Déjà vu anyone??? Tonight’s “Marriage Boot Camp” on WEtv picked up where last week left off with JWoww and Roger fighting, and him threatening to leave. It also ended with the same couple fighting with each other. Do we see a theme here? You don’t have to get married because she’s pregnant nowadays. You know that, right?
Last week, Roger accused Jenni of being fake at boot camp and totally threw her under the bus claiming she’s been fake and lied for TV shows before. “I feel like I am being honest and I know that Jenni isn’t…” Roger storms back to the room to pack. He has a total temper tantrum when he shuts the bedroom door and starts unplugging cameras and cutting out production.
“I start unplugging cameras… I want to be alone,” Roger rages in interview. Ahem, I don’t recall prior boot campers getting away with that sort of crap. Not supposed to touch the microphones or cameras, Roger. Do you think being such a big celebrity changes all the rules for you? You are famous for dating JWoww. That’s about it, bud. “I want to know are you here to work on your marriage or are you here for money?” Jim asks Jenni after Roger walks out.
“What do you want me to say?” Jenni responds. Not the right answer. It says everything. “I wanted to come here to benefit my relationship and I tend to forget we’re filming a show… my biggest issue is my career getting in the way of my relationship,” Jenni explains and goes after Roger. But he won’t let her in the bedroom. Jim goes in for a one-on-one with Roger, but has to agree to no cameras or microphones. Interesting.
Now we know that production was definitely dealing with a different set of rules for this celebrity crowd versus the way they handled the Bridezillas. Had they pushed their way in, Roger might have gone as ballistic as some of the guys in the prior season. Instead, they respected his boundaries and space. Is that fair? Guess it doesn’t matter.
Thinkfactory Media moved quickly so we didn’t miss the whole thing. “We have a guy whose obviously giving 100 percent,” producer Adam Freeman says. “She’s obviously cashing a paycheck.” So they take the microphone off Jim but we can still hear the audio. Roger should have known better – or didn’t care – because you don’t have to do more than one season of reality television to know they can hear everything even when you’re not wired up. It’s magic.
“I don’t care about getting paid for this,” Roger says to Jim behind closed doors. “Don’t come here and fake our life. It makes me wonder where I fall in the importance of her life.” “If this is just a job, we’re in the wrong place and we should leave,” he says. Jenni joins Jim and Roger with the cameras and promises she will be “100 percent real” for the rest of the program. Jim threatens to kick her out if she keeps playing fake. And all of that happened the night before – as in, it was part of last week’s episode. OMG. Where to start this week? In the morning pre-meeting for boot camp directors Jim, Elizabeth, Ilsa and Bobby, there’s some plotting going on for the day’s exercises.
Elizabeth believes Roger is resentful because Jenni makes all the decisions about the relationship. “I’m hoping that today’s drills help them to understand each other a little better.” The first exercise is about identifying “needs” and “wants.” That’s something us normal people do every day when we’re balancing our budgets and deciding what we can afford to buy, but for these folks, it’s not something they have to really stop and consider very often.
There’s a whole lot of “me me me” going on here. Before I continue, I just gotta stop and call the Fashion Police really quick – Gretchen is wearing a cocktail dress again in the morning. Somebody please help her out. It only gets worse later in the episode when she dresses up like the Tooth Fairy, but we’ll come back to that. We were talking about what the campers need and want from their significant others. “I need you to have faith in my music career,” Traci tells Kevin. He wants more communication. Slade says to Gretchen: “I need you to be more direct and physical with me in explaining exactly what it is you want.” “I need you to get a job so that I feel like we are secure, more so than what we have currently.”
Was that specific enough for you Slade? Trista needs more trust and doesn’t want to be held accountable for Ryan’s past girlfriend’s transgressions. But Ryan drops a bombshell (at least for them) because he says that he feels like sex is something Trista is checking off her to do list. Ouch! Tanisha wants to be able to rely on Clive to take control so she can step back and breathe, but he points out that she never gave him a chance to be a real husband to her. She kicked him out a month after they got married and she never gave him a chance to step up to the plate.
