Breaking Down Bates
1. This week we learned that Layla Stewart is Native American. Well, at least according to her very white grandmother, Kelly Jo Bates. Carlin filmed Layla holding Baby Harvey and Kelly Jo felt compelled to comment on Layla’s skin tone compared to the skin tone of the infant. Now, Kelly didn’t say if this was a good or bad thing, but it left Layla looking puzzled, and immediately handing the baby back to her grandmother. After pretending to help the Clark’s move, the Stewarts had some of the family over and allowed Trace to cook on their grill while Warden worked to uncover the pool. Uncovering the pool was this week’s big engagement draw as followers swarmed both IG and YouTube begging them to put a fence around it. The Stewarts are happy for any comments, good or bad, and will leverage them for more income. They will not fence in the pool because their children are now “great little swimmers”. Evan tells us this as we see Layla and Zade wearing floaties, dog paddling and breathing hard to stay above water that is at least 4.5 feet deep. They do not seem to understand that young children knowing how to swim for fun has absolutely nothing to do with safety and they don’t care to learn. Evan has instead set up tripods on both ends of the pool for maximum summer content coverage and films himself dumping chemicals into the pool in a show of his pure masculine prowess. Buckle up for months of rage bait with pregnancy drama sprinkled throughout. Carlin is suddenly no longer sick because it feels like Spring and is happy to show off a new frozen bread sponsor that she says Evan “made” for her intense pregnancy cravings. The Stewarts are now routinely topping 200,000 views on their weekly vlog, surpassing the Clarks, so they definitely know what people are willing to watch. This week’s vlog features Whitney and Zach hanging by the pool, and Warden putting together a pool basketball goal. Carlin keeps talking about the great outdoors while sitting on her cement patio, looking at her AstroTurf lawn. They attempt a q and a but have nothing interesting to reveal. They are keeping their Tesla, they both want a girl (surprise, surprise) and Carlin says she hasn’t been to the boutique bc of how sick she has been. This answer is truly BS bc it has been months and months, predating the pregnancy, since she has been active with the boutique. Layla and Zade make an appearance so that Layla can tell us that 3 babies is a lot and her mom doesn’t need anymore… and then Zade gets to baby talk into the microphone while his parents mock him, laugh at him and repeat his mispronunciations over and over. They haven’t mentioned speech classes in quite some time, but I sure hope this precious boy is still attending. Layla has to work a little overtime at dance class and we see her on Evan’s shoulders and performing a tap routine where she struggles to keep up with the choreography while also focusing on her mom’s ever present camera. Later, Carlin drops another Utah photo shoot where she pretends to be a Mormon Mom and pushes her tummy towards the camera in the hopes a bump appears. Her AI caption tells us they are “counting down the days” and that seems like a stretch… not because there are still many, many days to go, but because we all know these folks can’t count backwards.
2. Hailey Clark is now 25 months old and that means she is suddenly able to be forward facing in her car seat. While that doesn’t match the safety guidelines in America, it does match the influencer rule of needing to film at least one kid in the car while driving. No way can both Hailey and Harvey be backwards facing… these kids have to work! Hailey is humming along to some new Travis song that sounds like all the other Travis songs which are a rip-off of that one popular song that someone else sang a year or two ago. Katie also gets in on the filming in church this week. The big news from the Clarks is that they have finally moved into their new home. Travis rents a U-Haul and a few Bates show up to help throw things in trash bags while trying not to trip over the tripods that are set up throughout the apartment. Josie brings lunch and Kelly Jo comes by to hold babies. We see a super filthy rug and the pile of flooring that they told us they were going to repurpose gets hauled to the dump by Trace. Warden is there to install light fixtures and Evan watches while they tease him and he calls himself the “foreman”. It seems as though his ineptitude is a big family joke, so we aren’t exaggerating when we say the man is useless. Zach is really earning his commission as he is there to help and he brings along Bradley who works harder than half of the adults. Even a chaotic move is not enough to slow down Katie’s link game and she shares about her leggings, her shirt, her protein shake… and for some reason Kelly Jo’s sensible shoes that she says folks are asking about. Katie reaches a new level of influence when she turns their moving reel into an ad for a supplement powder AND Travis’ new music. She says they are loving having a fenced in backyard for the dog and the kids and Travis tries to blur out the coffee shop and main road that are literally on the other side of this fence. The youngest JebJud is staying with her while his parents are in South Carolina and he