Randy Houska Delivers Home Truths

The Teen Mom franchise has always been about judging the girls who, for various short-sighted reasons, decided to have babies they are patently incapable of caring for them (exception noted: Teen Mom 1 star Catelynn, who placed her daughter in an open adoption, and is therefore the hero of the whole enterprise). But Chelsea Houska of Teen Mom 2 has had more advantages than most: she's received lots of financial assistance from her parents, who also seem to be very available to provide child care for her daughter, Aubree, so that Chelsea could pursue employment (though she is such a spoiled brat that she quit her job at a tanning salon on the phone, giving no notice) and her education. But, much like her Teen Mom 1 counterpart, fellow spoiled brat Farrah Abraham, Chelsea displays absolutely no appreciation for the gifts she's been handed, which Kailyn or Maci would probably give their eyeteeth for, which is why we in the audience are lucky to have an onscreen surrogate in the form of Randy, Chelsea's father.

The thing you need to know about the dudes who've fathered the girls' babies on Teen Mom and Teen Mom 2 is that they are pretty much all worthless sacks of shit, in all the ways you'd expect of guys who became fathers against their wills, probably due to inadequate information about contraception and/or mistaken impressions of their girlfriends' feelings about abortion. Other than the aforementioned Catelynn, who lives with her boyfriend Tyler, none of the fathers is still in a relationship with the mother of his children. If the guys are not entirely absent from their children's lives, they palm the kids off on their grandparents during the weekends they have with them, or fail to contribute financially to their children's care, or they toy with their kids' mothers' affections -- and yet, whenever Dr. Drew Pinsky hosts a reunion special at the end of each Teen Mom season, he keeps beating the drum for the couples to reconcile for the sake of the kids, as though a household led by two resentful teenagers is a better situation for a child than one headed by a single mother determining her own future with the possibility of finding a mate who may not be biologically related to her child, but who actually likes her.

However, Randy Houska isn't parroting Dr. Drew's reactionary propaganda. Randy hates Adam Lind, Aubree's father, and Randy is absolutely right to do so. Not only has Adam been stringing Chelsea along with empty promises for the entire time we've known him: this season, he literally gave her a promise ring, only to dump her, two episodes later, on the phone. Adam and Chelsea have been on and off several times, and through their ups and downs, Randy has obviously had a chance to form a firm opinion of Adam -- specifically, that Adam is a trifling loser -- and last night he had no problem telling Chelsea exactly what she needed to hear.

So what happened was, Adam gave Chelsea this promise ring for her birthday. Sometime around then, he had basically moved into the house Randy has been renting for her -- paying no rent, of course -- which Chelsea had hid from Randy because she knew he wouldn't approve, but which Randy discovered when he went over to babysit Aubree one day. When Chelsea threw a birthday party for Aubree sometime soon after that, Adam showed up late (obvs), and in events that unfortunately for us were not captured on camera, Randy started telling Adam some shit, and Adam left early. So then, even though he had just given Chelsea the ring that ostensibly indicated his intention to make a commitment to her someday, Adam started giving her the fadeaway, for which Chelsea blamed Randy.

This brings us up to last night's episode: as Chelsea mopes around about the sudden cooling of Adam's ardor, she confronts Randy about his part in it. But God bless Randy, he is not having it. When Chelsea complains that Randy had gotten too involved, he immediately shoots back, "Someone had to." Chelsea protests that it was her place to do that, to which Randy replies that she wasn't doing it. "That's because I want to be with him," Chelsea whines.

At this point, Chelsea yells that they shouldn't be talking this way about Aubree's father in front of Aubree, adding that what she liked about having Adam there was that Aubree could see him every day and that the three of them could be a family, whereupon Randy points out that the three of them were being a family with Chelsea supporting him: "He's working, he has money, and he still doesn't chip in. Right? He just uses you." Chelsea doesn't deny it, deflecting that it's frustrating "when someone makes the decision for you." Randy calmly suggests that it's as though he was running an intervention: "It's like you're an addict, you can't get away from someone who's treating you this crappy. So in sixteen years, and you've got someone  treating [Aubree] like he treats you, what are you going to do? Stand by?" Chelsea has to admit that the way she lets Adam treat her would not be good enough for Aubree, but tries again to change the subject: "Well, at least, through all of this, I'm still rocking my GED." But Randy will not relent! "Where would you be now if you wouldn't have stuck with him? You'd be in hair school, you'd be happy -- you'd probably have met someone nice by now. He's an anchor you keep dragging with you." Chelsea mumbles that she keeps thinking eventually he's going to grow up. Randy tells her what she already knows: three years into their relationship with him, Adam has shown no capacity for positive change. Randy!

Randy's tough love finally forces Chelsea to call Adam and make him tell her what she already knows: he's out. Chelsea has to know she'll be better off in the long run. (The dog she acquires to console herself will probably not be so lucky, if the state of Farrah's dog is anything to go by.) So if this is the first stage of Chelsea's shedding Adam for good and maybe turning into less of a simpering moron, then Randy is a true hero.