Reality TV Time: I Cannot Tear My Eye-Nipples Away from My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding

Sometimes I think that Britain does things better. It’s the home of Alexander McQueen and Vivienne Westwood. All my favorite 80s and 90s bands were British. The Daily Mail really is the best newspaper in the world, hands down. And they really know how to do the whole majestic pageantry thing. They’ve got a princess for crying out loud!

Then, I watch a show like My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding, and well, my patriotism is restored.

Listen up Britain: Nobody does trashy like America. Y’all shouldn’t even try. You should just take your regular ol’ Irish travellers and go home already.

MBFAGW is the American spin-off of the British show, My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, which I enjoyed very much when it aired on TLC last year.

We stumbled upon MBFAGW and watched the first episode, which was fine and good. But then, last night we watched the second episode on our DVR and holy trailer park, it was amazing.

In episode 2, we meet 14-year-old Priscilla, a gorgeous and mighty mature-looking young gypsy girl in Douglasville, Georgia who is on the hunt for a husband so she won’t end up an old maid by 18. Even better, we meet Priscilla’s father, Pat Baby, who is throwing his daughter the world’s best Halloween party so she can meet her future husband.

Priscilla tells the camera how she really wants to get married and stay home to take care of a husband. She tells us this while she cleans these enormous, gaudy porcelain figurines. These things look like they might have been designed for Versaille. But they’re in a trailer. My co-TV-commentator XFE cracked, “Taking care of a husband? More like taking care of a trailer full of knick knacks.”

Pat Baby, we learn, is a paver, which the narrator tells us is a skill passed down through generations. This actually involves spraying asphalt over gravel. Not really seeing the whole artisan aspect to this endeavor, but ok. Pat Baby, by the way, LOVES his job. He’d really rather not be doing anything else.

Priscilla orders her dress from the Dressmaker to the Gypsy Stars in Boston. She talks about how she wants to be a “human light bulb” and proclaims her love for “Skurotsky” crystals. And pink. Lots of shades of pink. The dressmaker doesn’t let Priscilla and Pat Baby down. When she sees her dress, Priscilla proclaims, “I want to kiss it.” Pat Baby, meanwhile, exclaims, “It makes me wish I was a cross dresser.” Then, they take the dress out for a walk. On the streets of Boston. And along the River Charles.

We also get a glimpse of Priscilla’s “dance outfit,” which Pat Baby assures us is “risqué, but tasteful….highly tasteful.” When Priscilla’s mother Lou Ann sees the outfit later in the show, she exclaims that the slutty outfit, “brings out the pureness of her soul inside and out.” Pat Baby also expresses interest in trying on the rhinestone covered, heart-cutout, high-heeled boots. Man, these gypsy men are quite comfortable with their masculinity.

When they return to Georgia, it appears that Pat Baby’s sister has died. And, it’s a suspected murder. And, that’s it. That’s all we ever hear about that. Pat Baby, while holding a Michelob Light, sobs at his sister’s hay-covered grave (why hay?) at a cemetery that has, I’m not kidding, a pay-day-loan billboard right outside the entrance. Pat Baby vows to throw the best Halloween party ever in dedication to his sister. Oh, by the way, our Gypsy Joe Dirt already has a brand new, memorial tattoo of his sister’s name on his forearm.

Speaking of tattoos, it’s time for Pat Baby to get his Halloween costume together. He’s going as a swashbuckling pirate, so, of course, he needs another tattoo. When Priscilla questions the logic of getting a permanent tattoo for a temporary event, Pat Baby says, “Of course I want to do this! It makes a statement!” It does, indeed. And that statement is that you are kray-kray.

Pat Baby also prepares for the party by going to his “favorite place in the world, the liquor store” to buy a few cases of vodka, rum and some beer.

Meanwhile, Priscilla’s mother is, of course, having a hard time locking down a party venue. Maybe because she keeps telling everyone how rowdy things are likely to get and how untrustworthy her people are. Might want to keep that on the down low, Lou Ann. She lets us know that her crowd has been banned from a few funeral homes.

The party goes off very well. Priscilla is dazzling and her dress is the envy of all the other gypsy girls and their mothers. Her makeup is, suitably over-the-top. She focuses pretty heavily on the eye makeup, because “Somebody told me the eyes are the nipples of the face.” Yep. Eyes. Nipples on your face. And they need to be made up.

I literally do not have the words. Just think about that. So, if your eyes are the nipples of your face, what does that make one’s mouth? NEVERMIND. I take that back.

Anyway, it’s a successful party, in part because Priscilla also meets a very good-looking, nice-smelling boy (those were her criteria for a husband) so hopefully we’ll see the actual wedding later this season.  And more eye-nipple makeup.