Duggarpalooza!

First of all, I'd like to remind everyone that "I Left My Duggar in San Francisco" and "Duggars on Safari" air tonight on TLC. The San Francisco episode should be particularly interesting as Jim Bob and Michelle visit a head shop where they comment on the "funky glassware."

Now, on to the wedding! "Once a Bride, Always a Duggar" and "A Very Duggar Wedding" aired on Sunday night on TLC.

The first was a half-hour show featuring Josh and Anna's wedding preparations, including a trip to Florida for Josh and his sisters.

The good:

• The older Duggar girls got to travel sans-parents!

The bad:

• The older Duggar girls, plus Anna, were bossed around by Josh as they prepared for the wedding.
• Anna obviously only married Josh to get out of the trailer she was living in with her parents and 8 siblings.
• A "fancy restaurant" to the Duggars is one with silverware and glassware.

The funny:

• The photo pillow Anna made for Josh with a giant picture of them together. (Did he use it to practice for his first kiss?!)
• Josh called the restaurant they went to "Eye-talian" and couldn't pronounce the names of any of the foreign foods like lasagna or fettuccini.
• The waiter at the restaurant was crazy! (And yes folks, he's for real.)
• The Duggar girls set some sort of trap to spray Josh with soda when he opened his car door..?

The next show was an hour-long special about the wedding itself, from about the day before. But the main focus was sex! For such a modest family, they really put it all out there, don't they?

The good:

• Anna and the Duggar sisters ended up making some beautiful bridesmaid dresses.
• Erin Bates played the piano wonderfully.
• John-David speaks! And is funny! (Is Erin Bates lined up for him?)

The bad:

• Jim Bob's "talk" with Josh, which mostly consisted of giving him a Christian book on wedding-night prep, and telling him to listen to whatever his silly wife wants to blather on about.
• Pa Keller's pick-and-choose translation of the bible. "Jesus changed the water to wine at the wedding. That word really means grape juice. He changed the water to grape juice."
• The hair!
• The "transfer of authority" from Pa Keller to Josh. Poor Anna will never be under her own authority, I guess.
• Josh's "serenade." I guess he has an okay voice, I just hate when people sing like that.
• Josh went into their wedding night hotel room first, leaving Anna to drag the suitcases behind her.

The funny:

• The engagement re-enactment skit. They got every detail down to the half-hug! And I loved the lines, "It's her birthday, give her some lemon in her water," and "It's a half-carrot [crunch]."
• Jim Bob equates sex to Legos.
• John-David wiring the car brakes to the horn!
• There was rampant pickle-eating!
• The first kiss, which I highly doubt was worthy of the sound effects they played for it (including church bells, choirs, and fireworks).

And no, there was no pregnancy announcement at the end. Darn.

Duggar #18 Born December 18!

Just in case you haven't heard the news yet, Duggar #18, Jordyn-Grace Makiya, was born December 18th. She was due January 1, but was delivered via c-section because she was all sideways and stuff. Apparently this is common with mothers who've been pregnant a lot - their uterus gets so loose that the baby can just flip all over. I am very impressed with their TV editors, as TLC is advertising that their "birth special" will air Monday at 10 PM. (Hopefully this is an episode about Jordyn-Grace's birth, rather than composite of all the previous birth specials, which so far is all we're seeing on the commercials. But after 18, are they really all that different?)

17 Kids and Counting: "Duggars Learn to Drive"

Was having almost an entire episode dedicated to Jinger a shout-out to her fans? It was great to hear her described as "spunky," and Michelle kind of said (in not so many words) that she's a drama queen. Sounds like she still has some personality left in her! Free Jinger! What was up with their training technique - they don't do time-outs, but teach the kids to sit still in a chair? Jackson was not looking happy in that chair, by the way, though he and Johannah were cute when they had their "violin lesson." The episode opened with yet another product-placement moment when Michelle was shown cleaning with Pledge or something. I hope everyone caught it, because it's probably the only time you'll ever see her clean something! (At least until the older girls are married and gone.) Michelle commented that it's difficult to keep the house clean with so many people, especially "little people." Was that a dig on the Roloffs? Also, we had the rare treat of getting a brief interview with second son (and potentially autistic?) John David. He seemed normal, and he got his driver's license on the first try. Meanwhile, Jinger was in the car by herself with an unrelated man! And a TV camera. Even though she admitted to speeding and not reading signs, she still passed and got her license. That's good, it would've been really embarrassing to not get it while on TV (cough cough, Jeremy Roloff, cough).

17 Kids and Counting: “Trading Places, Duggar Style"

The promos for this episode made it sound like the Duggar kids really traded jurisdictions (that’s Duggar-ese for “chores”), but it was more like “boys make a mess with soup while the girls learn auto maintenance.” Plus there was a commercial at the end for Scrubbing Bubbles, starring Jim Bob, Josh, and John David. (Don’t tell me that wasn’t product placement - who holds up a bottle like that with the label facing forward and everything while they’re just talking or standing around?) I did appreciate that the producers asked Michelle a couple of the real questions that have been brought up about their jurisdictions and the amount of housework that the girls do: did she think their allocation of chores reinforced gender stereotypes, and did she think she was raising the girls to be stay-at-home moms? Michelle’s answer was awful, though: the girls like doing those chores because gender stereotypes are “innate,” and also “most” of them want, in their hearts, to be SAHMs (because it’s the only career they know of for women?!).

