fyi
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The Talk
Well, it's a finale, so Ragini and Veeral did what they needed to do to tie a ribbon around their season storyline...but the only even passably interesting thing about their story and the so-called "shocking" results of the fertility testing is actually a sad thing, namely Ragini's obvious discomfort with having run out of excuses. (At least for now. I have no doubt but that she's going to try to run out the clock before having to get pregnant.)
For sure -- she's already found a new road block, which is ordering Veeral not to tell Payel or the rest of his family about her four-star fertility...although I do kind of feel her on that one. If they were already up her ass before about getting pregnant, telling them her ovaries are firing on cylinders/fallopian tubes is only going to ratchet up the number of nosy questions she's going to get about the state of her womb.
And she's not in an environment where she can admit even to herself that this is just not something she really wants. Whatever that comment she made was along the lines of, "Well, I guess I did everything I wanted to do, so it's okay for my life to be over"? I mean, I have compassion for her; it can take a while to feel okay about deciding kids aren't a good call for yourself. But good luck selling that in a culture that's still arranging marriages.
I was about to add "or to this specific husband, who has no interest in hearing about or adjusting to what Ragini wants," but that one actually goes both ways. The season closes, but one thing endures: this couple's lack of fondness for each other!
Hey, now that the cameras are off they can return to their separate homes and resume not really knowing each other. Which I wished Meghan would also do to Josh, but I never really had any realistic hope that she would stick that landing...though his parents must have been worried that she might really leave if they bribed her with forty acres of back pasture. (Is Josh the mule in that scenario?)
I did feel bad for Meghan that even on her "escape from Josh" trip she was expected to go hang out with the boobs who spawned him; taking a break from Josh should, if you ask me, taking at least the same length break from FUCKING LISA. Except this week, the Josh/Meghan plotline took over, for me, the mantle of fakery from Veeral and Ragini. I doubt even Meghan would strain the finances Josh can't shut up about by booking a same-day plane ticket, or that anyone actually believed there was a chance Meghan might move back in with her mom on a permanent basis. Any actual person in this situation, were it real, would neither go see her in-laws, nor fall into the trap of a question like "So tell me, what's really going on with Josh?" When a dude's mother asks that about his son? The answer is "Everything's fine," THE END.
That entire sequence had the feel of a fourteenth or fifteenth take to me. Josh's teary realization that he loves Meghan, on the other hand...I can't say it felt rehearsed, exactly? But it was definitely weird. The entire conversation with his advisor felt both fake and like we were seeing the real Josh: doesn't listen to Meghan, thinks her being polite and friendly to her boss means she's cheating on him, oblivious to the concept that Meghan didn't "just" go home but went home because he sucks. Then all of a sudden he misses her? He misses her doing shit for him and he can't find anything; that's not the same. ...I know this is a radical statement? But I think I hate him more than I hate Christian.
I never thought I would agree with such a statement, but I think I do too! Christian, like Josh, started from behind in terms of having the capacity to become a good person because, like Josh, he was raised by a stifling snake of a mom who might also be a little bit in love with him. But Josh has had the opportunity to participate in the larger world outside his "culture" and interact with people who (series premise aside) weren't explicitly chosen for him by his parents, but he's never, apparently, evolved from being Lisa's perfect prince. He's definitely as big a baby as Christian, with way less of an excuse for his shittiness.
AND SPEAKING OF BABIES.
Oh, Sarah.
Lo, a second virgin birth! ...I'm sorry, I just don't believe they Did It.
Look, I know from both this show and My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding that Roma people tend to be or at least think of themselves as very private about sexy stuff, but even so, everything about the big reveal of Maria's pregnancy is weird to me, starting with the fact that no one said "pregnant"? It's all "You're gonna be a dad," "I'm gonna be a grandmother." It's not like I'm expecting anyone to be super-clinical about it given that everyone involved has been home-"schooled." But yeah, that does also force one to speculate about how little sexual education was part of Nina's curriculum. If she just told the two of them that babies come from turkey basters, would either of them know better? Maybe only if they had gadje friends to set them straight, AND WE KNOW THEY DEFINITELY DON'T.
And she calls him while he's at the barber and just blurts it out, no "hello," no lead-up? And then Christian rushes home and Nina's all excited and emotional, but Maria just kind of walks out of the room and Christian tells Nina to go talk to Maria, but barely interacts with her at all -- doesn't hug her, doesn't talk to her? How exactly did she discover she's pregnant, a magic carrot spoke to her in a dream? Because if these two have even frenched successfully, I'm the Sultan of Brunei. The more likely scenario involves Maria's bellybutton and too much sitting around at home doing nothing.
Maybe Christian picked up some tips from Grand Theft Auto -- it has hookers! However the pregnancy happened, it does seem to have tied up Christian and Maria's story up even more neatly than Veeral and Ragini's: they've made it to their first anniversary, no one's fled anyone in a while, Christian's stopped being verbally abusive (on camera, at least), Peter's in line to get arranged to a Gypsy girl, and now they're fulfilling their destiny by becoming parents. In the world of this show, that means they're doing everything right, and in the right order. Maria's being borne along by patriarchal forces she can neither oppose nor understand? Shhhh, she's gonna be a mom, everything's great for her now!!!
Well, not everything. She still has to get her braces off.