who's on judge mathis today? #234
an idiotic recap of the greatest syndicated courtroom show of all time
plaintiff: marilyn “porsha” from oceanside, california. marilyn “porsha” is wearing a deep beige???? taupe?????? pantsuit that is revealing mucho cleavage and has boxy shoulders and is nipped-in at the waist and i gotta say, should we as a society bring back sexy businesswear??? marilyn “porsha” is wearing lots of delicate gold chains (i have been trying to get into “lots of chains” as a personal style pivot but i have too many sensory issues to last more than a couple of hours before they start feeling like a noose) and has her hair pulled up into a severe bun on the top of her head. she’s got a smoky eye and nude lipstick and is this the most glamorous junior executive i have ever seen????? probably!
defendant: fauntessa from las vegas, nevada. MY GOTH QUEEN!!!!!!!!!!!! fauntessa is wearing a black blazer over a black turtleneck, black leggings, black high heeled boots, a long black weave, black eyebrow pencil, plus several loops of silver cuban link chain, along with one silver crucifix the length of my damn forearm hanging from each earlobe. she looks like a priest who works at a brothel, and this is absolutely how i would dress if i didn’t have clinical depression.
the complaint: marilyn “porsha” says fauntessa was a friend who came along when she danced on “soul train” in the ‘90s, and they got so close they even had a threesome with fauntessa’s boyfriend (HOW IS THAT RELEVANT) and now she’s suing her for a loan and emotional distress.
what does she want: $2500, a decent-sized amount. fauntessa is countersuing for $1000 for harassment.
how it went down: okay blame this one on the gorgeous amina, who texted me a clip from this episode (accompanying caption: “911!”) that had me screamlaughing on the toilet at one in the morning. marilyn “porsha” (i’m not sure what to call her yet) says that she’s known “mrs. reid” (uh oh) for fifteen years and that they are acquaintances who met while dancing on soul train. did you guys know that when i was a kid i wanted to fuck lou rawls? i made that decision while watching him on soul train! i also would sit on the floor right in front of the television lusting over him on parade of stars and the jerry lewis telethon, fantasizing about one day touching his chest hairs. what a fucking sicko.
marilyn “porsha” says that fauntessa has been a good friend to her (wait a minute, i thought she was a mere “acquaintance?”) throughout the years but then she came to find out that all she was really good at was being a manipulator and a taker who stabbed her in the back every chance she could. “how did she stab you in the back?” asks the don cornelius of daytime courtroom shows, and marilyn “porsha” says that fauntessa would often speak ill of her, telling people she’s not educated and “is only a dancer.” greg isn’t buying this for some reason and asks for more examples, then marilyn “porsha” gets the shaky cry voice and says that fauntessa dogged her out to her family and when she needed money to feed her daughter wouldn’t help her.
i am a little confused, and yet? we move! okay marilyn “porsha” tearfully continues that after she’d given fauntessa the money she’s suing for that we don’t know about yet, she went to fauntessa asking her for $20 to feed her kid and fauntessa refused to help her even though she owed her money, and that wasn’t right because she would give fauntessa the shirt off her back if she asked for it and that made her so mad she wanted to “bash her head in.” the audience’s reaction to that line is hilarious, particularly this black woman in the crowd seated behind the defendant who is looking over at marilyn “porsha” like GIRL HOW DARE YOU! it’s so fucking funny!! she is absolutely scandalized!!!!!!!!!!
fauntessa says, “well, you can see porsha’s character” (okay, porsha it is!) and that’s funny but also i feel bad because it’s so unfair to use a person’s emotional response to an upsetting event against them! i am very lucky to be a person who turns to stone when i’m hurt or angry, and even though this is truly the only favor the universe has granted me boy am i grateful for it. i don’t know what i’ve done to deserve the supernatural ability to harden into an impenetrable slab of granite when someone is making me mad but it’s the greatest weapon in my arsenal, just standing there stone-faced like “mm hmm, okay, i feel you” while my brain is literally boiling with revenge plots. i wish i could sprinkle a little of that on porsha!
fauntessa, who is cool as a fucking cucumber, says “yeah porsha used to dance on soul train, and she rode that train as long as she could, to anybody that would listen” OUCH “but porsha really needs to get herself together, not only for the two kids that were taken from her” PLEASE “but also for the last one that she can’t take care of.” ohmygod???? porsha’s tears dry up immediately, and she screams with all of the power in her lungs that her kids weren’t taken from her, they were living with their grandparents while she “pursued [her] dream!!!!!!!!” fauntessa is looking like “yeah right” and then porsha keeps screaming, this time that fauntessa is a snake and a user and a taker and she’s “here to reveal [her] ass today!” first of all, they bleeped out “ass,” which is hilarious. i’m in the middle of watching dopesick as my nightly nightmare fuel, and it feels quaint to hear a little baby cuss bleeped out after spending two hours every night watching people shoot melted oxy in between their toes.
doyle is like “i might need a second bailiff” and yeah i forgot the part where porsha turned to fauntessa with her pointed finger held aloft, the international signal for “bitch i’m about to fight you.” porsha continues, calling fauntessa ugly (that’s not nice!) and telling her god doesn’t like ugly people. greg breaks down laughing and says “ma’am, i don’t think he meant it like that” and how do we know??? what if heaven looks like an episode of models inc and the rest of us ugly pieces of shit are doomed to spend an eternity beating each other over the head for the coolest bedroom in hell?????????
