Vanderpump Rules Recap – 2/23/15

Quick reveal: if you can burn calories by laughing, watching Kristen maintain that her quest for truth was at the root of her insanity just made me go down two sizes.
Fear not, though, single people of the world: neither Kristen nor James is back on the dating scene because these horribly damaged creatures have made up and declared their love for one another and the world makes sense again, as long as you look at it through a haze of tequila.

At another bar, Sandoval, Ariana, Schwartz, Katie, and Jax meet up for drinks before their shift at Sur. As the group talks about the wedding, the ring on a string is brought up and even his adorable glasses can’t stop Schwartz from looking like a douche for handing over to his engagement-obsessed girlfriend a ring not meant for that particular finger. He is apologetic and looks like he genuinely feels badly for causing Katie pain, but the same look does not appear on Katie’s face. No, as Schwartz explains that it is his financial instability that is causing him to not move forward with the engagement, Katie looks like she is trying to stop herself from lunging across the table to rip her boyfriend’s eyes from the sockets behind those cute frames and then wearing his corneas on a string instead of that bullshit ring. She restrains herself because her name is not Kristen, but it seemed touch and go for a while there.

Also discussed at the table is that Kristen, her friend (!) Rachel, and Carmen went out recently and Carmen and Kristen got into a fight with a stripper, who mistakenly decked Rachel. You know – it was just a typical night out for Kristen who throws down with strippers like I get pedicures, but her behavior has become so alarming that even Jax states that she might need some help. And when Jax is the one commenting on your questionable and fleeting sanity, it’s pretty much a sure thing that you are teetering on being clinically f*cked.

Back at Sur, Scheana arrives. She’s just returned from her Hawaiian honeymoon and she looks less than thrilled to be donning a Sur dress, but she manages to look even less thrilled when she sees James, the guy who had the nerve to get punched at her wedding. James asks to speak with her privately and takes full responsibility for what transpired. Now, I’m not so sure why Scheana cares so much about an incident she didn’t even hear about until well after it ended, but she is still in the It’s MY Day mindset, so she allows herself to be annoyed. That said, she also allows herself to make a rather astute comment that the reason that Kristen dates guys who are nine years younger is so those guys will be dumb enough to take the blame for her whirlwind of crazy.

At the bar, Lisa joins Peter and Jax to inform them that she needs some help at an event she and Lance Bass are throwing at Pump. Lucky Puppy is an organization that places dogs with loving owners who have at least one string of a moral fiber within their beings, and that stipulation alone makes Lisa immediately put the kibosh on the dim light bulb that tries to shine above Jax’s head as he contemplates becoming a dog owner. And on behalf of all of the humans and all of the canines, I think that Lisa needs to be congratulated for making the declaration that Jax should never adopt a dog.

Jax does inform Lisa that Kristen has been texting him furiously, wanting him to speak with her about her ex-boyfriend engaging in a maybe-hook-up with a girl long after Kristen and he broke up. Lisa – being of sound mind – doesn’t understand why Kristen should care about such a thing but she does tell Jax right to his face that she knows that he loves to gossip, but that maybe in this case, he should employ a little thing called diplomacy and deal with the Kristen situation head on and finally be done with being inundated with texts from a lunatic. Lisa’s final suggestion on the matter? Have your talk with the mad one far away from Sur.

Jax is not the only one Kristen has been bombarding with texts. Just as she told Peter, Stassi has continued to receive messages from the girl who used to be her friend before she slept with Stassi’s boyfriend, and Stassi is finally curious enough to find out what fractured pieces of information are crackling around in Kristen’s mind or she is desperate enough for camera time to actually meet up with the girl for lunch.

Over sandwiches and cocktails – I’d totally be drinking at that meal too – Kristen tells Stassi that all that she wants in the entire world is for Jax to admit that Sandoval has been lying and that he cheated on Ariana in Miami. And she’s so frustrated that Jax will not just admit publicly that his best friend is a cheater! Why will Jax not help to ruin his friend’s life? What is wrong with everybody, wonders the person who will soon be the focus of an episode of Dateline Mystery.

“It drives me nuts because it makes me look like I’m the liar,” Kristen explains to Stassi, and here I must mention that I have personally called and have heard Kristen called a lot of things: delusional, f*cking insane, warped out of her mindless skull – you know, the typical and fully-deserved insults heaved her way. But I can’t recall too many people calling Kristen a liar. The issue of her glaring dishonesty doesn’t seem to be a focal point anymore, not since she finally admitted to sleeping with Stassi’s boyfriend last season after hiding the truth for a very long time. Her being a liar is not the cause of her social banishment. That she’s a walking and talking piece of sh*tty distortion seems to be why she’s not invited out for coffee more frequently.

At first, Stassi actually gives Kristen some advice about how to break Jax and get him to admit to what he knows. Kristen needs to get him to say something incriminating in front of Scheana so there is a witness. She needs to continue to push Jax because Jax will break. But then Stassi does something kind of impressive, and it reminds me that I kind of like Stassi: she suggests to Kristen that maybe Kristen needs to just let all of this bile-filled baggage go. She tells Kristen that she has lost her friends, her job, and is on the verge of losing her boyfriend, and that – for the sake of her own well-being – perhaps she should drop the need to expose the fact that Sandoval cheated on somebody once who wasn’t even her.

It’s some solid and blunt advice that Stassi gives to a girl she owes exactly nothing to, and she does it while wearing a dark lip that
she pulls off quite well.

“Kristen needs to stop pointing out the flaws in others to make herself feel better,” Stassi states perfectly, but that logic sails right over Kristen’s muddled head and she tells Stassi that she wants to just try one more time to expose a lie within a story of which she actually has no part.