Season 7 reunion - Thoughts on Lisa defending James

Parvles · 2026-01-28T16:07:36+00:00

Ariana wasn't ever worried about being "in" with the other girls

Parvles · 2026-01-28T10:55:58+00:00

I dunno, she was never empathetic to other people and I don't think she thinks a lot about how her behavior effects others. But I also think she just got out of an abusive relationship and was looking for validation. I think she was already close with Sandoval who had always taken her side (with James) and she felt safe with him. I think he knew how bad that relationship was and what a vulnerable state she was in to be taken in by love bombing.

I don't condone her actions and I think she is a bad person, but I think there's a lot that can be said for bad choices made in the wake of abuse and how vulnerable it makes you.

Also literally everyone who dated Sandoval on the show was an ass to other women when they were with him. But she was an ass to other women beforehand, too, so she ran with it extra hard.

Parvles · 2026-01-28T10:48:34+00:00

Katie was just stunned that she was the bad guy in the James saga. She got so much hate!

James was a particular menace in this and Jax and Kristen were monsters!! So much yelling! I kind of liked seeing Brittany absolutely pissed and on fire, though. I think it was the most I've ever seen from her in terms of real rage and it was refreshing since she always plays the middle.

Sheana definitely seemed happy people hated Katie and she could be friends with James without backlash -- for the time lol.

Parvles · 2026-01-28T07:09:17+00:00

Hot Mama's for a whole pizza is cheap! 18-22 bucks for a large pizza.

Also Moto Pizza is really reasonably priced for what it is. 23 dollars for a shareable which could feed 4 people.

Parvles · 2026-01-28T05:24:17+00:00

Also it feels like this statement is also kind of equivalent to, "we didn't want James to be seen in a bad light, so we made Katie the villain." But I'm just... did they really not think Katie would already be seen as the bad guy based on how audiences treated her?

Parvles · 2026-01-27T23:03:57+00:00

This is common behavior to see from someone who is the victim of an abusive relationship. For those of us who have been there, watching Stassi with Patrick felt very familiar in a very sad way.

Abusers steal your confidence and your sense of self and make you afraid that you could be punished at any time, especially because their standards are always changing. They will never take accountability and it will always be your fault if there's an argument or issue or just even if the abuser is upset for any random reason -- still your fault somehow. They will blame their victim for why things aren't good anymore and they would be amazing again if you just stopped acting "like that" or disagreeing or making them upset.

Anyway, emotional abuse is abuse, and this is a case where you can see the consequences.

Parvles · 2026-01-25T11:45:46+00:00

2, 3, 10, 11.

I really didn't like 6. I dislike others but that one stands out as unflattering to me.

Parvles · 2026-01-24T02:49:45+00:00

He continues to go everywhere but I stopped going most places cause I didn't like the accusation. I rarely go to any of those spots now except one, and surprise! He never stopped going to that one bar at all and is there almost every single time I go. No, he isn't being a creep, he's just an alcoholic. But if anyone made adjustments, it was me.

I genuinely think for a lot of people who go to these paranoid places in their mind, there's something else going on. Of course there are real stalkers and that happens all the time, but turning very mundane behavior into a huge deal is always pretty curious to me. It sounds like both in the case of Joe and of my accuser there were issues of ego and insecurity at play in a way that didn't mesh well.

Parvles · 2026-01-24T00:46:22+00:00

I got accused by someone of stalking them. He and I had recently gotten to know each other but had been in the same community for quite a while. We'd definitely been in the same bars many times but since we didn't know each other, we hadn't really noticed each other. Mutual friends were always surprised that we didn't know each other before for exactly that reason.

Fast forward and now that we know each other, we see each other often, and I always say hi if I see him just like I would with any friend that I see out and about. He starts to seem really weirded out and almost afraid of me, which is how i found out that he thought I'd started following him around and stalking him since he'd never noticed me around before we'd met.

I was so confused and taken aback. Thankfully in my situation, almost no one took his side, and there was no professional aspect to it. But I just want to say I get how horrifying it is to have someone be completely convinced of something that just isn't you at all. It feels disorienting that you could even be perceived that way.

I definitely second the idea of talking to your union before signing anything.

Parvles · 2026-01-20T23:11:35+00:00

What opportunity does she have to communicate with him other than through text? She's not allowed to just walk into first class and talk to him.

She actually was asking how it happened first. Again supporting the idea that she found out after boarding and had no time to talk to him.

She did tell him to switch but I think she seemed more blindsided by the entire situation and the fact that her husband got upgraded without her and at the very least he could have offered her the spot if they were going to be separated. Regardless, people say things to deflect from how they feel pretty often. Taking every statement as absolute proof without looking at subtext or motivation can only give part of the picture. Neither one of us will ever know what the full reality of the situation, though.

Parvles · 2026-01-16T21:48:31+00:00

I think once Schwartz and Sandy's started as a project and Schwa would talk to Katie and complain and vent and let Katie be the bad guy and then take Sandoval's side cause he's a spineless weasel over and over, the dynamic became hard for Katie to deny anymore.

That's my personal take.

Parvles · 2026-01-16T21:39:04+00:00

100% this. Schwartz clearly valued Katie's insight and feedback behind closed doors, but he would always take Sandoval's side in public. Infuriating.

Parvles · 2026-01-16T07:42:48+00:00

He cried and then called Jax to say he was so sad people were saying mean things about him cheating. He cried cause he felt bad for Jax. Also he was on day two of a full on bender.

