The only thing more disturbing than the sheer number of Amazon packages these kids receive each week for their various and sundried theme parties is the state in which they leave that house after Kyle’s birthday party. There is goat shit all over the tennis court, there is toilet paper still clinging to the trees, there are enough half-filled red Solo cups lying on the surfaces of the house to re-create the Pacific Garbage Patch in the Great Peconic Bay.
First of all, it’s a travesty that they all went to bed on that mess. If that were my summer house, no one would have left to go out after the party until there was at least a cursory sweep of the house so that we wouldn’t be coming home to a shit-stained grundle. Get all the cups and cigarette butts and half-full cans of Loverboy out of here. The next morning, there would have been another sweep for dishes, stains, and anything we might have missed in our drunken efforts from the night before. In my summer house, the entire mess would not have been left for the cleaner. I have too much respect for our collective support staff and secondhand embarrassment about how they are judging our lifestyle to leave them with such a shitastrophy.
As the episode starts, the party still rages on and we join up where we left off last week, with a rage-drunk Carl telling Jules and Jordan that they’re torpedoing the whole summer and he wants them both out of the house. Jules reacts with an outraged, “Are you kidding me?” and Jordan, realizing that he is not going to get to nuzzle in Carl’s hairy-chested embrace that night, decides to pack his sad gray roll-aboard bag and catch an Uber back to the city at the end of the driveway. I surely know that Jordan emailed that receipt to production and asked to be reimbursed, just as I surely know that he has his pubes professionally waxed.
With that, it seems that Jordan is officially out of the house for the rest of the season. It’s not that someone was kicked out, necessarily, it’s that someone voluntarily left after a tsunami of passive aggression washed his limp body ashore. I love when Hannah fills Lindsay in the doings of the weekend and Lindsay says, “I didn’t realize kicking people out of the house was a thing, but I have a whole list of people to kick out before Jules.” Thank god for this whirling dervish of vengeance.
Speaking of Jules, she does not take this news well and goes upstairs to cry. Paige and Amanda go to comfort her, and while they’re drying her tears (made of 57 percent rosé) Amanda tells her that Hannah said that Jules didn’t connect to anyone and that she would rather have Jordan in the house than Jules. The next day, full of regret and with a GI tract certainly full of sluggish ooze, Jules asks Hannah to chat about her comments. “What did I do to make everyone hate me so much?” she cries. Hannah is less concerned about answering this question than about the fact that either Paige or Amanda or both of them “threw her under the bus” to Jules.
When Hannah asks Paige and Amanda if they said that, they don’t remember it, but it is hard to remember anything in the haze of Fireball shots and novelty pool floats from the day before. But, check the tape, Amanda totally said it. And why shouldn’t she? Hannah is upset at them for telling, but, at the same time, she totally said that stuff. We need to get Lisa Rinna in here to tell our girl Hannah to own it. I love Hannah. I want to stay up all night with her debating which of the guys on Elite we would let finger blast us first. But maybe she should be less mad about being called out and try to do a bit more to make amends with Jules.
To get to the bottom of the situation, Hannah calls a house meeting so they can all talk about Jules right to her face. I don’t like this one bit. Jules hasn’t done anything wrong. Yes, she may be thirsty and trying really hard to fit in, but you can’t point to one thing she did and say she’s a bad person. She’s trying her hardest, and maybe a little too hard, but the reason she hasn’t connected with anyone has less to do with her efforts or behavior and more to do with them not letting her in. Amanda is the only one talking sense and mentions that they need to try to have quality time with Jules, too. Thank you, Amanda. The meeting ends with everyone deciding to give Jules a second chance.