It turns into a fight. She wants security. Clive says he just wants her love. But she’s not having that. “Clive you gotta work for that, it’s hard,” Tanisha says. “I love you, but I haven’t been IN LOVE with you for a long time.” Oh wow. Lots of people getting hurt by this exercise – let’s hope it helps them in the end. But at least Clive stands up to her this time. “Everything is about you. Nothing is about me. You may say that fame got to my head, but I felt it got to your head and your whole attitude and personality towards me, it changed which kinda draws me away from you.”
Clive tells her how he’s really feeling but I’m not sure it matters. Tanisha says they’re in this place “because I couldn’t respect you anymore.” And then she tells the directors, with a seriously woebegone look on her face that I actually believed, “I don’t know how to fix this.” Roger attacking Jenni at every turn is getting old. I’m not arguing that she might have signed up for the show for a paycheck, but he signed the contract too.
Seems like he blames her for all the bad publicity and other problems they deal with even though he’s right there with her for the paparazzi most of the time. Let’s not pretend her JWoww persona hasn’t given Roger’s life a major upgrade. “I just want you to be every single day open and honest…” Roger says and then talks about the skeletons in her closet affecting their lives. “Our personal life is kind of your career, which I don’t get.”
They cut him off and he’s pissed later that he didn’t get to express it all. But maybe I’m not the only one sick of listening to Roger bitch at her. She was JWoww when he started dating her, wasn’t she? After the exercise they all find out that it’s “date night,” but the dates are pre-assigned with other spouses at specific locations. This gets Gretchen her 15 minutes of fame this week because she tells them she has a prior commitment. WTF?
Look, I’m no expert and I’m sure these people have far more loopholes in their contracts than I did, but I’m pretty sure that it’s not considered professional to double-book yourself at a charity event in the middle of your contract with Thinkfactory Media and WEtv to make “Marriage Boot Camp: Reality Stars.” There’s a term called “first priority” that would generally come into play when you’re actually filming with an ensemble cast.
Every minute you burn costs the network money. Jim and Elizabeth take Gretchen and Slade aside to discuss the problem. “Tell me what this commitment was?” Jim asks, being much nicer than I would be. Gretchen claims it was a charity event booked months ago and announces that Slade’s going with her. This is when it gets good. Slade tells her he’s not going to go with her because he didn’t sign the contract to go to the charity event and he’s committed to boot camp. “Why would you want to stay?” Gretchen freaks. Fun to watch?
Botox face on Barbie only has so many expressions and this one tested her elasticity big time. “This is the day you decide to make that decision… literally my stomach is turning.” “What he’s doing here is going to have an impact on your relationship for the rest of our life,” Jim explains. I don’t think that made Gretchen feel any better. “Slade pushing back is exactly the reaction we were hoping for,” Jim explains in interview. “Gretchen going by herself is the first sign that they may be willing to break the codependency they have for each other,” Elizabeth says. But she’s not actually going by herself because production got her good with this one.
Gretchen was supposed to out to dinner with Kevin for date night, so now Kevin will be her date to the charity event. Boom! Ten points for Thinkfactory and WEtv. That was funny as shit! So Kevin is going with Gretchen to the event and Kevin plays along but Gretchen is shooting dagger looks at Slade. “I never dated a white woman,” Kevin is hilarious. He calls himself “The Black Slade.” Traci reminds him before he leaves that she is, in fact, the black Barbie. But really, she had nothing to worry about. Gretchen is dressed up like the Tooth Fairy. WTH was that pink tulle concoction? Didn’t I see it at the mall in the junior prom dress display? She is wayyy too old for that look – thank God I’ve already notified the Fashion Police.
Proud to say the entire Twitter-world was laughing their asses off with me. Gretchen is freaked out that Slade isn’t with her and babbles the whole limo ride to the event. For a minute, Kevin thinks she’s sincere and then she blows her own cover. “Shoot, TMZ is there right now,” Gretchen announces, looking at her phone. “Do you think it’s maybe best that you go down the street?” She went in by herself.
