I just laughed my ass off through the first three-quarters of WEtv’s “Marriage Boot Camp,” watching each couple trying to discuss sex and communicate using plushie toy pickles, hot dogs, donuts, tacos, flowers and more. It was classic!
Some of the couples who really have trouble communicating could get down and dirty with those toys. And the live-tweeting going on by viewers was absolutely hilarious. I had trouble taking notes (God bless the DVR) because I was laughing so hard at all the pickle tweets.
But what I really saw was a LOT of viewers really enjoying the show and live-tweeting about it – and I saw some of my fellow bloggers making funny and snarky remarks too. It was an interactive television watching experience and I enjoyed it immensely. Until the show ended and I found myself under Twitter attack from the #Hulkaholic Shaun (yeah, I’m using your hashtags). Kinda creepy. I’ll come back to that because the pickle, donuts and tacos have more relevance than that guy (but promise me you’ll read to the bottom because I am totally appalled by this guy’s behavior and you will be too).
The first “sexercise” of the day involved, as I said before, stuffed animals. Or stuffed creatures – mostly edible ones, but there was a bumble bee and a flower too. Everything had a sexual overtone to it from the talking Mr. Weenie to the donut to the pickle to the taco Mai-Lee found suspicious due to the “green stuff.”
Why are they doing all this silly stuff? To break down walls and get the couples to communicate about sex and intimacy.
“Sex and sexual intimacy are vital to all relationships because it is the physical expression of an invisible bond in the relationship,” camp director Elizabeth explains. “Today is all about having fun.”
“Sex is beautiful, fabulous – the glue that makes our marriages what they are – rich and wonderful and fulfilling,” she further explains. The stuffed toys are supposed to make it easier to discuss sex.
To make it easy for you to follow, I’m gonna break it down by couple:
Gloria and Mark were hilarious. He was all excited for this exercise. He wants sex all the time. Gloria was the donut and Mark had “Mr. Weenie.”
Basically, Mr. Weenie wants the donut all the time. Mr. Weenie doesn’t like it when the donut is tired. The donut wants to hear that she is tasty and attractive to him.
“A man needs to earn sex,” Gloria says.
Mark isn’t romantic but he gives it a shot. “I love you Miss Donut, you got some pretty nice sprinkles on you. Looks really, really pretty.” God bless him, he was trying. Bahahaha!
Mai-Lee was the taco (“with issues”) and Tomas was the pickle. And they have no problem talking about sex. In fact, they sound like they have a pretty good sex life already.
The taco wants a more submissive role in bed – she wants the pickle to get rough and aggressive, “hair-pulling” is good. The pickle wants to have sex with the lights on, but because she has body issues, the taco likes it in the dark. The directors try to explain how sex is a very visual thing for many men.
Blanca was the donut and Julian was the hot dog. And they were the funniest couple of the night.
“Your penis is pretty. And pink. And I want to f**k it. And flip me around and do me in different positions, and start getting nasty toward the end,” the donut says. It got kind of X-rated and those toys were even looking uncomfortable.
The weenie wants the donut to get on top more. “Blanca is selfish even in the bedroom,” Elizabeth says. If she can learn to be creative and less selfish in the bedroom it will help all the other aspects of the relationship, the director predicts.
Shaun is the bee and Sofia is the flower. And they’re both too embarrassed to talk about what they really want. So Sofia outs him and says the bee really wants to have his balls sucked more often.
The flower promises “I’ll put them in my mouth and then pop them out cuz they feel like egg yolks.” All the other campers were dying. So was I.
“I like it when you take initiative. Shaun over here, for some reason, doesn’t want to have sex, and I need sex.” Earlier in the show the directors discussed the fact that the problems in Shaun and Sofia’s sex life go far deeper than the fact they’re living in her mother’s house and it can be awkward.
“It’s hard to be turned down,” Sofia says. And then production shows us several clips of Shaun turning down Sofia’s overtures for sex throughout different times at Marriage Boot Camp. Ouch.
Tasha is the taco and Jeff is a really, really disturbing pickle. The taco doesn’t want to put the pickle in her mouth, and explains that if the pickle used rose petals and candles and romance, the taco will eat that pickle up. Yes, I did just say that.
Tasha the taco also wants “some whips and chains and cuffs and collars and ropes. Some smacking that tushy.” Yes, she really did say that. Then she’s willing to put that pickle in her mouth.
Elizabeth wraps up by saying it’s important to be able to talk about sex because it’s the “cornerstone of a healthy marriage.” And she sends them off to talk about the things they brought up in their role play with the stuffed toys.
