How Ashley dodged ever being on 16 & Pregnant is beyond me. This chick is bricks. We pick up where we left off last week, which was Ashley being forced to move to Vegas in order to get her life together. That makes sense. I hear alcoholics try to quit “the booze” by going on a summer afternoon bar crawl. With her electric blonde hair and bee sting lips she looks like she’s actually in a disguise, like that time Stephanie Tanner tried to run away from home, put on giant sunglasses and a trench coat and told everyone her name was Connie Chung. Simpler times. Since 20 year old Ashley isn’t mentally capable to walking to the car without an escort, Albie Manzo is tasked with driving her to the airport to make sure she gets on the plane. Spoiler Alert: She misses the plane, loses her place on stand-by and ends up having to come back home for the night. Someone test her for lead poisoning. Or rickets. I just assumed.
At least Ashley/Ashlee is home in time for Jacqueline’s party where everyone can talk about Teresa’s cook book (again) every two seconds. Once Teresa shows up she tries to get everyones attention to make an announcement, but no one is listening to her. They’re probably wondering why the camera man continuously is zooming in on the meatballs in the frying pan over and over again versus getting the camera on the meatballs who are standing in the kitchen drinking wine. Once Teresa finally gets everyones attention she lets them know that she’s sorry (kinda) if anyone took what she said in her cookbook to heart and that it was only a joke. She then goes on to announce that her first cookbook was so good and how people tell her that they couldn’t put it down and what a “page turner” it was. Uh. Yeah. Because at the end of the day you how suspenseful cookbooks are. Do you add a pinch of salt to the recipe? I can’t wait to see what it says! That’s it I’m not going to bed tonight because I can’t wait to find out how long you should boil the pasta for!? Even Barney Rubble was like “Enough Teresa!” but of course he said it like, “‘Nuff Tre.” It’s like he speaks in a code that only those under 4’9″ can break. Milania totally gets him.
The “party” breaks out into a typical middle school dance where the girls are in one room and the guys are in the other. The guys are all playing poker and making fun of each other. Then things get weird. Apparently Barney and Saul were cracking on each other, ended up wrestling, and Barney ended up with a black eye after he fell on the couch and hit a candlestick holder. Huh? Here’s the deal. There’s a camera crew there filming everything…how they missed this actual wrestling match is beyond me. Perhaps they should have stopped filming the making of the meatballs and actually filmed the meatballs fighting in the basement. Epic fail. So many other things in this crapisode didn’t make sense to me either. Enter the whole “Lauren Manzo trying to lose weight” storyline. WTF was up with that? At first I thought she was going in to get that gastric bypass surgery, but then we soon discover that the “doctor” is putting her on an egg-white with fruit shake diet…and that’s all she can eat/drink. She’s hoping that she’ll be able to drop 35-40 pounds from all of this and get down to a size 4. As Oprah used to say, “Dream big!” What makes things worse is that Caroline kept talking about how Lauren is in the makeup industry and how superficial it is so she needs to lose the weight. I mean I’m not a licensed therapist, although I can prescribe you Prozac (don’t ask), but I’m almost certain Lauren’s weight issues stem from Caroline who thinks she’s trying to help, but is kinda making things worse on the regular. Lauren should just try the toothbrush diet. At least she’ll still be able to eat. But, I mean, that’s just my strategy. Maybe you have your own.
Other rando things happen throughout this episode as well, like when Barney and Tre-bagger are filming at the pizza shop because they’ve decided to close it and open up a 55+ community on the gas station property across the street. Huh? Or when Saul takes his son to the gas station he owns to show him how to pump gas and tell him stories of when he grew up. Or perhaps it was the segment when Kat found out through Twitter that some girl sent her 15 year old son pictures of her boobs and so Kat decides to respond back to her via Twitter. Yes folks, all of this was actually filmed and aired…and it’s only the second episode. Hopefully by the 4th episode we’ll get to watch Jacqueline bush her horses mane all episode. And where the hell is Rosie on all of this? I was truly praying to Jesus Claus and Santa Christ that we’d find out that the girl who tweeted a picture of her rack would actually have been Rosie and there would have been a sign over her chest that said something like, “Sucker! You Just Got Punk’d!”
There was some comic relief during all of this which, of course, was Milania. Per usual she’s wreaking havoc all around the Guidice compound. She punched Albie in the nuts when he came over and told Gia (z-snap) that while she was cooking she wasn’t a cooker because she was a hooker. How this 3 year old girl knows the word hooker speaks volumes for the conversations that Tre and Barney must have around the table when the cameras aren’t there. At one point, Barney is pouring himself some wine and the 2 year old who looks like no one is bleeding at the table and no one will help her except Gia. Even daughter #3 was like, “Well you can at least clean up the blood for her.” So much dysfunction, so little time. Whilst all of this is going on, Tre is at her 100th book signing and that’s where we get to meet Sheeba, the craziest fan on earth. She’s like Pauly D’s Israeli stalker, but without the knife. She of course starts gushing about how much she loves Teresa, but then starts asking about Barney’s “DMV issue.” Teresa just looks at her like she didn’t understand what half of the words Sheeba said actually meant. Truth be told I’m sure she didn’t. After Tre stares at her, this chick is just like, ‘Well I’ll keep your family in my prayers.” Creeepy!
In the end, Melissa puts the finishing touches on her horrific ballad that she wrote for her husband Doozer. As she’s “recording it” I can’t help but thing she sounds like J Lo which, trust me, isn’t a great thing. I wonder if you can just buy the J Lo sound for when you record? It’s like, “I’ll take 1 J Lo and 1 Britney mechanical robot voice, thanks!” Melissa ends up having a “romantic” dinner where they sit at complete opposite sides of the long table and Melissa can play her new “song” for Doozer. Of course, he spends the time talking about his poison (puke) and how hot he is for that song. Yeah. Kinda like how hot you get when you hear the theme song from the Titanic.
This show seems to have fallen off the rails. I need to see some punches thrown and I need to see that fast. The entire 60 minutes was basically one giant infomercial for all the crap that these creeps are trying to sell us. And to make things worse, no Rosie. At all. Sometimes life is so unfair.
