who's on judge mathis today? #213
an idiotic recap of the greatest syndicated courtroom show of all time
plaintiff: marlena from grand view, missouri. marlena is serving miss laura snatching her wig off on def jam (click that, you’re welcome) realness and i am instantly besotted. boy do i love a woman who looks like she’s having a hard day. i understand the appeal of a lady whose aura gives off “i just left a spa appointment” vibes but nothing makes my heart flutter like a bitch who looks like she just got done cussing out her boss and now has to go to the DMV, and marlena is giving that. she’s wearing a half-buttoned baby pink cardigan with the sleeves pushed up over a sheer black and white polka dot dress; large, dramatic ear chandeliers; and her hair is slicked down but also includes a cascade of tight ringlets on top and down the back? her nails are right, her eyebrows are sharp enough to cut glass, and her lips are the frosted white of my 1987 dreams. i want to follow her around like a dog, i’m obsessed.
defendant: billy from kansas city, kansas?? (please no one ever explain the difference between the cities kansas to me). billy looks so much like tiny lister it’s fucking uncanny, like i am fully expecting him to leap through my screen and snatch off my chain, wowie wow. billy is unraveling the cord around his accordion of truth™ which is reminding me that there’s been a dearth of them lately, that these defendants are out here just, uhhh, raw-dogging justice????? that is so stupid, i’m sorry!
the complaint: marlena used to date billy and she paid for an attorney for him when he got sent to jail and also loaned him money, but she has not been paid back and it’s time to sue!
what does she want: $2500!!! billy is countersuing oh no: my guy would like 2500 retaliatory dollars for “harassment” and i am already tired!
how it went down: marlena, sounding like my favorite latenight betty wright loneliness soundtrack, says “first of all your honor, i am not the type of woman you can play games with.” whenever people make super tough-sounding declarative statements like that about themselves i always wonder to myself “is there a type of woman out there you can play games with? am i that type of woman???” the answer is obviously yes, you could literally play any mean, withholding game you want and i would be like *sad eyes* “it’s okay babe :( i still love u,” let’s hope marlena brought her lesson plan so i can pick up a few tips.
marlena says that billy knows she don’t take no shit, that he knew when he met her that her ex had “tried to put a restraining order on [her],” and i am gonna go ahead and put my pencil and paper away because “risk going to jail” is not worth growing a backbone. marlena says she met billy at a nightclub years ago and all he’s done since then is lie, cheat, and steal. she says they exchanged numbers despite both being in a relationship at the time, and if that’s not the pot calling the kettle a cheating liar i don’t know what the fuck is??????? lmao not me defending a man but come on girl y’all were in the lying and cheating business together! stop trying to make him look like the bad guy!!!!!!
they “talked on the phone for a year” (pro tip: any time a heterosexual man you just met wants to talk on the phone all the time there’s a 99% chance something nefarious is afoot) until marlena ended her relationship and then they started dating, but she found out later billy had never ended his relationship. see what i’m saying??!?!!?!! billy told marlena that he couldn’t break up with his girlfriend because he’d just gotten out of jail on a drug charge and she had evidence that could put him right back in there, and that’s cute, my silly ass once believed “i’m not in love we’re just living together because the bank won’t take her name off the mortgage” and frankly it’s heartwarming to see men out here leveling up their storytelling game.
billy and marlena continued to date for several months despite his, uhh, in-house probation officer. billy was pulled over driving drunk and got a DUI, followed immediately by getting into a physical altercation with a coworker, and he ended up going back to jail for 11 months, during which he talked to marlena three times a day. WHAT DID I SAY ABOUT MEN AND THE PHONE. anyway, during one of these 924 collect calls (cha-ching!) billy asked marlena to get him a lawyer to take care of the DUI served and she also paid a $500 fine. marlena says that billy was out of jail for “5 maybe 10 minutes” before getting arrested again, this time for medicaid fraud.
