Counting On Season 2 - Part 5

[justmy2cents]

6 minutes ago, IReallyAmHopewell said:

 

The family comes together to relive some of the most memorable moments from season 2. Plus, before the reunion is over, there is a surprise guest in store for the cast. 60 Min. |

Probably Baaaabe (Jeremy)

[MsSaylor]

Seriously who the fuck could the surprise guest be? Does anyone think there could be some kind of announcement tonight? 

[Carm_88]

43 minutes ago, justmy2cents said:

Probably Baaaabe (Jeremy)

Yeah by the look on Jinger's face, that's who I am thinking. 

[VelociRapture]

27 minutes ago, MsSaylor said:

Seriously who the fuck could the surprise guest be? Does anyone think there could be some kind of announcement tonight? 

In order of most likely to least likely:

1. Its Amy or Deanna or Jeremy or another family member. Basically, someone who would only be shocking to one of the Duggars - and only because they're paid to act surprised.

2. Sierra. Talking all about the tacky coffee and soccer themed outdoor December reception she has planned for JinJer. She accidentally mentions that she'll "forget" to order enough urns to keep the coffee hot and will have to "scramble" to find enough before the wedding starts.

3. Jana's secret husband appears to announce they're expecting triplets.

4. Jana's secret husband and four lovely children make an appearance. Just for shits and giggles.

5. A somehow now fully grown Caleb Dugar magically appears to briefly discuss how weird it is to be the only sibling without a J name, how much he loved his time attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and to call Josh a douchebag. Then he magically disappears again and we're all left wondering what the fuck just happened.

[MsSaylor]

I'm gonna be so pissed if it's Jeremy. That's not a damn surprise, he was heavily featured all season. But, alas, it probably is. 

Or maybe it's josh and Anna's new baby that they've managed to birth in secret? 

[Carm_88]

1 minute ago, MsSaylor said:

I'm gonna be so pissed if it's Jeremy. That's not a damn surprise, he was heavily featured all season. But, alas, it probably is. 

Or maybe it's josh and Anna's new baby that they've managed to birth in secret? 

It's Anna to announce blessing number 5? Her and Josh are so excited! 

[MsSaylor]

I actually totally think that extremely possible. I definitely think she's pregnant and I think she's due before Jessa so it's getting to the point where they have to announce. Although it would be kind of weird to do so on the show whilst pretending josh doesn't exist still. Probably would be better for them to do it on their own social media or something. 

My other thought was a new courting partner for one of the kids 

[Carm_88]

1 minute ago, MsSaylor said:

I actually totally think that extremely possible. I definitely think she's pregnant and I think she's due before Jessa so it's getting to the point where they have to announce. Although it would be kind of weird to do so on the show whilst pretending josh doesn't exist still. Probably would be better for them to do it on their own social media or something. 

My other thought was a new courting partner for one of the kids 

That;s the only hitch, they don't really talk about Josh but Anna has been absent from the show. One would think that she would be around giving Jessa baby advice about #2. I guess we will find out tonight!  

[Bad Wolf]

Wow. I can't wait. Not.

[Mercer]

Just asking out of curiosity: When did you realize the Duggars had a dark side? Did you ever buy what they were selling? Did you know from the start there was something off about them, or did something happen later that made you realize all was not what it should be in Duggarland? Was there some specific thing that changed your mind?

Speaking for myself, I originally thought the Duggars were pretty harmless. I watched their show a few times, and it seemed to be just a lot of virtually identical people in a large family doing extremely mundane things. I mainly just found it boring rather than objectionable, so I rarely bothered tuning in. Obviously they were quite conservative, but I didn't know enough about them to realize it went beyond standard Southern conservatism other than the oddball fact of having a lot of kids. I was vaguely aware that Jim Bob had been some kind of state-level politician, presumably conservative Republican, but I wasn't aware (probably because I wasn't living in the US at the time) of the specifics of his voting record or that he only bothered to show up for votes if there was an opportunity to grandstand against abortion. So all this to say, I assumed they were just a really dull family with a lot of kids who somehow managed to score the opportunity to have a really dull show.

