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January 29, 2007: Bimonte/Hubbard
When I first saw Nicole Bimonte, I didn’t think she was 12 years old. She looked a lot older. And she acted like a complete brat. She didn’t have any rules, so, of course, she was raising hell, being immature and throwing fits. She jumped up and down on her floor, causing the chandelier in the kitchen to shake. She was monstrous - and I’m sure this was the point of showing the various scenes of her. I don’t know what it’d be like to be around her 24/7. I wouldn’t have been able to stay around her for very long; I would’ve walked away from her, probably off to some quiet place where I could recover.
But her parents weren’t stopping her behavior. They were letting it happen. Lori Bimonte doesn’t like structure or rules. She keeps clothes in the kitchen, which befuddled me. I get that it was supposed to be weird, but didn’t the kids have bureaus or storage containers of some kind where they could put their socks and shoes? It seemed barbaric to have them living out of a kitchen. Socks in a kitchen drawer? The kids bathing in the sink wasn’t so awful, because I know that happens. But why were they living out of the kitchen? It looked like a pretty nice house from the outside and seemed to be in a decent neighborhood, so I didn’t understand why they were in such chaos.
I guess Lori liked chaos. She was always off getting her nails done or getting tanned.(Loved when martial arts-obsessed Lekili Hubbard was forced to get her nails done and said she felt handicapped by the ridiculously long nails.) She didn’t even stay to watch her son in karate. She let Nicole stay on the Internet until 5 pm, and she knew about Nicole's overly explicit website. Did anyone else notice that she listed herself as 16 on her website? I don’t know how Lori could’ve known about Nicole's website and not stopped it immediately.
At least she admitted at the table meeting that the website and abuse of Internet usage was causing her concern. I think without Lekili Hubbard’s influence, Nicole could’ve continued some seriously bad behavior. She was already having 20 people over on a school night without telling her parents. She had control of that house, but by the end, she had let go of some steam thanks to Lekili introducing her to karate.
Karate helped Nicole release some of her anger. (Was it just normal preteen anger, I wonder, or something else we didn’t know about?) She was getting along with her dad, taking an interest in photographs of her parents, helping out with the cooking and cleaning. I’m not sure if that was just an act for the cameras, but it seemed like Nicole had taken a turn for the better. Plus, Lekili Hubbard introduced them to Feng Shui, explaining how Nicole’s room was over the kitchen, which represented “fire,” and she needed “water” to calm her down. (Frankly, I think Nicole needed more than a water fountain to soothe her inner angst.) All in all, Lekili Hubbard’s influence on Nicole was positive and probably saved her from getting into severe trouble.
On the other end, there was Makanani Hubbard, the opposite of the spitfire Nicole. (Did you notice during the credits that Nicole Bimonte ran up a $700 cell phone bill, and her father smashed her phone with a hammer as punishment?) Makanani was sweet and quiet, a 19-year-old girl with martial arts-focused parents who thrived on structure and control. She had a boyfriend that her parents didn’t approve of and refused to acknowledge. She did what she was told and endured the hold that her parents had on her — monitoring everything from the amount of time she spent sending emails to whom she was going out with to how much time she was on the phone. These two girls, Nicole and Makanani, were like night and day. But both had difficulty relating to their fathers, which changed over the course of the episode.
Makanani was finally able to tell her dad that she wanted to be trusted enough to be with her boyfriend. She said it made her sad that her parents refused to meet her boyfriend, yet she knew everyone in her boyfriend’s family. It was a grown-up, mature way of voicing her feelings about the situation.
Of course, she was 19 years old and Nicole was 12, so there was a huge age gap and there should have been differences in behavior. But seeing them in a controlled fashion in this hour, I could see the danger both in letting Nicole run rampant and in making Makanani suffer through such strictness and rigidity. I’m glad that they learned some lessons.
I was very happy to see Makanani living on her own with her boyfriend, and the Hubbards having less martial arts and more quality time. But the greatest thing of all was seeing Nicole less monstrous.
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Jan 29, 2007 9:48 PM
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Yes, I saw that Nicole had listed herself as 16, and I think they should've really pointed that out, made it a point of putting that out there. I couldn't believe the mother [Lori?] knew about the site, the pics, the stats, and didn't take it down. I got the feeling Lori had basically just given up because it's easier. Pretty pathetic on her part, to give up on a 12 year old.
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Jan 30, 2007 10:30 PM
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I would just like everyone to know that Nicole hasn't changed one bit. She still controls her parents and she is still really mean. I guess it was all just an act for the cameras. She would always brag about how she was on tv. Yet, everyone rememebers her for only being a brat. I know this because I personally know her.
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Feb 6, 2007 5:19 PM
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