My initial, immediate impressions on “The Baldwins” Episode 1, with a few screenshots from the premiere 📺🤳📸while we’re all waiting for Ready-Bat’s awesome review. 🖤🦇
Welp, that was strange.
It both was and wasn’t exactly what I was expecting.
Here’s what I’m not surprised about:
A. Alec walks around like a big, huge slob with his gut hanging out and an old, sweaty-stained loose-collared polo shirt EVERYWHERE. 🤢
I mean everywhere.
Does the man not own anything in a more breathable fabric and some high-powered anti-perspirant?
Like, some medical grade stuff?
All that Botox Hillary uses and dermatologists she sees and no one can help Alec not look like a melting Yeti?
Why not? 😬
B. Alec sort of “presides” over his “humble kingdom,” like some indulged hookah-smoking Pasha or post-feast Henry the VIII - like he just lays or sits around and waits to have a servant bring a baby to him.
I did not get “involved father” from him in this at all.
That weird game where Alec and Hillary try to describe each one of their kids individually to prove they really do know and spend time with them, 🙄was painfully cringe to watch, and made me feel rilly, rilly bad for the kids they obviously know hardly anything about.
When you have this many kids this close together I’m sure that’s not all that unexpected, but it’s still sad.
Alec again uses that creepy “beautiful, just beautiful” synopsis for one of his sons, only this time it’s for LEO, not Romeo, who has now been downgraded to “funky” or something stupid like that, can’t remember.
Dunno what happened to Meemo’s awe-inspiring “beauty” Alec raved and raved about on Howard Stern, Dana Carvey’s podcast and others, but apparently it’s gone now and Leo done stole his thunder.
C. Hillary conspicuously plays up her “Spanish-ocity” when she KNOWS the camera’s on her, but drops it when she’s actually distracted and needing to focus on something important “in reality.”
Her explanation for why she sometimes has an accent still absolutely makes no sense.
D. The pets appear to be disposable, no one really checks to make sure the children are holding them properly, or that they’re being cared for, not that I can see, and when the cats were zipped up into their tiny fabric carriers and just left in there on the floor for God knows how long with the rest of the luggage I felt really, really sad for them.
Me no treat me kitties like that. 😾😿
E. Everything the camera pans to in an attempt to illustrate Alec’s HARROWING “OCD” 🙄 just looked like what us ordinary workin’ folks/plebes call CLEANING UP AFTER YOURSELF & YOUR KIDS.
Seriously. What was all that? A whole lot of to-do about nothing.
Gee, Alec, I, too, like to line up the shoes and have been known to start organizing the fridge or the freezer when I peep in for ketchup or a popsicle, and notice things look a little askew.
GHASP! Guess I have a serious illness!
Come on you don’t like a messy house, and since, unlike Hillary, you didn’t grow up with live-in nannies and housekeepers on Long Islsnd in your cramped, 2 bedroom home, the second-eldest of 6, you don’t mind doing it. 🧹🧽🫧🧼🧺
(I also think a lot of this was staged and played up for the camera a lot)
Grow up, big deal.
Maybe teach your kids to help; that would be useful. 👍
What was unexpected:
A. I felt so bad for Carmen.
She seemed so far away and separated from her siblings, and from her Mom and Dad.
Yes, even from Hillary, her “bestie.”
I mean, your Mom can only be your “best friend” but to a certain degree, when you’re a preteen, no matter how “cool” she is.
She obviously is more mature than her brothers, who are rowdy and kinda like a little gang of testosterone, not unusual when kids are young for girls to be more mature…but she seemed to isolated herself a lot, either that, or take on a “caretaker”/“2nd Mommy” role to the younger kids.
That “sister” Hillary wouldn’t shut up about Carmen wanting so much is fully 8 or 9 years younger than her and not even in Kindergarten, there’s nothing they can really talk to each other about, and little to share.
She just seemed to “fall into her phone” 📱 a lot and be off in her own little world; I dunno, I felt bad.
I wish she had a “fun sibling” closer to her own age she could really do stuff with. Or, like, maybe just a friend. Yeah.
A friend would be nice.
B. Hillz and Alec are MUCH stiffer and more uncomfortable around each other than I thought. When Alec talks to Hillary, it’s like he’s reading lines.
She tries to get cozy with him by sitting beside him on the couch and plopping her big ol’ honking dawgs 👣 in his lap and he… doesn’t touch them.
He really doesn’t touch her a lot.
Unlike when they’re on the red carpet, or posing in front of the elevator getting ready for one of their infamous nightly “boyfriend/girlfriend” dates, they don’t snuggle up…
They don’t hug, kiss, embrace, pick lint off each other’s clothes, give each other little pop kisses or pecks on the cheek—they just don’t seem physical or affectionate with each other at all. Very strange.
C. INVISIBLE NANNIES—BOY, YOU SAID IT!!!
I expected the nannies’ importance in their lives to be diminished, but not ERASED.
They are not shown or talked about AT ALL.
What happened to Leo’s Jamaican godmother? The “helpers” all their kids are so very close to? The friends who feel like family?
I THOUGHT IT TOOK A VILLAGE AND ALL HANDS WERE ON DECK!!
Maybe TLC couldn’t afford to pay them à la Jeff Lewis and Zoila? They were totally GONE! 🔎 POOF! 💨
That’s all I got for now.
Kinda a let down. 🤷♀️