who's on judge mathis today? #271
an idiotic recap of the greatest syndicated courtroom show of all time
plaintiff: shawna from marinette, wisconsin. shawna is wearing my favorite kind of kohl’s attire: a muted lavender (just go with it) cardigan primly buttoned over a neon periwinkle (seriously, just let me cook) blouse that she’s paired with sensible black slacks that can go right from her desk at the local insurance agency to the school board meeting where she will be arguing in opposition to the high school library’s one gay book. i can’t see her shoes but i know in my heart that they are skechers. this is an outfit that perfectly complements the 30 oz yeti rambler® filled to the brim with piping hot kirkland brand coffee (jazzed up with a splash of hazelnut-flavored international delight) firmly lodged in the front cupholder of the 2021 chrysler pacifica currently idling in her driveway. that’s an outfit you can trust to be five minutes early picking you up at the mall!!!!!!!!!!
defendant: brian from menominee, wisconsin. and here we have the gentleman that gave her a “fantastic deal” on that chrysler, brian in his pale grey dress shirt that’s kinda shiny and too big and barely-pink tie that’s kinda shiny and too small. his hair is buzzed close to his scalp and he looks almost exactly like that white-haired actor who’s in almost every movie and TV show ever made, almost distractingly so, i mean if you cover one eye and push your computer screen a few inches away it’s uncanny!
the complaint: shawna worked for brian and says he agreed to pay her utilities in exchange, then her electricity got cut off one day so now she’s suing for unpaid labor!!
what does she want: $2975??? that’s a helluva bill for electricity! how many months overdue is that, 25????
how it went down: shawna says she met brian two years ago through his wife and they all became very good friends. shawna says everything was cool until six or eight months ago when she caught brian, on several occasions, “rubbing [her] prosthetic leg” when he thought she wasn’t looking. um, excuse me? now, i just took my medicine, but i fucking know i didn’t just hear this seemingly nice, ants-on-a-damn-log-making-ass lady say what i think she just fucking said said???? this dude got caught red-handed secretly rubbing her goddamn prosthesis?????? fletcher in minorty report would never do that disrespectful shit!!!
shawna says “it wasn’t even the real part of my leg!” and the woman directly behind her in the audience nearly unhinges her bottom jaw as it drops open in surprise. then shawna says “if he was really into my leg, i could give him my old one” and pardon me i have to get up and pace the room three times see you in a second. LOLWAT. shawna says that when she’d confront him brian would say he was “goofin’ off” and promise to stop, but over the following months shawna says she kept catching him feeling up higher and higher on her prosthetic leg. she continually asked brian to stop, eventually resorting to asking his wife to step in and help curb his behavior, and even then this dude wouldn’t quit it. i am beside myself. murder court, y’all got room left on today’s docket???
brian begins his defense by saying “sir, she’s an aggressive liar” and this woman looks as cool as a juice box nestled inside a kong cooler on the sideline of a suburban soccer pitch so why did he not go with whatever option b opening statement he could’ve come up with???? just dumb for no reason! he says, “i never tried to touch her leg or nub” and i’m gonna go ahead and say that a dude who talks like that probably did that shit. the judge asks brian if he’d ever tried to touch shawna’s leg and brian hesitates before shaking his head “no” at the same time his mouth is saying “it’s hard not to, you know, when she takes it off and waves her nub in the air, wearing these little tiny shorts.” i’m sorry, but would vincent from paul blart: mall cop 2 ever speak so disrespectfully of a lady?????? i think the fuck not! also what on earth is happening here, i don’t know if i should laugh or cut my own throat.
the judge, shooting murder lasers from his eyeballs, says “you just couldn’t control yourself, huh? you got to get to that leg, you got to have it?” brian shrugs and eww this is feeling gross. shawna interjects that she “only wears basketball shorts” and this isn’t an svu newsletter but don’t we all know that what she’s wearing (or not) shouldn’t matter??? greg asks brian if he wants to say anything else and brian tells him that shawna wrecked his marriage by telling his wife that he was hitting on on her. brian (who, maybe, is wasted?) says that he doesn’t believe any of what shawna told his wife was true, to which shawna replies, “believe it? you’re the one that did it!!”
shawna says that she worked “about five jobs” for brian and that instead of paying her in cash he agreed to take care of her utility bills so it wouldn’t interfere with her disability payments and that is smart as hell. she says one morning she was sitting at her kitchen table peacefully having a coffee before going to work (i love this kind of scene-setting, god i love a storyteller) when all of a sudden the power went out. it turns out that brian hadn’t been paying the bill for months. she says that when she called him about it brian told her he hadn’t agreed to pay for it at all, but then shawna pulls a signed affidavit (that’s what she called it!!!! i have no idea if that’s what it actually is, to me it just looks like notebook paper with blue writing on it) out of her accordion of truth™ that she claims is proof that he did.
brian says he stopped paying shawna’s utility bill because she became lazy and less enthusiastic at work, and i’m sorry but if rapt attention and peppiness are your expectations as a boss then you might as well go on ahead and shutter your business, brother. he says he “didn’t feel like he had to keep paying her bills because she stopped working.” greg says “you told her that?” and brian says he did.
shawna says “how was i supposed to make my commitment when i couldn’t even climb up a ladder because he’d be taking pictures up my skirt” and i…………am not 100% positive i know what any of that means. no one has said what work she was doing, but why did it involve a ladder and why was he standing below her and i feel like i both know way too much and also nothing at all. what’s going on here!!
the ruling: somehow the judge manages to reign in his insatiable curiosity (i wonder if he, like i, smells some kind of illicit sex thing that might not be palatable for television at three in the afternoon and is wisely steering the ship clear of this FCC-shaped iceberg) and once again asks brian who is most certainly not major bennington from the cinematic masterpiece sonic the hedgehog whether or not he’d informed shawna that their arrangement was changing. brian, once again, emphatically claims that shawna knew he was going to discontinue paying her electric bill, and i don’t play the esteemed sergeant ty o’brien in fox’s inimitable program 9-1-1 lone star but even i know that there’s a zero percent chance that this woman who is dependent on inadequate disability checks agreed to work for free for her creepy fucking sexual harasser??????? this man might need an actual lawyer!
brian keeps insisting that he never signed an agreement with shawna that he would pay her bills in exchange for work (although he literally JUST SAID that he stopped paying her bills because her work had gotten sloppy, and not in the hot way) so the judge asks for his license to compare signatures with the handwritten legal contract™ shawna brought to court. they are practically the same, but just to further prove this dude is lying greg asks doyle to grab the affidavit the show makes them sign (a first!!!!) from his office and whaddya know: that signature is identical as well. a ha, ya burnt!
i knew as soon as homeboy opened his mouth that this case wasn’t gonna go his way, but shawna’s last minute revelation that brian also regularly asked her not to wear underwear beneath her basketball shorts (wtf is this damn JOB???) just put the nail in his already half-buried coffin. shawna screams “you’re a freak!” in brian’s direction after her winning judgment is announced, and in the post-verdict hallway interview she says “i don’t know how you thought you could get away without paying me” to which brian responds……………………….“i like your leg.” ew, yuck. too bad she didn’t whip her prosthesis off and beat him to death with it. or at least reenact the greatest reality television moment of all time. (what is aviva up to these days? i miss her on my TV!)
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “ma’am, you done threw me off with all this freakiness!!!!!”
*bangs gavel*