So, the little boys did laundry (and they were using brand-name detergent - what happened to their homemade laundry soap from last week?) while the girls put on plaid flannel shirts over their long skirts and learned to change the oil in the car. Then the boys "helped" Michelle cook green beans and Tater Tot Casserole for lunch while the girls were "stranded" 200 yards from the house and left to change a flat tire on their own. The two oldest boys were nowhere to be seen during the chore swap, except when they drove the girls out to the tire change spot in a Corvette..? (Bet Josh "borrowed" that from the used car lot.)

The Duggars' double-standards just make me so angry. Jim Bob and Michelle kissed before they were married! Michelle wore pants! She worked outside the home (first in JB's mom's yogurt shop, then with JB as a real estate agent, and she even mentioned last night that she occasionally had to drive a tow truck when they ran a towing business)! Not to mention, they both got to attend public school, where Michelle was even a cheerleader!

For those of you interested in this type of fundie entertainment, TLC will be airing a special this Sunday on Purity Balls.

17 Kids and Counting: "Cheaper by the Duggars"

Last week I speculated that this week's episode, "Cheaper by the Duggars," would feature such money saving tips as shopping at Aldi's and thrift stores, and getting TLC to build your house. Well, two out of three right isn't bad! After hearing how all the kids' shoes have fallen apart (one girl had covered the heels of her boots with duct tap!), we saw Michelle take the younger boys shoe shopping at a thrift store. There are ten boys in this family. They left with thirty pairs of shoes. Is that three new pairs per person? Whatever, they were $1/pair. We saw the older girls making laundry soap, which they've been doing for a year now, after getting the recipe from another family. We saw Jim Bob collecting rent from one of their commercial properties, and he showed off their biggest money maker, the cell phone tower on their property. And he proudly proclaimed he had a full signal while standing nearby. Of course we saw the shopping trip to Aldi's, where they ignored the urine/bleach smell (at least if it's anything like the Aldi's by me) and bought $3000 worth of groceries in 11 shopping carts. Oh and also they were being followed by a Korean film crew, which the TLC crew was filming. They're being featured in Korea to inspire people to have kids, I guess, since they have a low birth rate. When Jim Bob met them, he said, he told them his was a "typical American family." Har har, Jim Bob. If that were true, why would they have chosen you out of the entire country? No, they realize you're abnormal, that's why your wife's on TV in Korea. A neighbor from town, Mr. Charlie (?), set up one long row of a vegetable garden for the Duggar kids to help tend and get some veggies from. They kept saying how they loved cucumbers, but I think we know from past Duggar specials that what they really love is pickles! Finally, the most shocking revelation in the entire show: the older Duggar girls perm their hair! Hello, what about your countenances, ladies? Anyway, pretty much everything they showed seems to be in response to various comments made on TWoP and elsewhere on the internet (especially Jim Bob interviewing on what he thinks their environmental impact is, but also "how do they get their income?" and "why don't they grown their own vegetables?"). If this trend holds, based on current TWoP discussion, we should see them doing some volunteer work in a future season of their show.

17 Kids and Counting: "When Big Families Collide" and "Bates vs. Duggars Smackdown"

Hi everybody! New contributor Lola here, writing today about the latest episodes of the Duggar Family's new series, 17 Kids and Counting. Just the latest in TLC's "abnormally large family freakshow," this series of half-hour shows is more of a "reality TV" look at the super-Christian Duggar family of Arkansas, who until now we've only seen in a few hour-long specials and an occasional news appearance when mom, Michelle, pops out yet another little "blessing." (Without getting too in-depth into their beliefs, the Duggars are part of the Quiver Full movement, which believes that children are blessings from the lord and people shouldn't do anything to inhibit getting pregnant. Which is fine and all, except most QF families end up with maybe 5-6 kids. The Duggars actively try to get pregnant as soon as possible after each birth, which is why there are a kajillion of them.)

In their two latest episodes (shown back-to-back), the Duggars received a visit from the Bates family from Tennessee. With 16 kids and one on the way, they have almost caught up to the Duggars (though actually, there are two sets of Duggar twins, so by number of pregnancies, the Bates are winning). If you thought the Duggars' uniform of khakis and polos for the boys and long skirts for the girls was conservative, take a look at the Bates! Okay, khakis and polos again for the boys, but those poor girls are dressing like Little Clown on the Prairie! The Bates women thought if they wore dresses "it would be pleasing to the lord," so one of the older girls sews the same pattern in various sizes and color combinations so everyone can wear a matching dress with a giant collar and ruffled trim. However, while the Duggars currently dress in what they refer to as "Modern Modest," it wasn't too long ago that they were all rocking the big frilly collars as well.

Anyway, some other stuff happened, the two families did some good Christian activities like skydiving and paintballing, but probably the funniest part was when they went to Silver Dollar City to see people in old-timey costumes demonstrate blacksmithing and candy making. The Bates girls' dresses were the same as the old timey costumes! (Meanwhile, Jinger Duggar was shown rolling her eyes at the candy demo. Free Jinger!)

Coming up next week: see how the Duggars save money on necessities like food, clothing, and shelter! (Based on past specials, I'm going to guess it involves trips to Aldi's and the thrift store, and getting TLC to build you a house.)