I have no pity for anyone on that god-forsaken show. They all need to be kicked off.
Does anyone find it ironic that Donnell talks a lot about “being a man” and “I’m a man, goddammit”, but it is quite clear that he plucks his eyebrows? He even admitted to shaving his legs!!! The effiminence in his gestures is undeniable as well. I think if there ever was a case of protesting too much, he definitely takes home the ribbon.
[hijack]
When I was a little girl watching soaps with my mom, I thought Victor Newman was the most handsome dashing man ever.
I thought Nikki never deserved him and that he should have stayed with Ashley.
I don’t watch soaps anymore, BTW. I went through detox once I got a real job and couldn’t spend my days in the dorm catching up with all the drama.
The twitching has almost all but disappeared.
[end of hijack]
[hijack]
When I was a little girl watching soaps with my mom, I thought Victor Newman was the most handsome dashing man ever.
I thought Nikki never deserved him and that he should have stayed with Ashley.
I don’t watch soaps anymore, BTW. I went through detox once I got a real job and couldn’t spend my days in the dorm catching up with all the drama.
The twitching has almost all but disappeared.
[end of hijack]
Lib, if it is any reassurance the other night I was yelling at the TV during Frontier Quest. Reality TV can affect any of us negatively.
But where they got those fucking morons and what they did to prepare for spending a year busting sod on the prairie is beyond me. If it’s RAINING all the time you DON’T plow little river beds to plant your potatoes in. You keep the fucking seed spuds high and relatively dry or they will ROT, you shitheads! And your very first responsibility was to your livestock and getting them secured and comfortable, not putting up your tent or building a kitchen. Draping the tent over your wagon would’ve taken five minutes and given you enough shelter for June in Manitoba–or as much shelter as a tent could EVER give you. Digging a well at some random place? Is the water table that high or does the camera crew secretly fill it for you, because you sure got lucky. But giving your poor stock a bucket of mud rather than letting the silt settle out? You’re SURPRISED you and they are sickly? And by the end of episode two you haven’t learned how to plow OR figured out that the horses are going too fast OR that you should get your wives’ fat asses onto that plow to help keep it in the ground. At this rate you have no chance of getting a crop of ANYTHING into the ground that will mature in time–do you realize how short the growing season in Manitoba IS??? You might as well draw straws now to see who you are going to eat first because you’re STARVING come winter. And where the fuck did they get that team? Have they EVER plowed? When the people are idiots I at least expect the horses to know what they are doing. They aren’t pulling a beer wagon in a parade–has anybody told them that? And no more people whining to the camera! If you had prepared at all before this instead of treating it like a lark or an adventure you wouldn’t be heading down the road to certain DOOM! If TOUGH people mention their injuries AT ALL it’s macho, “That’s not an injury. THIS is an injury,” “Can you top this?” trash talk, not your “Boo-hoo-hoo! I have a blister!” shit. Any study of life on a homestead would’ve shown you that it was the people who PREPARED and KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING who didn’t move back east after two months.
Not that I let myself get involved with TV shows, of course.
http://www.mtv.com/onair/roadrules/season12/questions.jhtml?id=christena
Question 12. Describe your Road Rules experience in three words.
Voting off extravaganza
Sounds like to me that theres more voting off to come, hopfully they get rid of the right person this time.
I’m new here. Anybody wanna chat?
I liked number 15 from your link: “[The RV] smelled like Donell’s rancid feet with a hint of open butt hole. The RV bathroom was used once by Donell and continued to smell like a public urinal the rest of the trip.” The mind reels.
beccabee52000
You might want to try the MPSIMS forum for a better shot at civil chatting. But welcome to the SDMB.
I thought the whole Abe-Donnell thing was absolutely fascinating because it brought to the fore the “which one’s the real jerk” issue that lurks behind so many human interactions.
Is Abe a jerk because he started the physical violence?
Or is Donnell the jerk because he pretty much goaded Abe into physical violence knowing that it would get Abe kicked off the show?
Or is Abe the jerk because he holds unpopular viewpoints and expresses them in sometimes rude ways, so he deserves whatever happens to him as a result of these viewpoints?
Or is Donnell the jerk because these viewpoints may be Abe merely repeating what he’s been taught while Abe isn’t actually a bigot as he demonstrated by helping Donnell up the stairs and getting cozy with the black girl whose name I can’t remember?
Or is MTV the jerk for hand-selecting these two to put together knowing that there was a pretty good possibility that what occurred would occur?
I think reasonable people will stop at different points along the above continuum.
I don’t. A big part of jerkness is dishonesty. Abe is brutally honest. The two-faced one is Donell.
