In Defense Of Emily

Lifetime's Pretty Wicked Moms, which just aired its third episode last night, is another one of those reality shows where well-off, usually white women who basically hate each other hang out together under a series of flimsy pretexts that will be kind of compelling when filmed; I guess the main difference between it and any of the Real Housewives shows is that its stars all have young children -- except the one who doesn't live in the same city as the rest of them (they're in Atlanta; she lives in Birmingham yet is always around) and who is designated as "The Dog Mommy" -- which allows the show to wring drama from their competitiveness, and from the clashes that arise out of their differing ideas about parenting. That they are all garbage goes, I assume, without saying: they are, after all, the stars of a reality show. But the worst of them all is also...kind of the best. And not in a "you love to hate her" kind of way.

Emily is "The Queen Bee" of PWM -- self-designated, I assume. Unlike all the other women on the show, she works: she owns a boutique called Swank, and though her fellow PWM star Miranda ("The Southern Belle") claims that everyone in Atlanta calls it "Skank," from what we can tell she built the business herself and takes it pretty seriously. Emily and her husband, Pete, have help with their daughter Amzie (...I know) in the form of Miriam, their full-time nanny. Miriam's departure for a week's vacation is the central event of the latest episode, and we're supposed to judge Emily for crying as Miriam leaves, and for not knowing how she's going to manage on her own. And I do, kind of. But I also appreciate that Emily owns up to feeling the way a lot of parents feel, but aren't supposed to admit: that even though she loves Amzie, she also relishes the time she gets to spend away from her, being an adult.

Naturally, Lifetime wouldn't have placed Emily at the center of a reality show if she didn't also evince distasteful character traits -- and she does, in abundance. She's dismissive to her husband Pete; not until this latest episode did she relent to his request that Amzie start sleeping in her own bed, rather than in Pete and Emily's, which is not unreasonable of him to ask, given that Amzie is two. After giving a makeover to Meredith, another star of the show, she humiliates Meredith at a gathering of their "friends" (co-stars) by trying to force Meredith to watch the video of her wedding, which Meredith has never done because it happened around the time of a traumatic car accident that Meredith doesn't want to remember (and has no memory of due to a head injury she sustained in the crash). She's also...dumb, as we learned last week when she tried to fill out an absentee ballot.

I can't stress this enough: Emily is definitely gross. But what redeems her for me is that she is parenting in a way that works for her, and she owns it. If you read STFU, Parents, you're familiar with the concept of "sanctimommies," and that's what all these other bitches are. And though I would have thought the fact that they're all southern would mean that they judge each other's parenting decisions behind one another's back, that is not the case. Nicole B. ("The Alpha Mom"), who has her daughter McKinley (ugh) on a 100% organic diet and has never allowed her any sugar at all, calls out Emily for letting Amzie have Coke to Emily's  face. And, look, should Amzie have Coke, at age two? Probably not. But throwing shade directly at Emily for parenting her child according to her own judgment is fucking rude. If abstaining from sugar has made McKinley a superior specimen of child, we don't really see it. We do, however, see that Miranda's incredibly rigid scheduling of every second her son Ledger (bleh) spends on this Earth hasn't made him particularly fun to be around, as he hits everyone around him -- including his mother, who apparently never disciplines him.

Nicole B. and Miranda are such assholes that when Emily needles them, it's kind of the best. For instance, a Hallowe'en party in last week's episode featured a bounce house, which Emily was excited to take a turn in. Nicole B. begged off, because she's still recovering from McKinley's birth, parts-wise, which is to say, she fears that if she bounces too much, she'll pee her pants. Emily proudly tells us that she had a scheduled C-section in order to preserve the structural integrity of her whole area; and Nicole B. is such a goddamn martyr about her ruined junk that it's hard not to applaud Emily for being so forward-thinking.

It would be harder to defend Emily if Amzie were a little shit, but she's not, or at least she's not edited that way (and given how poorly Ledger comes off, I feel pretty confident that if Amzie were misbehaving all the time, we'd see it). Okay, yes, that's probably due to all the time she spends with Miriam, but...Emily hired her? I don't know. The lesson of last night's Miranda storyline seemed to me that it benefits Ledger not to have Miranda on top of him all the time, as he nailed a commercial audition only with a woman other than Miranda playing his mom.

I guess I just respect Emily for acknowledging her strengths as a parent, and acknowledging her limitations as well. If every mother would just admit, like Emily, that she finds playdates boring in general, and specifically unbearable when she's expected to get through them without wine, all mothers would be better off.

And Meredith did need a makeover.