billy, who has been laughing this entire time, says that when he met marlena she knew what she was getting into, that he already had a serious girlfriend and marlena was aware that she was going to be his “woman on the side.” i love that, i really do. i admire the transparency and honesty going into this kind of arrangement. the problem with it, though, is when you expect your side woman to do main woman shit. that’s when, i assume, the emotional lines get blurred. if i’m your side bitch don’t call me from jail??? or ask me to both find and pay for a lawyer?????? that’s a task best left to the woman you actually claim to love and want to be with! marlena may be a self-described “psycho,” but there’s nothing psychotic about expecting more from a person who is expecting a lot out of YOU????? i can feel myself getting a little nuts and i promise to try to rein that in but i do not blame marlena for thinking she had a bigger place in billy’s life (if that’s even true) if she’s out here calling 1-900-LAWSUIT on his behalf!
billy says “i told her i was sneaky and conniving” and she told him she was fine with that. greg is like, “well you should’ve known then that she was gonna be a problem.” and what a problem marlena was! billy says that one day he went to let his dog out and saw marlena driving recklessly down his street and he ran out to stop her (he didn’t know she even knew where he lived!!!!!!!!!!) and ten minutes later the police showed up saying they got a call from a concerned citizen that someone in his house was firing a gun. billy says that marlena admitted doing that but she’s denying it now, and billy says a week after the police incident he opened his door to discover a fireman outside wielding an ax, getting ready to chop it down. he doesn’t say the reason they gave (and that sounds very fishy to me, an expert in the 9-1-1 cinematic universe) but he’s convinced marlena orchestrated that, too.
billy says he didn’t really know marlena was like this until one night he was at the club and “stepped out for some fresh air” and saw marlena being put into the back of a squad car for violating the restraining order her ex-boyfriend had on her; apparently she was being arrested for vandalizing his house. “ALLEGEDLY,” interjects marlena, and i’m sorry but i am crying laughing. i love her. billy screams “she did that!” and marlena holds a finger up and says, “went to court, found not guilty” and puts her finger down and please, where is her docuseries, i’m begging!!!!!!!!!!
greg asks marlena to break down what she’s asking for and she says billy owes her $500 for the lawyer/DUI situation, a $750 loan, and the rest is for the $100 a week she sent him while he was locked up. the judge says “nah, that sounds like a gift” as billy is shouting “that was a damn gift!” and everyone in the courtroom is like MM HMM but then marlena holds up a sheet of paper and says, “but your honor, he signed a promissory note!” the crowd goes nuts and greg looks over the evidence, saying, “sorry buddy, looks like you played yourself.” listen man, maybe if you’d made her your main woman she might’ve written that pop and cigarette money off!
the ruling: billy’s like “hold up hold up, if you look at the bottom of that iou i wrote that it’s null and void if anything happens to me” and marlena snaps “you’re still here, ain’t you???” and this is not the relationship energy i want in my life but whew is it entertaining to watch. i don’t know this for a fact but i’m willing to bet that billy absolutely does not fuck good enough to be worth all of this trouble. add to it that he’s always needing money due to various crimes and probably has multiple main- and sidechicks looking to jump her for hanging around their man?????? not worth dying for, babe!!!!!!!!!
greg asks billy about his counterclaim (the judge can barely stop laughing long enough to put a sentence together) and billy says that in addition to calling both the police and fire departments, marlena texted and called his phone so much that it broke. if that’s true (it isn’t) then his beef is with the apple store, right? greg sarcastically says, “hey man, your woman was just worried about you!! that’s why she called the police, the fire department, and blew up your phone, she was just checking on you!!!!!” aw shucks, billy actually thought he had a case and it’s almost heartbreaking to watch him realize he’s kinda losing it.
BUT WAIT: greg calls back to the beginning of the case when marlena said billy “knew not to play” with her and asks her to clarify what she meant by that. marlena hesitates and judge mathis is like “you called the police and the fire department, didn’tcha” and she says no but he’s not buying it and grants billy $500 for, oh i dunno, having to explain to a man that was about to chop his door down that his not-girlfriend was mad at him????? but that doesn’t matter because marlena is gonna get her money too and, at least according to the lusty gaze billy is giving her in the hallway outside of the courtroom, many more chances to, eh, harass her not-man.
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “so what you’re saying is you shouldn’t even have had to tell him you’re a psycho, he should’ve already known!”
*bangs gavel*