MiniCap: 16 and Pregnant

Recaps

By CathodeTube | Wednesday, April 18, 2012 | 11:24 am | 14 Comments
Tagged: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in: 16 and Pregnant, MiniCaps, MTV, Recaps

Woooow. Now this was an episode. This kind of ep is the reason I wanted to recap this show. I was worried about its 1.5-hour length, but it’s action-packed.

Alex is just about to start her senior year. She’s got a job at Mickey D’s and a job teaching dance. She’s articulate and fairly even-tempered, and she walks to work a mile both ways (really) on 37-weeks-pregnant cankle-legs without complaining.

And then she’s got this.

Matt apparently has a drug problem. I’m having trouble figuring out what his drug of choice is. For one thing, I don’t recognize the drugs kids do these days, and if I were to use the references I’ve gathered from the past 20 years… see, I want to put this gig on my resume… so, yeah, I haven’t really gathered any references. But this particular drug problem is pretty obvious.

Alex’s mom is a hardass. She set Alex up with birth control a year or so ago, and she also said there would be no babies in her house. So Alex gets the choice of adoption or moving out and supporting herself on her part-time wages. She actually gets some good options presented to her, including parents of a friend of hers who want to adopt her kid – they say they’ve been wanting a new baby for awhile. And they happen to have a neighbor who has a free room. But this is no sitcom and things don’t work out so neatly.

Did I mention Matt is a complete loser? I think I should specify this because there have been some productive and useful secret junkies throughout history. He is not one of them. He blows off Alex and the baby when she needs to go to work – which sets her up for a possible job loss on top of everything else. Apparently Alex’s mom needs to keep her dinner date here, so she doesn’t step in. At that point I wonder how far a parent needs to go in proving something when they’ve essentially failed, despite their best efforts, in teaching the don’t-get-pregnant lesson, and life is about to teach their young child-mom more than they could ever hope to. I hope it was a damn good dinner.

The cast of characters also includes a crap-happy rabbit and a giant white poodle. There are baby feet, and there is projectile vomiting over a carseat edge. I am seriously impressed.

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.

14 Comments

  1. 1
    S-Natch S-Natch
    Posted April 18, 2012 at 11:49 am

    Haven’t read the minicap yet, so you may mention this but Matt seemed like he was on heroin or something the way he kept nodding out. I hope not, but it really looked suspicious to me.

  2. 2
    S-Natch S-Natch
    Posted April 18, 2012 at 11:52 am

    One thing – the room wasn’t free. The neighbor needed help paying the $500 rent so she wanted Alex to pay half. Hence the way things went awry. I think she chose the wrong option, IMO. Thanks for the mini – can’t wait to read the full!

  3. 3
    wow
    Posted April 18, 2012 at 12:14 pm

    In my opinion, this is the best season of 16 and Pregnant so far. Good stuff. Not sure what Matt’s drug of choice was but when he got in the car with Alex, he clearly reeked of smoke enough that she brought it up on camera. He definitely seemed wayyyy too out of it to just be a weedhead. Something else is going on for sure.

  4. 4
    LadyStardust
    Posted April 18, 2012 at 2:07 pm

    At first, I thought Matt just was a huge stoner…but eventually it became obvious that he was on something much worse when he started acting exactly like the addicts on Intervention who nod off in the middle of an interview.

    And I feel completely creepy saying this (even though I’m not THAT old), but Matt has the potential to be absolutely GORGEOUS when he gets a little older and sober. Although you can’t tell from that screengrab you picked. I would love to see what he looks like in 10 years, all cleaned up and off drugs. Hopefully he IS off drugs by then…

  5. 5
    sardini
    Posted April 18, 2012 at 2:28 pm

    His drug of choice is definitely oxycontin…or pills of some sort!! He probably crushes them up and snorts them. F-ing loser.

    This girl was different than the typical obnoxious teens. I felt bad for her and wanted to give her a hug. Hopefully she takes that baby far far away from her bitchy mom and POS boyfriend.

