Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Love Cowboys

Is it just me, or is it getting harder and harder to order the lives of the Teen Mom 3 cast because it's turning into a four-way tie of despair? Here's the best I can do.

Alex

You can see how very, very grim things are when Alex -- the one whose baby's father, Matt, is a no-account drug addict -- is having, relatively speaking the best time: she's teaching dance, she's getting a tattoo, she's hanging out with her picture-perfect grandparents. (Her grandpa looking at the tattoo of Arabella's footprint on her back and asking why the tattoo artist worked his phone number into it was classic grandpa humour.) Of course, the only reason Alex's week has been so pleasant and trouble-free is that Matt has moved out of her house and is declining to make contact with her, and when the camera cuts over to what's going on with him, it's clear why. Though his case worker, Maricelli, has found Matt a place in a group home where -- if he abides by its rules -- he'll be able to live for the next few years while he figures his life out, she also lets him know that his admission is conditioned on his passing a drug test. So when he shows up several hours late for his appointment with her, claims he's been in the hospital being treated for an "incommunicable disease" with an IV drip and has to get right back there, and also help his mother move, and also he read the handbook for the group home and doesn't like the rules and doesn't want to live there and storms out angrily without taking a drug test...I mean, I think we all know what that litany of excuses was going to add up to, so when Alex gets the news at the end of the episode that Matt has ODed, sad though it is, none of us could have been all that surprised, right? And still her life is the best, you guys.

Katie

It's not like I'm going to sit here and deny that Katie's daughter Molli is beautiful and sweet. And though I'm confident that Katie will be able to turn things around for herself eventually, Molli's birth is the tragedy of her life. Of all the teen moms in this cast, Katie is the one whose ambitions were the most clearly defined: she wants to be a social worker, and though having Molli scuttled her immediate plans to join her best friend Victoria in college, Katie knows how to make the jump from her current online community college in order to make the jump to the four-year college where she'll earn the right degree for the career she wants. If she's going to go to the nearest college that offers her program, in Utah, one of two things has to happen: either Joey gets a job at a mine in Utah, or she goes away to college -- with Molli, presumably -- and lives apart from Joey for two years. And when she talks about the latter possibility with her mom and friends, she says how hard that would be, because she's never spent more than a couple of nights away from him since Molli was born. BUT WHEN YOU SEE KATIE AND JOEY TOGETHER, IT'S CLEAR SHE CAN'T STAND TO BE AROUND HIM. Her whole manner is different with him: she's sad and withdrawn and barely makes eye contact with him; it's as though, even since the start of the season, she's learned that confronting him about his shit isn't worth it in the long run, and that she might as well just take it. Unfortunately, now Joey has decided to stand his ground on the matter of moving to Utah for the sake of her education, and use his status as the family's sole income earner as a cudgel to get his way. And as bad as all that is...at least he is earning an income, does live with his child, and does apparently love her. It's just too bad for Katie that he doesn't seem to love her -- but then again, like I said, I don't think she really loves him either.

Mackenzie

Like Katie, Mackenzie has, through parenthood, trapped herself in a relationship that under any other circumstances would have long since run its course. I know that, since the events of this season's filming, Josh and Mackenzie have gotten married, so maybe the therapist that Mackenzie visits for the first time in the latest episode really helps them work out their issues. But from where I sit, Mackenzie and Josh seem temperamentally unsuited for one another -- that is, if Josh's apparent inability to say more than four words to Mackenzie at any given time isn't evidence that (a) he hates her, or (b) he's severely depressed. The latest episode had maybe the third time I've even seen Josh touch his son this whole season, and he handled him like Gannon was an unco-operative squid. And Mackenzie said in so many words that if not for Gannon, she and Josh would have broken up by now over his screening her calls (not really okay when your girlfriend is also the custodial parent of the child you share and might need to reach you in the event of an emergency), and how miserable they both seem to be whenever they're together. Making her sit on your front step for an hour without calling to let her know where you are is kind of unacceptable and hey, I don't know, maybe give your child's mother a key to your place? I just don't see how this checked-out Josh turns into a person Mackenzie would actually want to marry.

Briana

Well, I don't know what's up with the @Papichuloo Twitter feed that Briana believed to belong to Devoin and on which he was making threatening tweets about her, because that doesn't seem to be Devoin now. (I even checked @PapiChulo, which is how the judge kept pronouncing it, and that doesn't appear to belong to Devoin either.) I guess the account could have changed hands between when this was filmed and now, but still, all Devoin had to do was go to court and deny that it was him? There's no way for Briana's lawyer to have proved that Devoin did make the tweets in question? Whatever: Devoin is a scumbag, and I maintain (as I've been saying all season) that the only reason he's still pretending to care about being in Nova's life is because it gives him some kind of macho status. At least Briana can be pretty sure that, despite the fact that she didn't get an order of protection against him, he's not going to show up demanding to see Nova, because he doesn't actually want to.