We learn that Julian has a “naughty lunch lady” fantasy (what is that???) and then he motorboated Blanca in the kitchen with an audience. I don’t think their sex life is THAT lacking. She just needs to get on top more like his hot dog requested of her donut.
Next they split up the men and women for another activity. The men are going to learn how to give lap dances – on each other – and the ladies are having makeovers.
That scene with Tomas and Julian rolling all over each other was hilarious. All of the guys were such good sports. I saw several blossoming bromances. The booty-poppin alone made watching the show worth it.
I could never have gotten my husband to play along with that one but I did have a good laugh with everyone else on Twitter. Shaun looked like he knew what he was doing – but is that really a surprise to anyone? He’s gotta do something for Sofia if he’s not willing to have sex with her. Let’s hope she gets lots of lap dances.
The girls all looked beautiful after their makeovers. I felt sad for Gloria, the only wife who seemed to think her husband might not find her gorgeous. She’s beautiful but so damaged. And when she came downstairs, unlike the others who waited to be praised by their spouses, Gloria never even gave Mark a chance to compliment her transformation. She was bitching and whining instead of giving him a chance to give feedback.
Elizabeth seems to have a very good understanding of where Gloria is coming from (which is good cuz I don’t). She tells Mark, “You need to be tender with her.”
“It’s like my angel just came out of the sky,” Mark tells Gloria. I just want to give him credit and say I think he would have said something nice even if she hadn’t gotten all upset when she first came downstairs. She’s so insecure and so pretty and so painful to watch.
Sofia has asked them to make her over to look super sexy for Shaun and her dress leaves nothing to the imagination. Which is fine because she’s gorgeous with a fab bod. But I don’t even know how you’d sit in that. Good thing she’s not planning to do much sitting… she’s thinking she’ll be on her back with those heels in the air. But it’s not to be.
When the boys were getting ready for their lap dance performance, the ladies sat down and had genuine fun together in the kitchen doing shots and being silly and guessing about what their husbands were up to. It all looked like we were off to a winner of an evening. The girls were buzzed but not ugly sloppy drunk, and I think a little alcohol was a good thing before the grand event of the evening. Tomas agreed in interview.
The lap dance/quasi-strip tease sex dance thing was hilarious and the wives were dying laughing. I was SO IMPRESSED by the effort of every single one of those husbands. Seriously good sports. And everybody went running out the door to have sex afterwards. Even Tasha and Jeff. Everyone except Shaun.
Sofia can’t get Shaun interested. He claims he’s sweaty. “I wanna have sex really bad,” Sofia tells her husband, almost begging.
“Clearly, I don’t wanna,” Shaun says.
“C’mon,” Sofia pleads. His response – “No way.” I ached for her. She’s so young and pretty and why wouldn’t her husband want her?
I could not believe it when they called them all out of bed for evaluations. Jim and Elizabeth, you’ve been trying to get them to hook up this way for seven episodes, why are you interrupting? Tasha and Jeff were the funniest. He was clearly giving her all the time she needed, as requested by her taco. Gloria was rockin some serious JBF hair. Good for her!
Evals were squishy. What are you going to say? Bad job trying to communicate about the most difficult topic in the world to discuss in front of America? Of course not, they had to tell them good job.
So it all should have been hunky dory and they all should have gone back to their bedrooms for more sex. Everybody should be getting very lucky. But instead, Shaun has to pick a fight with Sofia when she tries to get him to go upstairs for hanky panky.
Shaun is yelling at her about being sloppy. Julian is trapped in the kitchen and just looks like he wants to escape.
“When you drink you get obnoxious so don’t next time I drink go ‘oh, you’re so obnoxious,” he rants.
“That’s because you have a problem,” Sofia spits back.
This is where weird turns super strange. Shaun has apparently nuked some burgers for himself and he brings them upstairs to the bedroom, ostensibly so Sofia can puke (he announces to the group at large). When they get into the bedroom, he sets the plate down on the dresser and goes in the bathroom.
As he comes out, he sees Sofia in the vicinity of his food and hisses at her in the most vitriolic voice possible “Get away from those burgers. You took a bite of them, didn’t you?”
WTF? She’s your wife dude. What the hell is wrong with you? The only thing I can see wrong with Sofia is that she’s still standing by her man even though he treats her like complete s**t in front of the world.
That’s actually my question of the night – what is wrong with Shaun? This is what I referred to in the beginning of my blog.
