It’s time for another episode of that hot, steaming pile ‘o’ garbage television, Mama June: Family Crisis!

It’s been a couple of weeks since we’ve checked in on Mama June and her gang of dentally-challenged family members, so let’s venture on down ‘er to the holler to see what’s up.

Alana is preparing to take her senior portraits…and has demanded a $1000 wig to wear in them…as you do. Obviously, Pumpkin was not thrilled about paying for random hair for her sister, who has her own perfectly good head of hair by the way. 

Anyway, the girls seem to have just realized that being on a hillbilly horrorshow of a TV program for most of their lives could result in a payout if they can somehow exploit their fame. Alana decides to get to beggin’ on the ‘Gram to try to find someone to do her wig, makeup and nails for free for her photos.

The girls also put their non-wigged heads together and decide to have a meet-and-greet with fans/ whoever happens to be wandering through the parking lot of whatever  greasy spoon hamburger joint they plan to set up shop in.

Meanwhile, Josh is at work because he has dozens of kids to feed doing nothing except chewing on a piece of hay or something. (These people make it too damn easy for The Ashley, I swear!)

All of a sudden, Pumpkin gets a pages-long text from Mama June. Pumpkin shows us the ridiculously long text, which surely reads like some sort of grammatical nightmare, free of any and all punctuation. 

Pumpkin confirms what The Ashley suspected.

“There’s no punk-tu-wation,” Pumpkin tells Josh. 

June is basically just rambling in word salad form to tell her daughters how great she’s doing and to beg them to show up to her upcoming blingy beach wedding so that she doesn’t look stupid in front of her new hubby’s family. As you may remember, June gave Justin‘s mom and aunts the impression that her daughters actually like her.

“This is the kind of stuff that she textseseses us,” Pumpkin tells us of June. “She’s like, ‘I’m sorry that I chose drugs over you guys but you know the past is the past.” 

None of the girls text Mama June back so she drags Justin out to a restaurant so she can stuff some sort of fried disaster into her gullet to make herself feel better. (Justin probably agreed to go because June promised he could order off the big boy menu that day.) 

June proceeds to order enough food to feed a small army (aka all of Pumpkin and Josh’s kids). She’s just jamming mozzarella sticks into her piehole as she desperately checks her phone for responses from her daughters. 

Soon, a buffet of greasy food arrives for June.

Justin encourages June to reach out to his mother, Mama Dukes, and vent about the situation with the daughters. June doesn’t want Mama Dukes to know that she’s a “reject” who has a bunch of daughters who hate her. If nothing else, Justin wants June to fess up to lying to Mama Dukes about the girls wanting to come to the bridal shower and wedding.

That suggestion doesn’t set well with Mama June. (There’s a good chance, though, that the queasy feeling was actually caused by the 1900 chicken wings June just plowed through. Who knows?) 

Back at Pumpkin’s House of Wayward Children, Alana and Pumpkin are discussing June’s text, which Alana says she didn’t even bother to read because it’s too long. 

Pumpkin is mad that Mama didn’t bother to get all the daughters together so that she could apologize to them face-to-face. She also recognizes that Mama only sent all of the apologies and whatnots because she wants the girls to agree to be bridesmaids in her wedding and “give her away to Justin.”

In fact, she asks the girls to go bridesmaid dress shopping with her.

Alana says she doesn’t want to be a bridesmaid at all (although I  think she’d jump at the chance to “give Mama away.”)

Just then, Jessica arrives. She begins screaming for Pumpkin, and Pumpkin screeches that they’re downstairs in Alana’s room. (Seriously, these people have like 18 babies living in this house. How do these kids ever nap with everyone in the house speaking at the octave level of a jackhammer?!) 

Jessica says she read “some” of Mama’s message but, like the others, she’s not feeling it. Jess and Alana want to tell Mama “hell naw” but Pumpkin encourages them to refrain from responding, since it will irk Mama more. 

Pumpkin is right. Back at the abandoned Jazzercise studio that June and Justin call home, June is absolutely frettin’ that her daughters have ignored her rambling “apology” text. June— ever the victim— is starting to get angry that her girls have dared to go “no contact” with her.

After all, it’s not like she sold all their possessions out from under them!

Oh…wait.

But it’s not like she abandoned any of them as minors to go snort-and-sex-it-up with some toothless degenerate.

Oh…wait.

“I poured my heart out in that text message!” June wails.

