Kris Jenner Will Stop At Nothing To Protect Kim Kardashian’s Brand

For part 2 of Kim’s Fairytale Wedding: A Kardashian Event, the producers smartly focused on an entirely different (but equally sensitive) issue. Part 1 may have been about the family ragging on Kris Humphries and questioning his devotion to Kim Kardashian, but part 2 was all about Kim’s bad decisions. Because there’s something that Kris Jenner protects with the kind of fierceness you would’ve seen in medieval times when parents had to preserve their daughters’ virginity—Kim’s brand, and the Kardashian name.
With only a few weeks to their wedding, Kim and Kris discuss the important question of how they’ll build their lives together. He holds out hope that she’ll move to his hometown in Minnesota, but she wants to stay in the spotlight for a good while longer. She even reminds him, “The reason I fell in love with you is because you can handle my career.” (The next shot is of the paparazzi mobbing them as they leave IHOP or wherever, so his point is kind of moot anyway.)
The biggest drama revolves around whether Kim will take Kris’  name. He doesn’t believe that she will, but it’s mostly because it would mean so much to him if she does. And for a long time, she’s really excited about the idea. (It also brought us one of the episode’s best quotes: After Kris reflected on how she’s doing this traditional thing for him, Kim responded, “I’m a down-aaass beetch.”)
But trust momager Kris Jenner to swoop in and remind Kim what a bad idea this is. Their fight quickly goes from…

Kim: “You are being so selfish.”
Kris: “Britney Spears didn’t change her name!”

…to Kris showing Kim that the only way to rebrand her perfume, clothing, etc., is to go by Hump and have the logo be her ass. This is really the worst thing a mother could do, but it sounds like the tough-love approach a manager would use to clinch her argument.
So now Kim can’t change her name, not even on legal documents that would only be seen by TMZ or The Smoking Gun but wouldn’t affect how she’s mentioned on E! News.
Really, I don’t give Kris enough credit. When Kim starts regurgitating her mom’s reasoning for why she shouldn’t change her name, he says, “Four years ago, you sold clothes in a boutique in the Valley… Now you’re Miss Princess.”
This was a relevant facet to look at; after all, a fear for many women is losing your identity once you’re married. Let’s not forget that Khloe’s legal name is Khloe Kardashian Odom. Apparently it’s OK for her to change her name because she’s the lesser Kardashian who has fewer products to her name.
There was also an interesting subplot that reversed the issue of identity, where Kris complained that Kim doesn’t open up to him emotionally the way she does to stepdad Bruce Jenner about missing her father Robert Kardashian, who died of cancer in 2003. He even asks, ”Are you not yourself when you’re around me?” to which she responds (logically, not meanly), ”You don’t know, like, a whole half of my life.”
Despite watching Kris struggle against the Kardashian/Jenner clan for the last four hours, we see a reversal in the final minutes. In the three months leading up to their wedding, he cultivated a kind of silly mustache that Kim hated. “Growing the mustache was the last bit of control I had over the situation,” he mused in the confessional, then added, “It was always a plan to shave it.”
So even though he’s supposed to be the anathema to this fame-seeking family, his final act before he’s married is to show that Kim owns him?