Welcome aboard! What passes for “chatting” here is done in the MPSIMS forum, though there are a number (somewhere between zero and more) of chat rooms used by the members. The BBQ Pit is reserved for expressing our inchoate rage. You probably don’t wish to chat with someone whose rage is inchoate as you risk providing the focus they need.
Yeah, Lib, but there’s also the position that Abe upped the jerk factor when he went from merely exchanging verbal barbs to flailing his fists around the dance floor.
Most jurisdictions hold that “he taunted me into hitting him” is not a valid defense to assault, showing that most people believe that the first one to start physical violence is the biggest jerk.
Donell is dead-set on controlling his environment for his own purposes, in part I think because he knows he can’t compete physically in the missions with his the other castmates. Donell had it in for Abe since the beginning, and did not let up digging at him, snubbing him, and calling him a hick from Montana. Donell also did his best to turn the other castmates against him, and it’s pretty evident to me he’s got Mary-Beth and Cara under his nasty little thumb. Christena at least can think for herself, and she’s the only one who ever really bothered to try to understand and befriend Abe. IMO, despite Abe’s narrowed world perspective, opinions, and socially awkwardness, he was honestly making an effort to learn something through his RR experience; unlike the others who seem to regard it as a popularity contest. And therein lies one of the major problems with the way the new RR seasons are constructed like Survivor, where castmates get voted off when the team doesn’t complete a mission. Part of the fun of watching previous seasons was the cabin fever aspect, where we knew they were all stuck together and had to attempt to overcome personal differences in order to win their Handsome Reward. Now, if someone doesn’t fit in, he or she just gets booted.
As far as the fight is concerned, no one emerged blameless. Donell shouldn’t have picked at Abe the way he did, calling him names and goading him on to violence. He knew Abe would react the way he did; hence my earlier comment about engineering the situation to his advantage. Abe shouldn’t have resorted to a physical manifestation of his frustration by hitting Donell, as cathartic as it was for me to watch. But he understood he was out of line and admitted it during the tape review; whereas Donell refuses to take any responsibility for his role in the fight. Dave and Christena both should have spoken up sooner about Abe’s mistreatment by Donell, Cara, and Mary-Beth; perhaps things wouldn’t have had to come down to a physical confrontation had the cast hashed it out earlier. I have no words for Cara and Mary-Beth, other than they should grow backbones and quit listening to whatever poison Donell pours in their ears.
Ooooh, I am SO glad somebody else was so pissed off about this! I never watch the Real World or Road Rules until all of a sudden they run a marathon and I get stuck in it, so I showed up for the very episode we’re talking about. So I didn’t “know” anybody involved, but oh god did I feel an intense visceral loathing for Donell. I don’t usually get so emotionally involved, but what a disrespectful little asshole! And the way the girls were all “He’s a monster! It’s not your fault!” after made me want to throw up. When little miss “I can’t stand to watch a shoving match!” had to go stand by the window to escape the video rewind I was a little surprised by my intense, deep desire to step into the TV and shove her out the window. Grr.
And my family eats cornbread all the time. We are white Southerners. I’d never thought of it as a “racial” food, although of course if that’s how Abe meant it then it was, but that’s certianly no worse than the CONSTANT ribbing about Abe’s “redneck from Montana” status. I felt very sorry for the guy (Dave?) who ended up getting caught in the middle, but it’s not like, at least on what we saw, that ANYBODY stood up and said “Donell was at least 40% to blame for this.” Of course, I’d have left. But then I’m not on a reality show. For a good reason.
I am still surprised, two days later, at how upset I got over this. I couldn’t sleep that night for pissed-offedness.
Oh, and the way they both behaved afterwards was very telling. Abe admitted he was wrong to hit the guy, he left with a male-ish offering (“Take it easy”, I think) while Donell didn’t even respond. What a fucking asshole.
TaxGuy
I think you’re confused. Committing a crime and being a jerk are not necessarily the same. Yes, it is ethically reprehensible to assault someone for taunting you in a place you don’t own. But. As Judith and Zsofia and others have pointed out, there is some considerable history, precedent, and pattern here. Donell’s intention has always been to isolate, deprecate, and debilitate Abe. It has been a deliberate plot and scheme operation from the beginning. Now, that alone does not necessarily make him a jerk, but don’t forget that every step of the way, Abe stepped up to help Donell when help was needed despite their history together. He made numerous rational and polite requests to Donell directly to stop the harrassment. He also warned Donell repeatedly and in every way — with his words, with his body language, and even with his facial expressions — that he was at the end of his rope during the dance rehersals. Donell chose to press on. In doing so, he stepped into the bright light of jerkdom full blown. He’s a bully. He’s a pussy. He’s a jackass. And he’s a jerk.