See, James (who hooked up with Lala last night and recently banged a girl named Jenna) tells Kristen that he believes that she has been untrue. She was in Detroit (?) for a modeling job (???) and she was out late with friends (?!%?!%) when her phone went dead so she didn’t call her philandering boyfriend who just last week called her a “f*cking bitch” while sitting next to her on her therapist’s couch and her silence made him feel sad. Both of them sneer, “I don’t want to be with you” and their interaction is brimming and simmering with such hatred that I cannot help but spontaneously think about the definition of the word “crucible” and that it’s a container that allows things to boil to staggering temperatures and this bullsh*t relationship that’s playing out on television right now is like watching a crucible that’s about to explode and leave crusty debris all over the wall. And sticking with my literary allusion for just a second, who else wants to wager that if Kristen had lived in Salem in the 1600s, she totally would have accused everyone in town of witchcraft? I’d bet maybe anything on such a thing, including James’ face, which he gestures to and tells Kristen that she will never have it again in something that sounds far more like a promise to me than any sort of threat.
Inside where it’s safe, Lala feels flustered by Kristen’s presence so she seeks out Sandoval and Jax to vent about her concerns. Making her feel all better about the situation, Jax tells her that Kristen is absolutely crazy and that she totally knows where Lala lives. Back outside, Kristen tells James how good she was to him and his reaction is to tell her that he will not miss her. It’s vicious, their interaction, and James is maybe the cruelest person on this show and that’s saying something, though he is maybe also the most pathetic person on this show and that’s really saying something. This probably-uncircumcised d*ckhead walks away from her while chortling that he already has a date lined up for tomorrow night and it’s going to be so much “funner” than any moment he’s spent with Kristen. Then he takes a long drag on his cigarette like he’s a Bond villain created during a writer’s strike and I really don’t know why somebody strong has yet to kick the sh*t out of this guy.
“I love him so much. He’s my best friend,” cries Kristen – and I think she ought to get herself back to therapy stat.
Over at Scheana and Shay’s Sober House, Scheana is wearing inexplicable blue glasses as they welcome Ariana and Sandoval. Sandoval is there to provide some tips for healthy living to get Shay over the hump of ingesting a box of Otter Pops during the night and a fistful of pills during the day. He whips up a juice I actually want to try in spite of the fact that it looks like Gumby was melted down into a glass and he serves them some eggs and the guy is a rather good friend and I’m still really confused by Scheana’s glasses.
A brief twinge of fear settled inside me for a moment after the Sandoval scene. It was beginning to look like things on this show were moving into far too sunny a place for me to enjoy while in my own dismal mood, but fortunately Jax is back onscreen and he’s decided to be a tattletale who also happens to be in his thirties. He informs Lisa that her anti-fraternization policy is being systematically violated by the coupling of James and Lala, but Lisa doesn’t quite care and in fact finds it slightly humorous that Jax is being passed over in favor of a guy who appears to have skipped puberty entirely.
Still emotionally smarting from the loss of the love of her life who hates her, Kristen has invited her friend Rachel to meet her at a dive bar in the middle of the day. Turns out that Rachel is Kristen’s “Girl Power” friend – which means that Rachel needs to be caged immediately because God only knows what Kristen, the Wonder Twin from Hell, could do with an extra burst of power. At the moment, Kristen is depressed and so she does the healthy thing by ordering a bottle of wine and a straw. She also tells Rachel that James already has a date set up with Lala and that Jax told her that James and Lala kissed. Kristen has been up all night, thrown up all day, drank some wine, and is now embarking on plans to destroy Lala’s entire life because her therapist once told her that to channel her anger means that she is growing.
Not growing anymore is Peter’s hair. The ponytail is coming off as a sign of his burgeoning maturity. Plus, the guy needed a storyline and watching him attempt to date last season was haunting. As his hair is lobbed off, the guys discuss Kristen. Sandoval – who is obviously at the salon for Peter’s big hair day – thinks Kristen has zero self-awareness. He’s absolutely correct, of course, but Jax disagrees. Jax has a soft spot for the girl he once nailed on her boyfriend’s sofa and besides, he wants to help Kristen destroy anything that develop between James and Lala so he can bone Lala next because there has now been a vagina in his midst for more than an hour that he has been denied access to and the whole thing is just confusing him.
In some metal camper that gives pedicures while parked in some lot, Katie, Ariana, and Scheana get their nails done while talking about how Kristen has set in motion her campaign to destroy Lala because Kristen is nothing if not a master at the proper placement of blame. Scheana is on Kristen’s side here; she thinks Lala is the one to blame because she had the audacity to flirt with a guy who appeared to hate his own girlfriend. I find that logic slightly flawed. See, Lala doesn’t know Kristen so I’m not sure why she should have any loyalty to a stranger. (I’m not letting Lala off the hook that easily. I might not think it’s a big deal that she lacks loyalty, but I think it’s a gigantic problem that she clearly lacks taste in men.) At any rate, Scheana thinks Lala is not really a girl’s girl and that’s why she wasn’t invited to get a gel manicure in a camper van. On a happier note, Scheana tells her friends that she and Shay are doing fine and they are pretending that they just got back from their honeymoon and everything is great and it’s awesome that his addiction was able to be solved without a little thing like rehab. Like the perceptive person she is, Ariana finds Scheana’s plan moronic and she knows that their collective embrace of blissful ignorance will ultimately only prove damaging.