Meanwhile, during this entire meeting, no one is even mentioning that Jules spent the night with Craig from Southern Charm. While Shep and Austen went back to tea-bag each other at some skanky Hamptons hotel, Craig hung around to go out with the whole crew and take Jules back probably to that same skanky Hamptons hotel and have sex with her. Guys, this is the Avengers: Endgame Bravo crossover that we’ve been waiting for all of these years. Could there be an inter-show romance? Could there be a cross-pollination of storylines and also a child conceived by two Bravolebrities? (Much like someone is a “porn star” as soon as they star in one adult video, regardless of success, so is the term “Bravolebrity” bequeathed on anyone lucky enough to be cast on even a second-tier show.) I just want it to be noticed that Jules was rocked by almost being kicked out of the house but still managed to bed a South Carolina decorative pillow magnate with a six-pack. Respect, Jules. (I just pounded my fist against my chest twice and then threw her deuces.) Respect.
The next weekend, Lindsay is back in the house and we discover that, like the nagging anxiety that you’re not good enough that gets you out of bed in the morning, she is essential to this show’s success. She is the chaos agent that we need in these trying times. Lindsay does not brook house meetings. Lindsay takes it in her own hands to make things happen. Lindsay is not the kind of person who would put a Duraflame in the fireplace to get the fire going; she’s just going to pour gasoline all over the entire living room, drop a match, and then shrug and go into the kitchen for a snack until it gets so smoky she can’t taste her roasted-red-pepper hummus anymore.
When the crew gets back from dinner, Paige says to Lindsay, “I like Luke, but I question his intentions with Hannah.” Now, mind you, this is after the dinner where he told everyone he broke up with Yelena, so he’s totally free for Hannah to do whatever it is she wants to do with him. (Apparently that is grind on him until his genitals are worn down to a nub and not let him finger her.)
Lindsay says, “Let her live her life.” She is right. Hannah needs to make her own mistakes with Luke and figure out her relationship on her own without Paige’s interference. Then, Lindsay being Lindsay, she goes outside and tells Hannah and Luke what Paige said about them. This, right here, is why Lindsay is on reality television and the rest of us are cowering at home making face masks out of old bags of Flaming Hot Cheetos. (Note to the public: Be sure to wash out all of the flaming hot dust because inhaling it is seriously no joke.) Then Paige and Hannah end up in a screaming match, and Paige is like, “You started this whole fight, Lindsay.” Yup, she did. She very, very did.
The same thing happens the next night at Lindsay’s Roaring ’20s–themed birthday party, a theme that is as tired as Angela Landsbury at Betty White’s lifetime achievement award ceremony. Lindsay pulls Hannah aside and mentions that Paige and Amanda are really cliquey and that that should bother Hannah. She should speak up, Lindsay tells her. The next thing you know, Hannah is going to confront them, and we just all need to pop some popcorn and hope it doesn’t get stale by next week’s episode. Hahahaha. We’re all trapped in our houses. That popcorn will last about as long as Craig did with Jules.
The one loose end we need to wrap up from this week is Carl, who is not doing well. Things with Barry’s Bootcamp ambassador Sarah have dried up, Lindsay is bringing her new beau Stephen out to the beach, and Carl is having trouble at his job at Loverboy. Apparently he was so hungover from the weekend that he skipped work on Monday and missed his call with his boss. Kyle is worried. Um, yeah. It’s not like Carl has the best track record with holding down jobs. Even more concerning is how he attacks the front door until the knob falls off, doesn’t try to fix it, and doesn’t bother to tell anyone he broke the front door.
At dinner, Carl is just as big of a mess, considerably more drunk than everyone else. He starts to row with Lindsay and then demands that he get a different chair from the restaurant because he doesn’t like how short he looks in the chair he was given. It’s all horrible. What Carl is going through is so obvious and he’s treating it with alcohol and it is not helping at all. He should be at least a little bit embarrassed because even Kyle thinks he’s a mess. However, Carl then goes to order the chicken fingers and fries off of the kids’ menu, which is brilliant. It is something I have thought to do many, many, many times but never had the balls to pull off. Maybe, like Carl, I just needed three.
