David cameron

Marlee Matlin in What the #$*! Do We (K)now!? Photo: Samuel Goldwyn Films In the season (I know ) finale of The Vow , Mark Vicente and Bonnie Piesse wind their way back to the Albany area to sort through all the belongings they left behind when they fled NXIVM, the reported cult in which they’d spent years. It’s a trip meant to serve as closure for the couple as well as for the series, which serves up images of the pair standing reflectively at night in front of their former house, murmuring about how they’re probably being surveilled at that very moment. While rummaging through the contents of their storage unit later, Vicente pauses to hold up a copy of What the Bleep Do We Know!?: Discovering the Endless Possibilities for Altering Your Everyday Reality , which was published to accompany the 2004 movie of the same name he directed. “I wrote this book,” he sighs to the camera. “Another life.” His tone is rueful, that of a man marveling at how much time has passed since … [Read more...] about Before NXIVM and

The VH1 reality series Couples Therapy , left, and the Showtime docuseries Couples Therapy. Illustration: Richard A. Chance There’s a scene in HBO’s NXIVM-cult docuseries, The Vow , that turned my initial idle curiosity into absurd, all-consuming obsession. At the end of the first episode, a former cult member named Mark Vicente gets emotional in the middle of a talking-head interview as he describes how NXIVM destroyed the early, tender part of his marriage. “I feel like my life with Bonnie was stolen,” Vicente says. “Bonnie got there first.” He’s referring to her realization that the organization they had devoted their lives to was a cult. Then, without any warning, the show skips back in time to an earlier moment of rupture between the couple, when Bonnie laid out her concerns about NXIVM to Mark. “There’s a lot of things I’m starting to see about the organization,” she tells him, while Mark tries to talk her off the ledge: “C’mon, boo. C’mon, c’mon.” “I think some … [Read more...] about Reality TV Glows Up