Justin is still pressing June to call his mom, because apparently she has experience being a trashbag mom too…or something? He insists that June tell his mom that she lied about the state of her relationship with her daughters.

Mama rings up Mama Dukes and confesses that she may have “stretched the truth” a bit when she talked about how close she is to all of her daughters. Mama Dukes is not happy that she was lied to but forgives her daughter-in-law.

June invites Mama Dukes to go get their hooves done together, in hopes that Mama Dukes can give her advice on how to make up for decades of crappy mothering.

At the nail salon, Mama June tells Mama Dukes that she’s sad that her relationships with her daughters have all soured. Mama Dukes encourages June to keep saying she’s sorry.

Over in Georgia, Alana, Pumpkin, Josh and the rest of the gang are preparing for the fan “meet and greet.” They are charging sad people a fee to come meet them, have photos taken with them and get autographs. 

Mama, however, is not invited. 

A few days later, Alana receives her wig in the mail that she plans to wear in her senior pictures. Pumpkin tries to encourage Alana to stop worrying about fake hair and instead focus on more important things, like using her ‘Honey Boo Boo’ fame to lure a college into accepting her.

I think that’s nice…

Alana assures us that she wants to go to college because she wants to become a neo-natal nurse. She promises Pumpkin she’ll go to a college fair.

The next day, Alana heads to the salon– wig in hand– to have it fitted to her noggin. The hairstylists— who are doing this for free, mind you— look like they want to ask her the same question The Ashley does: why the hell do you need a damn wig when your real hair looks nicer than said wig?!

Later that day, the photographers arrive to take Alana’s senior “pitchers.” (I swear not one single member of this family can pronounce the word “pictures.”) They set up the background right in front of Pumpkin’s litter of kids/baby items/assorted vomits as Alana prepares in her room. She’s swindled some salon lady into doing her wig hair and makeup for free in exchange for “promoting” the lady’s business. She’s also scored some custom clothes to wear.

Finally, Alana marches downstairs in her wig and everyone is making a fuss. (Pumpkin is probably thinking about all of the diapers she could have bought with the money Alana’s mermaid hair cost.) 

A few days later, it’s time for the meet-and-greet event. Once we arrive at the venue, we see that there is legit a whole line of people waiting to meet the Honey Boo Boo crew. 

No. Seriously.

(It must be a slow day in town. Maybe the tractor-pull competition or the mother/son square dance isn’t happening that week? There can’t be much to do in that town if this many people are there to meet these clowns.)

The whole gang is “setting” down at a table, signing autographs for fans. The meet-and-greet is going well, with Doe Doe flashing her piano-key teeth and everyone chatting with the fans. 

“I feel like you’re part of my family too!” one lady tells Pumpkin.

Oh, honey…

Just then, a black car pulls into the parking lot of wherever the hell this enchanting event is taking place. We all know what pink-haired trashbag is about to exit that car, but for whatever the reason, they’re trying to build some suspense.

Finally, it’s revealed to be…MAMA JUNE. She’s still mad that none of her daughters responded to her “I’m sorry, please be my bridemaids” text. She has discovered that the family is in Atlanta doing a meet-and-greet, so she hustles over there. 

Mama is determined to insert her big ol’ mug into everything talk to her daughters, so she decides to ambush them while they’re autographing sad people’s Honey Boo Boo posters.

I can’t think of a more depressing sentence to type, honestly.

Even JUSTIN can see that this is a horrible idea.

“You’re talking about crashing a party,” he tells June as they pull into the parking lot. “That’s really not the way to win them back in.” 

(I’m not sure exactly what “win them back in” means but I’m pretty sure he’s telling June to crawl back into the hole she came out of so I agree with him.) 

Naturally, June won’t listen to reason and decides to make a huge spectacle to take all the attention away from her kids…as per usual. 

Inside, it’s a very strange assembly of folks that have turned up for the Honey Boo Boo crew meet-up. There are girls in tight spandex SHEIN dresses that appear to be ready to do the swing shift at Bubba’s Boobie Bungalow. There are old ladies in crochet sweaters. There are creepy men (who are hopefully being kept away from the young SHEIN girls.) 

Alana is bragging about how many people have come out to see their smiling mugs.

“This is the real reason that I do what I do,” she tells the cameras.

