But maybe nothing is more frightening in the first ten minutes of this Reunion than watching Stassi attempt to assuage her own sense of guilt or mask her alarming levels of cowardice about her inability to apologize to any person who somehow invaded her rarified airspace. She is the kind of girl who, when confronted about saying nasty things directly to a camera while a microphone was strapped to her dress, offers the most offensive kind of apology there is, which is to say, “I’m sorry you were hurt by what I said.” She cannot seem to make herself simply say, “I’m sorry I said some of those things,” because she’s not sorry and she’s too afraid that she will be assassinated if she says the far more accurate, “I’m sorry you can’t take a joke and that your insecurities and your secrets mean that my bold comment hit a nerve.”
The thing is, I’m not of the opinion that Stassi owes some of these people apologies. What she said might not have been particularly kind, but which of these people was signed to this show due to an overwhelming trait of compassion? I do think Stassi should have apologized to Katie, but Stassi doesn’t do apologies.
“Why did you just cut me off and deem me unworthy?” asked Katie, bolder than she’s ever been and I’m wondering if it’s her new curtain of artificial hair that’s giving her powers.
“I felt like it was both of us,” Stassi responded, which was a terrible response for a girl I normally give far more credit to for her verbal comebacks.
“No,” said Katie immediately, shutting that ridiculous response right down and then alluding to Stassi’s Problem, something she apparently went through that is being kept under wraps for now, which means – because she decided to appear on a reality show – that we can all take our guesses about what her problem might be. Here are my theories:
1. I think her parents are divorced, but maybe there’s another divorce on the horizon.
2. Someone close to her had to go to rehab.
3. Her boyfriend became racked with concern about dating someone who once disrobed in front of Jax.
4. Kristen tried to entice her to join her International League For Truth and Stassi wasn’t sure how to get out of an organization that would require a total loss of sanity and having to wear a unitard.
Whatever it is – or was – the issue is just danced around, and when the subject once again turns to the horrible things that she has said, Stassi explodes for a second and all but screams, “None of you guys know me,” and the reactions they all give her when she says that can best be defined as expressions of blank laughter. Jax’s response is the best; he just looks confused because he used to live with this girl. He does know her, and I realized in that second that I might not mind Jax so much if he’d just embrace the art of not speaking. I mean, if Robert Durst went mute why can’t Jax?
Stassi is not off the hook yet. Andy Cohen asks if the entire breakdown of her friendship with Katie was due to Katie jetting off to Miami with a small congregation made up of some of Stassi’s enemies (the enormous other group of people who have wronged her had something else to do that weekend) and Stassi responded, “I would have totally gotten over the Miami thing. I just wanted her to acknowledge that, yeah, like, I know I did a total 180…” but she was cut off by Katie bursting in to insist, “I would have loved to have done that BUT YOU WEREN’T TALKING TO ME!”
“I do understand why she went to Miami,” Stassi begins to explain, “and I would have gotten over that so quickly. It just snowballed into so much more,” and that right there is why having Stassi as a friend strikes me as exhausting. What kind of adult (or pseudo-adult) has a friend she must spend so much time begging to understand her choices? This chick has clearly gotten away with this kind of behavior for way too long and her middle school friends should be ashamed of themselves for putting this whole bullsh*t behavior into motion all those years ago and then allowing it to continue out of fear that Stassi would call them out for having a bad gawky stage or thinking that blue braces were cool.
Turns out that one of the things that Stassi is mad at is that Katie made some comments about how Stassi has become a “kept woman” since meeting her boyfriend, and when Schwartz jumps in to tell Stassi how distraught Katie was after their friendship sputtered to a stop, Stassi responded by saying, “I don’t care when I hear that someone is talking about someone I really love…” and Schwartz cuts her off and mocks how she can only talk about herself, to which Stassi responds, “It’s my feelings!” The entire thing was starting to go in boring and backwards circles, so thank goodness it was around that time when Jax was asked about the tattoo he now has on his entire bicep that supposedly looks a great deal like Stassi.
The idea that this piece of sh*t is now walking around with her face on his arm clearly scares Stassi out of her mind. She almost starts hyperventilating, and that’s when Jax tells her that it’s not a picture of her and he takes off his jacket and unbuttons his entire shirt to show off a face that’s not Stassi’s (but could be an image of her possessed fraternal twin) and Stassi begins to scan the premises to make sure that there are no baskets filled with lotions or holes in the ground where Jax might want to keep her. Personally, I was far more horrified that Jax removed his clothing in a restaurant. Come on, Board of Health! Is nobody on call tonight? All I know is that after seeing that image, I would never eat another fried ball of goat cheese on the premises. I shall instead make Scheana serve them to me on the patio. Maybe Kristen can hand me a napkin from her special spot in the bushes where she hides so she can stare at Sandoval.
Speaking of Scheana, she spends a lot of time in the beginning of this Reunion smiling primly at how Stassi is being called out publicly. It’s not a real smile and she keeps doing it with her mouth closed and now we all know for sure that Scheana without teeth is the physical embodiment of a creepy, plastic Cabbage Patch Kid. Mine was named Dona Layla – and if she were not at the bottom of a landfill today, she would kick my ass for comparing her to Scheana.
It’s then brought up that Stassi believes that Lisa tried to push people on her she did not want to associate with, and I really think Stassi has a point here. The only one she should have stayed connected to is Katie; she had every right to hightail it the f*ck out of SUR the moment Jax oozed his way into a room she was in, and his revoltingness is just made all the more clear when he says that if Stassi is in such a good place and so happy with her new boyfriend, why should his presence even impact her at all? It appears that Jax can only imagine a world where his presence to a woman is jarring because of that woman’s complicated feelings for him that he’ll try to help her resolve by tossing her ankles behind her head. He cannot fathom that his presence is sometimes just disturbing because of how truly awful he is as a human being and how damaging he has been so continually and that someone might simply value her own life more when he is no longer a part of it.
Thank you!
🙂
-Nell