If I had been allotted a full three years to sit inside of a dark room and devote all of my time to trying to figure out exactly the way that the guys from Vanderpump Rules would commemorate Shay’s last afternoon before he willingly married Scheana, I could never have come up with what actually transpired. My imagination’s vivid and all, but I’m not sure it would ever venture towards the sheer darkness that involves the scenario of four grown men standing in an alley, drinking 40s out of brown paper bags.
And then, of course, there’s Jax, whom I’ve come to believe is smegma personified. He appears suddenly onscreen and we can see, even without a cut to close-up, the faint sight of the gash that’s still on his forehead from that time he ran through a glass door to stop his car from being towed. He stands there in the dirty alley (“Maybe this is where I came from…” I imagined his inner voice whispering excitedly to the meatier parts of his brain) and he ribs Shay with exactly what you’d expect this d*ckhead to say to a man getting married: “One vagina for the rest of your life!” It was a comment that was both totally expected and glaringly uninsightful, and I’m beginning to embrace the feeling that Jax needs to be sent far away from society in an effort to protect ourselves at large from what I will from this point forward coin his terribleness.
(I’d capitalize his terribleness, but making anything Jax does into a proper noun feels all kinds of improper.)
Please know this: I don’t suggest the deportation of a fellow American cavalierly, but I’m nervous that I have legitimately developed some kind of Pavlovian reaction to both his face and his voice – don’t think I haven’t tried to watch the scenes with Jax without burying my face in a pillow! – that subsequently causes my inner organs to clench in a way that makes me wince in pain. I’m frightened for my health! But I will give him credit for getting me off my habit of snacking while watching this show because, even if I’m just chomping carrot sticks, my tummy can no longer handle it.
After the super-classy toast in the alleyway, the boys wander into a barbershop to get groomed for Shay’s big day. Schwartz – whom I guess made up with Jax after the last episode ended on a cliffhanger during which he called out his buddy for never having his back, to which Jax responded with the incredibly sentimental and apologetic I don’t care – sat quietly while a man tended to his sweet little face while another barber took a razor to Jax’s throat and I sat straight up on my sofa in an anticipatory form of total glee thinking, this is it! The money shot! Alas, Jax was not gutted by the barber and instead all I got to see was him getting shaved while Sandoval administered to Shay as his self-appointed stylist and then showed off his own perfectly shorn face, something he declared would feel great when rubbed across Ariana’s vagina. Sandoval’s baby-soft skin also served to then cause continuity issues for the rest of the episode since the rehearsal dinner that followed the shaving scene showed Sandoval with significant scruff.
Before we get to Sur – setting of the rehearsal dinner because Scheana gets an employee discount there and her wedding costs have buoyed north of $90,000 so girlfriend’s gotta save money somewhere –we first gain entrance into the luxurious and spotless home of Lisa Vanderpump. I don’t know if it’s mating season or something to do with the migration patterns of swans, but I feel like we have seen way more of the guard swans that patrol Lisa’s house these days than we ever have before. I enjoy how mildly terrified every person looks walking over that bridge to Lisa’s front door when the circling swans below come into focus. People are right to be scared! Swans can be vicious – and I sadly know this to be true because one chased me when I went on a hike near a lake one time.
It was a totally scarring experience.