know that your eating partner is going to respect your half of the pizza. If they ate your half, you’d punch them, right? Josh basically asked for Anna to contribute to the bill, then not only ate her half of the pizza and expected her to sit back and let him gorge his porky ass, he also ate her buffalo wings, consumed those little celeries that always come with the wings for some reason I have yet to understand, drank her Dr. Pepper, belched loudly enough to shake the table, then blew the belch gas directly onto her face.
And I can’t help but feel that if the pizza was in the other girth, or if Anna was the cheating spouse, she’d be dumped faster than a shitty comparison to Italian eatery etiquette.
But enough of that worthless unraveling of a sheltered woman’s whole understanding of loyalty and self-worth, let’s get back to Jill ‘Like, Uh’ Dillard and Jessa Kardashian. For the record, subtracting the 30 seconds of irrelevant Jill/Jessa talking heads, Anna’s segment, the entire reason millions probably tuned in to this misery, was approximately 9 minutes and 30 seconds.
Seeing as the whole episode, minus commercials, clocks in at 46:10, I’d have to say my prediction was very close, if not being a bit generous. It comes out to about a fifth of the total runtime.
Oh Christ, that means we still have four fifths of insipidity to go.
And guess what else I accurately predicted? Sierra, the Quiverfull Wedding Planner is here to plan the (ugh) baby shower! I might be tempted to refer to her as Dances With Flamingoes, referring, of course, back to when she decided buying enough plastic lawn flamingos and overrunning a front ard with them was a ‘cute’ way of having a gender-reveal party. Ultimately, it looked less like a cutsey-wootsie party and more like a very specific-yet-also-vague threat from Don Corleone. Luca sleeps with the…err…birdies…tonight….
Oh Crazy Fuckery, Thy Name is Duggar. Or, Sierra.
So the ladies all gather (I’m surprised more than two women are allowed to assemble in one place by themselves in this culture) at Sierra’s home, and discuss the cah-RAH-zee ideas of men shopping! Oh boy, I smell late-80s sitcom setups where the fathers are meant to look like morons that natural selection left behind so the message that women belong in the kitchen is drilled into our impossibly-thick skulls! Oh, chortle chortle chort.
So. the ‘guys’ are going shopping for Jessa’s “MeMeMe’ party because they wanted the shower to be all about them. I bet it must be hard having a penis in a male-dominant subculture. Good thing they know how to cope. Ben still must be suffering trauma, as he still doesn’t know how to wear a hat. Jessa think Ben’s idea to have a ‘baby food cook off’ is original, as she’s never heard of it before. Well, Jessa probably hasn’t heard of Spongebob Squarepant either, and that damn show hasn’t had an original idea since the fourth season.
The entire shopping trip ends up being Ben thinking of fifty different ways to kill a baby with one spoonful, and Derick mentally facepalming. And remember, guys, Derick is the one who gave us that incredible insight last week on how jaw surgery may or may not induce pain in a patient. I am just sitting here, jaw open, wondering how Derick can tell a grocery store cashier that he plans to feed an infant hot peppers, and she does not sic CPS on their dumb asses.
Back at Sierra’s home, the ladies are where they belong, surrounded by wailing babies in the kitchen (presumably barefoot). Sierra brags about how she can crank ‘em out as fast as she can. And she is referring to party favors, not babies.
Notably, Principessa Jessa is absent from her own baby shower prep. The day of, she comes in late and struts around like a queen. I fucking hate her.
Even now, Ben has to be reminded that the seed swimming around Jessa’s no-no zone, waiting to be brought into a world of no promise and no soul, is from his own nasty nether region. Ben reacts like any boy his age would…with shit-spewing fear.
So the party begins with a game where the women close their eyes and diaper a baby. Now, correct me if I’m wrong…but that can’t be that difficult when the object being diapered is an immobile doll, no? Maybe it’s because I have two brain cells to rub together, but it seems to me that the degree of difficulty of that game is about on par with Chutes and Ladders if the board was produced in ‘large print.’
