Sorry to double post, guys, but this felt like an at least somewhat helpful update:
I’ve been snooping around these guys’ TikTok pages and, to be honest, the three parents and six kids seem largely chill with each other; on the main Martin Family page (@officialmommyofive) and Jake’s TikTok (@b3bydon) and YouTube (
https://www.youtube.com/@B3bydon) pages, they post videos of themselves doing things like visiting a trampolining/indoor games center and hanging out and having fun together, and talking a bunch of smack about pop culture and celebrities. The atmosphere seems rather laidback and amicable, although Cody does seem kinda awkward in some of these vids; maybe he’s not used to being on camera?
To be honest, I don’t know if I should be happy about all this, as they seem to be getting along now, or worried, as they’re sweeping the previous controversies under the rug and trying to push the narrative that they’ve risen above their detractors. Then again, a lot of these characters, particularly Michael and Jacob, aren’t exactly the brightest crayons in the box; maybe they’re like Angry Grandpa and his family from before Michael Green became a clickbaiting cuck and have reconciled their differences because they’re a bunch of kinda stupid hillbillies who don’t know better, in which case I… guess I should feel happy for them?* I dunno, it’s all very weird.
That being said, I still think it’s very irresponsible to just toss aside past actions and wrongdoings without admitting that serious mistakes were made, i.e. Michael and Heather admitting that they were wrong to treat the Halls they way that they did, and then convince their viewership and their four remaining sons that it was no big deal, or that any detractors are just haters who don’t really understand what was going on.
And for the record, I still don’t like Michael at all: he’s still an uneducated, narcissistic, egotistical, white trash, redneck, (at least partially) incompetent idiot, the music that he and Jake produce sucks dick and is so fucking cringeworthy, and I still want to beat his head into a brick wall whenever I imagine him blaming Cody for putting snot on the underside of his desk (which was actually the first video I saw of him when I discovered him during the COVID lockdown in April 2020) or pouring a vial of invisible ink onto his bedroom floor and screaming obscenities at him, blaming him for doing it.
*This is one thing that sucks about being on the Autism spectrum, by the way: you’re bad at understanding many social cues and crave a solid “Yes/No” answer and consistency like air and water.
Okay. Ramble over.