Vanderpump Rules Recap – 2/16/15

Before the botched introduction of the wedding party takes place, there is the moment I’d like to call When Lisa Met Kristen, though not a second of it contained any of the zaniness or the joy of a meet-cute moment. No, Lisa locked eyes with Kristen and an expression passed over her face that clearly read, “Oh, f*ck – this lunatic,” and Kristen decided that this was the perfect time to speak to her former employer. See, Kristen is feeling good. She has been buoyed by the confidence that a glass (or six glasses) of wine can give, she has spent the last twenty minutes or so imagining her upcoming wedding with Sandoval, and she has happily scoped out the joint and has realized that there are cliffs aplenty and it will be more than possible to shove Ariana over one after the soup course, and who would even suspect her should Ariana go plunging to her death? How could it be Kristen who killed Ariana? Kristen is having the time of her life, which is exactly what she tells Lisa while wearing an expression and using the inflection that Patty Hearst did while she was trapped in a closet with a bag over her head. She goes on to tell Lisa that it’s clear that Lisa never liked her and that’s why she was fired – to which Lisa tries to explain to the crazy woman in her airspace that it was her attitude she didn’t care for – but the lunatic isn’t listening. She’s too focused on the fact that she knows that everybody expects her to ruin the wedding, and she’s going to surprise them all by not being the biggest assh*le on the premises for the evening.

I’d like to just toss out an idea here: if everyone expects you will single-handedly ruin a wedding, is it possible that maybe you need therapy or medication? Or am I saying such a thing because I’m jealous of Kristen’s amazing life and the bond she has with her twelve-year old boyfriend?

Gotta be choice two.

Moving from one repulsive wedding guest to the next, we find ourselves with Jax, who is murmuring words of love into Carmen’s ear, an action that caused my own ear begin to bleed. But Carmen is not really caving to Jax’s sweet nothings (nothings being the operative word here) and she gets annoyed when Vail joins their table and greets Jax, who responds with a greeting so short that it’s highly unlikely that he has not banged or attempted to bang Vail in the last week or so and is now desperately trying to cover it up. Making things more awkward, it seems Vail recently left a comment or a kiss or something ridiculous on Carmen’s Instagram, and it’s here where I’m going to provide a quick public service message to users of social media: if you don’t know someone personally and your only correlation to that person is through some guy you have both been with, you two are not friends. There is no need to write on a girl’s Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram like you’re buddies or founding members of a support group. If you believe you’re coming off as stealth or cool, you’re not; you are coming off as a threatened stalker, and Carmen should avoid both Vail and Jax like her very existence depends on it, which it might because these people are f*cking damaged.

The more you know, am I right?

Back in Los Angeles, we venture out with Stassi and her lone friend, Kristina. They go for drinks and toast to not being at Scheana’s wedding and Stassi discusses the mounds of dignity and self-respect she stands atop while imploring Kristina to go trolling online to find pictures of Scheana as a bride so they can cut her to bits. Finding a picture of Scheana in her dress gives Stassi a ton of ammunition, but anything she says about how terribly Scheana looks is watered down by the simple fact that Stassi claims to be above all of this sh*t and all of these people, but when the only thing you do on this show is wade into the nonsense, you’re not really above anything. And furthermore, that she was able to rise above the fray seems to have nothing to do with any move she made besides snagging a boyfriend who makes a good enough living that she no longer has to hoist platters at Sur. And I don’t begrudge her that – good for her! Cutting most of those people from the fabric of her life like they were scraps of material that moths had nibbled on was an excellent move, but stop acting so superior when you have done nothing to achieve superiority. When you legitimately stop caring about how ridiculous Scheana looks or when you finally refuse to be on camera discussing people you feel you are so above, then your superiority will be something that is not an illusion. Until then, cheers to only having relevance because of your affiliation with Scheana!

I think that normally Scheana would actually be quite pleased to realize how much she continues to be the focus of Stassi and Kristina, but she has too many other things on her mind right now to care. Because right now she must whine that the wrong song is coming on again and that, because of it, her entire wedding – nay, her entire life – has been compromised. So she does the only thing she can do when three hundred guests are sitting there: she makes them wait. And when the correct song finally starts, she and her beloved shimmy out to the balcony and wave to the people they love and then have a first dance that ends with the bride twerking because Scheana radiates both class and refinement.

Elsewhere on the dance floor, Sandoval remarks that he is thrilled to be far away from The Crazy Table at which his psychotic ex-girlfriend and her currently inebriated boyfriend sit, resentment bubbling between them like hot pink lava. Turns out that James has begun to grow weary of Kristen’s obsession with Sandoval, so he solves the problem by creating a new problem. He gets sh*t-faced wasted, moving – as Kristen puts it – from happy to belligerent and stubborn in only an instant, and I would feel badly for Kristen, but I can’t get it up to have any feeling towards her that even resembles sympathy because this is the kind of thing that happens when you are forever obsessed with your ex-boyfriend and you have made the choice to date a twenty-two year old child in the interim because you cannot face being alone.

Perhaps the only one less happy than James at the wedding is Katie, who has been guided to a private spot by her boyfriend of four years where Schwartz proceeds to give her a ring on a string that she can hang around her neck. It becomes abundantly clear almost immediately that Katie would much prefer to hang Schwartz from a noose that is tied to one of the trees festooned with twinkly lights. It’s not that the ring on the string isn’t pretty, explains Katie; it’s that she wants an engagement ring to wear on her finger, and this is essentially a rose gold consolation prize.

To his credit, Schwartz recognizes that he has hurt the girl that he loves and admits that he has commitment issues and that he has shown poor judgment in selecting this particular piece of jewelry. He strikes me as a rather good guy, but then again that could also be because he is surrounded by douchebags as far as the eye can see.