Welcome to Plathville: Lydia Plath Is No Exception

‘Welcome to Plathville’ spoilers find out that Lydia Plath has been texting with a guy she has a crush on, and Kim Plath has noticed that it’s 100 texts a day.

Now, if one carries on texting conversations, which is easy to do when you have a phone that isn’t t9 (remember those days?), however Kim Plath is concerned that this could lead to emotional investment and potential heartbreak on Lydia’s part. But what Kim Plath doesn’t seem to realize is that Lydia actually seems to know what she’s doing. Last season it was a big deal for Lydia to have a phone. This season the phone has been downplayed, since she has it, but Kim and Barry wanted her to use it only for emergencies.

When Lydia Plath elaborated on this relationship in her confession, she said that no one really knows “where she is” in relation to this boy, and her mother does not understand that Lydia knows her in a way and probably knows a lot about the boy’s inner life. Kim Plath doesn’t seem to realise that unlike her generation, Gen Z is much more open in text chats than in real life.

Welcome to Plathville: Lydia Plath Is No Exception.

What’s amazing is that Kim and Barry Plath’s beliefs seem to have evolved at least a little bit, because they keep telling Lydia that she’s the one who can contact this guy and she’s the one who’s in control, but at the same time they’re also telling her that she can’t text this guy 100 times a day on a phone they bought “for rental properties”, we didn’t know they had more than one (farm), but okay, go away Kim Plath. But it also begs the question of something darker, aren’t Kim and Barry Plath just putting that face down for the camera and telling Lydia something completely different behind the camera, when TLC isn’t filming.

Kim does say that if Lydia Plath and this boy are still interested in each other after high school, they need to “do something about it,” but she encourages Lydia to wait until she graduates high school to meet then, which on the one hand might be the smart thing to do if she’s studying to be an extraseller and doesn’t graduate for a few months because she’s 17, but if it’s over a year until graduation for Lydia and this boy… what’s the harm in them getting to know someone?