In the glow from the outdoor bug lights in the alleyway of Sur, Jax looks demonic and old and used up and he just kind of stare at Sandoval as his friend confronts him once again about attempting to sabotage the relationships of those closest to him. In one of my very favorite moments, Jax denies that he has ever done anything wrong, and the editors cut to a flashback that shows a sequence of him doing everything wrong, but nope – Jax continues to maintain that he never said anything to Kristen about Sandoval having sex in Miami, despite the fact that there was a table of witnesses and the entire f*cking thing was filmed. It was about here when I found myself studying Jax like he was a messy science experiment, like one of those volcanoes that spews fake lava that smells. What exactly is his thought pattern here? Does he figure that by the time the footage airs nobody will care that he sold his friend out? Does he believe that he can leave Los Angeles before anyone sees the footage and go live forever in sunny Mexico, where he will change his name to Jeronimo?
Before Sandoval can scream or knit Jax a beanie that has his new name embroidered across the front, Kristen inserts herself into the conversation with a “Hi, boys!” that I’m sure she believes sounds both cool and confident. Sandoval turns to the emotionally-crippled woman before him and asks if Jax indicated to her that he had slept with Miami Girl, to which Kristen smiles and says, “a million percent.”
“Why do you keep trying to destroy his life?” Jax asks Kristen, realizing that ricocheting the blame to this psychopath will probably be his best chance here. “Shut the f*ck up.”
“Jax, stop deflecting,” says Sandoval calmly. “Kristen, you’re a psychopath,” he continues, even more calmly.
“Tom, I’m very happy in my relationship,” Kristen explains to him in a way that is – well, what’s another word for pathetic? Pitiful? Wretched? Whatever the vocabulary choice, Kristen is all of the above and Sandoval knows it.
“Then move the f*ck on and go be happy!” he rages. “Stay out of my f*cking life!”
And with that, Kristen gets up and walks away and I believe with all of my might that she thinks she has come across as lucid and calm and collected and articulate and closely resembling a human being – and her continued misguided perception of herself and of the nature of truth is rather alarming. But before she can leave the place where even the kitchen workers hate her, she first walks up to Ariana, who is sitting with Katie and Lisa.
“I’ve said every last thing I could possibly say to your boyfriend and every last thing I could possibly say to you,” says Kristen while the women just stare at her, hoping that if they don’t meet its eye maybe it will just go away. “Good luck,” she finishes with a smile and the whole thing screams of madness.
Back outside, Sandoval looks over at Jax with an expression of unadulterated repulsion and says, “What the f*ck is wrong with you, dude?” to which Jax says nothing, sitting there in silence like he is the mute elder statesman of Douchebag Nation.
Sandoval gets up and goes inside and approaches Ariana, who is still sitting with Katie and Lisa. It is then that he apologizes that she has had to deal with the terrible people who are in his life and then he hems and haws for a moment and it looks like maybe he’s about to propose and all I could think was LOOK AWAY, KATIE, but what he ended up proposing was that Ariana move in with him. She accepted and the two of them began to make out on the couch in front of their boss, something I try only to do on Thursdays.
Walking away from a couple who are about to mount one another right there on a leather banquette, Katie finds Schwartz and the two sit down to discuss Katie’s desire for marriage and Schwartz’s desire to wait, a conversation we all have at parties while cameras are pointing directly at us. Schwartz insists that he loves her and Katie insists that he has six months to propose. Here I must interject and say that I fully understand that Katie wants to get married and she has every right to feel frustrated, but I’m also rather certain that dragging a man kicking and screaming to an altar after giving him an ultimatum might not be the wisest thing Katie has ever done, and I’m including that time she dyed her hair the most unfortunate color of burnt sienna and then actually went outside of her house and into public where people with vision could see her.
After the romance that a forced ultimatum for an engagement ring brings about, Lisa calls everyone together and pours all of them shots and then she screens a slideshow of The Photoshoot That Occurred For No Real Reason. When a picture comes up of Sandoval and Ariana, Kristen – who, again, is in her thirties – mimes the act of vomiting while she is standing in a crowd of people who hate her at a party she was barely invited to next to her adolescent boyfriend who now looks as crazy as she does and Scheana calls her out for her obnoxious and unnecessary reaction.
“This is bullsh*t,” says Kristen. “I’m so sick of people hating on me.” And that, my friends, is what is wrong with this idiot. She causes all kinds of conflict deliberately and with intentions of malice and then she is confused as to why people hate her. She’s a sinister, awful person and she might make excellent television, but I’d be fine with never seeing her delusional face again.
Walking away from the party, Kristen lets us know that she just wants to move forward with her twenty-one-year-old boyfriend who is a bigger man than Sandoval “in more ways than one,” and maybe these two crazy kids have a chance, because there’s obviously nothing that shows an unmitigated devotion to another person more than announcing his d*ck size on television. Should they ever get engaged, I call shotgun on buying them the following off of their registry: a box of extra-small condoms (because something tells me that Kristen is delusional enough to have hallucinated that James has the most gigantic d*ck in the land) and a bladeless set of knives. Do those exist? Can I patent a line of products called Wedding Gifts for Psychopaths?
It all ends – well, until what I’m sure will be a four-part Reunion – like this: Jax goes outside and realizes that his truck has been towed so he wanders around aimlessly, which is the perfect imagery for somebody so lost. Katie and Schwartz walk away together and head home to an apartment that Katie has rigged with countdown clocks like the ones on Lost to keep Schwartz apprised of how much time he has left before he is forced to become a husband. Tom and Ariana happily leave Sur filled with the excitement of moving in together, and I hope it will not be until the next morning that Sandoval begins to panic about how he will find room for Ariana’s grooming products in a tiny bathroom that is already stuffed with his own bronzer and tweezers and exfoliator. Peter closes the door to Sur by himself and wanders away contemplating why he has not slept with Vail yet and it occurs to him that maybe it’s because he stared creepily into her eyes during their non-date, but then he shakes his head and tells himself that no, that can’t be the reason. Scheana tells the camera that she is married to the love of her life, a man who has said twelve words all season, and that includes his vows. And Lisa gets into her Rolls Royce and returns home to her palatial mansion with her devoted husband and her coddled dog and she looks around at the life that she has and she giggles because she knows exactly what is in the f*cking briefcase.
Nell Kalter teaches Film and Media at a school in New York. She is the author of the books THAT YEAR and STUDENT, both available on amazon. Check out her website at nellkalter.com. Her twitter is @nell_kalter.
Did you notice that Kristen had a black eye in the scene where she was getting ready for the Sur party? It was never addressed, but very noticeable. Also, the Pink Motel is in Sun Valley – not really deep in the California desert. 😉
I did not notice the black eye. Wondering if the stripper did it…