gets to care for the kids in the backseat while she hawks life insurance as they are driving. I don’t know if any of these youngest Bates are getting an education in anything other than ad sales these days. The weekly vlog is all about the move and the funniest part is seeing Gil Bates take every piece of junk or left over that the Clarks don’t want. He turns nothing down including a canister of used Metamucil and some old ceiling fans. The move is very different from Erin’s latest where there was barely a Bates in sight. Erin had no Gil, no Kelly Jo and no army of brothers to do the hard work. Evan shows up in the vlog to direct everyone on what shots to get… you know, the important stuff. Once everything was thrown in the new filming location, Katie takes Hailey for a haircut. Travis tags along with his big camera to film the entire thing. Hailey performs just how her parents directed her to and ends up with a sassy bob. The Clarks are absent from this entire move. We know daddy Clark is recovering from surgery… but where is Travis’ brother this time? His sister? Momma Clark stays put in New Jersey, and it seems Katie finally got exactly what she wanted. Now… what’s next?
3. Josie Balka got back to business as usual this week with a Costco run, teeth whitening links, and showcasing her girls in the pool for swim lessons. It is interesting that the Balka girls seem to have had more swim lessons than their cousins who actually have a pool in the backyard. Josie’s Effortless Shop is a constant content mill, but they only have old pictures and video of her. She hasn’t filmed anything new in quite some time. Instead of working at her shop, she is focused on mini vlogs for TikTok and IG. Once again she fake wakes up and walks around her house filming herself at the crack of dawn. She is the last one still participating in the Christ Calisthenics at the Jesus Gym, so it’s easier to film herself. Back at home the girls wake up to the bright camera light and get their makeup done with mommy for a trip to the park. Josie has tons of comments from women who love this content, and even the brand No Bull comments. Kelton takes Josie out on a date and that calls for another GRWM where she talks to the camera and asks questions as if this is a live event. She shows us their meal at a fancy Italian restaurant and there doesn’t appear to be a piece of beef in sight. Cows across the world sigh in relief. After weeks of sleek, straight hair Josie is back to living in her pool noodle and showing off her bouncy perfect curls. She gets several comments from folks asking how she is able to wear that thing all day, even during workouts, without her hair getting sweaty. She never answers and we all know to look for the seamless edits.
4. Some sister-in-law must have finally convinced Alyssa Webster to use her home school scholarship to get a yearly pass to Sea World, bc the Webster kids got to go for a second time this year. At the park Alyssa admits no one wore sunscreen and the girls were all forced to wear those dumb baseball jerseys from Prince Rhett’s first birthday that are monogrammed with an R. Rhett himself is squeezed into his first birthday jersey. Alyssa tells us Rhett doesn’t know what to think bc he has literally never been anywhere. Yeah, we know. In what has to be some passive aggressive move… Alyssa is suddenly constantly wearing a baseball hat advertising her favorite coffee shop. The woman who refused to wear her own sad hat, is all over IG grinning in another company’s hat. Make it make sense. After Sea World, Alyssa is heading off to her cult book club. The new book is a doozy called “The Love She Desires and The Respect He Deserves”. Just typing that makes me itchy. It’s from some kooky dude who says in order to receive love from a man a woman must show him unconditional respect. He also says women need to feel that they won’t be abandoned. If I was married to John Webster I would beg to be abandoned. It’s all based on some CHAIR theory and Ephesians 5:22-33. So, Alyssa leaves her house to go learn how to respect men with a bunch of other depressed women. I guess that’s how John gets to go on all of these solo trips. He just tells Alyssa he is going, and she has to respect his decision so he will continue to love her. I’ve never been a fan of book burning, but please, light this mess up. Speaking of the sad hat… it showed up on Jessa Duggar’s baby George this week. Alyssa commented on the post, but Jessa didn’t tag her or respond to her comment. The Duggars have now worn the hat more than the entire Bates clan ever did… owners included. In more news that gets my pressure up, Alyssa took her 5 kids to Build-A-Bear to get birthday bears. She says they went for Maci and Rhett to get bears, but ended up with FOUR for the January, February and March birthdays. Guess who has a birthday in April and guess who did NOT get a bear? Allie. Alyssa forced the girls to all wear their “big sister” shirts and line up for another filtered, forced photo shoot in the store. She’s still bee-bopping around in the coffee shop hat while showing us the kids playing with their half-nekkid bears. Of course she didn’t spring for outfits, so the entire outing cost her 26 cents. Would one more dime have really hurt so that Allie could take part in the fun?
