16 and Pregnant Recap: RIPtide

Recaps

By CathodeTube | Wednesday, May 30, 2012 | 10:53 am | 10 Comments
Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in: 16 and Pregnant, MTV, Recaps

Holy friggin’ crap, Gasmii. This ep isn’t funny at all. Like, this isn’t a regular dead babydaddy ep. This is a special dead in a horrible accident babydaddy who was actually engaged to our teen mom and finna make an honest woman out of her ep. Wow.

So I’ll take this opportunity to tell all the other babymommies from this season to STFU about how hard they’ve got it. Kristina’s situation is legitimately the most sucky. Anyone else who wants to bellyache about how they’ve got no one to talk to all day except this baby knows just where she can shove it.

Proceeding as if this were just a regular ep with an average level of tragedy, then, Kristina lives in Bayberry (?) Texas, on the border of Loosiana. Her late babydaddy, Todd, was the younger brother of Daniel, the husband of her Aunt Dotty, who she spends a lot of time with ‘cause she and her mother don’t get along. Kristina and Todd both got caught in a riptide during a trip with her family to Galveston Beach. Lifeguards were able to save her but couldn’t find him, and his body eventually washed up on shore. Dayum.

Not the same Riptide at all

Kristina moved in with Dotty and Daniel after the funeral, joined of course by her fetus and a giant photo of Todd. (And that photo means drink. Unless you feel like an asshole doing so. I totally understand.)

The three bereaved sit down to dinner, and Daniel mumbles that they’ll get through it. The plates and glasses look empty – clean empty, as if they’d never been filled. Symbolic. Well, there’s a Diet Dr. Pepper, but that’s it. Daniel tells Kristina to focus on the pregnancy – that she’s not living for herself anymore. She’s having a boy, and Todd would have been happy about that.

As it seems is often the case on this show, the teen mom’s mom lacks coping skills. Not only has Kristina’s mom, Kim, been unable to touch up her roots since the accident, but she’s consumed by guilt and unable to get through french fry #1 at Jucy’s without getting weepy. Although I sympathize, it’s not about you, lady. Kim exposits that, although she was upset when she found out about the pregnancy, she wants to be supportive and help. She misses Kristina and wants her to move back home. She asks if Dotty and Daniel’s house reminds Kristina of Todd, and if that’s why she prefers it. Well, that, and Dotty and Daniel are apparently more focused on keepin’ on keepin’ on and are less apt to saddle her with a big load of misery when she’s been having an okay day under the circumstances. She doesn’t say the last part.

The other “only one” who gets Kristina is her Megan, Tressie. They drive and laugh about this one time Todd put a bra on over his shirt.

Which would make it a mansierre.

Todd’s mom also copes with things by talking. She’s one of a couple of people so far who’ve told Kristina that she can’t hold it inside. And I agree, but give the kid a break. Let her do things on her own time. Todd’s mom actually says she’s worried it’s going to cause problems with the pregnancy. For cri-yi… Kristina accurately notes that it’s different for her, having actually been in the water with Todd before he died. She says there are nightmares, there’s survivor guilt, and there’s wondering why God let her find the person she wanted to be with and then let him be taken away. She’s crying, of course, and I have to conclude that the old(er) ladies so intent on sharing their sorrow with her are just not respecting that she’s grieving in her own way. I’m sure she cries plenty but would simply prefer to do less of it in front of the cameras. It’s been what – six months? Who made them Elizabeth Kubler-Ross? Folky violin and strummy guitar of exploitation play.

Yeah, I don’t remember saying to touch me, mom-lady.

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CathodeTube

CathodeTube has wanted to be a recapper ever since she read the MightyBigTV interview with Sars and James Van Der Beek. She lives in Chicago with her husband and baby son, and adores hip-hop, cop shows, competitive reality TV, and all foods involving melted cheese. She used to copyedit made-up blogs for the "reputation management" of people who got themselves on The Dirty or Mugshots.com. Turns out google-bombing doesn't work anymore, so now she writes product copy, is much happier, and still wears stretchy pants at all times.

10 Comments

  1. 1
    kthxbai kthxbai
    Posted May 30, 2012 at 3:30 pm

    This was no contest the saddest episode of this show ever. It was also the only 1 that ever made me cry. And I had to fast forward through even more than I usually do.

    I hope you’re right the producers sent her to counseling. And paid for it.

    I think they should’ve sent all of them. Including her mom too. Because for all she tries to make it about her it seems like she’s also got some bad problems about it. To be fair she did near about lose her baby and her grandbaby that day. Not to mention whatever closeness she had to the boy. With the families already related to each other.

    Anyway they should’ve just given Kristina the $ for this plus a Teen Mom and took the cameras off to film somebody else. That we can make fun of.

    These people are just grieving. They so did not need to be on TV.

  2. 2
    wow
    Posted May 30, 2012 at 5:25 pm

    So gut wrenching!! You know its sad when the fact that there is a pregnant teenager is the least depressing part of the episode!

