Yesterday, I spent the morning cleaning my brother’s kitchen and bathroom. Why, you might ask? Because the Monica in me is fierce. (Yes, I did just make a Friends’ reference but it goes with the theme of the post. Sort of.) Plus, I was bored and for some reason the Internet stopped working and my brother’s cable went out. So I cleaned.

3 hours later, after I scrubbed the floors, the ceilings, and the walls, my back gave out and I needed to lie down for a bit. So I plopped my ass down in front of the TV with half an avocado and some fake meat and flipped through the 3 channels my brother gets without the cable. I had a choice between some soap opera called “Passions” (or something like that), a Judge Not-Wapner show, and Montel. I chose Montel. Up until yesterday, I hadn’t ever seen Montel. I had seen Mad T.V. parody Montel, but I hadn’t ever seen the real deal.

Yesterday’s episode was a rerun from October. It was called, Surviving My Husband’s Death Trap.

There was a woman whose husband burned her face using her nail polish remover and a lighter. There was the guy who put a pipe-bomb beneath his wife’s car seat. It blew her leg off from the knee down. And still another women was forced to hold two live wires soaked in a wet sponge.

Each one of these women got up there and between the falling crocodile tears and teensy dabs to the face with a Montel-distributed tissue, they told an audience of women (and me) their stories. By the time he was talking to the nail-polish, face-remover lady, I was all,

“WHY DIDN’T YOU LEAVE HIM, SISTER?! WHY?!”

::Scoops out a bite of avocado::

“WHY DID YOU LET HIM BURN YOU? YOU’RE PREGNANT FOR PETE’S SAKE!?”

::chews on a Not Dog::

“WHO TAKES OFF THEIR NAIL POLISH IN THE MIDDLE OF A FUCKING FIGHT?”

::takes bite of avocado::

“I must tell Toby about this crap when he gets home.”

::makes note in notebook::

After I watched Montel I watched Doctor Phil (who, I am physically unable to tolerate but I watched him anyway, probably for the same reason Toby and I listened to Rush Limbaugh halfway across the country). By 3:30 I was a desperate housewife.

It’s about a woman named Michele who, after moving to New York City, began watching too much daytime television.

“Toby, if you think your day was bad, today on Montel there was this girl who shot her baby’s daddy.”

She tells her husband about each episode every night when he returns home from the office.

“You think your boss is bad, this chick had sex with his gay father while her adopted son watched!!!!!”

“Why would someone eat face cream?”

Her husband is driven so mad he attempts to take her life by poising her Not Dog and beating her with a sack of avocados. She survives the attack and will be on Montel in May.