“Open.” One word, said the way you would say it to a toddler — and Laila Sekander said it to her grown son on national television, a spoon already halfway to his mouth.
It happened in the series premiere, “My Best Girls,” on October 25, 2020. Laila sat on the couch with a plate of breakfast, lifted a forkful toward Shekeb, and told him to open. He did — like a child in a high chair — and the camera held on it long enough for everyone to see what kind of show this was going to be.
The Word Was “Open”
Laila never hid what the spoon meant to her. “I love to feed Shekeb, and always I’m going to do it. It’s a very beautiful feeling,” she said in the premiere. This was not a one-off gag: Laila fed Shekeb forkful after forkful at every shared meal, and the word “open” came with every bite. TLC’s press release had warned viewers these men were “spoon-fed — in some cases quite literally.” Laila was that case.
The same episode showed the rest of the routine: Tuti, Shekeb’s bird, treated like a grandchild by a mother whose whole life was built around being needed.
Emily Was in the Room
What makes the spoon scene sting is who was watching. Emily Chu, Shekeb’s girlfriend of about two years, sat in the same room while another woman fed her boyfriend like a baby. Laila made no secret of her dislike — according to reports at the time, she objected to her son dating a non-Muslim Korean woman, and said so to Emily’s face.
That is the whole triangle in one frame: a mother kissing her son’s cheek while his girlfriend stands beside them, already an outsider.
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Every beat that followed was already inside that spoonful. When Shekeb raised moving out, Laila shut it down with the same line every time: “Momma gonna die.” When Emily pushed for a future, Laila brought another woman to lunch in front of her, then brought Yussra — her preferred match — to Emily’s dinner party to question her cooking to her face. It reads like a checklist from the wildest mom interventions in the show’s history, and Laila wrote most of the entries herself.
Emily named her price: a $40,000 ring. She got a $500 promise ring instead, with Laila hidden in the bushes to watch — and saw through it in seconds, threw the ring away, and destroyed the picnic. By the Season 3 finale, Shekeb had moved back in with his mother, and according to reports, the couple have since split for good. The full Laila and Shekeb timeline ends exactly where the spoon said it would.
None of it was a surprise: a man who opens his mouth when his mother says “open” does not move out because his girlfriend asks him to.
Six Years Later, the Spoon Is Still the Show
The last new episode aired on November 18, 2024, and TLC has said nothing about Season 5 since. But the spoon never left the conversation — it is the shorthand fans reach for whenever a new mama’s boy mom appears on television.
Other moms proved change was possible. Kelly McAdams, once the woman who ran Matt’s life from inside her own house, now sits on podcasts smiling next to Matt and his girlfriend Devon. Laila never climbed down — she outlasted the relationship instead, and the 2026 couples scorecard makes the contrast plain.
So here is the question the spoon leaves behind: if Emily had walked out the morning after that first “open” instead of fighting for three seasons, would Shekeb have followed her — or stayed on the couch with his mouth open?