What about the fact that he signed up to do a reality television show about his deteriorating marriage does Shaun not understand? He did “Bridezillas,” right? On the same, well-known network. So ostensibly he knew what filming would be like. And he saw their “Bridezillas” episodes, so he knows that they don’t show every moment and production does edit the show into episodes. And they make sure to keep in all the drama. This, my friends, is common sense.
Common sense is something Shaun appears to lack. Shortly after tonight’s episode, he launched a Twitter attack on me! I’ve never tweeted him or messaged him, and I have no reason to. I don’t interview peeps for my blogs, I recap what some viewers may have missed from my perspective. Especially the funny s**t. Like failing to buy sleeping bags for the camping trip.
Since he clearly doesn’t get it, I’m going to give Shaun a little primer on reality television blogs and social media.
Writing about “Marriage Boot Camp” is good for WEtv. I have regular followers who watch the show because my blogs are funny and I get them interested in it. You might not appreciate my sense of humor, but you aren’t really my target audience. Reality television viewers are. I’m not writing for “the talent.”
We bloggers get to choose which shows we write about – I stopped blogging another show because I didn’t like it after a couple episodes. Depending on the site you blog for, and the more popular your writing is, the better shows you can grab to blog. If Shaun hasn’t noticed, I also blog the Real Housewives for Monsters & Critics. And no, Shaun, you’re not even in their hemisphere of celebrity. I just really liked last season of “Marriage Boot Camp” and so I’m blogging this season too.
Here’s an example of how Shaun is blaming his network for his own stupidity. He tweeted this to his own network and the director of “Marriage Boot Camp” after the episode:
A few little birdies told me that the reunion was filmed very, very recently and so, all the campers got to see the last three episodes so they could fight about them at the reunion. Rumor has it that Shaun doesn’t make himself look any better in the upcoming episodes, and that he’s taking everything really personally.
Reality check, Shaun (pun intended) – you signed up for this television show. You knew the stipulations of the contract. You participated in the exercises. You knew they were filming you when you got drunk and made an ass of yourself the first two episodes. You knew they were filming you when you refused to have sex with Sofia. You even knew they were filming you when you wouldn’t let your wife have a bite of your cheeseburger or you wouldn’t have whispered.
So why the hell are you complaining now? Because production didn’t show the ten times you were nice because they are busy showing the 100 times you were an a**hole? Because your dirty little secrets of your past have been revealed in the press as this show is airing (not that many people give a flying f**k about it). Let’s face it bud. You embarrassed yourself.
Now that you know how bad you’re going to look when this show is over in a few weeks, you are freaking out. I don’t see any of your co-stars complaining about unfair editing by ThinkFactory or WE. So either you’re completely full of s**t, or you’re the only one who has the guts to speak up. Show of hands for how many viewers think Shaun is full of s**t? Yeah, I thought so.
There are a number of people (viewers and bloggers) who have expressed opinions similar to mine regarding Shaun’s behavior on the show. As to why he’s attacking me personally, my theory is that Shaun is totally pissed off because I’ve been making fun of the fact that he and Sofia hired a publicity firm to try to squelch the gay porn stories that broke a few weeks ago and I mocked their press releases (which were, btw, really, really bad). And no, I wasn’t interested in interviewing them despite repeated offers from their press people.
But whether Shaun likes what I’m writing or not, blogs are good promotion for “Marriage Boot Camp” (unless of course, they’re calling the show a dog, which I am not). I definitely didn’t like everything that was said about me when my show aired, but I never attacked any of the reporters or bloggers who were writing about “Wedding Island” on TLC. And my reality show was all about me so I did take it personally, but I never blamed my network or production company when somebody wrote things I didn’t like. I might have felt like they didn’t show enough of my softer side, but that was me doing what they put in the show. No denying that. Editors are supposed to use the dramatic footage and that’s what they did.
Shaun, on the other hand, has lost sight of the fact that he’s only one-fourteenth of an ensemble cast, and that I have blogged about the missteps of all the campers this season. If he feels picked on, it’s because he keeps doing stupid s**t. But to be completely honest, I thought I’d been exceptionally kind to him on a number of occasions when I didn’t think he got enough credit for a good deed. Guess I won’t worry about that for the next three episodes because if what I’m hearing is true, there won’t be anything nice to say. And next Friday I have ginormous wedding so I’ll have to DVR and blog Saturday anyway. No spoilers!
Meantime, would somebody please set up WEtv’s #Hulkaholic with some basic media training and etiquette lessons, please? Perhaps that firm he’s hired to promote him can help.