Kristen, our favorite therapy patient who should get herself a refund, is like cleaning up leaves while a tornado is gusting through the neighborhood. In other words, nothing will get clean and it’s all just an enormous waste of time and energy.
Scheana is the human equivalent of loading and unloading the dishwasher. The whole thing is based upon the premise of ease and convenience, but if you look a little closer, you’re reminded that you must rinse the dishes before they go in and some never wind up clean. I think I have a glass that’s been in that dishwasher for six months straight – it lives there now. Scheana’s like my dishwasher. She’s not the most irritating appliance or task in the vicinity, but she annoys the living hell out of me every now and again.
James is that dirty towel you throw away instead of even bothering to do laundry.
And Jax? He’s a combination of jobs that all have scum in common. He is the cleaning of toilets and the scraping of residue from showers and bathtubs. He is locating that item in your refrigerator that you’re certain has died and he is carrying that item outside while wearing a hazmat suit. He is the milk that has turned and the fruit that has grown both moldy and fluffy. He is the living incarnation of maybe everything I truly hate.
Hatred aside, the tiles in my bathroom now positively twinkle (aw, Jax!) and so it’s time to get to all the action of this week’s episode. I think they’re just trying to lay the groundwork for the chaos that must be coming this season because it’s all been rather sedate so far. I wouldn’t worry, though; these people want to keep their jobs so they will soon cart in the crazy. In the meantime, there’s a new girl on the premises who is clearly there to spark some conflict.
Arriving at SUR, Lisa is greeted by Lala, the new girl. Two weeks earlier, Jax – sporting his super sexy nasal bandage – tried to hit on her, but Lala was unfazed. As she explains to her new boss during her job interview, she’s a lot of guys’ types. So yeah, it was just your run of the mill interview scenario that had nothing to do with setting up a reality show storyline and everything to do with SUR desperately needing a new hostess and anyone who believes otherwise is a total idiot.
Scheana shows up next and girlfriend is pissed. Seems young James had himself a classic meltdown at the end of Scheana’s birthday party, the one where she required that her guests arrive in costume. Decked out as something unfortunate looking that required donning a black wig, James spun tunes, fought with his uninvited girlfriend, and then downed a bottle of something I could swear was whiskey or scotch or some other form of hard alcohol that can double as paint thinner. That sh*t put him over the top as far as annoying goes (usually he just hovers near the apex of annoying, but the alcohol he all but snorted tossed him clear over annoying’s edge and into the valley of exasperating) and Scheana wants to know how it is that his insane levels of intoxication became her problem. Was it that Kristen arrived uninvited at the party that made James mainline booze? Because, according to Scheana, who cares that Kristen was there? After all, the only one who requested that she be banned was Scheana’s BEST FRIEND, the girl Kristen has fantasized aloud about mauling before flinging her in front of moving passenger trains, so it’s not like Kristen being there should really make anyone uptight in the least. Let’s leave James and Kristen out of this for a moment, okay? Can we just agree that the actual issue here is that Scheana is being a d*ck for still associating with her best friend’s arch nemesis and is also kind of a fool for trying to pretend that she’s even slightly surprised anymore by the terrible behavior her dear friends exhibit when a camera lens is pointed their way?
So early into the episode, it’s hard to pinpoint who exactly is the biggest moron. (Is it Scheana for continuing to read the nasty text messages her friend Kristen keeps sending her? James for simply existing? Me for watching this nonsense?) It seems James seriously wants to kick my ass in the moron department because apparently the guy spent the night with some random girl named Jenna even though his girlfriend was right beside him earlier and all of it would eventually be exposed since his little indiscretion took place during production. And now Scheana – who hates drama and anyone who claims otherwise is a bitch with sh*tty eyebrows who doesn’t contour her entire face – now finds herself smack dab in the middle of a new bit of chaos. Poor girl.
On the other end of the restaurant, Lala interrupts Lisa’s relaxing cup of tea. She’d like some clarification about her schedule because she’s got an upcoming booking in Italy for her modeling and acting career and it’s really hard for her to have to answer to anybody because she’s so wildly successful in her other endeavors, which is why I dressed as Lala last Halloween and everybody knew exactly who I was. At any rate, she swears she’ll be back at SUR soon and I for one am thrilled because maybe that means that there will be less of a focus on Kristen, a girl who doesn’t even work there anymore. Though frankly, unless we are privy to her therapy sessions, I’m not fully interested.
Outside, Katie and Scheana take a break with a camera crew present and discuss the James/Kristen/Jenna/Wild Turkey incident that recently went down – I think it’s the event that is all but sponsoring this week’s episode so I expect that all of the commercials will be for Valtrex – and Scheana shares one of the seventy-two texts Kristen has sent her that call Scheana a bitch and her friend Jenna a whore. It’s all very unsurprising, as is the moment Jax saunters up the alleyway to introduce his new piece, Brittany. Oh, Brittany. Who is she? Well, she’s a girl who is willing to date Jax even after he’s impersonated a slug for several years on television. Obviously a genius and an excellent judge of character, Brittany met Jax in Vegas and is now showing up hoping to get a job at SUR and I’m sure that, just like with Lala, her goal to work there has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that this restaurant’s cast appears on Bravo twice a week. I’m sure she just has a real affinity for fried goat cheese balls.
