“Marriage Boot Camp: Reality Stars” on WeTV is getting good. This week really got my attention.
It started out same s**t, different day – with Althea and Benzino starting out the day fighting again. He’s trying to find out what she’s pissed off about, and she won’t work with him on it. I think she’s just a spoiled little diva bitch. #IfTheManoloFits
“Just tell me what I did wrong so I won’t do it no more,” Benzino honestly is just sick of getting in trouble. It’s sad.
Meanwhile, the other couples are downstairs saying nice things about their spouses to each other – a self-imposed exercise because the boot camp directors aren’t even around.
All of the couples were playing nice til they got to Mama June. She wasn’t mean, she was just honest in saying that she didn’t think she could say anything good about her husband. She says he’s not a good father anymore.
“Because of the constant cheating, the heartbreak he’s caused… and the point of the matter is that all I want is like the truth. And until I get those answers, I honestly believe we won’t be able to stay together because Alana and the kids deserve the best,” June says.
They continue fighting upstairs and Sugar Bear accuses June of turning the kids against him.
“I want my youngins back,” Sugar Bear says. It’s sorta like watching a bad 80’s cowboy movie on CMT channel.
“We’ve got a problem with Mama June and Sugar Bear. They’re stuck. Sugar Bear needs to come clean before they can move forward as a couple,” Director Jim Carroll says.
Meanwhile, Benzino and Althea are still going at it when they’re all called to the boot camp room for the day’s exercise.
“When are you gonna get help? When are you going to accept help?” Benzino asks.
Going into the exercise, Director Elizabeth Carroll is “very concerned about how well some of them are going to handle how hard we’re going to push them.”
“Today is about fighting,” Elizabeth kicks things off.
“A sure sign that your relationship has issues is when you think your relationship has no issues,” Jim’s talking about Sean and Katherine, who weren’t able to list anything they fight about because they’re so perfect.
“People think happy couples never fight,” Jim says that’s not the case.
First they write down their “hot button” words on poster board, and then they all go outside to a boxing ring to have a fight.
They’re told the object of the game is to get the highest score by showing how truly dirty and mean you usually are when you fight.
Ink and Sarah go first and it’s ugly. He dominates, verbally beating the crap out of her. When she asks him to stop talking over her he says the following:
“Now I’m being rude, whatcha gonna do, cry about it? Gonna cry about it?” Ink is really aggressive.
“Putting your hand on a girls leg and you think that’s okay?” Sarah says he gropes other women in public. Sounds like something to be justifiably pissed about.
“They got real serious with it. They went from an argument to a full grown fight,” Sugar Bear says.
Now if you’ve ever watched “Marriage Boot Camp” in previous seasons, you realize that these idiots are being awful to each other to score higher because they don’t realize the high scorers will be the losers. Just shaking my head. How do you sign up for an established reality show without watching every prior episode??? Seriously.
“I get jealous when you give my homeboy your f**king phone number,” Ink says. And that opens up a whole can of worms that eventually leads to Sarah admitting that she has, in fact, been text cheating on Ink with one of his friends. No bueno.
“They’re saying some pretty nasty, vicious vile things to each other. This cannot be healthy or productive in either way,” Sean says. And at first, I had to agree. But when it was all over, they were the couple most upset about what had been said during the fight.
If my husband ever said those things to me… we’d be headed to Marriage Boot Camp or a divorce attorney.
Sugar Bear and June go at it pretty hard too.
“You’re always ************ cheating,” June says.
Sugar Bear comes back right in June’s face. You just know it’s gotten physical at some point in the past.
It’s impossible to understand what they hell they’re saying as they scream at each other. I’m guessing that no amount of translation software could help the producers figure it out either or they would have had captions. When English is your native tongue and you require captions to be understandable… #NuffSaid #SavetheChildren
“Do not let him back you in the corner, you push his ass into that corner,” Sarah coaches June. I’m not sure how I feel about the gender specific team bias, and the heckling going on. I’ve not really seen that too many times on this show.
The guys start cheering for Sugar Bear in a way that creeps me out. And Jim and Elizabeth are acting like managers in the corners.
“We designed the exercise to see how our couples fight,” Jim says. “Fighting itself is not bad if done correctly.”
“Their arguments don’t move toward any resolution and are unnecessarily hurtful.” Elizabeth says they’re going to show them what they’re doing to their relationships by the way they fight.
“Golly, it was really disturbing,” Sean says. Does he really talk like that in real life? Is he from Mayberry?
June’s happy the rest of the world got to see the “real” Sugar Bear. He’s not so happy about it. I’m intrigued.
Benzino and Althea go at it, but I don’t need to write the quotes on this one because we’ve been listening to them fight since the first day, through every episode. Apparently Thinkfactory Media agreed because they shortened them up.
Sundy doesn’t find Cedric attractive, and she’s mean. And she’s irresponsible with money and he’s the provider and he gets no credit. Somebody remind me WHY he stays with her.
