Last week, I was almost beside myself because Danielle Staub's actions were so unbelievably infuriating. Bringing a cartload of sickly-looking (and whatever they have looks catching) and badly dressed hoodlum errand boys to protect her while she was attending a cancer fundraiser for a sick baby? Each of whom did the prison shower-shoe shuffle rather than actually walking and each of whom made vaguely threatening or distasteful comments about people who weren't in the room while Danielle (who also has her own version of shower-shoe shuffle) smiled like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth (probably not, with all the artificial material that makes up her face) and said "I'm being protected, here! Watch it!"
This week, it was boring and maddening to watch Danielle completely ignore the also-vile Kim G (and Kim G's mother-in-law Edna Garrett from the Facts of Life who, btw, looks much younger than Kim G herself) corner Danielle at her Big Girl Birthday Party to tell her that last week's behavior was Oh-So-Unsavory - Kim G was actually going on and on about whether Danielle had invited the hideous Andy Gibberish Danny as her "escort," as if Kim G was some delicate Southern flower rather than a woman who had stood idly by at a party while Hell's Angels moved menacingly through the crowd, people wielding forks threatened to use them as weapons and the irrepressible Danny (whom Richard Lawson over at Gawker brilliantly calls "Scraps") called her son's best friend a spineless fag*ot. Yes.
THAT Kim G.
Kim G's mother-in-law could barely keep the smile off her face while she put in her two cents about how bad Danielle's behavior was. You could just see that if she were an extra on a real show, instead of an extra on a reality show, they would have to fire her because she would have to keep trying her line over and over again because she kept cracking up. "I love you but I have to talk to you," is I believe how she put it.
Danielle started crying and said the friend of my enemy is my enemy, and said, no! I am a gay advocate (by which she means she has heard this is a good thing to be) and he was not calling an actually fag*ot a fa*got, just that 20-year-old kid to whom I had already given an f-u moment - her actual words, but spelled out - by walking up to him and shaking his hand (but in a I-got-you kind of way). She started crying and being a victim because you can never, ever be Danielle's friend if you disagree with her idea of what is appropriate behavior. So Kim G and her mother (Edna Garrett) back down and let Danielle go on and on with her delusional version of victimization, and you could see in their eyes that they were done. They might still hang around her, but they know that she's a complete nutter and they really, really don't see any point in getting in any deeper. They might get in longer, but not deeper.
And knowing they were done, I was so happy to realize that I also am done. This character is too vile and too unchangeable to be actually interesting. She's done the most interesting thing she ever can. And now we're done.
It was kind of a yawn to watch Danielle buy Danny (her male alter ago) a suit (or more likely get one free from the stupid man who thought this would bring good publicity for his business). The prison and courtroom humor wasn't funny and showed a kind of nose-thumbing to any laws they broke or time they served. It was a big adolescent joke, like when Robert Downey, Jr. asked Jodie Foster to put money on his books.
That's not what you call moving away from your past.
It was also a yawn, but a really annoying one, to watch Dina go to tell Danielle she is out of her life. I never understood that - first of all, it wasn't like Danielle and Dina were super-close and the cord needed to be cut. The cord was cut a long time ago, and to bring it up again is just pretty harsh. It's the kind of "I need closure so I don't give a damn how this impacts you, because this is about me."
I actually had a friend who had an imagined fight with me last year, and when she apologized and said it wasn't about me, it was about her, I ended the friendship. You just can't be friends with someone who is only ever going to see things from her own point of view. Maybe this was the idea that Dina had when she set out on this mission, but it all seemed backward and over the top since she hadn't been seeing Danielle as a friend. Though she said on her blog that she was always texting supportive things to Danielle - but again, a text does not a relationship make.
So - this week's horror show was watered-down and blech. Except for Ashley. Ashley is a not-too-bright teenager with a doughy body and a doughy brain. By "doughy," I am not talking about Ashley's ready access to food. I am talking about Ashley's obvious conviction that there is no reason in the world that she should ever do any kind of work or behave like a decent young lady or be grateful for any of the vast riches that she has in the world.
By which, I mean, her car. Because really, she doesn't have anything else.
Her parents have not done much to spur Ashley to work or go to college or do anything productive. They do pay for her automobile and they give her money for her clothes and haircuts and pizza.
So what does Ashley do with her spare time?
She fights with Danielle online.
Of course, Danielle takes every little comment and makes it into something it's not. Her reality is truly frightening, because she's a psychopath. Ashley says something along the lines of we all know where you're going...to HELL and in Danielle's weird mind, somehow this is a death threat. "Like what, I'm going to hell now?"
(Which could have just been a realization that she has a lot of repenting to do, pronto.)
So Jacqueline, Ashley's mother, goes to lunch with her friend Teresa and she decides that rather than staying home and calling her daughter on the carpet, she will stay at lunch and eat orange soup and drink wine and then question her about whether it's true that she made a terroristic threat to Danielle. To which Ashley responds, "Do I look like a person who could kill a person?"
To which I immediately thought, yes, yes you do.
Ashley thought this was a big lark, even when her boyfriend (and how lucky she is to have a boyfriend, because I don't see what she really has to offer) told her to cool it. In fact, immediately after speaking to her mother, who told her to stop posting on Facebook - the battleground for this war - Ashley posted on Facebook to tell everyone that Danielle had signed out a warrant for her arrest (which, by the way, was not true at that time - Ashley was trying to influence her friends to hate Danielle even more). Jacqueline called her and told her to take it down NOW, but Ashley just smiled that insipid Ashley smile and made it all out to be a big joke to which only she knew the punchline.
Then at a big Family Dinner, Ashley brought up the Danielle issue to her entire extended family, because she wanted everyone to laugh and tell her how cute she was being and how stupid her parents were for not seeing how Very Right Ashley Was. Because her parents had told her not to tell anyone. Ashley made a crack about Danielle that was pretty ugly, but which was also the kind of thing that drunk people laugh at. Even her stepfather laughed, which Ashely took to mean that she was utterly adorable and she should keep doing it, only faster and harder.
So - what Ashley is missing, of course, is any kind of accountability. Presumably she is mad because Danielle said she had fat arms and called her a bad name, but rather than just brushing it off, she took it several steps too far. And now she has a criminal record.
So - when your daughter can't control herself and when she believes that she needs to fight your on-screen wars, does that mean it's time to get off the TV?
As for Teresa and her bankruptcy, no surprise there. What is a surprise is that they only claimed $79K of income last year, which wouldn't pay the mortgage for one of their houses, let alone all four of them. Or the clothes that she buys her daughters with the deluded notion that she is making them "fabulous" instead of "ridiculous." I am sorry for her - I think she really made herself believe that her poor daughter would become a star and slot them right into a Child Star Parents Life. And that her book would be such a hit that it would completely get them out of debt. Now it's time to pay the piper - and I hope she does, with humility and grace, rather than martyrdom and tears.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment