Episode Report Card Potes: A | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT The Right Ingredientses
By Potes | Season 3 | Episode 8 | Aired on 05.30.2011
Meanwhile, Jacqueline's mom and dad have come to visit, and her mom is totally making cookies from a package. Jacqueline asks her dad for a little advice about Ashley, saying that she's an entitled nit with no work ethic and a major attitude problem. Basically, if Ashley made the slightest bit of an effort, Jacqueline would want to help her more. Jacqueline's dad asks if Ashley's ever heard her story. Jacqueline shares with us that she and Ashley's dad met when they were seventeen or eighteen. We get pictorial evidence, and boy is Jacqueline unrecognizable. Her face is like a third of the length that it is now. The couple got married and had Ashley by twenty, and divorced when Ashley was just over a year and a half old. Ashley's dad left, Jacqueline dumped all of his stuff in the courtyard, and then she moved back in with her parents. Jacqueline says that it was difficult, but she was working at the time and, one assumes, managed to get to her job on time. Ashley doesn't do that, which is frustrating.
Jacqueline's dad points out that Ashley doesn't have the same background. She came from a broken home, with an absentee dad, and then was uprooted across the country into the Manzos of all families. Her dad is also remarried with a family, and she has four brothers in Texas. Jacqueline cries as she tells us that Ashley is struggling with coming from a broken family, and it hurts because it's kind of her fault. I don't know. I know plenty of people with divorced parents who aren't quite as jerky all the time. Ashley talks to her half brother, whose name is, improbably, Anden Holmes. She tells us that she feels like she doesn't fully belong with her family in Texas, because she's only there a few times a year. She cries a little as she says that she has one little brother who's really good at football, and she misses all of his games. Sounds like a plus to me. Back in the living room, Jacqueline's dad tells her to support Ashley as much as she can, noting that she'll have to have the patience of Job. He assures her that it will be worth it one day. Jacqueline's dad is a glass half full kind of guy.
After a break, Kathy goes to visit Caroline. She's carrying a giant bouquet of flowers and a picnic basket. The hell? Caroline is wearing a bedazzled black sheer blouse, which doesn't bode well. She brings Kathy a glass of wine, and then stares at her in what can only be described as an unimpressed manner. Kathy tells Caroline that it was not her intention to cause a ruckus in the Brownstone, and that she doesn't want to drag her into something that doesn't concern her. Kathy explains that she was coming from a place of love with an interest in reconciliation. Caroline clearly does not give two shits. Furthermore, she felt bad for Teresa, because Teresa is like her mentally challenged puppy. Also, Kathy intimated that she abandoned her kids, which was a low blow. Even though Caroline and Teresa aren't BFFs, they're Fs enough that Caroline doesn't appreciate someone coming into her house and bashing her. She tells Kathy that she doesn't want to know about the Gorga drama, or even to hear about it. She doesn't even know Kathy, and doesn't want their family issues to cloud her judgment of her or Melissa. Kathy and her pug eyes tells us that she's a grown woman, and doesn't need to win anyone's approval. What's she doing there, then? Caroline's final word on the situation is that Caveman Joe and Teresa need to accept the fact that they were rotten to each other. They have to fix this themselves, and then everything else will fall into place. Then they can scream at each other over family dinners instead of at carefully choreographed and filmed events, just as the Lord intended.