5. It’s that time of year again when Whitney Bates starts hawking her Abeka homeschool curriculum so that she can continue to educate her kids for free. After flipping through the workbooks and telling us all how wonderful it is, she is off to a Boutique photo shoot that is styled like a Spring Tea Party. Back at home, Zach makes a fried chicken sandwich and calls it Chick-Fil-A, and then films himself announcing that the big Boutique Cash and Carry event is cancelled due to impending bad weather. Interesting that Zach was the one to make the announcement when they constantly push how women focused and female centered this business is. Whitney take the kids to the park and films herself going through the car wash. Riveting content. This week, Zach spent a lot of time pushing his cooking and also reshares Katie’s moving reel while gushing over how proud he is of her. We see his recipe for noodles with tomatoes and he is getting better at filming the food. He tells us his kids think tomatoes are spicy and we all remember the bland palate these folks are working with. Over on his YouTube channel this week, things get wild in the kitchen as he attempts to make chicken-fried steak with gravy. Of course it’s a beef dish, and we see him take a mallet to his already cubed steak to whack it some more while his kids holler in the background. Eventually the baby toddles in to the shot and touches a hot plate that scalds her and sends her into screaming fits while Zach just says over and over “don’t touch that”, “don’t touch that”… “oh, she touched that”…. This is the baby that is already in an arm length cast from a previous fall. The whole thing is sponsored by some coupon/money saving app that not even Zach fully understands. We end the week seeing a ball of dough on a windowsill that Zach says he is turning in to homemade pasta. 5 kids, 2 parents with about 8 different jobs equals a whole lot of chaos happening in that house.
6. Lydia Bates is on a constant hunt for content and that led her to filming baby Ryker in church. Gil Bates is squawking in the background while Ryker tries to break and make a run for it. Later, she heads to watch Trace flounce around in tights at his flag football game and then she shows off her new nursery rug. The rug is big news because it is a muted green color and it’s easy to tell Lydia hates that it’s something other than beige/white, but it was free in exchange for an ad, so she will learn to love it. Lydia and Trace spent a ton of time at the park this week, and the rest of the week Lydia is in her mirror, promoting a makeup line. She shows us how she applies the different layers of beige, nude and brown until all of her features practically disappear. She takes Ryker to buy spring flowers and we see him dump water all over himself. She says repeatedly that she is 27 weeks pregnant. The weekly vlog, and her other reels, are all about their trip to her family’s farm. We see the baby chicks, chickens, Amy the Emu and some fancy German birthday cakes because 2 of her brothers are celebrating birthdays. Lydia is terrified of Amy the Emu but I think if they featured Maui the Cat and Amy the Emu, their views may go up. Her family is busy building a new barn and raising animals, so they seem fairly settled in the valley. Trace wants to clear up their number one most asked question, which is how they plan to squeeze 4 people into that shoebox sized house. He tells us they are not moving bc he has a great deal on rent, has traded out rent for remodeling the place and they have a bigger storage unit. Lydia says they would ultimately like to build their own home, and that they may switch rooms with the kids when they get a little older. I had an especially hard time understanding Trace this week as he said things like “we do gotta” instead of “we need to” and he really stumped me when he said they had “3 new orchard sounds” coming up. I finally deciphered that he was saying “3 new ULTRASOUNDS”. Have mercy. Trace also posts a picture of himself posing with Lydia’s brother Christian that is straight out of the 2004 JC Penney catalog.
