May 28, 2007: Silver/Pitney
I had a few problems with Ashley Pitney. One, she had this whole theory that real men shouldn't tap dance. Gene Kelly tap danced. So did Fred Astaire. Both were men. Neither one was really a "girly man." Men can tap dance or do ballet. But Ashley seemed to be against that. She wanted her boys to play sports and be tough men. She said dancing was for little girls in tutus, which bothered me. Because both boys and girls can dance, play sports, do whatever.
Ashley Pitney seemed to have a very specific idea of gender roles that kind of rubbed me the wrong way. She waited on her husband and boys hand and foot, which is fine if that's what she prefers. While Alan Pitney gambled online for hours and her sons played video games, she did everything. But she didn't mind.
Ashley Pitney didn't know what to do when she was transplanted into the Silver household, where the man waited on the wife hand and foot and the boys enjoyed tap dancing more than sports. Instead of trying to engage in the tap dancing and the music, she made her spiteful comments and tried to change them into her notion of real men.
I know that she was trying to show the Silver boys a different kind of lifestyle, but I felt like she was really aggressive about it. She didn't try to understand them. She just looked down at them and thought they were girls instead of boys. She didn't try to understand their take on spirits or psychics; she just balked and called it hocus-pocus. She seemed rude to me. She gave Sam Silver a microphone and told him to start voicing his opinions, but then she gave him opinions to voice (telling him to say, "I won't do the dishes tonight"). I think she and her husband, Alan, were kind of mean. When the video game console wouldn't work in the Silver household, Sam and the boys said that it was because the spirits wouldn't allow it. Ashley screamed at them: "The spirits have not made the game stop working! Y'all have freaked me out for the last time." That, to me, is not an effective way of discussing someone's beliefs. They believed in the spirits, and everyone has their own beliefs. She should've been more accepting of that. Instead, she was quick to call it hocus-pocus and tell them that they were crazy.
I did like that Ashley introduced Justin Silver to basketball. The Silver boys did need to be more social and find other activities to do. Andrew Silver was kind of caught up in the idea of being a star. His mom, after all, told him that he was destined to be a star, so he was naturally overly into it. Remember the scene at his mom's creative group? After he finished playing his guitar for the 60-year-old ladies, one of them asked him when he'd written it. He said he'd done it that day in under an hour because he was quick like that. I think he believed a little too hard in his destiny of becoming a star. He wasn't allowing himself to look at other things because his mom, Sheree Silver, had told him what he was meant to do. If my mom told me that I was meant to be a tap-dancing star, I would've believed her.
Of course, Sheree Silver was also kind of odd. But I think she knew that and didn't think of herself as strange. She was a professional psychic who made her kids listen to relaxation tapes every night to go to sleep. They went to sleep with her reading affirmations to them. Her husband, Sam, painted her toenails and blow-dried her hair every morning. He was a sweet guy, but I don't know if he should've been pampering her to the extent that he was. In a way, he did need a pep talk from Ashley Pitney about standing up for himself, but he did not need her yelling at him that he was a woman, not a man. She was really rude to him at the table meeting, as was her husband. Alan Pitney called Sam "mullet" and told him to shut his trap. He told Sam that he should tell his wife to shut her trap more often. That, to me, was rude.
I understood why Sheree got upset and walked away. But Sheree was definitely out of line when she told Alan that his son Tyler used to be an extraterrestrial in a past life. If she knew they'd be resistant to that, maybe even angry about it, then why would she tell them? Sheree believed in her psychic powers and wanted her kids and everyone in her life to believe in them, too. She didn't seem to understand that maybe Alan and Ashley wouldn't enjoy the idea that she called their son an alien. Sheree's son may have been convinced that he was a soldier and that his dad killed him in a past life, but some families don't like their kids thinking that kind of stuff. I know I wouldn't tell my kid something like that, especially if they were as vulnerable as the Silver kids.
At least Alan Pitney learned to appreciate his wife more. And he doesn't gamble as much, since Sheree Silver hypnotized him into stopping.
