Couples Therapy Dabbles In Truthiness

Nikki & Juan Pablo Hate Each Other, In Front Of Everyone Else This Time, Continued

As we pick up where we left off last week, Nikki and Juan Pablo have, according to Dr. Jenn, been fighting "for hours" about moving in together. Nikki gets frustrated and screams at Juan Pablo that he's not listening to her, and when he has no response to that other than to flick his fingers under his jaw in what may be the Venezuelan version of this "fuck off" gesture, and she stalks off in fury, THing that she didn't want everyone else to see her upset. "For longer than they already had," she does not add. Once Nikki's gone, Stephanie and Deena are like, maybe you want to go talk to her? Juan Pablo -- bearing out his claim from the premiere that he regards Nikki as his child -- defiantly says that if Nikki wants to talk to him, she can come and talk to him. "I don't want to deal with this anymore." So he's putting her in time-out, I guess.

Dr. Jenn WEAWWY Huwt Jenna's Feewings!

Fucking Jenna is STILL moping about Dr. Jenn scolding her which seriously happened two episodes ago. You can tell she's upset because she is hugging her knees and drawing a big sad eye in her journal.

The porn star has the emotional maturity of a fourteen-year-old. HANDS UP, EVERYONE WHO'S SURPRISED. Anyway, Jenna's performance of depression is so unignorable that even Cicely has to tell John that Jenna's wearing her out. Cicely: you are wrong a lot, but you're right about this.

Meet Janine, "The Human Lie Detector"

Somehow, Jenna's pouting has gotten her excused from the next activity, which is sitting down with Janine Driver, "the human lie detector," to see how honest everyone is about their reasons for coming on the show. You can skip over Deena and Chris, who are basically fine and thus boring. Dick is extremely evasive about his Big Secret, but the way he's talking about it tips Stephanie to the fact that, against her wishes, he's already disclosed it to Dr. Jenn, and when Janine asks for a percentage chance that Dick and Stephanie might get back together, Stephanie curtly says that, now, the chance is 0. Brr!

On to Cicely, who (duh) wants Janine to ask Treach whether he's been faithful to her "this last past year." There's a commercial break after this question, so we leave on Cicely looking smug as hell as you can see above, but when we come back, Treach says he has, and Janine says she thinks he's being truthful. Cicely is still unconvinced, sniffing that people beat lie detectors all the time, though I would say people as dumb as Treach probably don't?

Then we're back to Nikki and Juan Pablo, and you're not going to believe this, but she's upset that he hasn't told her he loves her yet. Juan Pablo seems -- as usual -- extremely annoyed by this issue, and tells Janine that their hangups are all over "a word." "It's not a word, it's a feeling!" yelps Nikki. Dick is like, "Lie detector," and Janine duly asks Juan Pablo whether he loves Nikki. Juan Pablo: "Well, like I say, yeah, I'm falling for her, big-time. But do I love her? As I-- To tell her, 'I love you'? Nah." "NAH," he says. Nikki instantly starts crying, and Juan Pablo, sitting next to her, has the balls to squeeze her shoulder to comfort her in the midst of the devastation he just caused her. Nikki sobs that she doesn't know when she's going to be good enough for Juan Pablo, and he assures her, "You are, babe." He then seems to step outside his own body, looking at the situation clinically, and muses, "It's hard." This seems to present an interesting scientific area of inquiry for Juan Pablo!

To Nikki, Juan Pablo says he wishes every day that he could "make it better," as if it's not within his capacity either to love her or to tell her he's never going to love her and let her move on with her life. For his part, Chris thinks the "cultural" defense for why Juan Pablo hasn't declared his love is horseshit. So say we all.

Post-Lie Detector Debrief

Stephanie tells us she's glad that Dick didn't reveal their deepest secret in front of the whole group, which is, indeed, very chivalrous of him.

