Whether Barb is correct or not, it's a narcissistic perspective that she's using to make Richelle doubt Mark, and not for Richelle's sake. I was just surprised that Richelle would take what Barb was saying as anything but warped manipulation based on her reputation. And seeing as Mark warned Richelle against meeting…

I don't think she's OK with the father being around… I don't think she feels she has a choice. She took an awfully long time to call him back and curtly tell him where she was after he gave her the money. I think she doesn't want to see the rest of them because they're just a reminder of the whole situation. I…

I was surprised and offput that Mark's (that's who I meant) fiancee turned Barb's accusations back onto him. Why on earth, after all she's heard about Barb from him and then experienced for herself in person, would she take anything Barb said to heart? The fiancee seemed more savvy than to let Barb seed discontent in…

I don't believe Aubry is being truthful, but I also don't think she's totally lying. I think she definitely has sexual abuse in her history, and it's possibly what put her in foster care. I think she's an extremely untrustworthy character, so nothing she says can be taken at face value.

I think Russ was supposed to be our sympathetic "in" to this whole mesh of characters; he was the first one we met and his reaction formed the baseline foil for all the others, particularly Barb's. I think he's remained sympathetic, because his sins are in the past and his flaws are passive (weakness) rather than…

She can be specific about the details because she's likely been in a similar situation, though not necessarily with her brother. We know at the very least she gives blowjobs in exchange for drugs; I doubt that's the limit of what she's done. I do agree it's clear she's been sexually abused, but not by who. I actually…

Does she harbor prejudice against people based on their race? That's what racism is. I understand your/their interpretation and sympathize with why it might have come about, but unfortunately it's racism in sheep's clothing. It still teaches people that what's important is the color of your skin, not the content of…

Those things just seem way too subtle and ambiguous to me. She didn't seem to act differently around her brother than the rest of her family — she's treated all of them with contempt and manipulation. She tries to use their care for her to guilt them into doing what she wants. I think her brother cares about her as…

What was with the ending of that scene? Was that supposed to be Barb "opening up" and then her friend basically ignores her and we're supposed to feel a pang of sympathy or something? I wasn't sure what happened there.

I need to learn to skip AV Club reviews of this show. They're like, Glen Beck level delusional. None of these observations come close to what's actually going on in the show.

Um, no? That's one of the primary aspects of her character, obvious to pretty much everyone, and even stated outright by her brother several times.

I'd been going back and forth about whether the show wanted us to think Carter & Aubry have something meaningful or just a twisted outgrowth of their addictions. I thought this episode proved it's mostly the latter. Maybe they could build something real out of the experience, depending on how they see each other when…

No one on this show is a saint, but the kids seemed like typical teenagers to me, and fairly well-adjusted relatively speaking (kind of bratty, but decent underneath the attitude). But the show is demonstrating that trouble finds and sticks to them more than it would a white family. It bugs me that they're casting…

I liked this one a lot. The newly introduced characters have fleshed out the ensemble of perspectives and started bouncing them off each other in a dynamic I think truly started to gel this episode. It relieved some of the narrative scrutiny on individual characters that I think wasn't doing them any favors given how…

Barb was too much… I'm comfortable watching flawed characters, but her hatefulness went beyond reason. Her relentless tearing into Russ and his nondefense has the feeling of watching someone stab a body over and over long after it's clear they've bled out. Every interaction they have is like revisiting the mutilated…

I could not disagree with you more strongly. He's in the worst place he could possibly be, as demonstrated by his new "protection"… a.k.a. the beginning of his indoctrination into gang culture. He needs to be at his home with his levelheaded sister and devoted father who he knows both love him, not surrounded by…

If kids could be removed from their homes by the justice system every time they got angry at their parents, teenagers would have a 100% detention rate. Jenny too was not speaking to her father. Should she be put in jail and surrounded by "trained professionals" as well?

Yeah, I didn't understand that. If Tony is no longer being detained for a crime, how are they able to keep him there against his parent's wishes? They don't have any reason to believe Tony is in danger or suffering neglect at home - if anything, he has a helicopter parent. Wouldn't they need to get CPS involved or…

Those looking for some truly engrossing and thought-provoking stories about race relations and crime in America right now should check out the recently aired two-part series by This American Life, "Cops See It Differently" (Part 1 and Part 2). It does what I keep wanting this show to do: illustrate the gray areas and…

When I watched that scene, I got the impression they were setting up another reversal of expectations: you think she's just a born-and-bred racist, but they seem to be coming at that too hard and too early for it to really be the case. I think we're going to find that her opinions are generalizations she's made based…