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Bridezillas: Movin' on Up
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So I'm at my internship the other week talking to some of the other (much younger) interns, and one was talking about looking forward to her 21st birthday. It's been about... well let's just say it's been awhile*since I was looking forward to my 21st birthday and I wondered aloud what I had to look forward to besides more humiliation and then death. An intern who'd already turned 21 pointed out that you can rent cars at 25. Well, I've already*experienced the thrill of cruising around in an uninsured Taurus with a tape deck and manual locks and windows. Miss 20-year-old insisted my wedding and babies*would be the next big things. I would have bought that until this past weekend when two things happened.
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One: While enjoying a delicious slice of pepperoni pizza at Presidential Pizza, I watched a 4-year-old hit an old man with a chair, break a glass, purposely turn over her drink, and attempt to choke herself. Not looking forward to that. Two: I watched "Bridezillas" - a show featuring women so terrible, tacky, and loud, that I don't know how they landed a man and convinced him to stick around. It's "My Super Sweet 16" with many extra years, pounds, and psychoses. I have a lot of bitchery in me, but if that's what it takes to be a bride, spinsterhood sounds more fun and better for my blood pressure.
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In the latest episode, the smug, mocking, lady narrator introduces us to 31-year-old Brandi from Dallas. The narrator purrs that Brandi is a "booty-dancing bride-to-be." And where does a woman with such a classy description meet men? The club, of course. Brandi drawls about her first encounter with bill collector Mark: "He grabbed my awr-um and whispered in my ear 'damn you have a nice ass.'" Ew. I usually punch guys who grab me by my arm in the club. If you want my attention, get a nice handful of ass.
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The charming tales continue as Brandi explains she forced Mark to propose to her after she game him some "good lovin'" SEVEN YEARS after he attacked her awr-um in the club. Why the long wait? Perhaps to accumulate and combine their finances to fund an affordable wedding and buy a home? No, they're pretty much broke. But because Brandi has "high class taste with a Wal-Mart budget," they've blown their cash on a place called the Empire Room on the 48th floor of a Dallas building. Other examples of Brandi's high-class taste:
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- While ordering her wedding cakes (two cakes are more economical than one, obvs) she asks the baker to make the groom's cake in the shape of a vagina. It's also supposed to say something along the lines of "your last piece." The baker wisely refuses to get her fingers dirty with the vagina cake, although I would love to know what flavor it would have been (strawberry maybe?)
-Brandi has also choreographed the bride and groom's first dance herself. I know from the episode that aired in a re-run before this one (I watched accidentally, I swear) that the dance involves a lot of jiggling ass, bending over, and yelling "two step! two step!" You know, classy people always go for that Lil John music video feel at their weddings.
-Brandi also describes herself as putting the "B in bridezilla" and says she's like an x-rated movie -- raw and uncut.
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Our bitchy narrator returns and lets us know "first up for the broke bride" (meow!) is a day at the spa.*Have you ever gotten a pedicure? What do you think about while your feet are soaking in a tub that hundreds of other feet have soaked in, and a perfect stranger is hacking away at your toenails? If you're a classy gal like Brandi, you're thinking about fried chicken. She calls up her fiance, and he shows up with Popeye's combo meals. Brandi reprimands him for being ghetto as he sits down in the chair next to her to eat. He happily exclaims: "we movin' on up, huh?" That's right baby, to the deluxe wedding ceremony in the sky!
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If you're like me and have an unreasonable hatred of other people's feet, you may be gagging by now... But don't worry, the classiest part is coming. Once her feet are done, the manicurist gets to work on Brandi's hands. But something is bothering Brandi. Something is irritating her. She asks the manicurist for a fake nail. The unsuspecting woman digs into her box of plastic nail tips and hands one to Brandi, who then sticks it in her mouth and uses it to dig out a piece of chicken stuck in between her teeth. She scoops the chicken off her tongue with the nail, and pulls the whole white chunky mess out of her mouth.
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Do you ever wonder how people watch themselves on television? Do reality show participants sit at home and cringe when they see how ridiculous they look? Or do they pat themselves on the back for being smart enough to trick someone into putting them on the air?
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We leave Klassi Brandi to her chicken, booty-dancing, and wedding planning and take a little trip to Florida where 26-year-old Kristen is about to marry her "superfly fiance" Tim (narrator's description, not mine). I'm not sure what makes him "superfly." He works in a warehouse, wears a big, gold chain, backwards baseball cap, and has facial hair in a razor-thin strip from sideburn to sideburn. Whenever I meet guys with this style, I automatically call them "chin-strap" in my head (everyone gets a nickname in my head).
