plaintiff: hoo boy, there was a three-segment DNA case before this and i fast-forwarded through that shit because it’s rarely funny and someone always gets hurt and that is not the energy with which i am trying to move through my life! okay, back to the mess. katie is from colorado springs, colorado and has the mother superior of all speak to the manager hairstyles: layered, gelled, swooped, and dyed a rich, gleaming auburn. i guess it’s apt since suing a bitch on tv is the most speak to the manager shit that ever existed?? anyway, she’s wearing a crisp white button-down under a black blazer and her accordion of truth™ is primed and ready.
defendant: carl from colorado springs, colorado. cozy sweater season is still in full effect and i wholeheartedly approve! carl is wearing a deep oxblood v-neck cardigan over a white dress shirt and his bushy beard looks impressively well-maintained. i fucking appreciate that shit, as not a single hair on my body (and there are many, so so many) is ever doing what i want it to do at any given time.
the complaint: katie dated carl while she was separated from her husband and is suing him for the down payment on a van.
what does she want: $2000 because carl took the van she paid for!
how it went down: katie starts with some backstory, saying that she filed for divorce from her late husband in october of last year due to his worsening addiction to meth. she stayed single for a couple months but decided to get on a dating app (her words, not mine, i am dying to know which one!) and then met carl and they had “an amazing relationship.” they were a good fit! in july of 2019, after they’d been together for seven months, her estranged husband was shot and killed. katie and her four children were pretty messed up after that happened, and she says carl wasn’t very supportive of her grieving process so they decided to break up. dang.
carl says they hit it off pretty quick and immediately moved in together, but things went downhill after katie’s husband was murdered and they started arguing a lot. he says that there was a lot of emotional stress and that katie has had a lot of tragedy in her life. greg is doing his best to pull a compelling story out of this dude but he seems really bummed the fuck out. or maybe he’s high? it’s honestly hard to tell. anyway the judge has put on his caring therapist costume and says “sometimes when things get bad people turn away from each other when they should be turning toward each other.” that’s very sad and very true but if somebody doesn’t pull a wrinkled stack of printed out texts™ very soon i am going to cry!
someone whose identity they bleeped out came to help with funeral arrangements and caused some friction between carl and katie that devolved into their breaking up. the judge asks how he got involved with the funeral stuff in the first place, obviously baiting him and trying to start some shit because this is wild boring, and carl says it was because katie asked him to. poor greg, trying to squeeze a single drop of drama from this withered lemon of a case. poor me for watching it.
carl says katie was very stressed and not thinking clearly, so they argued a lot and he would often leave their house to go stay with his brother. greg is really trying to cyrano de bergerac this snooze of a story, trying to lead him by his bristly nostrils to a more dramatic arc by asking why carl would pick fights with a grieving woman, and carl, god bless this hairy dope of a man, is just like “i didn’t fight, i left.” clearly the combatants are not forced to take a screen test prior to coming on the program. carl says that they would argue, he would leave to defuse it, then she would accuse him of not caring about her. what is happening here? my wife and i have had spicier arguments over whose turn it is to cook! what are we doing???
finally, the van. katie was looking for a new vehicle for herself and her kids, which includes a set of two-year-old twins. excuse me??? man, i bet i can think of another (two) reason(s) these people fought all the goddamn time. the divorce ruined katie’s credit and she wasn’t able to finance the car in her own name so she asked carl to do it. the down payment was $2000 and she handed him the money in cash, however the day after that her husband was murdered and katie and carl got into another argument about his “lack of support” so he kept the car. i am going to tread lightly here, but it’s so easy to say YOU DON’T SUPPORT ME and make somebody look like an asshole without saying specifically what they did? or didn’t do? because, to me, carl putting his credit on the line and financing a minivan feels a whole fucking lot like support!
katie says it was an emotional time and “carl wasn’t quite supportive and [she] doesn’t think he could offer the support that she needed, especially with [her] four kids.” ok i am the absolute fucking worst but please tell me what does that sentence mean. what did he or didn’t he do? what did she need from him and were those requirements reasonable??? I HATE THIS. greg asks for carl’s side and i wish he’d ask for a specific example of the herculean amount of support she needed but i guess this’ll have to do!
the ruling: carl says that katie had a van repossessed in july and needed a new vehicle, and he went to the dealership with her and agreed to put the van in his name. he says the two grand came from a joint bank account, so it wasn’t only katie’s money that went toward the down payment. okay so now we’re getting somewhere, this shit is finally heating up! (sidenote: i don’t even know my wife’s phone number, let alone share a bank account with her, and we have been married for 97 lesbian years! what the fuck, carl!) carl says they were sharing the car, but when she kicked him out he took the van with him because he’s not going to leave a piece of property he’s responsible for at someone else’s house. i’m about to be a bitch again (surprise!) but homegirl just got a different car repo’d, who on earth would trust that she’d keep up the payments for this one?
after the commercial break (should i try that drug ozempic? looks fun) carl says thathe told katie he would repay her but since they fell out about the car they’ve been on-and-off and greg pretends not to know what that means but WE DO: it’s not an issue when they’re together, and the minute they break up it’s “GIMME MY TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS.” carl says he told her he’d pay her back because he feels bad for her, so greg tells him to go on ahead and do that shit. judgment for the plaintiff!
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “let’s talk about this joint bank account, so i can educate everyone else” is some cold-blooded shit to say to a fucking bonehead who gave a virtual stranger her pin number and access to all of her children’s toy money (omg why!) and i screeeeeeeeeched when he did.
*bangs gavel*