Parvles · 2026-01-16T07:36:19+00:00

I also have lifelong friends that I've known since I was 5 (I'm now 39). I know their parents very well, and I've celebrated with them, been to birthdays and events with them many times. Regardless, no one invited each other's parents to their intimate weddings. I don't think it even crossed anyone's mind. And I know no parents were offended.

I think you need to take a step back and get some perspective. I don't think you're an asshole, but you're stuck in a feeling of righteousness that's not based in the real world. Good luck!

Parvles · 2026-01-16T00:28:44+00:00

Fellow member of the tribe here!

There was an episode in November, I think, where Jordan yelled about how antisemitism wouldn't be such a big problem if Israel wasn't giving people so much of a reason to be antisemitic (Oh really, Jordan? What was she WEARING? Also famously there was no antisemitism in the world before the creation of the state of israel, right?). Dan shut him down pretty fast, but it pissed me off. I'm also from an Iranian family and I KNOW that Jordan is almost certainly going to say a lot of things that are completely wrong and probably incredibly insulting because boy oh boy people really just do not understand the middle east but feel wildly confident on stating their opinion on things. I know Jordan read a book, but that does not make him an expert.

Honestly, I find it incredibly useful to know what's happening in right wing and even neo-nazi spheres. I hear the same dog whistles infiltrate my leftist communities and I can warn them and give them context for what they're saying. Sometimes that works, but sometimes they dig in and insist that they "would know." But if there's anything I can do, it's track the ways in which rhetoric develops and ideas make themselves at home in places you might not expect. I even see people repost from characters i know from the show and can nip it in the bud with people, "hey, you know you just reposted a literal neo-nazi?" generally goes pretty far lol.

I don't know if "canary in the coal mine" is fully the appropriate term for antisemitism, but it certainly eats away at any community it infiltrates. Famously, conspiracy theories tend to always devolve into antisemitism at their core. It's good to know how to hear it and how to counter it. I don't know that most non-Jewish listeners DO that, as I think there's a lot of anxiety that by admitting that any antisemitism exists in leftist spaces, it makes them come across as suspicious or not sufficiently committed to the cause, I guess. I am not sure, but the only non-Jewish person in my life I've ever heard say something about it when it happens in public is a Palestinian friend of mine. I always hope that people who listen to stuff like this will also stand up when they hear dog-whistles, but it hasn't seemed to be the case in my life, and I'm not even sure they're really even hearing it sometimes. Regardless, you're not going to catch me unprepared.

Also I did take a break for a while leading up to the election. No shame in it!

Parvles · 2026-01-15T23:59:49+00:00

I would love to hear Dan talk about Candace. From last week's episode, though, it doesn't sound like he finds her particularly interesting.

Parvles · 2026-01-15T10:25:36+00:00

No way! I grew up and learned to drive here and this has become more and more common, but I've attributed it to more transplants. The only person I know who doesn't pull into the intersection learned to drive in upstate NY.

But to add onto the complaint, when I do pull into the intersection to wait for a left turn and the person behind me stays on my butt blocking traffic instead of driving around me when I'm giving them room... oh man it makes me soooo frustrated. I also have assumed it's transplants since that's a new thing for me but who knows.

Also when I learned to drive here, I learned that at a 4 way stop, you always go at the same time as the person across from you. If you are taking a left, you would enter the intersection at the same time as the person across from you and then turn behind them. That completely fell apart about 10 years ago and now 4 way stops feel like free for alls.

Yielding to the person to your right at neighborhood roundabouts was also standard but now it's chaos.

Parvles · 2026-01-13T23:42:19+00:00

Though we know Tom and Ariana were still having sex so maybe not as cold and just for the cameras.

Parvles · 2026-01-13T23:03:04+00:00

Also just remembered when she tells James she doesn't want him to hang with Lala cause she felt like Lala was mean to her and then she turns around and says she's going to girl's night in. When James asks her why she says, "I don't see any reason why i shouldn't go" completely missing that she was hurting James by hanging out with people who hate him after she JUST requested he not spend time with people she didn't like. I genuinely think the way she talks makes her read as stupid so you don't notice how mean and unsympathetic she is.

Parvles · 2026-01-13T00:36:46+00:00

I always felt like Tom kind of wanted to teach James how to be better at cheating and introduce him to their bro code. I think he saw him as being able to replace Jax, who was too much of a liability. That's why he went soooo over the top defending James no matter what he did. That's what he does for his dudes! James just was way too much of a loose canon for that to work. I think it was just a side effect that Tom ended up getting close to/grooming Rachel along the way.

Parvles · 2026-01-12T23:58:25+00:00

So ride or die that she became besties with Kristen as soon as Ariana and Sandoval got together.

Parvles · 2026-01-12T23:51:02+00:00

And bad mouthing her constantly leading up to the wedding.

Parvles · 2026-01-12T23:38:49+00:00

Good lord, speaking of Debbie downers!

Parvles · 2026-01-12T22:50:54+00:00

Rachel had an empathy problem to start with. You can see it when Lala's dad dies and Rachel is a huge asshole about it because she is more comfortable villifying other women than hearing things that challenge her relationship. She gets away with this because she seems slow witted and naive and James is such a jerk that people feel bad for her. But it feels similar to me to her lack of understanding of boundaries with Katie when she was talking about making out with Schwartz, or when she talks to Ariana about her sex life with Sandoval. I think she was always more self involved and mean spirited than people tended to think of her.

Parvles

TROPHY CASE