plaintiff: lisa from hillsboro, missouri. blonde, sensible hair, a brilliant emerald green blouse (yes, a blouse), black cardigan, black slacks, tasteful red lips. looks like she just gracefully stepped out of the pages of a j.jill catalog at my doctor’s office. requisite accordion of truth™ in hand, which makes me wonder: do they just give everyone one of those before they waltz through those courtroom doors? like is there ever a slovenly, sloppy mess rolling up to set with receipts and text printouts exploding from their pockets and handbag and a producer pulls them gently aside and says, “bro, you need to wrap that shit up” while slipping them an accordion file? someone find that out!
defendant: wayne from waterloo, illinois. wayne is exactly the type of dude i just had in mind: collar sloppily unbuttoned, hair greasy and unkempt, shirt wrinkled: A TRAGEDY. swinging that accordion of truth™ he just borrowed from production like he doesn’t give a fuck.
the complaint:
what does she want: $2300 for a refund on a deck! countersuit, baby: wayne would like $5000 (the max) for HARASSMENT. from this lady?! i know it is illegal to judge a book by its cover but lisa looks like she should be selling hand cream in a kiosk at the good mall, not harassing men with sleep-creases in their shirts! i’m intrigued!
how it went down: lisa starts by saying she met wayne on a dating website around the holidays, and there is a woman just over her right shoulder in the audience who makes the most hilarious YEP I CLOCKED THAT face while nodding and i am obsessed with her. i mean, wayne doesn’t look like oscar the fucking grouch but next to lisa he does appear to be disheveled as fuck and it’s definitely one of those situations where you look at them like, “how y’all meet?” lisa says that this is her first time dating an older man but he begged her until she finally caved. wow man, i gotta read those fucking emails!
they met up for drinks and he was really funny and great so she wanted to go out with him again. they made plans for another date and he cancelled on short notice. they made more plans and he flaked out again, so close to the meeting time that she’d already be dressed and on her way? (uh oh!) hearing this, greg shouts “CRACK!” and the room explodes in laughter and also i no longer feel bad for prejudging him because the judge and i are clearly of the same mind. “CRACK! HEAD!” greg continues, much to everyone’s delight. then he pantomimes heating up a crackpipe which is very favorite thing to do. lisa says that wayne was always canceling and always sick, and on the occasions he would show up he’d come to her house and immediately fall asleep on her couch. again greg is like “that’s crack!” and the camera pans over to wayne who is currently slumped forward on the podium. the judge might be onto something here. the final straw for lisa was finding out that wayne lives with his parents, so they never went out again after that.
wayne says that he met lisa online and after their first date, it was snowy and romantic outside, he went back to her apartment and spent the night. and then another night. HOW CONVENIENT FOR YOU TO LEAVE THAT PART OUT, EILEEN FISHER. wayne says the relationship was bad, mostly because the “sex wasn’t good.” what do these words mean when coming from a dude who looks like him? i literally cannot figure out what he’s trying to say? i see his lips are moving beneath his thinning brows, the studio lights twinkling across his balding scalp, but can someone please translate that sentence for me?! wayne then goes on to say that maybe it was bad because he “doesn’t usually date thicker women” and case closed judgment for the plaintiff!
the ruling: lisa is suing wayne for the deposit she’d put on a deck that he and “his company” were supposed to build. she gave him the money and again with the excuses and the never showing up. probably explains why he’s 127 years old and still under his mommy and daddy’s roof. turns out wayne doesn’t own the company (i’m shocked!) and when he couldn’t get the job done he apparently offered lisa a refund that she refused to take. in what world? then, despite having been offered this refund, lisa called wayne’s boss, relayed the bad deck story, and his boss fired him on the spot. bitch i don’t know the law but you gotta be fucking up A LOT if you get canned after one complaining phone call. one time at the animal hospital some asshole called my boss and was like “that black lady at the front desk was rude to me” thinking i was gonna get in trouble but my boss just sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose and said “yeah, sir, she’s rude to me, too.” get outta here!
lisa paid wayne the money in mid-march and didn’t call his employer until early july, which judge mathis says is fine because 90 days is a reasonable amount of time to expect a job to be completed when you don’t have a contract. that’s a useful thing to know! wayne’s defense is that he didn’t do the work because she called his work, and sorry man you deserved it. then it comes out that he was acting like he was building the deck through the construction company but really he told her to pay him cash and he was just going to do it on the side using company materials. oh, buddy. you should have just built the deck. now you got no job and no house and this thicc lady who is way too cute for you just embarrassed your old ass on syndicated television. judgment for miss ann taylor plus!
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “little bit of snow? oh you were snorting before you started smoking! you’re a powder man!” and also, because it’s the holidays and greg is feeling generous, after insinuating that wayne built “a little deck” *wink wink* he says, “i’m the insulter in chief! if you come in my courtroom insulting somebody, particularly a woman, i’m gonna go at you for her! she doesn’t have to say a thing, i’ma tear you down! you and them lil’ decks you build!”
*bangs gavel*