Get excited people who used read this blog 4 years ago! I'm back!

I was recently wondering why I could not find any good recaps of the horrible, super trashy, and insane reality shows that Josh and I watch on a weekly basis. They are so ripe for hilarious (yet kind, these ARE real people) commentary! So I decided that if no one was going to do it for me, I would have to do it myself! (This is the "bootstraps" mentality so favored in this country, so naturally, I expect a lot of props).

While I have read many hilarious "Real Housewives" recaps, I can never find any good recaps of the reality shows on VHI, including "Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta" and "Hollywood Exes." Where are my kindred spirits who cannot help but love Lil Scrappy?! Or others who are willing to acknowledge that Matye Garcia is disturbingly insane, and almost never makes any sense at all?! (Prince really dodged a bullet there.) So here I am to give you a quick primer on these two shows.

First, let's start with Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta, because wow. There is a lot going here. Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta is one of the most obviously scripted reality shows I have seen, and yet it is also seems weirdly invested in having characters expose all of the artifice. The minute you might say to yourself  "Are Stevie and Joseline even actually married?" like 20 other cast members are asking the same thing.

This season we have:

Steve J (a producer) and Joseline ( a performer of some sort), who are terrible, being fake married and fake rich, after years of torturing his ex and mother of his child Mimi, who I always liked but now is pretending that a porn she made with her greasy boyfriend is actually a stolen sex tape, which somehow makes me like her less. (This show is not appropriate for children, in case you didn't get that). So they are always trying to take each other down, yet Mimi and Stevie have some kind of undeniable connection that makes them sort of still into each other as they try to expose each other's dirty secrets etc. So basically, super great soap opera plot here, though these days no one is exactly rootable.

Lil Scrappy, you gotta love him.

Then there is Lil Scrappy, a rapper who is a sweet man-child with a PSYCHOTIC mother named Momma Dee. She is scary and always hates his girlfriends and says things like "She is B.I.C.T.H- in that order!" (I am not sure what she thinks that spells.) Scrappy stories are pretty much always the same. He has a girlfriend, or a fiancee, but then he also has this SUPER HOT, nice, "friend" who relentlessly wants to sleep with him, usually, weirdly, at the behest of his mother. Even though he is always cheating on his girlfriend, I cannot help but love him, because he seems so sweet and just desperate for all the love he can get, and when you look at the woman who raised him, you are kind of like "I get that." It's kind of like how everyone hates Don Draper for being a cheating drunk, but when you really consider his upbringing you think to yourself "It's a miracle this guy isn't a serial killer!" (Maybe I

Kirk and Rasheeda, he is the WORST.

will recap the season finale of Mad Men for you high-minded people.) Same goes, to a lesser degree, for Lil Scrappy. Also he has this charming marble-mouthed way of speaking and is pretty funny. He's my favorite person on this show, by far.

Kirk and Rasheeda are a married couple who are having problems. She is a rapper and he is sort of her manager, but it seems like he just says mean stuff to like it's his job. So, their problems are basically that Rasheeda is cool and smart and Kirk is the absolute WORST. He seemed okay until last season when he cheated on his pregnant wife, and then had the gall to deny his child demand a paternity test from her. (Um, YOU are the one who cheated dude.) This season he has already told his child's grandmother not to kiss the baby and attempted to hire a hot nanny so he could just have a side-chick right in his damn house. He is weirdly mean to Rasheeda all the time, and even Stevie J, former holder of the title "the absolute WORST" thinks he is being shady and should just be nice to his wife.

We also have Karlie Redd, who is a singer, I think, and is right now dating rapper Yung Joc. Well at least she was until she found that he was sleeping with their real estate agent, who revealed this to Karlie when she was showing them a house they might rent. So that seemed super real and not a set up. Another note on Karlie, she pretends to 29 when she is pretty clearly a decade older. Just own it, girl!

Massachusetts' own Benzino, former owner of The Source magazine, is also sort of on this show, and he got shot in real life during the filming, so I expect his role in the latter half of the season will increase. He is friends with Stevie J, which means he is probably a terrible person deep down, but manages to come off okay most of the time, as long as he doesn't get his own storyline.

Oh and Waka Flocka Flame and his fiancee whose name I cannot remember are also on this. He seems nice and they are planning a wedding so I am sure this will all blow up at some point soon, because this show is definitely not about having happy people on it.

There are some other ladies on the show who are ostensibly, if you look at the titles, main characters, but so far this season they mostly seem to exist to comment on the personal lives of the aforementioned.

So that's Love and Hip Hop: Atlanta. Are you even ready for Hollywood Exes? I don't know if I am, but here goes.

Hollywood Exes, oh boy. 

Hollywood Exes is a show that is an a more traditional reality show style, as in, the network makes these people have all these weird parties and events that puts them together and then they fight and at some point in the season, they all go on a trip together and fight some more. Lovers of Real Housewives are encouraged to check this out. On this show we have:

Nicole Murphy, Eddie Murphy's ex wife. She is beautiful and amazing, why Eddie Murphy would have left this woman is beyond me. She is now engaged to Michael Strahan, from Live with Michael and Kelly, who seems great, so good for her.

Jessica Canseco, Jose Canseco's ex, who is the kind of person who has no filter and therefore says really inappropriate things all the time, but people still kind of like her. Perfect for a reality show, bravo VH1!

Andrea Kelly, R. KELLY's  ex wife,  and who is EXACTLY as insane and weird yet great as you might expect R. Kelly's ex to be. She comes up with a lot of catchphrases, such as "Check yo' email" and "Hollywood fa boo-boo." She is very emotional and gets so fired up all the time, about basically everything. VH1 really did a bang up job casting this show.

Mayte Garcia, Prince's ex. A fanatical animal rights activist, she has no problem destroying people's things if they even let someone wear fur in her presence. She also has no self awareness whatsoever. She is someone who has pretty clearly benefited from being insanely beautiful for her entire life, so has never had to actually be normal or treat people respectfully. She thinks that if she smashes her friends things "accidentally" in a blind rage over a fur purse, that SHE is the one who deserves an apology. Ugh Mayte. ugh.

Sheree Fletcher, Will Smith's ex. Like LONG AGO ex. Who was married to him for two years. And unlike Mayte, who is in a similar situation, she doesn't even really seem to give a crap about Will Smith or think about him ever, which is good. However, we're stretching the premise here. She's a preacher's wife and is always moralizing so I really dislike her.

These are the most interesting Hollywood Exes. Martin Lawrence's ex, Shamicka, and Shanna Moakler, ex of Travis Barker AND Oscar De La Hoya (double Hollywood Ex!!) are on it as well. They're kind of new, I'm not attached to them yet. Shamicka seems nice and boring, Shanna seems nice and kind of funny. But everyone on reality show seems nice until you get them into mansion in Aspen or some shit, and then everything goes BONKERS.

While the cast of Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta has to contend with marriages being destroyed, sex tapes, miscarriages, and even being shot, the ladies of Hollywood Exes basically just fight about sugar containers being smashed on the floor, mojitos not being made, birthday parties being skipped, and fur hats being set on fire as a prank. The stakes are lower, which means this show rarely if ever veers into that "Oh god, this is depressing, I am a bad person for watching this" kind of territory. They are rich ladies with rich lady problems, for the most part. How nice for them.

So your assignment? Watch these shows! Then I can recap them for you and together we will laugh and laugh. It'll be great, trust me!