I know I sound like a glitching Furby with only one setting, but I love this Summer House season. It’s just so fun! Everyone is mostly getting along, the parties have been great, and there have been some excellent new additions to the cast. I also love how each week the roster is slightly different. Instead of Gabby last week, we got Craig, and instead of Gabby this week, we get Andrea. (Sorry, Gabby, but I haven’t really missed you.) And then West is at a wedding, so he’s not around. It’s always a little bit different that the dynamics in the house get to breathe and we really see how much fun the group has together.
Also, the hilarity is there, and we can’t forget it. How did they manage to show us everyone arriving at the house and struggling with the shitty new front door it was the funniest thing I’ve seen since watching a seal hit a kayaker with a squid on TikTok? Then there’s Paige trying to pull a Saran Wrap trick on Kyle so that he tries to go into his room and runs into a barrier of cling film. Craig goes downstairs to get him and tells Kyle that he’ll never believe what they found in his room. “A gigantic dildo?,” Kyle asks. How would my imaginary husband — who just defended his cold and shrunken wiener to his wife — immediately go there? Why would there be a giant dildo in his room? Is it to compensate for his own shrinkage?
Speaking of funny, what about every single one of Paige’s confessionals? (This Bed Sore Sister does her best work sitting, rather than laying, down.) I am going to write the quote in totality because it made me LOL IRL. “I think Lindsay deep down knows she shouldn’t marry [Carl], but I think she wants this fairy tale, ‘He was my friend for so long, and I got fucked over by so many guys, and then we met,’” she says. “And that sounds beautiful, and I would so watch that on Lifetime, I really would. But this is real life, and you two don’t really like each other.” Oh, Paige. You’re doing amazing, sweetie.
Yes, the only drama this season is Lindsay and Carl, and we barely got any of this episode. But I realized watching this episode that the show has really become less about a group of friends and more about a group of couples. We have Kyle and Amanda as the long-time couple who is thinking about having kids and moving to the burbs. We were even tortured by Amanda taking Kyle to look at a $1.4 million house somewhere in Dirty Jerz (please be Franklin Lakes) and you could see Kyle staring off into the middle distance as the tendrils of existential dread coiled around his throat and threatened to suffocate him.
Then there is Paige and Craig. First, I need to apologize to Craig because in the last recap, I mentioned how good Kyle and Carl looked in their racing-themed outfits and forgot about the stiffness in my shorts provided by Craig dressed as a mechanic with fake grease on his face. It was like he was a gay porn fantasy. He is really one lousy tribal tattoo away from starring in an automotive-themed 2009 Raging Stallions film called Drive Shaft. But they’re the couple who is serious and considering the next steps.
Then we have the brand-new couple: West and Ciara. They’re going slow, like Ciara wants, but they’re just so adorable together. West is talking to Amanda about their situation and says that Kyle keeps giving him advice. “Don’t listen to Kyle,” Amanda says. “He’s trash. Just because he’s married doesn’t mean he knows what he is doing.” After the big party, West comes to hang out in Ciara’s bed, and she lets him come in, but their sleeping together stays literal and not euphemistic. But it’s like we have every stage of coupledom represented on the show.
And then there is Lindsay and Carl, a.k.a. Larl, and, well, they are a couple that is imploding. They know it, we know it, and Paige definitely knows it.
The little bit of drama we have in this episode springs from their relationship in an indirect way. At the end of the speedway party, Carl gets Kyle in the pace car and says that his wedding is coming up and he wants Kyle to be in the wedding. We’re all at home bracing for it. This is the big moment. When one bro asks another bro to fulfill their bromance by asking him to be his best man. “Will you be a flower boy at our wedding?” Carl asks. What? Is that even a thing? Sure, there are flower girls, but a flower boy? Can’t we at least call it a “flower guy” for some alliterative effect?
For a second, I thought, Know what? Maybe this is cute. There will be a bunch of groomsmen, but won’t Kyle be adorable walking down the aisle all alone in a tux and a mullet-dropping pedals? But then Carl says he’s going to be with former castmates Luke and Andrea, too. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. This is bad. Kyle immediately asks if there are going to be groomsmen, and Carl says yes. Then Kyle asks, “But I’m not a groomsman?” Carl says no, he’s going to be a “flower dude” (pardon me while I workshop some titles). They have a nice conversation about how their relationship has healed from last summer and Carl says he’s glad that they’re in a much better place together. “But I’m not a groomsman?” Kyle asks again in disbelief. He can’t fathom it. Now he’s a glitching Furby who can only say one thing.
What Carl did is low. We all know Carl was the best man and officiant at Kyle and Amanda’s wedding, and now Kyle is just one of three “flower fellas”? It doesn’t seem right. Carl tells us in confessional that he felt Lindsay didn’t want Kyle in the official wedding party. And that is her right — it is her wedding too. But doesn’t she realize that this is a demotion, and Kyle would take it as such?
But here is the difference between guys and girls. Kyle is clearly hurt and brings it up to Andrea when all the guys, including the groomsmen, meet to be measured for their suits. But he says he’s going to suck it up and just do it because that’s how boys are. Sweep those emotions under the rug and get on with it.
Meanwhile, the next weekend, when everyone arrives at the house, Carl is talking to Jesse about the impromptu bachelor party he had the night before. “Is Kyle a groomsman?” Jesse Solomon (always both names!) asks. Carl responds that he’s in the wedding party. “So he’s not a groomsman,” Jesse Solomon clarifies. Carl says no, he is a “flower luchador.”
Okay, we need to give it up for Jesse Solomon, shit-stirrer extraordinaire. I know we’re all blinded by West’s hotness and wonderfulness, but I think he is the real newbie MVP. No one moves the story along like Jesse Solomon and he does it in a way with no guile, just straight up asking the hard questions. That’s why he always gets away with it! When they all have rooftop drinks, he just blurts out to Ciara, “When are you going to have sex with my friend?” meaning West. Yes, we all want the answer, even West. Later, Ciara jokes to him that her boyfriend isn’t there that weekend, which also means West. “Boyfriend?!” Jesse declares excitedly. You know this messy bitch (complimentary) was right on his phone texting West about this the minute it came out of Ciara’s mouth, and I love Jesse for it.
However, the real difference between boys and girls and the “flower distribution professional” is what Paige says in another hilarious confessional. “Carl officiated his wedding, and they’re making him a flower girl?” she says. “I wouldn’t even go if you said that to me. I would slap you in the face and say, ‘Have a nice wedding.’” Yes! Remember how annoyed Danielle was that she wasn’t a bigger part of Lindsay’s proposal? Imagine if they were still besties and Danielle was relegated to ring bearitrix? All of Sag Harbor would have been wiped off the map!
The rest of the episode is Paige’s catered Italian dinner. (“What do women of leisure do?” she asks as she sits on the couch as a team of professionals prepares her event.) I’m sorry, but this is how all the dinners should be. Paige is paying $8,000 a month in rent. These people can afford to have someone cook and clean for them and we want to benefit by seeing a really nice backyard dinner party in the Hamptons. The sun starts to set, the breeze starts to pick up, and the temperature in the hot tub kicks up a notch or two for some drunken bikini shenanigans in an hour or two. Off in the trees, the fireflies flicker and the cicadas start to sing their song, and it is one of celebration. None of us want this summer to end. Well, except maybe Larl.