Before Jax brings Brittany over to meet Lisa, Jax begs Lisa to be nice to her. Brittany’s just a sweet girl from Kentucky, Jax explains. In fact, her sweetness caught him off-guard, much as I’m sure his chronic scumbagginess will one day catch her off-guard. But until that sh*t goes down (don’t worry; it’ll for sure go down onscreen), he’s her knight in tarnished generic aluminum foil. Lisa promises to be decent and then acts for a moment like this is going to be a real job interview, but let’s all be honest for a second, okay? Their exchange is not for one iota of a second about the owner of a restaurant hiring a new employee. No, this is about the executive producer of a reality show hiring a cast member who will compromise the already-tenuous peace. Needless to say, I won’t gasp when Brittany is handed one of the handkerchiefs that SUR waitresses wear as a uniform, though the outfit Brittany showed up in for the interview actually makes the flimsy uniform look like something you’d wear at a convent…during a holy day.
While Brittany is being fake interviewed, Jax chats up Lala at the bar and finds out that she lives in Stassi’s former bedroom. I know! I too figured that space had been sealed off as a shrine to the former SUR waitress who takes herself far too seriously, but I was wrong and Lala slumbers there. I don’t think it’s me taking a gigantic leap to wonder just how long it will take Jax and his newest nose to try to slither into his old stomping ground so he can simultaneously bang Lala while remembering the good times with Stassi as Brittany, unaware of it all, serves a drink with a ridiculous mark-up at the bar of the restaurant where her amazing boyfriend got her a job.
Over at Katie and Schwartz’s apartment, Schwartz is cooking and talking to his dog. Gordo is furry and adorable and Schwartz is currently rocking a lot of scruff and is therefore also furry and adorable. It almost doesn’t matter to me that the guy apparently makes no money and has run down the clock of the Proposal Ultimatum Deadline and that he recently spent his time getting a perm. I still find the guy so cute and not at all malicious and that’s obviously all I need to decide that someone on one of these shows is walking perfection.
Not the epitome of perfection is Kristen, who shows up to meet James with a look of such unadulterated misery on her face that I have to wonder why she even got out of bed. She’s a f*cking mess, but James is seriously ridiculous. The guy spent last season making comments like, “Kristen says my penis is bigger than Tom Sandoval’s” and he shows up in public wearing low-cut tank tops and those factors alone would make me deny even knowing the guy, but Kristen feels the need to have a talk with the newest love of her life, the one that was so not a rebound scenario to get over Sandoval and how dare you suggest such a preposterous thing? The look of pure hatred she throws James as she inquires about him going home with Jenna as she holds a glass of wine like it’s a f*cking dagger is almost terrifying, but it’s not nearly as terrifying as watching James try to lie convincingly. He sputters and covers his face and all but turns purple, especially when Kristen offers to show him the Uber receipt that proves he went home with someone else. Oh, and for all of you who think that maybe Kristen shouldn’t break into her boyfriends’ emails? She would like you to know that she finds something incriminating every single time so she is right to do such a thing. What’s that? Maybe she should date men who aren’t pricks, you say? Interesting.
At any rate, Kristen declares she’s done with James and he responds by laughing at her and so she stalks off, glugging wine the entire way. She’s devastated, but I think that maybe she’d feel better if she came back and took another long look at him. That’d cure the heartache.
At some other restaurant where cameras are permitted and the random customers hanging near the bar signed a release form, Sandoval, Ariana, Schwartz, and Katie meet up with the newest servers, Lala and Faith. Jax invited everyone and our host shows up with Brittany, the luckiest girl in the whole wide world. At the bar, we learn that Jax has a fetish that involves foot odor (anyone else gently traumatized by this reveal?) and we even get treated to a photo of toes in his face. Listen, I’m THIS-CLOSE to believing that Bravo is getting ready to air a show that takes place in a bathroom and is called Matrons and captures the excitement of public urination. But until that show can be greenlit, we can instead enjoy Jax pretending to believe that Brittany knows nothing about him or SUR…after this show has been airing for several seasons.
Back in the banquette, Katie is chatting with Lala and guessing that the new girl is mildly full of sh*t. She just doesn’t buy her stories about being flown to Italy for modeling, but there’s no time to really get into anything because Sandoval chooses to break up the moment by passing out shots and leading a toast about how soon they’ll all hate one another. Cheers!
Kristen’s apartment is way less festive. She pours herself a drink and is sitting motionless on the couch when James comes over. He looks like he’s making an effort – he put on a shirt with sleeves – and she wants to not be reactive like she was when she was with Sandoval. Instead, she wants to remain calm while James tells her the story about cheating on her (he says he did it because he wanted to) and he might have tried to undress the girl but they didn’t have sex and he swears he’s telling her the truth. However, during his charming little interview, James tells us that he and Jenna “were definitely boning,” and I now fully believe that we have just stared directly into the eyes of the very thing the Mayans warned us about that would usher in the end of civilization. I wish I knew just one Mayan so I could tell him that his people have been right all along and that it is indeed a scrawny, pathetic English wannabe DJ with a chin ass who is taking everything down like a cosmic cannonball.