who was on judge mathis yesterday? #284

an idiotic recap of the greatest syndicated courtroom show of all time

plaintiff: angela from lansing, michigan. okay, neighbor!! i like to drive to lansing for two very specific reasons: 1 there is an outpost of my favorite glasses spot in the middle of an absolutely gorgeous outdoor mall and 2 that same mall houses a cavernous pf chang’s that is always empty at 2pm on a weekday, the ideal time to eat at the best restaurant in the world. angela has sleek black hair parted on one side and is wearing an eye-wateringly bright neon hawaiian print tunic beneath a black blazer. she is straight up adorable, with chubby lil rosy cheeks and a cutie pie smile that i hope are hiding something sinister!

defendant: robert from lansing, michigan. robert is tall and dapper and milk dud-headed (complimentary), and he strides into the courtroom wearing a black dress shirt with a shiny silver and black striped tie. he looks mad as hell, which is funny because he has one of those combination soul patch slash chinstrap goatees that are impossible to take seriously.

the complaint: angela used to hook up with robert and claims he sold some of her belongings without her permission, so she’s suing!

what does she want: $2300 in return, robert is countersuing for $2300, can’t wait to see what he says it’s for!

how it went down: angela begins, saying “hello your honor, first thing i’d like to say is do you know the song ‘poison’ by bell biv devoe, never trust a big butt and a smile?” okay well first of all judge mathis wrote that fucking song. (wanna know what kind of freaky little weirdo kid i was? my crush was RONNIE, lolll) greg, of course, says he was just singing that song the other day. me too, because it comes on the oldies station now. angela says robert had a big butt and a smile (irresistible, i get it) and that’s how she ended up in a years-long friends with benefits situation with him. she says that for thirteen years she and robert have been bootycalling each other and that he has a good relationship with her sons and they look up to him.

greg is like, “do you think THAT is a good idea? introducing your sons to your booty call?” and that’s hilarious because my first thought was “isn’t he their father???” the judge goes on to explain what his idea of a friend with benefits is, “typically a person you only associate with for sex. ‘we’re friends and we’ll have some sex, but we’re not mates.’ so people like that don’t help out with your kids.” nothing in the world beats listening to a man to define why he doesn’t have to be an active participant in your life!

okay angela says that in may 2012 she found out she was pregnant with their child and while she was incredibly excited robert was “less than enthused.” yeah, i bet! doesn’t really work to be a dad every couple friday nights from 11:32pm to 12:17am. angela says she suspected he was upset because the day she discovered she was pregnant with his child was the same day one of his other friends was giving birth to another of his children. if anyone from the government is reading this, please use my tax money to just start mailing plan Bs to every person with a uterus while it’s still legal. or just, i don’t know, pump it into the public water supply like fluoride? this is absurd.

angela says that several weeks later she got sick and lost her job and robert offered her a place to stay. executive producer greg mathis stops her in her tracks because this is not how good storytelling works, we need to give robert a chance to talk shit about angela (i mean, give us some background) before she gets into the property of it all. robert starts his testimony by saying he’s an avid fan of the judge mathis television program and he watches two episodes a day. WITH WHAT TIME? does the man sleep?? all that fucking and being a role model for male children and he still has two hours a day to devote to the greatest show in the history of television??? this man truly does have the same hours in his day as beyoncé.

robert goes on to detail how he runs a bootcamp for children out of his home (haha yeah, me too brother, it’s called “go get me another diet coke from the refrigerator”) because when he was a teenager he was running the streets and his uncle snatched him up and put him to work “cutting grass and tearing up carpet.” and now, as an adult, he honors that legacy by tearing up the carpet of every one of his female friends. just kidding, he says that now parents leave their bad ass kids with him to spend their summers working his illegitimate chain gang to keep them out of jail. he doesn’t really say that? but…………….the vibe is very much giving “indentured servitude as correction” and that is extremely weird, especially because homeboy isn’t even wearing a fake drill sergeant costume. he’s just, like, a dude with too much time on his hands who studied the cadence of motivational speakers. if the government is still reading this, pop by this dude’s house for a wellness check.