The turning point for me was their El Salvador trip in 2011. I watched those episodes because I thought it would be interesting to see something about El Salvador more than because of specific interest in the Duggars, but in those episodes I found the Duggars extremely off-putting. 

The first thing that was problematic to me was that both parents went on the trip, leaving their medically fragile toddler in the care of her older siblings. When - very predictably - little Josie had a medical crisis, the siblings were left to deal with it on their own. I found that a really unfair decision on Jim Bob and Michelle's part. Even if the siblings were young adults by that point, they didn't choose to bring Josie into the world, and it should not have become their emergency through their parents' absence. It's one thing when a crisis hits out of the blue, but Josie had been sick; this was not something that couldn't have been foreseen. When you choose to have nineteen children, you can't necessarily both go gallivanting off together on a completely voluntary trip. If you want the freedom to travel without being tied down by children's needs, you have to decide to have fewer of them and let them grow up without being replaced by new babies. Just pushing parenting off on your other children is not a solution that allows you to have your cake and eat it too, which was what Jim Bob and Michelle seemed to be banking on. That incident made me really question their judgment.

By the end of the El Salvador episodes, I was also questioning their sincerity. Jim Bob and some of the children (I couldn't tell them apart at that point so not sure which) were complaining very sadly about how terrible it was that the orphanage children couldn't be adopted. This left me rolling my eyes, for a couple of reasons. 1.) None of the Duggar children had been adopted, and pretty clearly none ever would be. A family that churned out an endless stream of biological children but then complained about the unavailability of adoption was clearly all just talk, trying to make themselves look better, and I didn't buy it at all. 2.) I found it highly arrogant that a family of white American voluntourists who stopped by for a quick vacation to hand out presents imagined they knew better what these children needed than the caretakers did who devoted their whole lives to looking after these kids, or the government of the children's own country. There are lots of reasons that adoption might not have been the best choice for these kids - like the fact that many children in orphanages are not in fact orphans and a lot of them might still have family, and that being raised in their native culture is a huge benefit to them that needs to be considered in the equation. But nope, the Duggars had the solution, even though their understanding of the issues involved seemed to be limited to, "Oh, look at the poor brown children!" Their simplistic answer was adoption - by someone else, of course, not by by them.

Those episodes left such a bad taste in my mouth that I researched the Duggars further and found out a whole lot of other problematic stuff about their beliefs and lifestyle.

TL;DR I was wondering how other people came to a realization that something was amiss with the Duggars, and whether anything specific led to that conclusion?

[Buzzard]

22 minutes ago, MsSaylor said:

My other thought was a new courting partner for one of the kids 

The Duggars have "surprises" in the sense that they would like a teaser to get them another season.  This is really the only likely possibility.

My guess is that Jeremy will be there, but not in the sense that they have edited it to appear.  TLC is famous for making things appear one way only to let it play out completely opposite. 

My money is still on Famy, and that she's pregnant.

[Bad Wolf]

And we still don't know what Jana didn't see coming. 

[ClaraOswin]

I haven't been keeping up on the threads at all and I know you guys have probably discussed this already.

But I just watched the TLC video clip where the guys talk about filling out a questionnaire for JB before they started "courting."  So freaking bizarre. Says a lot about these guys that they didn't immediately run in the other direction.

I think I'm 3 or 4 episodes behind on the show so yeah...I don't really have anything else to say.

[Buzzard]

12 minutes ago, Bad Wolf said:

And we still don't know what Jana didn't see coming. 

Didnt they say something similar at the end of last season?

[Carm_88]

3 minutes ago, Buzzard said:

Didnt they say something similar at the end of last season?

Yes I'm pretty sure that they did. 

[socalrules]

I am continually amazed this show continues. So next season is Jinger planning a wedding and then the season after will likely be that another sister courts. Fall is courting season and spring will be wedding season. We will have the exact same episodes with just a different sister. It's Groundhog Day but less interesting due to the fact that there is no growth as they repeat everything. I find them so boring that I cannot understand how they can even spend time with each other. 

