"Teen Mom's" Reason of the Week to Always Wear a Condom (Oct. 7, 2013)

This week, the teen moms focused on moving forward with their lives.

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This week on Teen Mom 3, we see the girls making real attempts to grow up and move forward with their lives and relationships. Briana, for instance, starts college! Alex reclaims her life and goes to her senior prom! Mackenzie realizes that she might need to move on from Josh! These are all developments, and considering it’s episode eight, it’s about time.

Briana

For Briana, life is finally starting to move forward despite her less-than-clean break from Devoin last week. She may not have been able to secure a restraining order against him, but Briana seems to be focusing on other, more important aspects of her life than her loser ex—like her daughter, and starting college, for instance.

This week, we see Briana finally registering for classes at a community college, something she’s spoken about since the series started. With a young child in tow, she’ll still need help before she’s fully on her own—but luckily, her mother, Roxanne, and her sister, Brittany, are both willing to help.

The first step towards independence: Briana attempts to get her driver’s license, so she doesn’t have to rely on others for rides everywhere. Her first time behind the wheel doesn’t go as smoothly as she would have liked, though, and it seems like it’s going to be a while before she’ll be able to safely drive, like, down the street.

It isn’t all positive, though. While it’s always seemed like Briana and her family have had a great relationship and have been extremely close, it seems like all of the focus on Briana’s life and needs have finally taken their toll on Brittany this week—on Briana’s first day of college, Brittany snaps, and says she’s sick of all the attention on Briana’s problems and wants to be more independent from the family so she can focus on her own needs. Suddenly, all that Devoin drama is looking pretty favorable when compared to family drama.

Alex

When we left Alex last week, she had just received a phone call that she had been dreading for years—Matt, Arabella’s father, had overdosed, and was now in the hospital. Thankfully, Matt survives, but he still has to stay in the hospital for a while so doctors can evaluate his condition and make sure he didn’t cause any damage to his organs. The entire experience leaves Alex frazzled, but she does comment that she hopes this teaches Arabella the consequences of drug and alcohol abuse.

In an effort to help Alex relax and have a normal teen experience—something she pretty much gave up when she decided it would be a good idea to have sex without a condom—Alex’s family convinces her to go to her senior prom. Alex isn’t too into the idea at first, and cries about how Matt ruined her life until her little brother (who, along with her little sister, seem to be much more logical people) explains that her relationship with Matt wasn’t for naught, because she got Arabella out of it. This seems to placate Alex, but she’s still resistant about prom.

It isn’t until Alex goes dress shopping with her mother (and actually has a fun, no tears time) that she finally decides maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to have fun for one night. She sets up a date with some dude named Nick, who seems promising—but Alex ends the night not terribly impressed, finding him “boring.” After dating a drug-addicted loser, maybe boring is good for her, but OK. Nick is boring. 

Mackenzie

For Mackenzie, this week isn’t much better than last—Josh is still distant, and Mackenzie’s hopes and dreams for a picture-perfect family at 17 are drifting farther and farther away every day.

Mazkenzie is determined, though. In honor of Father’s day, Mackenzie sets up a little photoshoot with Gannon, and dresses him up like a “mini-Josh” to surprise Josh. When she goes to give Josh the picture, though, he’s nowhere to be found—not home, and not answering his phone, either. I’m not sure why she would expect him to actually answer his phone, though, since phone calls involve actual speaking and stuff.  She does eventually get in touch with him, but he seems uninterested in anything that doesn’t have to do with bronco riding, rodeos, and cowboy hats. Womp, womp, womp…

Actually, more than “womp, womp, womp”—Mackenzie is finally fed up with Josh’s behavior after her failed attempt at a Father’s day surprise, and she’s left at the end of the episode wondering if Josh is even worth being engaged to. This is only made worse after she spends Father’s day with her own father, and comes to the realization that she wants to be with Josh only if their relationship is as loving as her own parents’ relationship. Cliffhanger! (Except not really, if you look at Mackenzie’s Twitter. Sorry, spoiler alert…) 

Katie

For Katie, this week’s episode didn’t see a break in her drama with Joey—in fact, things between the young couple seemed to get even more tense, because Joey refuses to move to Utah so she can attend university in Salt Lake City with him and their young daughter, Molli, nearby.

To her credit, though, Katie does try to make things better in this episode. Her friend, who is married to a man who works in the coal mines during the late night, just like Joey, advises Katie to try and “understand” Joey if she wants their relationship problems to subside…which is actually pretty sound advice. Joey’s work hours don’t allow for much sanity—sleep deprivation is a terrible thing.

Unfortunately, Katie’s attempts don’t quite work. Somehow, trying to “understand” Joey only makes things worse, and he ends up spending his off time fishing instead of hanging out with Katie and Molli at home.  Things don’t look too bright for the couple, which isn’t all that shocking considering they seem to hate each other more and more each episode. 

Teen Mom’s reason of the week to wear a condom

As the theme of this week was really growing up, the episode really seemed to highlight things that the girls missed out on—college, a stable relationship, high school prom—and the moves they were making to have it all while attempting to raise a kid at such a young age. 

Which, of course, brings us to this installment of Teen Mom 3’s reason of the week to wear a condom: Wrap it up, and you won’t have to worry about staying tied down when attempting to pursue your goals, whether it be going to college in Utah so you can fall asleep in Math class out of state, or breaking up with a guy who won’t speak in full sentences because he’s too busy thinking about broncos, or something. More than halfway into the season, it’s becoming increasingly clear that this is just the whole theme behind the show—that, and leaving us in suspense every week about when Josh is actually going to show some human emotion on his face. Anyone up for putting money on next week?

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