plaintiff: tanzania from union city, georgia. close-cropped platinum blonde curls, light eyes, freckles, black blazer, serious as a heart attack. her eyebrows are sharp enough to slice deli meat, which is a look i’m into.
defendant: danielle from riverdale, georgia. hmm miss danielle looks like a sunday school teacher: neatly coiffed hair and a prim, belted black dress with a periwinkle cardigan over it, but she only has the top button on the sweater buttoned, which is absolutely chaotic.
the complaint: tanzania dated the defendant’s witness, and says that once they broke up his new girlfriend, the defendant, started harassing her.
what does she want: $5000 for harassment and defamation, and i am nervous in advance because those are so hard to prove and greg gets so mad when people don’t have the right evidence to support those claims. can i just pause here to say that i am giving you an uncomfortable glimpse into my VERY SPECIFIC PRISON OF ANXIETY right now? my silly armpits are damp because i am worried about a stranger getting yelled at by a court tv judge, literally the second-lowest legal stakes to, oh i don’t know, pinky swearing? why am i scared! this isn’t real! countersuit: $5000 for harassment and emotional distress, and i am going to have a fucking aneurysm. there’s no way on earth either of them can win this case!
how it went down: it’s hot right out the gate. tanzania starts by saying she has over 300 emails from danielle, harassing her, and that danielle also has created multiple facebook profiles impersonating her. i got off facebook a year ago, like scorched-earth-no-announcement-left-a-pile-of-charred-bodies-in-my-wake got the fuck off facebook, and every time i hear some shit like this it just reaffirms that i made the right move. and please don’t think it was some kind of moral or political statement, i’m too dumb for that and I DO NOT HAVE ANY BELIEFS, but the noise and misery was just too much so i bounced and i have not regretted it even for a minute. except i forgot to get a lot of people’s email addresses so we could pretend to stay in contact but also no one reads their email so who cares!
as tanzania is explaining what’s on these fake profiles danielle made, the camera pans over to the dude at the heart of this bullshit. and this brother is cool as a fucking fan, man, just chilling and sitting there looking bored. do you know the level of inner calm you have to have to be half-asleep while your ex battles your current on fucking television over some shit you did?! okay i tuned out what tanzania was saying while trying to approximate the SERENITY OF JEROME but i woke the fuck up when i heard her say “she said i gave him herpes on facebook.” what the fuck are our aunties doing online?! my sister fits the profile of the fb black auntie to a T (lacefront, 60 years old, goes to church all the fucking time but still talks shit) and every single time i see her cackling at the cracked screen of her obamaphone i know she’s on that shit starting mess in the comments of a blurry-pictured gentleman named WALTER or CLARENCE and i hate it!
let’s get the backstory: tanzania and jerome dated on and off for twenty goddamn years. twenty years! twenty fucking years of the same old shit! jerome has married two other people during this twenty year span. WHY ISN’T SHE SUING HIM. isn’t wasting a woman’s time a fucking crime?! danielle interjects to say that she just met jerome a couple years ago (girl, heed these fucking warnings and GET OUT) and she had no idea who tanzania was until tanzania found her number in jerome’s phone and called her to threaten her! why!! i mean, i know why, but just one time can’t the “why are you sleeping with my deadbeat man?” call go something like:
sam: “hey sweetie, is this my boyfriend’s girlfriend?”
mbg: “mm hmm, yes it sure is.”
sam: “great. he’s been lying to us both. wanna go half on a vengeance murder?”
mbg: “pick me up after my hair appointment. let’s do this.”
THEN WE DRIVE OFF A CLIFF LIKE THELMA AND LOUISE
the ruling: this is pretty convoluted but the gist is basically that jerome has been sleeping with them both, and lying to them both, and the true solution is that they should join forces and destroy him. even greg, who sometimes isn’t as empowering as i want him to be, screams “you’re suing the wrong person!” when it is revealed that after the initial call from tanzania, jerome brought danielle over to tanzania’s house to confront her back. man is there any creature imbued with more confidence than whatever is stored in an old man’s balls? i wouldn’t want to be caught treating these women like this in private, let alone on channel 26 at 2pm! greg is sick of this stupid shit, and angrily dismisses both cases just like i knew he would.
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: when pressing tanzania for the history of her on-again, off-again relationship with jerome, the judge said “how many times has he been in and out?” and the entire courtroom burst into immature giggles. i can’t even lie: BITCH, I CACKLED.
*bangs gavel*