Sean and Katherine seem fake. Katherine actually tries to fight about her jealousy over the women who are his fan stalkers, but Sean is laughing as he answers her. He’s not taking the exercise seriously. He earns no respect from the other campers.
“I wanna be able to talk it out,” Sean doesn’t like these screaming exercises.
“To me, Sean throwing in the towel just empowers the women more,” Benzino says.
That’s EXACTLY what I meant when I said I don’t think they should have made it a boys-against-girls drill. You’re not supposed to be trying to get all the men to agree that your wife is a problem.
When it’s over, most of the couples leave the ring sorta laughing, and I’m thinking to myself “these people are freaks” because if I exchanged words like that with my husband, I wouldn’t be laughing and smiling.
The exceptions are Ink and Sarah – they’re still fighting. Like any normal couple, they can’t walk away from the s**t they said to each other in the ring. Just my opinion. Of course, they don’t fight fair.
“Bitch you dirty. Dirty-ass bitch,” Ink yells at Sarah. Ouch!
Elizabeth and Jim have to talk him down. But that only lasts til he sees Sarah again. That’s when we see Ink is just putting the puzzle pieces together and realizing she actually did cheat on him with the guy he accused her of… yikes!
“Ink said some things that were below the belt and are gonna stick with Sarah for a long time,” Sean says.
“Sean’s a doormat,” Inks says in an interview. At least, they feel the same way about each other. And respect each other about the same.
The next exercise is a result of the scores they achieved fighting in the ring.
“We’re in a canyon – what the hell are we gonna do with these rocks?” June says when she see piles of rocks on the ground.
Turns out they were given a point every time they fought dirty. Every point they earned is a point against both of them.
“You’re all losers,” Jim tells them.
“There are consequences for fighting dirty,” Elizabeth says.
“Together you will bear the accumulated weight of your negative words,” Jim explains the couples will be shackled together and have to drag the number of points they earned TOGETHER in pounds of rocks up what appears to be a really long steep hill.
Ink and Sarah are f**ked with 42 pounds of angry weight to drag, but they work together (better than any other couple) to figure out how to get up the hill as quickly and painlessly as possible.
Sean and Katherine drag the least weight, of course, with 16 pounds.
“This is not a race. It’s about the two of you working as a couple to resolve these issues,” Elizabeth reminds them.
Just as they’re starting up the hill, Sarah admits she’s been text cheating on Ink and I expect the s**t to hit the fan. But it didn’t. They worked through it. Maybe I don’t give this couple enough credit because I’m not from their world so I don’t understand how they could act the way they do to people they say they love.
Ink and Sarah figure out that going backwards works better. Maybe that’s their problem. They do everything backwards.
Some of the couples fought all the way up the hill as they were dragging rocks.
“I think they learned more walking up this hill than they’ve learned in the entire boot camp,” Jim jokes, and the other directors agree.
“The last person I want to see is Judge Toler,” Sundy says when they tell them to go get cleaned up for evaluations. I sorta feel the same way, but the judge was less awful this week than in previous episodes.
Ink and Sarah are up first. She takes Ink to task for never trusting anything.
“They’ve got no room for error. You don’t give an inch,” Judge Lynn Toler says.
Then she gets real.
“Tonight’s the night, Sugar Bear… you need to tell her the truth – all of it…” Toler says. And he does!
Sugar Bear admits to cheating on June – WHO CHEATS WITH A TOOTHLESS MAN THAT FARTS ON TELEVISION??? – I’m finding this absolutely fascinating, and disturbing.
“I’m here now to change that. But that is the onlyest one I’ve ever cheated with. The rest of them I just talk on the phone and text,” Sugar Bear says. Cuz that makes it okay, right?
“I think it’s been more than one,” June says he gets defensive when he’s lying.
Judge Toler tells Althea EXACTLY what she needs to hear.
“Benzino, I saw you pick up all those rocks and carry all that weight. Althea, you were nowhere,” Toler says.
She tells Althea that she gives off nothing but negative energy.
Sundy and Cedric spend too much time talking about what they don’t like about each other. I agree, but I think most of the blame lies with Sundy. She’s just mean and selfish.
The advice to Sean and Katherine is kinda lame cuz they’re not giving her much to work with.
After the evals are over, it gets MUCH more interesting. After Sugar Bear takes off, Mama June tells the other campers he’s lying.
“I believe it was more than one. The text messages that I have are men and women,” Mama June says. #OMG
June tells Sugar Bear that she’s concerned about messages he’s exchanging with men and he flips.
“I ain’t been with no f**king men,” Sugar walks away in as much of a huff as he ever shows. Equal to the most enthusiasm he ever shows. But it turns out, he’s not telling the truth.
Next week, all the s**t hits the fan and everything goes insane and I CAN’T WAIT!!!
Althea hits Benzino and he says she’s going to jail.
And Sugar Bear admits he’s been “experimenting” with men. That’s not news any wife wants to receive at Marriage Boot Camp. Good grief.