Jessa wins because of course. The game takes less time to complete than it took me to complete that last sentence.
More time is spent focusing on the men’s game, because of course. The boys all decide to shove ice cream and Doritos into the food they would feed a helpless infant with an esophagus the circumference of a pinky finger. They have a random bro taste test it all, and Random Bro chooses Ben’s food as the best.
Because of course.
Thankfully, Jim Boob and J’Chelle are relegated to cameos and have no talking heads. It’s still painful to watch Jim Boob smile and enjoy being alive. He doesn’t deserve to feel joy. Or life.
After the jump, we get back to the REALLY intriguing stuff…Jill and Derick getting ready to leave on their swindling trip. Jill says ‘Grandma’ is coming to help, and I bite my lip until she specifies that it’s Grandma Cathy, Derick’s mom. Praise Jeebus. Cathy is coming along to an impoverished, disease-ridden country fresh out of chemotherapy to be Jill’s babysitting bitch.
Jessa is sad Jill won’t be around to be L’il Sturgeon’s pseudo-mom. Jessa’s going to have a hard time balancing Baby Surgery in one arm and a curling iron in the other.
In El Salvador, Jill, Derick, and Cathy eat papaya. I laugh. I cry. I pray for the sweet release of unconsciousness.
Jill then says the single most insulting thing in the entire show. That Israel is distracting to her while she works on her home Spanish course, so she managed to rope/bribe/blackmail/otherwise coerce her own Spanish tutor into babysitting.
Jill, you fucking had a baby at 23. Many women still do it, and some do it even younger than you. But really, did you expect a human child to NOT require 100% of your time and attention!? You raised half of your siblings, and frankly, you raised them better than their (and your own) parents! How could you have NOT understood that giving birth, then bringing said fruit of your womb to a faraway country would be a slight bit cumbersome to your luxurious lifestyle??
For fucks sake, girlfriend, I know you have a hard time distinguishing a tree from the color blue sometimes, but when you live in a culture where literally all you are expected to do is pump out babies and feed people, you HAVE to have SOME semblance of knowledge regarding the true-to-life experiences of raising a baby.
Jill Dillard, Natural Selection called. It says it missed you and wants to catch up.
Meanwhile, in Awkward Booking Land, Benessa are speaking at a women’s conference. I know Ben is there because no woman can be allowed out by themselves ever without the world imploding, but I can’t for the life of me understand why Jessa is speaking. I thought she hated women.
Anyway, Jessa is brought onstage by the human equivalent of a bowl of sugar saying ‘You will just melt.’ If by ‘you’ the person meant ‘your sense of reality’ or ‘the two centuries of feminist theory’ or ‘all remnants of your sanity’ then yes, I’m sure we will melt.
I don’t fucking care about what they say, because I’m pretty sure they are about as fascinating as used paper towels. Most of the questions are about the impending arrival of Little Serpent. During a ‘newlywed game’ portion, Ben fails miserably in guessing basic crap about Jessa, because they’ve known each other for a total of three years and are both barely old enough to imbibe alcohol. He only knows her favorite slipper color because the answer is ‘no.’
Meanwhile, back in Central America, Jill is taught how to use a sling properly by a local, still gets it wrong, and then begins walking on precarious ledges while holding Israel in said sling. Then they give Israel the distinguished honor of having his first ‘real’ food be guacamole. And a Chipotle commercial is born.
Back in Alabama, Benessa have a ‘babymoon.’ What the actual hell is a ‘babymoon?’ Basically, it’s a shitty excuse for unemployed asshats to have another vacation. They share a jar of the Duggar Family’s favorite phallic condiments. That’s amore.
They kiss. I barf. The end.
Next week promises Jessa’s long-sought-after birth episode. I don’t care. Instead of describing the preview, I’m going to leave you with this screencap I took when my computer froze mid-episode. Because I am kind of in love with this screen cap.
I still haven’t watched this but it sounds like a train wreck.