Um…what is it, exactly, that you guys actually do? Just curious…

Two hours later, June and Justin are still sitting in the car in the parking lot. June has apparently gotten cold hooves about going in and crashing her kids’ big day. 

June is afraid that everyone is going to actually tell her what a trashbag she is.

“Josh is here. I know Josh has his oh-pin-yons,” Mama says. (I had to spell it out because that’s exactly how she pronounced ‘opinions.’) 

Justin— who is actually make a ton of sense in this scene— reminds June that Josh is the one who has to comfort the girls when they cry or get angry every time Mama sells their crap, chooses a methed-out man over them, flakes out or just commits any of her usual selfish acts at their expense.  

Inside, the event is wrapping up and Pumpkin is bragging that “there’s a new Mama in town” (spoiler alert: it’s her) who can exploit the family for fame and money.

I think that’s nice…

Josh and Dralin leave to go fetch the bellowing females some pizza and soda, and Mama June— who is still sitting out in the parking lot like a troll— spots them. She realizes that this is her chance to ambush the girls, as their gentlemen protectors have left.

Justin walks June to the door but won’t go in to be devoured by the wolves himself. 

June walks in and the group is stunned…stunned, I tell ya.

“What the f**k are you doing here?” Pumpkin says to June.

June immediately begins bragging about how “respectful” she was to wait until after the event to show up uninvited.

As The Ashley always says: Hefty bags are gonna hefty…

June then does a shout-out to Jessica’s girlfriend Shyann, pointing out that she’s never been able to meet her in-person. (Shyann looks like she’d like to crawl under one of those fold-out autograph tables and die.) 

June then launches into a speech about how she has still not heard back from her daughters, and that she knows she’s “f**ked up a lot.”

Pumpkin starts to turn red…

“I know that in the past I have allowed a substance to overtake me,” June continues.

Meanwhile, Pumpkin is balling up her fists and appears to be sweating like June at an all-you-can-eat pork product bar. 

Mama starts sniffling and is basically telling the girls that it’s not fair that they continue to hold all of the awful things she’s done to them against her. She’s essentially just blaming the drugs for all of her terrible actions, even though Mama June was clearly a terrible person long before she was arrested wearing a sweatsuit full of crack a few years back.

She appears to be the most upset about the fact that she’s not in the social media photos the girls are posting.

Pumpkin has had ENOUGH. 

“Do you know WHY you’re not apart of it?!” Pumpkin bellows (even louder than she usually speaks). 

She then basically tells Mama June that drugs didn’t make her a dumpster fire. Sure, they made her a flaming dumpster fire, but she was already trash long before her addiction.

Pumpkin reminds Mama that she was more than willing to sign over the rights to Alana— HER OWN CHILD— so that she wouldn’t have to pay Pumpkin child support. 

“You said, ‘I would rather sign over my rights than give up any money!'” Pumpkin says. “Coming from her own mother, do you know how that makes Alana feel!? For once, really feel how we feel!” 

Mama hangs her head, in shock that someone would actually throw her words back in her face.

She, of course, tries to defend herself but is just a blubbering, stuttering mess. She knows there’s really no way she can dig herself out of this hole she’s created. 

June’s a landfill of a human, with or without drugs. (Let’s not forget that this is the woman who promptly dated the man who sexually abused her oldest daughter Anna— as soon as he was released from prison for his crimes against Anna. HEFTY.HEFTY.HEFTY.) 

June defends herself, stating that, after she thought about it for a while, she did realize it would be bad to pawn Alana off to whoever’s willing to take her. (But…I mean, June needed money to buy her man some new teeth and gold chains!) 

“You will never understand how much you have truly hurt us!” Pumpkin screams. “You have hurt the s**t out of us, every single one of us, Ella included! I’m a mother of FIVE and I would never sit there and say that! EVER!” 

Pumpkin is NOT DONE. She goes on to say that her kids want a mama who doesn’t choose a man, or drugs, over them. 

Pumpkin tells Mama that she has clearly not grasped the concept of what being a mother actually is. 

“I don’t feel a lick of f**king sympathy for you!” Pumpkin screeches. 

She tells Mama not to show up at Alana’s graduation and pretend to be the mother-of-the-year.

“I DID THAT!” Pumpkin screams. 

The episode ends with Mama in tears, playing the victim, and Pumpkin screaming.

Business as usual…

To catch up on The Ashley’s recaps of previous ‘Mama June’ episodes, click here! 

(Photos: WEtv)