Speaking of chivalrous, here's the opposite of that. In their room, Juan Pablo pretends to try to understand what's really bothering Nikki, disingenuously asking whether all she wants is for him to say that he loves her. Nikki, with understandable irritation, says no, what she wants is for him to actually love her. He even more disingenuously says that he wishes he were an American, because then he'd just say the words like it was no big deal and they wouldn't fight about it; he then tries to Spanish at her the difference between "adore" and "really love," and Nikki blows up: "I don't. Speak. SPANISH!" The linguistic distinctions mean nothing to her, she tells him; the issue is that he doesn't feel for her the way she does for him. He challenges her by asking how they each measure how the other feels, and Nikki says the difference is that if anyone were to ask her how she feels about him, she'd say she loves him; if anyone asks him, he wouldn't do the same. Juan Pablo sighs that if she were Venezuelan, she wouldn't expect him to declare himself this way, and she says that doesn't help either, because it makes her feel inadequate.

Finally, Juan Pablo points out that even though he is not ready to tell Nikki he loves her yet, he still wants to live with her (WHAT A PRINCE), which should count for something for her. But she says it doesn't, because she wants "certainty," and she's not getting it from him. He says he wishes she were a little more like him and he were a little more like her. "You don't really wish that," she grunts. He admits that he doesn't mean he wishes he were "cranky" like she is (NOT THE TIME, DUDE) -- just "more emotional." Nikki decides she's done with this conversation and they go outside with nothing settled or solved. HEY, IT'S ALMOST LIKE YOU TWO HAVE SUCH DIFFERENT IDEAS OF WHAT MAKES A RELATIONSHIP WORK THAT YOU SHOULDN'T BE TOGETHER.

Even More Lie Detector Debrief

Now that it's over, everyone agrees that the session with Janine was manipulative and unfair -- except Treach, who thinks Janine's confirmation of his truthfulness should exonerate him with Cicely to the end of time. Since Cicely's not outside discussing it with everyone else, Treach gets really aggressive in his declaration that she should have apologized for asking about his fidelity, and that he is not apologizing for anything ever again. Then he goes into their bedroom and bunks up on the couch because the best thing for the situation is to cool off. Oh, Treach. You are ridiculous.

When we get back outside, only Dick & Stephanie and Deena & Chris are still up. They agree that the session with Janine made Juan Pablo look terrible (and Nikki look somewhat more relatable than she had been); Dick looks into the camera to declare that they're doomed. I tend to agree!

Good Grief, MORE Lie Detector Debrief

Treach is mad that Cicely is looking at the therapy process in terms of her "winning," which I think is probably true though I also think he probably does cheat on her all the time. Then Jenna finally emerges: Cicely tells her she's upset that Jenna and John didn't have to go through having Janine examine their relationship, and at first I think she's just kidding, but apparently she's VERY SERIOUS. Jenna: "I don't really care." I don't really blame her, for once.

Talking About Dick's Big Secret, Part 4

Everyone knows he's holding something back, and they all have guesses, which Nikki apparently thinks is tacky since whatever it is, it's none of their business. Cicely THes that Nikki can get over herself and quit policing other people's thoughts/gossip. I agree. Gossip brings people together!

We then find out that Dr. Jenn has had a private session with Dick and Stephanie, which we don't see, during which Stephanie was apparently persuaded that Dick should disclose his status to his fellow patients, and then we're in group, watching him get ready to tell everyone. As Dr. Jenn preps everyone, Dick turns to Stephanie and quietly asks, "You okay?" "I'm fine," she shrugs, with an extremely creepy mask face and super-dead eyes, because either (a) she has really already decided that there's a 0% chance they're getting back together, as she'd told Janine, or (b) the only way she can get through this moment is if she completely shuts down emotionally. Whichever, it is CHILLING.

Dick promises to be more forthcoming than he was with Janine the night before, and says it's important for him to be honest in this situation since "[t]his is probably the last relationship that [he'll] end up having in [his] life." (Pessimism or a suggestion that he's more ill than he seems?) And then he announces that when he was screened for Big Brother 13, it turned out he was HIV-positive. We get a few quick shots of the other patients' reactions, and then we're out!

Verdict

Even though the meatier reactions to Dick's announcement have been saved for next week, it's still worth watching to see Juan Pablo's latest performance as his approximation of a human being.