Budgeting at dinner tables is usually about calories, not currency, but this household is serving both. This mother, generous enough to host her adult son and his jobless girlfriend, Carmella, rent-free, draws the line when gourmet inflation crosses it. What started as a sweet gesture of gratitude, home-cooked meals, turned into a recurring card swipe for steak, seafood, and, apparently, the fantasy of living like suburban royalty. When the mother finally says no and sets a budget, the son acts like restraint is an affront to romance itself. The girlfriend pouts, the son defends, and suddenly the kitchen feels like a low-stakes reality show about entitlement.  

Hospitality often reveals who views generosity as a gift and who mistakes it for a subscription service. Carmella is enthusiastic but clueless about economics, using someone else’s grocery card as though it were a scholarship. The son, meanwhile, plays the chivalrous defender, forgetting that gallantry funded by his mother’s wallet lacks heroism. You just gotta love the main course of all this, which is absurdity, of course, the woman providing free housing is apologizing for not leading with a financial boundary. The guests act shocked that kindness came with an invisible limit.