okay porsha keeps screaming and i might have to retract whatever sympathy i was feeling earlier because wow those tears gave way to an unholy spew of acidic bile!!! finally she takes a breather long enough for fauntessa to remind the judge again that this version of her is who porsha really is, that porsha is “a lady of the night, stripper, prostitute, unfit parent—” and as she’s listing all this porsha yells “AND I [BLEEPED] YOU TOO, RIGHT? WE FUCKED TOGETHER. WE HAD SEX, TOGETHER, WITH YOU AND YOUR MAN.” i wish i had the words to describe greg’s face right now? he looks like the cat that caught the canary, glittering eyes wide as dinner plates as he asks, “did y’all?” porsha continues “WE HAD SEX. ON MY MOTHER, WE HAD SEX” imagine her hands clapping to punctuate each word here “she was always trying to get me in the bedroom, BECAUSE THIS LOOK ALONE” she gestures at fauntessa’s glorious outfit “COULDN’T [BLEEP] A [BLEEP]’S [BLEEP] [BLEEP].”
now i can’t really read lips, especially from the back of someone’s head (porsha has spun all the way around like the exorcist to yell directly in fauntessa’s face), but i’m pretty sure she’s saying “because this look alone couldn’t keep a man’s dick hard.” now, porsha. anyone who’s so much as met a human male knows that he could get a boner from a gust of wind, so not only is this cruel it is also patently false! greg can’t even contain himself as porsha screams “she needed me as that buffer!” and the audience is losing their dang minds. she continues, pointing at fauntessa’s feet saying “those boots can’t keep a [BLEEP]” and i’m sorry but if a man won’t fuck you because of your boots that’s literally great news. you don’t want that dude!!!
greg shuts porsha down, calling her “vicious,” and fauntessa says this is exactly who she is, a person who not only verbally assaults people but also just got out of jail for hitting a woman over the head with a pipe. in response to this, porsha starts yelling (again with the yelling!) that fauntessa has “shoulders like a 49er” (okay i laughed but i’m also a person who just watched a bunch of training camp footage on nfl live and fauntessa is no deebo samuel!!!!!!!!!! porsha gotta chill!) and fauntessa, who remains the calmest person i have ever seen on daytime TV (what is she on and can i have some?), says that she’s been nothing but a friend and mentor to porsha and it’s a shame she’s talking about her like this.
greg admonishes porsha, telling her to “maintain herself” and she apologizes and says she’s acting out because she’s nervous and holy shit what the fuck is homegirl like when she’s relaxed??? porsha says that fauntessa, whom she looked up to and admired, told her she was about to lose her beautiful high rise apartment because she was down on her luck and she asked porsha to lend her $2500 to keep her place. fauntessa says that circumstances at her time share selling job changed and it affected her income so much that she was going to rent out a bedroom in her high rise suite to a coworker. she says that at the time porsha was homeless and needed a place to stay so she offered to rent the room to her instead. fauntessa told her she would need to put down $1000 for the first month and $1000 for the last and she agreed.
fauntessa says that before she moved in porsha decided to move her ex-boyfriend in with her, and when fauntessa told her that wasn’t cool “she got irate, just like you see her doing today.” (um yeah, we saw that! it was bad!) fauntessa says that porsha then started threatening to hurt her, which she believed she would do. fauntessa says that in the email porsha keeps yelling about (i missed that between all the bleeps, i guess???) the judge will see evidence that backs up this claim, and that she decided to keep porsha’s money because she was harassing her, not because she needed it.
i know that i’m a rookie lawyer (i’m not), but that’s not really legal, right??? someone who knows the actual law: gimme a call and tell me what’s up (and also answer a few questions about some laws i recently may or may not have broken, please and thanks). greg asks porsha why she’s suing for $2500 if she admittedly gave fauntessa $2000, and she says the extra 500 is “for emotional distress” and greg is like “someone distressed YOU??? i don’t believe that!” and hahaha shoulda thought about that before you raised your voice and started calling people defensive tackles and shit, babe!!!!!!!!!!!
the ruling: greg asks fauntessa about her harassment counterclaim and it’s worth noting that while porsha has cycled rapidly between crying and screaming and sniping under her breath and back again over the last 17 minutes, fauntessa is so mellow it’s like she got hit with a tranquilizer dart. i would kill to be this cool under pressure! fauntessa says that porsha repeatedly showed up at her job, hung out outside her apartment building, and one time ran up on her and tried to stab her with a pocket knife??????? excuse me??????????????? ONE THOUSAND RETALIATORY DOLLARS IS TOO LOW.
fauntessa says she knows how to defuse portia and calm down a situation (i bet, my girl is like a human xanax), and she did so by telling her she would pay her. but then porsha started harassing her son, showing up at his house and rolling up on him in her car and she decided she wasn’t giving her shit. fauntessa’s sons have written statements and honestly who needs them, i’d be willing to believe anything anyone said about porsha based on how she’s behaving in front of these cameras today.
unfortunately for fauntessa she’s gonna have to give porsha her two grand back, BUT: judge mathis says that based on porsha’s behavior in court alone he believes she harassed fauntessa, so she gets her $1000, too. judgment for everybody! after the judge leaves the courtroom a thing happens that i have literally never seen on this show before: porsha makes her way over to get in fauntessa’s face to brag about her victory (??) and is quickly intercepted by a bulky security man i had no idea existed!!! doyle races over to grab her, too!!!!! i’ve never seen him have to tackle a litigant before??? and fauntessa just stood there, coolly watching it happen. dang porsha’s obviously got it all wrong, because i definitely just got a boner!
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “nervous? you ain’t nervous! next thing you’re gonna say is you’re ‘shy.’”
*bangs gavel*