Here Comes the Bride

This episode bothered me for the fact that everyone in it other than Norton behaved worse than Ralph. Ralph's advice was well-meaning and although he went over the top with his king of the castle rant, the gist of what he was saying, that A) staying with in-laws after you are married (especially HIS mother in law) is a bad idea, and B) the man has a voice in the marriage also, was correct. He didn't intend on wrecking their marriage, he was just trying to give Stanley some cojones which Stanley clearly lacked.

It's obvious that Agnes was bullying Stanley the entire time they were together, and now Stanley stands up for himself for the first time and she runs away crying that he's a beast. Instead of crying to mommy which is where she wanted to stay anyway, she imposes herself on Ralph and Alice in their cramped apartment. And Alice, after marginal convincing from Agnes, agrees to let her sleep in the bed, forcing Ralph to spend the night on a wooden chair!!! What an inconsiderate bitch. And the only solution she can think of is to talk to Stanley???!!!! Why doesn't she stand up for her husband and insist that as sorry as she is that their marriage fell apart there's no space in the apartment for her sister's freeloading ass?

And then Stanley, who spent an entire relationship's time being estrogen-whipped until Ralph gave him some confidence, caves in to his whiny bratty wife and snitches on Ralph to Alice!!! Isn't that a violation of Raccoon lodge code? Yeah Ralph gave him the advice but he chose to follow it, and instead of owning up to his "mistake" (although personally I'd say that was the wisest thing he ever did and his apology was unnecessary, she was already throwing herself at him) he turns around and says Ralph put him up to it which proves him to be every bit as weak-minded as we all suspected him to be from the beginning. He must not have had much going for him because he and control-freak Agnes clearly married each other out of desperation. Ralph alluded to that with his comment about Agnes practicing to be a bride for 20 years. Even Alice made subtle hints about her failures at keeping a man with her comment about her waiting for the right fella to come along. Yeah, the right fella for Agnes was someone as feeble as Stanley who would swallow all of her *beep* whole. Any man with any self-respect says "bye, bitch!" to Agnes fairly soon.

To top it all off, Agnes calls Ralph a troublemaker right in front of him when he arrives home from work. Uh, bitch, this is the same troublemaker who let you sleep in his bed the night before at the expense of his back, which has been known to be somewhat of a liability. Agnes should have been slapped.

The moral of every episode is that Ralph is in the wrong. However in this episode Ralph did nothing wrong, and although his advice did not work the way it was intended he was treated very unfairly.