so when angela needed a place to stay robert told her that she should go to a shelter and send her kids to live with him because he’s good with children and also “women don’t like to put the toilet seat back up.” if i’m remembering correctly (i refuse to rewind), isn’t she pregnant with his child? like literally the most vulnerable child in this situation?? i understand he has no value since he can’t boost a carburetor or whatever robert is teaching his youth militia to do but come on!!

robert is talking so fast i can barely keep up, and now he’s saying that angela went to a shelter but her boys stayed with him but she left the shelter two weeks but then ended up in the hospital (why??) and while she was in the hospital she called him asking him to bring her some food but it was a saturday which is bootcamp day so he had a bunch of kids over at his house and he doesn’t have a vehicle so he said yes he’d bring her the food but he didn’t go right away because his girlfriend who’d just given birth to his son was over and when he finally did make it to the hospital angela said he was acting like he didn’t care if she lived or died (he does not) and i am jaw agape in literal disbelief that this is a person angela had sex with for thirteen years.

we’ve all fucked a mistake or two but angela seems like a nice lady and i can’t believe she’s wasted thirteen years of her one wild and precious life sleeping with major payne????? this is making my stomach hurt. after angela was released from the hospital (days? weeks?? we’ll never know) she went over to robert’s house to retrieve the items she’d left there, which included a carseat and a baby blanket and omg i thought these were teens?????? he offered a home to her light-enough-to-need-a-carseat child but not his mother??????? the energy here is so darksided.

angela said she was going to send her older son in to get the stuff but when she pulled up she saw robert had left her belongings on the porch. not wanting to incite a conflict, angela left and texted robert asking him why her stuff was outside. robert texted back that he’d started selling her shit, starting with her washer and dryer, which is why the rest of it was out there. i’m sorry but WHAT was left on the cutting room floor because this is making my brain bleed. she had a washer? and he sold it? while also running a child slavery bootcamp? and taking care of her old baby plus his new baby???

there’s like three solid minutes of crosstalk but here are some facts i could discern between all the yelling:
-angela had a house, robert agreed to hold on to the house stuff (washer, dryer, furniture, etc) while she was in the shelter and he took in her two kids
-robert’s reaction to angela’s pregnancy was so negative that she had an abortion, after which there were complications that landed her in the hospital (i am not as dumb as i look, they were definitely using coded language to talk about this initially)
-robert is an asshole and when he took angela her “thank you for not gestating my baby” meal ($4.99 at mcdonald’s) in the hospital he picked a fight and she decided that when she got out she wasn’t going to deal with him anymore and made arrangements to get her children
-she gets the children and later, when she has secured stable housing, she goes back to robert’s to collect her things and sees a bunch of them in the front yard, then he texts her saying that he sold the rest but now in court says he was just bluffing
-i am so tired

the ruling: robert starts banging on about some hubcaps he thinks angela stole from his garage and i just gotta say, it’s okay to let people go! it really is!! even if you’ve been ~dealing with~ a person for thirteen years, it is absolutely okay for you to decide that relationship no longer serves you and cut your losses. i understand that a person can be like a cozy, familiar sweater but i promise that there are newer, better sweaters at the store. sweaters that won’t yell at you in the hospital or sell your washer out from under you while you’re in a homeless shelter. the judge grants angela her $2300 judgment but throws a thousand dollars robert’s way because…………….he believes this bullshit rims story? he’s so impressed by his youth outreach work??? okay then! man, i need to start that peewee fight club i’ve been meaning to. do you think i’d look good in camo??????

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “once again, i do admire the bootcamp organization you run, but if you’re producing babies two at a time with women you aren’t married to, it sounds like you might literally need a boot to a certain part of your body!”

*bangs gavel*