It’s unclear whether he joined her later or just cruised town in the limo (definitely the less painful option) but whatever it was, folks were tweeting that she’s a racist. I think she’s just ignorant. But maybe it’s a little bit of the same thing, right? “I don’t think Gretchen is giving 100 percent to the boot camp…”
Kevin says after she ditches him. Meanwhile, Tanisha is welcoming Ryan into the black family and giving him “Swagu” lessons while they make cake pops. “I’m like the typical white guy – I have to drink to dance,” Ryan explains to Tanisha, but that doesn’t stop her from teaching him a gangster walk that is hilarious. Just wondering if Ryan knows that he’s imitating a dealer walking with his “gat” in his pants. They hitch like that cuz they’ve got the gun in their waistband. But whatever – it was like watching a “Saturday Night Live” sketch. In interview afterwards, Trista and Ryan were hilarious! “Date night was off the chain, yo!” Trista jokes. “I was thinking later on tonight you could show me some of that agro-yoga and I could show you some of my Swagu,” Ryan teases her. “OMG, Tanisha – what did you do to my husband?” Trista asks, laughing. The next morning he entertains the entire house with his Swagu walk. Classic.
“You accepted me into the black community,” Ryan jokes with his new bff Tanisha. She likes anybody who gives her cake pops. So do I. But during evals later, you can tell from the look on Trista’s face that she’s really upset her husband can let loose with Tanisha but not with her. It made me sad. Trista and Roger’s date was for doing acro-yoga which didn’t look fun (or safe for the average person) to me. “She’s a MILF,” Jenni teases Roger before the date. Trista and Roger communicate well but neither of them got much out of the exercise session, other than motion sickness. I’m going to call that “horror-yoga.”
Meanwhile, Jenni and Slade are taking dance lessons. Hard to believe JWoww can’t dance unless she’s in a club, but she’s gutsy about it and gives it her best. Which means she tries to lead and drag poor Slade around the dance floor. “We were like two left feet,” Slade says. After that’s pointed out to her, and she loses the seven-inch heels, they actually do pretty well together and seem to have a lot of fun. She needed to let go of control – Slade needs to learn how to take control. Well matched!
Traci and Clive are getting a couples massage and learning how to give massages. Not sure I’d be okay with that as a wife, but Tanisha probably wouldn’t care unless screaming about it got her more airtime. During the date, they talk and get to know each other and we learn that Clive likes to cook but the hearing situation has made him hold off from going to cooking school. Evaluations were easy this time. Because nobody calls out the elephant in the room of Gretchen ditching Kevin for her big red carpet entrance. Wouldn’t want TMZ to get the wrong impression, right?
Wonder why the directors let her slide on that one. “I feel like this dance exercise for me and Slade was really great,” Jenni says. “Constantly we’re battling over who has control in our relationship,” she says of her and Roger. Jim gives Clive a verbal spanking. Which is surprising because it feels like EVERYBODY lets Clive off the hook most of the time. “Clive, she is working and trying to do something for both of you,” Jim says. “If you can get direction in life, you’ll satisfy her needs and wants.” Kevin gets complimented for his patience.
But that’s probably for putting up with Gretchen’s bulls**t. Roger goes after Jenni during evaluations, again. But the directors have had enough. What started out looking like a guy who cared is starting to look like a domineering bully. He just doesn’t like the fact that JWoww won’t let him crush her career. “Roger, you get something into your head and everybody else should have the same belief system,” Jim points out. He’s like a dog with a bone and the temper tantrums are getting on everybody on Twitter’s nerves too. GTFU. Just when you think it’s safe to watch this season’s “Marriage Boot Camp,” the teasers for next week appear and we see that the plushy sex toys are back. AAAHHHHHH!
It was bad enough watching Bridezillas play with their tacos and donuts, I do not want to see what Tanisha does during this one. I’m not sure I can get a permission slip for this so may not be able to blog it. While I was still laughing from that, it turned dark again. Jenni got a message that somebody sold a story about them and Roger gets furious, again.
Blaming Jenni completely. Roger says she doesn’t think about how things will affect his family making us wonder if it’s something more serious than the bun in the oven. The teaser shows it getting ugly as she accuses her fellow boot campers of leaking the story.
I am not going to miss that one… but it’s not for two weeks because the network was smart enough to realize that even dedicated fans might not stay home to watch this on the 4th of July. I’ve got my DVR set for July 11th! Big wedding that night. Probably a good thing because I shouldn’t be allowed to live-tweet about the stuffed animal sex toys again.