  3. 3
    S-Natch S-Natch
    Posted May 30, 2012 at 5:52 pm

    Haven’t read the recap yet, but hats off, Cath, for even attempting it. This was the saddest episode of any reality show I have ever seen. That poor girl – not only to lose her fiance but then for the baby to be endangered as well. Not to mention having to deal with the cloyingly self-centered woman whose vagina she popped out of. :( Best wishes to that poor girl and her family.

  4. 4
    Jenkoz
    Posted May 30, 2012 at 6:38 pm

    Her mom, my god. But I get it. I lost my son at birth and I got a lot of “I feel so bad for you I wish I could take it all awaaaaay” that I resented because it made me feel like I had to comfort them. You start to not trust people with your feelings. My stepdaughter’s mother had no problem telling me how sad she was in her own right which, thank goodness for her because that made me feel so much less alone. But I was 32 and had some perspective to know they meant well. At 17 or whatever I don’t think I’d have been as patient as she was.

  5. 5
    Chicken Lips
    Posted May 30, 2012 at 9:20 pm

    I felt bad for the baby – his noggin is huge and his little neck can’t hold it up even with adult intervention – he looked that he was constantly looking about 6 inches above where he should have been because his head tilted back so much. Could that be caused by the fact that he was born early and his head/skull/brain was fully formed early but not the rest of him? It just looked uncomfortable for the little guy. I hope his neck grows into that head.

    I’m probably in the minority, but I think that Kristina was a touch bratty – her mother was grieving, too (she was there and wasn’t able to help either of them) and her method was to talk about it, but Kristina completely discounted that and got pissed off. Todd’s mother’s method was to talk about it and Kristina just said to Daniel something about how his mom was just trying to cope. Granted, we don’t know much about the relationship before he died (except the explanation that they don’t get along so she lives with Dotty), but that only made her look more bratty when she wasn’t understanding what her mother was doing yet it was OK for everyone else to talk about it in front of her. Maybe it was different because her mother was there and no one else was, but I just couldn’t shake that feeling.

    I was also wondering if her mom was acting like that because she feels guilty about taking them to the beach, watching them in the water and not being able to get to them so she is trying to do everything she can to try to help and be there for her but has gone completely overboard and to the complete other end of the scale. Was she like this before the accident? Kristina just said they didn’t get along – but in teenage speak that could mean anything (Mom wouldn’t let her have sex with Todd in the living room, Mom made her be home by midnight on a school night, Mom asked her to please rinse the dishes before leaving them in the sink if she wasn’t going to put them in a dishwasher). I think knowing that would help gauge what this reaction was all about.

    I hope the counselor can help her – that will be tough for the baby to be raised like someone that sits around alone all the time.

  6. 6
    Classy Drunk classy drunk
    Posted May 31, 2012 at 6:12 am

    I’m with you Chicken Lips. I think Kristin’s mother is over compensating because she almost lost her baby. It seems they had a strained relationship before and now her mother is trying to do the most and make the relationship right. Kristin comes off a bit bratty because she’s not ready for that type of relationship with her mother.

    Both families need counseling.

    Shout out to you Cath I would have been just fine if you’d passed on recapping this episode. I normally get a little misty every time the baby is born on one of these but this episode had so many tear jerking moment I found myself fast forwarding alot.

  7. 7
    hot cawfee
    Posted June 2, 2012 at 8:36 am

    Yes Mama Kim— drownings more like to occur at a baptism—ya know all that water.
    Kim– I hate you.
    back to reading

  8. 8
    hot cawfee
    Posted June 2, 2012 at 8:44 am

    @Jenk– my condolences hon– that is tragic to lose your little one.

  9. 9
    hot cawfee
    Posted June 2, 2012 at 8:48 am

    I am holstering my snark too. This was just sad. And not our usual “16 and Pregnant” with maternity prom dress shopping and boy-friends that get stupid and flake out (and leave). I cried alot too during this episode and even got teary during the baby shower at the hospital. How pretty was Kristina’s dress??? Is she going to be a Teen Mom this season? I ‘d love to see her and see how she is faring.

  10. 10
    chaosbutterfly
    Posted June 2, 2012 at 10:02 am

    I honestly don’t think that this should have been an episode.

    And instead of drinking every time we saw the giant Todd picture, the game should be to drink every time Kristina’s mom said “me” or “I”.

    @Chicken Lips, I don’t think Kristina was bratty. If anything, the girl was catatonic. When she wasn’t crying, she was just staring into space and never spoke above a mumble. The only time she looked alive was when she was crying in the hospital, at her baby shower, and when she finally got to bring her baby home. Who I agree has a gigantic head. A C-Section was a good idea, because pushing a head that size out would not have worked.
    And Todd’s mother was different from Kristina’s mother in that Todd’s mother at least appeared to be mindful of how her grief would affect Kristina and she didn’t just try to dump it all on her. Also, when they were meeting for lunch, Todd’s mom talked about her own pain a little bit, but she also discussed Kristina’s feelings and how grieving would affect her.
    Kristina’s mom was just mememememememe IIIIIIII mememememememe I. Not even thinking about how Kristina felt.
    Like God, lady, what kind of mother is that selfish?

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