It Was A Therapeutic Smash

Jenna Picks A Fight: The Conclusion

Jenna is mad because when John stomps out on the idiotic childish fight she picked at the end of the last episode, it makes her "trust less." Meanwhile, John is out in the kitchen telling Treach he's sick of Jenna's shit, and will not be returning to their room until after she goes to sleep. I guess this is as good a place as any to remind us all that John and Jenna have only been dating three months and are clearly not meant to be together? They have, and they're not. This is all stupid and pointless.

Who Had The Saddest Childhood?

It's time to get the group together and share sob stories talk about childhood trauma! Up first is Juan Pablo, who says he had a friend growing up that he hung out with all the time. Right after Juan Pablo and his first girlfriend broke up, this dude started dating her. "He broke your trust," says Dr. Jenn. Juan Pablo says that this experience made him fiercely loyal forever afterward, and Dr. Mike witness-leads that the long-term effect of this incident is "probably" that when Juan Pablo says "I love you," he "really mean[s] it." Juan Pablo agrees! Dr. Jenn tells Nikki she should keep that in mind. Juan Pablo:

"Therapists," please stop backing up Juan Pablo's bullshit story.

Treach never really had a dad, and after the day he went to the only address he had for the man and learned that he'd moved without telling his son where he was going, he really didn't have a dad, he ended up turning to the streets for parental figures and affirmation. This makes Cicely want to be nicer to him or something.

Jenna then tells the story of her childhood trauma, which is that her mother died painfully of malignant melanoma, often keeping them up at night screaming in pain. After a certain point, Jenna's father stopped letting the kids see her; when she died, he forbade them from going to the funeral, and Jenna's still never been to her grave because her father never told her where it is (which, it seems like, wouldn't be TERRIBLY difficult information to find if it's that important to her?). After the death of her mother, Jenna's father turned into a crazy disciplinarian who didn't feed the children properly and meted out humiliating punishments for the tiniest of infractions. She then tells the story of getting offered a ride home, at age fourteen, from some guys who punched her out, and that when she came to, they were raping her. She didn't know how to tell her father what had actually happened because she thought he would blame her, so she said she got in a fight. I don't mean to be disrespectful given all that Jenna's been through but maybe if you're going to tell this story, wear a less distracting ring?

I mean, no one's going to be able to follow that, really? But Nikki REALLY isn't. Nikki's never sounded more Barbie-ish than when she starts by saying she was always good at everything she tried when she was a kid, from athletics to academics. Cicely:

Nikki was very popular in high school and made the Varsity cross-country team as a high-school freshman. Jenna:

Nikki had a great home life, but blames her parents for letting her get away with shit, because if they ever asked her to do something she didn't want to do, she'd "throw a fit" and they'd give in. Dr. Mike concludes that this is why she has such a problem with Juan Pablo's failure to say he loves her: things have always come so easy for her. Nikki:

Oh, Nikki. You are out of your trauma league. This is not just bringing a knife to a gun fight, it's riding in on My Little Pony.

Shut Up, Nikki

After group, Jenna and John get a quiet moment to talk about what she's just shared. She says she tried to tone it down a little, but there...kind of is no way to do that. He now understands why she got so upset when he banged his head against the headboard, and they hug, and I feel a little bad for being mean about her even though I still think she's ridiculous overall.

As the group eats lunch, we get to see exactly how challenged Nikki is at reading a room as she presents several other traumatic stories of her childhood that she could have shared, including getting lost at Wal-Mart; slamming her fingers in a door; and getting kicked off the cross-country team for breaking some rule she didn't agree with, though on that last one it sounds like maybe she didn't STAY kicked off? The editing makes it seem like Nikki is just rhyming these off without anyone else's input, and for once I think the editing is probably legit because WHAT? Jenna gets so disgusted that she leaves the table, and in the kitchen she quietly tells John that she's about to put Nikki's eyes out. I tend to agree, and I also think maybe Juan Pablo picked a sociopath from all the ladies ABC found for him? Like calls to like, after all.