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So Kristen explains how she trapped Chin Strap into marrying her, and we get another charming story: they met in high school, she was two years older and had a car, so he started dating her. They broke up when her mom threatened to disown her. 4 1/2 years later they got back together. Kristen accidently-on purpose got preggers. Now they're getting married. I need to call my bookie and start placing bets on these couples lasting. I'm pretty sure "divorce within 5 years" across the board would work. With any luck, we can watch on Divorce Court.
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Though Kristen lives in Florida, I can't help but think her nasally, whiney voice has a tinge of New York or Boston to it. Whatever it is, it's grating and when she starts describing her wedding theme, I just hear over and over again "modern Victorian glam... And bling."*Ugh. What kind of taste do you call this? No class with a Renaissance fair budget?
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Kristen hires a hair stylist to practice her wedding day Victorian-bling-glam-modern-with-an-olde-fashioned-twist hair. I think it looks pretty -- swept back with long spiral curls. Enter "Momzilla." Kristen's mother Arlene literally looks like some sort of lizard or dinosaur. She's a rather large-athletic-looking woman with a thick, lined neck, large nose, beady eyes, no eyebrows, long red nails*and a mannish crewcut. Of course someone whose hair was cut*with the number 3 blade of an electic razor*thinks the soft, pretty hair looks terrible.
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She passive-aggresively questions the stylist about how long she's been doing hair, then talks about how horrible it is until Kristen eventually begins to hate it herself. Hmmm... very smart Momzilla. My mom relies on guilt to influence my life. You just target your kid's low self-esteem. Kristen becomes so self-conscious of her hair that she insists on wearing a dish-rag tied over her head as she heads home to shower.
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Back in Dallas, it's two days before her wedding and Brandi is broke. So she calls up someone named Miss Shirley -- the payday queen. Miss Shirley advises Brandi that to get a payday loan she needs a ton of paperwork including info about her bank accounts and pay stubs. Can I just say that I would love to have Miss Shirley in my life. I imagine that she wears a turban and sits on her front porch with her cat just waiting for her cordless phone to ring so she can dispense advice. And if you come to her for a loan, she takes you through a beaded curtain into her living room where you sit on plastic-covered furniture and work out a deal. And if you can't pay her back? Well, no one doesn't pay Miss Shirley back.
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Anywhoo, Brandi doesn't have the paperwork she needs, but goes to the payday loan place anyway to try to charm someone into giving her $1000. (Can I*also say that I think payday loan companies are really a scourge on poor people who can't get legitimate loans and can't afford to be put in any more debt? OK, off my soapbox.) Needless to say, Brandi doesn't get the loan and angrily takes us through her handbag. We see her birth contol, make-up, gifts, church program... her point is, she can't fit paystubs in her already stuffed bag, so how dare the payday loan clerk request them. How dare he?!
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In Florida, Kristen is getting more support from her family, mostly because her mom seems to be benefitting from the wedding as much as Kristen is. Momzilla is hosting a bridal shower and everything's going ok until it's time to open gifts. At that point, Kristen isn't getting enough attention and goes looking for her mother, bleating throughout the large house "Mah? Mah?! MAH?!" She finds Mah outside having a smoke. After wrangling everyone together, Kristen opens a few gifts, but everyone starts leaving to get more drinks. Kristen starts crying, and while this happens, I notice that Momzilla has a giant suit of armor in the hallway of her tacky, tacky house. I guess they have some sort of olden-days fetish. These people are totally nouveau riche.
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Anyway, Kristen eventually finishes opening her gifts. Ending with a gift from Momzilla. No, she didn't get Kristen a corset and pantaloons. Momzilla had a pair of her own earrings covered in platinum. Kristen seems touched, until Momzilla lets her know she'll want the earrings back after the wedding.