  6. 6
    CathodeTube CathodeTube
    Posted April 18, 2012 at 3:57 pm

    Looks like the verdict so far is opiate abuse for the babydaddy. That’s what I was thinking too, with the nodding. Meant to specify “free” like in open, with a crazy price tag over $500, which I thought was nuts! I don’t think the lady ought to have charged her for half the house when she only occupied one room. And then putting her stuff on the driveway… Alex suffered for that lady’s pre-existing financial hard luck.

  7. 7
    tvwatcher
    Posted April 18, 2012 at 5:44 pm

    now that was an episode for all the haters of this show. The girl was just so relateable and her baby was just so cute. I really wish her boyfriend wasn’t so drugged out though, he is one of those druggies that you root for to get off the drugs because he seems like he could actually be a good person if he just was his normal self. He was probably just an innocent kid at school when she met him and that must be so hard for her to see him the way he is because of knowing him when he was younger and not drugged out. sad story here.

  8. 8
    relatable
    Posted April 19, 2012 at 8:18 am

    This episode absolutely MIMICKED what happened to me when I was 17, but replace the mother with a grandmother who got ill towards the end of my pregnancy so I had nowhere to run back to, and a whole web of problems arose, so I can totally relate to this strong young woman! Alleluia, someone on this show with pure HEART and STRENGTH! This is the realest I’ve seen MTV!!!

  9. 9
    wow
    Posted April 19, 2012 at 12:21 pm

    Good point – also even in his incoherent drugged up state, he was STILL making logical and well thought out points even if his intention was to bear the least amount of responsibility possible (which is totally understandable given his age and that he had two years of high school left). Also, once the baby was born, you could see the desire to be a father there…but his age, situation and drugs obviously trump that. Very sad, I truly hope he gets it together.

  10. 10
    Classy Drunk classy drunk
    Posted April 19, 2012 at 12:47 pm

    I think MTV is attempting to fight back some of the back lash that the show has gotten in recent years. They have upped the reality on these stories.

  11. 11
    mavros
    Posted April 19, 2012 at 5:22 pm

    I’ve been a fan of this series since the beginning, and this is one of the few episodes that has really touched me. Admittedly, I’m 7 months pregnant myself (though my teenage years are a distant memory), but I found myself brought to tears by the situation that Alex was in. I couldn’t imagine being practically forced into giving up my baby. Yes, it would have been the more practical and logical choice for all involved, but unless you’re the one facing that choice, you can’t fully relate to how difficult it would be. Having a daughter myself (and another on the way), I’d like to think that should I find myself in the unfortunate position of having a pregnant teenager, that I wouldn’t be so unforgiving as Alex’s mom.
    I do hope Matt gets his act together, and I hope that one day Alex’s daughter can watch this episode and see just how much her mama loved her and how hared she fought to keep her.

  12. 12
    wow
    Posted April 19, 2012 at 6:30 pm

    I totally agree mavos. I truly felt that if Alex gave in and gave up her baby that she’d probably never be the same person again. Sure she’d end up living her life and maybe for all intents and purposes “a better life” education and career wise, but it seemed as though this would be a decision that haunted her forever because clearly it was not her own. As a mother, I couldn’t force that type of pain on my daughter no matter how livid I was that despite every effort on my part, she still ended up pregnant.

  13. 13
    kthxbai
    Posted April 20, 2012 at 1:47 pm

    I probably shouldn’t even make any comments because my opinion’s too unpositive.

    Much less how they do the show. (Putting the baby daddys on it, not making the girls get counseling etc)

    This 1 had me yelling at the TV as usual.

    Delusiona’s whole family AND all her Megans tried so hard to tell her that A) she can’t afford a baby and B) her boyfriend’s a fuckwaffle.

    He even tried to tell her that himself. Which wasn’t easy since he was too wasted to talk at all.

  14. 14
    Bobbie
    Posted February 12, 2013 at 12:10 pm

    Well there is NO question that her boyfriend Matt is obviously on heroin or some other kind of opiate. My question is why did this girl give him chance after chance & constantly made excuses for him, when it was obvious from the beginning that he not only had a serious drug problem, but was trying to tell her from the beginning that he was not ready or willing to be a parent. From the start she either was just not getting it or more than likely hoping that after she had the baby, he would change, sober up and be the father that she was hoping for. Unfortunately for Alex, that’s not how addiction works.

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