Smashy Smashy!

Dr. Jenn opens this season's "smash shit up" exercise by informing us that Dr. Mike's area of expertise is anger management, I guess so that we don't think giving a bunch of extremely volatile people baseball bats and setting them loose in a house full of props ISN'T irresponsible? I have never understood the therapeutic benefit of this exercise (the only one, I think, that they've done every single season), and every time they cut to observers flinching when the bat-wielder screams curses and destroys whatever supposedly symbolic stuff has been set out for them, I feel like it's probably doing more harm in the aggregate than good? But we do get to see how our childhood trauma sharers from earlier supposedly learn from the experience: Nikki sees that Juan Pablo is scared to trust, just like she is; Jenna sees that John is giving her the safety and support she never got from her parents; and Treach realizes that Cicely is his dad now, I guess.

Everyone Still Hates Nikki

Out by the fire bench, Cicely delightedly reads aloud, to Dick and Stephanie, a story from In Touch in which Andi once again rehashes her terrible night with Juan Pablo; when she's done, they all agree that the reason Juan Pablo hasn't told Nikki yet that he loves her is that Nikki sucks. Sometime later, Juan Pablo and Nikki have come out to hang, and when Nikki mentions that she took the magazine inside, in case Cicely wasn't done with it, Cicely says she wasn't, and that it was very interesting. She shit-stirringly mentions the Andi article, and Juan Pablo says that Andi and Nikki are friends, which Nikki confirms. Cicely can't believe Nikki is friends with someone who would shit-talk her man like that, and gives her impression of what she'd say if any of her supposed friends dared to talk about Treach that way in public. Juan Pablo then gets up to give HIS impression of what that morning after the bad (or, according to him, NOT bad) Fantasy Suite night was, and agrees with Cicely that a good girlfriend would defend Juan Pablo against Andi's attacks, and though he sort of winks at Cicely as he says it, like, I'm so bad and this will get her all riled up, it's pretty clear he means it. Nikki whinily tries to say that it's like she and Andi were dating two different guys, but when she can tell she's not going to win this one, she decides to stomp into the house. This is like getting kicked off the cross-country team all over again!!!

Juan Pablo is instructed by producers decides to go into their room and ask if Nikki's mad. Guess what? She is. But you'll never guess why, because IT IS SO ABSURD: she's mad that Juan Pablo let Cicely say mean things about ANDI, in defense of HIM. Let me just explain the situation again: Nikki expected that when Cicely read a story about Andi running down Juan Pablo, Juan Pablo should have agreed that Andi -- a person not present -- was right about everything, in order to pacify Nikki, because Andi is her friend. And look, do I personally think Andi's version of the story was accurate? Of course I do -- but I certainly don't expect JUAN PABLO to say it was AT HIS OWN EXPENSE, largely because if he were capable of that kind of fearless self-assessment, the night wouldn't have gone down the way it did in the first place. As Jenna, next door, creeps over to the wall to eavesdrop (exactly as I would do), the fight rages on, with Nikki calling Cicely disrespectful and continuing to berate Juan Pablo for not having Andi's back, or not having Nikki's back while she got Andi's back. She just cannot hear herself.

So then Jenna announces in a TH that she decided to stir the pot, and does: she goes outside to complain that she can't sit next to their fight anymore, and reports Nikki's charge of disrespect to Cicely. As if Cicely needed any more reason to hate Nikki.

Back in the fight, Nikki says, "I stuck up for Andi like I would stick up for you," apparently not noticing that she DIDN'T stick up for him, IN THIS EXACT SITUATION FIVE MINUTES AGO, which is WHAT CICELY WAS TAKING ISSUE WITH. Nikki then declares, "I don't want to talk about this ever again, do you understand me?" What I want is for Andi to show up and explain how, after things ended for Andi on The Bachelor, she could still be friends with Nikki at all, but I bet neither of us is going to get our wish.

Verdict

That whole smashy business is dumb, as usual, but the stuff around it is pretty good.