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Kristen's wedding also gives Momzilla a*chance to let out her inner beauty queen -- who must have traveled a long way to get out of the deep recesses of that lizard-like body. Momzilla has gone to a pageant store and bought a tight, sparkly, Barbie-pink dress that costs twice as much as Kristen's wedding dress. I get the feeling that on some weekends*you could find Momzilla in the junior department at Macy's, squeezing herself into tube tops and skin-tight jeans. Momzilla loves her pink prom dress, but complains that there's bunching in the crotchal region. Silly Momzilla, every drag queen knows you tuck to the back. But the ill-fitting gown can't bring her down. Kristen says Momzilla's pretty excited because someone at the store told her she should enter the Mrs. America pageant. Kristen does not like this, because she wanted to enter the pageant right after her honeymoon (and now we know why she's marrying Chin Strap).*Note to WE TV: I had never heard of you or watched you before, but if you follow these women on this journey that will inevitably end in heartbreak, I promise I will be a faithful viewer of that trainwreck. Smooches.
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So back in Texas, Klassi Brandi is getting closer and closer to her booty music video of a wedding, and fiancee Mark is on his way out for some bachelor party fun. He tells us it will involve plenty of nekkidness. Brandi lays down some rules for the man she trusts enough to spend the rest of her life with: 1) "keep the hoes out your face." 2)Be home by 3am because the only things open in Dallas after 3 "are chicken and legs." And I officially will never go to Dallas. She writes down her rules and tells Mark to sign the paper. He wisely refuses, so Brandi attacks him psychologically, telling him his outfit makes him look like a ghetto clown. (Sidebar: a ghetto clown is not such a terrible thing. Back in the day, there was this clown in Atlanta named Happy Nappy. He was quite funny and my dad wanted to hire him for*my birthday party, but I believe my mom vetoed that idea. She's got executive power like that.)
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We never get to see how Mark's night ends, but he must have behaved himself, because we find Brandi showing up at the Empire Room for the rehearsal. She's wearing a really long weave and a full-length fur coat. Surely Miss Shirley made a few phone calls and*her money problems have been solved, right? Actually, no. On the way to the rehearsal dinner, her fiance calls to let her know that his parents can only afford $10 per person for the rehearsal dinner. The wedding party members offer to pay for their meals, But Brandi refuses, crying and saying how tacky that would be. The catty narrator is back, explaining that fiance Mark "scrounges" up enough money to pay for dinner, and then points out the irony when Brandi tells the guests that if they want to donate cash, there will be a bucket passed around at the wedding.
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So the morning of the wedding, Brandi holds a last-minute dance practice with Mark. The dance has evovled into a vertible cornucopia of played-out dance moves from the past three decades. I detect: the Bankhead Bounce, the snake, the tootsie roll, a variation of the Cabbage Patch, a two step, and whatever you call the move where you stick your butt out and jiggle it left and right until your ass looks like two lumpy sacks of grain on a paint mixing machine.
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Later, Brandi's sister stops by to do her hair. Brandi's sister is Mrs. Texas and generally goes on errands in her tiara and sash introducing herself thusly: "Hi, I'm Roslyn, Mrs. Texas," as though the title is her last name because, she says, you never know who you're gonna meet. It is a tactic that I might try. If "Hi, I'm Mariah, Unemployed," doesn't land me a job, at least it will fend off the 5 to 30 people who ask me for money everyday on the subway.
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Hair-doing is pretty uneventful, although Brandi does let us know she plans on taking two birth control pills in preparation for her wedding night, which is officially TMI. You know she and Mark are a couple of freak nasties in the bedroom. I bet there's video proof somewhere out there.
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Brandi looks beautiful, and the wedding seems quite nice. Even the portion of the dance we see looks fairly tame, although it did involve a bit of spanking. Brandi thinks it was a success, though, because a lot of people texted her about how much they liked it. Yeah, I wouldn't admit to liking it in public either.
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Meanwhile, in case you forgot about our Florida couple and their snooze-inducing wedding preps, Kristen has picked a fight with Chin Strap over nothing in particular. Basically, her mom was irritating her after their dance lesson, so Kristen accused Chin Strap of making googly eyes at the dance instructor who was taller, thinner, and had a less annoying voice. You can see on his face the point where Chin Strap realizes that Kristen will inevitably turn into Momzilla and re-thinks his decision to marry her. He voices this out loud, and Kristen, predictably, freaks out. Excuse me, dude, but after you've become a baby daddy, it's a little too late to express doubts.
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So, if you're planning on watching next time... prepare yourself for relative excitement: Kristen is a hot mess and threatens to "go Britney Spears" on everyone's ass. Plus, get ready to gawk and*point in amazement, Momzilla: King of All Momsters returns.
Auditiongasm Fall '08: Bridezillas 2 -
08-11-2008, 05:23 AM
Linear Mode