7. Erin and Chad Paine trekked out to that deserted beach with the orange dirt again so that Erin could film her kids running around wet, sandy, and fully dressed. The kids are digging in the sand using a big steel stock pot and you just know that thing was once full of beef fat bubbling away and has also been used for some stone soup to feed that pile of young’uns. Anyway, the exploitation was just so she could then announce that her beef fat lotion was now on sale. Instead of $22 it is now $19 and that $3 is really gonna make all the difference in the world for consumers. The God Alphabet and her doodles are also on sale so the money must be getting low again. Expect a full and proper return to YouTube soon.
8. Michael shows more pictures of blooming weeds from the dam park this week and she posts a picture of herself with Bill and Jane at the farm. Keilen Corner is back with a new vlog that features her and Brandon sitting at their desk quietly talking. They explain that Brandon flew to Michigan alone so that he could then drive his parents to Florida to see their daughter who is about to have a baby. While Brandon was gone, Michael can’t be left alone, so she flew to Florida to be with Erin. Brandon stopped off in Rocky Top with his parents so they could see Gil and Kelly Jo on the way home. Brandon’s mom brought gifts for everyone. Wonder what Kelly Jo gave them? The bill? Michael talked about spending time with Erin’s kids playing games, reading stories and making crafts. She said she got to play cards with them until it was their “curfew” and that sounded like some labor camp wording. Anyway, Michael doesn’t want anyone asking her why she didn’t see her other Florida siblings and says this time she “didn’t leave Erin’s house”. We know that’s because her headship was out of town and she can’t just be freely traveling hither and yon like some hussy. Michael also talks about Baby Miles Balka’s first birthday and how kind it was of Josie to allow her to spend some alone time with him on his special day. Michael seems especially close with Josie’s baby.
9. Lawson and Tiffany Bates constant vacation life continues this week in a cabin in Gatlinburg. Before leaving on this trip, they headed out to visit Nate and Esther so they could beg them to please allow them to release the birth vlog of Esther having her baby boy. Nathan and Esther agreed apparently, and then decided to also release it themselves. Currently, Nathan’s vlog has 5,000 more views than Lawson’s. I guess folks would rather hear it from the horse’s (ass) mouth. The baby is almost 6 months old and the highlight of this film is that Nate is adamant the baby be called Happy Alan, even though his name is Graham Alan. We also see Lawson meeting up with Tiffy in the airport to fly to Arkansas for the birth. They greet each other like high school besties… all that is missing is the fist bump. Nathan also says that Lawson owns a plane and hands down orders to other members of Medic corps to go pick up his parents and fly them in for the birth. This seems like news we don’t know about… is this where the money is coming from? Is Lawson that high up in Medic Corps that he’s pulling a salary and owning planes? Anyway, he and Tiffy spend most of the vlog pregnancy baiting even though Will is only ten weeks old here. It’s such an old and tired trope. Back in real time, Tiffy’s parents are with them at the mountain cabin and they hit all the hot tourist spots like Cades Cove and the suspension bridge and the candy factory. We see Bobby and Tori’s kids playing mini golf with them and Lawson crows about all of his holes in one. Tiffany reposts an old reel where she uses Lawson’s wallet to “pay for” their dinner and it feels like she is begging the Red Flag Guy to strike again. Tiffany’s mom has her birthday and Tiffy rains praises on her and they all go out to an Italian restaurant for dinner. Later, in a Mexican restaurant, we see Gil, Tori and Tiffy’s parents all together. I guess Bobby and Tori get in where they can fit in with this crowd.
10. Bits and Bytes…Kelly Jo spends the week promoting all of her children’s vlogs…The Bates Sisters Boutique now features more pictures of Ellie than of Whitney or Carlin…Kelly Jo is back at the farm and shows Callie and the older JebJud cooking alfredo for supper. KJ is very happy to film while sitting…in a surprise move the BSB cuts the prices on all of their new release items. Dresses that were $65 are now $40 and tops that were $45 are now $30. I guess they are trying to move the product since the big sale was cancelled.
Have a great week friends! Everything is covered in yucky yellow pollen in my part of the world… but that just means that beach season is almost here!