Maybe jeremy will be the surprise and he surprises Jinger by saying they can live the first year of marriage in Arkansas. He can come off as a wonderful partner who only wants to live nearby for his wife and it has nothing to do with making it easier to film and gain a TLC level of fame. 

[December]

I remember thinking they were creepy off the bat with the specials. When the show got popular and people I knew talked about what a nice family they were, I searched online to find out their real beliefs  (were they culty or just an odd family with relatively mainstream Christian beliefs?) and found this site and others. So that really settled it for me. Later on I met some people who'd been raised in similar circles affiliated with Gothard  and that was an even bigger eye opener... I guess I didn't realize that it wasn't just a couple of odd families (albeit large ones), but actually a fairly substantial movement. 

[Carm_88]

I started watching around the time that Josh was courting Anna. I thought it was pretty interesting that they had all these kids and that they could keep them straight. I found it pretty odd that they didn't kiss or anything before marriage. When I realized that Josh and Anna were the same age of me, I was mighty intrigued. 

Things started to seem a little off for me when TLC started to show all those reruns and I saw how the girls were dressed in the specials. They didn't seem so odd by the time that I started to watch, I mean they were a little, but not so out there cult like. I stopped watching and eventually came back to it. The whole Josie and Jubilee situations just put them on my bad side. I still watched it but I felt like I was watching that wasn't right. Like I was peeping, there as nothing outwardly wrong but it stopped being funny and started being creepy. 

I'll admit that I was completely suckered for a while. I thought they were very, very strange but I didn't think that there were hiding any deep dark secrets. I was clearly wrong. 

[nst]

I thought this questionnaire that JB made them fill out was an urban myth 

AND HELLO we know Jeremy is the surprise now 

insane show 

That's just so stupid -

[weirdemmaline]

I thought there was something wrong from the get-go. First watching 16 kids and moving in or whatever the hell that particular special was called I remember getting into a pretty deep discussion about what Boob and J'Chelle had to be thinking to keep cramming more and more kids into these small houses that weren't guaranteed to them (and letting small children help them put together the tth... nope)

[Italiangirl]

Well i live in Italy so is pretty hard to have some news about the Duggar aside from the show. I Watch some of the first special (construction of the Tth and some trip with the kids) after just heard some news on internet (jubillee) after i Watch the famous trip in El Salvador and is was strange for me because i didn't understand why they letto a little sid kid at home. After that there was the Joshie boy scandal,  i know that something was wrong but I didn't know exactly what. 

Gothard and the rest i discover here 

[AnnaRuk09]

The "surprise" has to be Jeremy. The immediate clip after they said there would be a special guest is Jinger's brains oozing out of her face. Come on TLC, just sad. 

[ClaraOswin]

18 minutes ago, nst said:

I thought this questionnaire that JB made them fill out was an urban myth 

AND HELLO we know Jeremy is the surprise now 

insane show 

That's just so stupid -

Yeah, apparently not a myth. Pretty nuts.

[nst]

7 minutes ago, AnnaRuk09 said:

The "surprise" has to be Jeremy.

it is 

moving on 

they think they are normal 

they are all insane

[HarryPotterFan]

14 minutes ago, weirdemmaline said:

I thought there was something wrong from the get-go. First watching 16 kids and moving in or whatever the hell that particular special was called I remember getting into a pretty deep discussion about what Boob and J'Chelle had to be thinking to keep cramming more and more kids into these small houses that weren't guaranteed to them (and letting small children help them put together the tth... nope)

I immediately judged them for having such small children helping build a house with little to no safety precautions. I thought they were just some strange family with parents who were a bunch of idiots. I was disgusted with their extreme mysoginy, but didn't realize how far their awful beliefs went. When I saw an episode where they want on about how evolution was a myth, I became more intrigued with these strange people who were so opposite of my family: feminist scientists/doctors. I felt so bad for these little children, one of whom declaring he wanted to cure cancer. I remember thinking, "good luck with that, your parents worn let you learn basic science." And I felt bad for these kids who were given no chance to be educated and reach their full potential.

Then I fell down the FJ rabbit hole, and realized how awful they were. And hearing Jessa go off on how abortion = the Holocaust...I completely lost it.