Ariana’s birthday party is kind of odd. It’s in someone’s backyard and there are balloons and streamers and a bouncy castle and the girls are sequestered inside doing one another’s hair while the boys chatter away outside about how excited they are for their upcoming vacation. But who cares about any of that when Ariana comes outside dressed like a unicorn in a tutu? None of it makes any sense, nor does the shirt with popsicles festooned all over it that Sandoval is wearing, and I feel like I’m high as f*ck right now watching this scene and I seriously need to make friends with someone who has her own bouncy castle, though I will need to procure a strong sports bra first.
As the party goes on, Jax and Brittany tongue one another in the pool because, you know, romance, and Ariana plays carnival games on the lawn. There’s sumo wrestling and crowns weaved from balloons and sno cones made out of flavored tequila but there is no Lala. Faith, the other new waitress, made the cut so Scheana explains to the table at large why Lala was not invited while Schwartz breaks the news to Katie that he is in fact taking a stand and leaving for a trip without her. Katie cries that she is always the flexible and giving one in their relationship and I think a lot of us can probably empathize with where she’s coming from.
Ariana, however, will not permit her boyfriend to leave town. Her birthday brings waves of grief her way because her father passed away two years ago and these kinds of occasions remind her of all the things he is missing. I don’t remember Ariana ever shedding a tear when Kristen told her to her face that she’s a whore or that she’d willingly pay a lot of money to watch her die, but she does cry here and it’s sad to see. She wants some constant comfort and companionship and she wants her boyfriend to provide it. Before he can do that, there is some silly string and a cake covered in sparklers, and then Sandoval swoops in to have a chat with the birthday girl who immediately bursts into tears again. This is a person who is still grieving and Sandoval’s eyes fill with tears just seeing this kind of emotion dripping down the face of the woman he loves. He will always be there for her. He will never leave her – except for tomorrow, see, because Peter told him they’re gonna do something in Vegas that involves crushing sh*t with bulldozers and there’s really no way he’ll miss something so awesome and anyway, she’ll still be crying when he gets back! He can comfort her then!
On the drive to Vegas, Sandoval tries to appease his guilt by saying that he has never given Ariana a reason not to trust him and that’s when Jax – the best friend a guy could ever have – busts in to remind us about Miami Girl, the chick Sandoval allegedly banged in Florida who made very specific claims about what the guy’s dick looked like to serve as proof that she saw it. To this day I wonder about what she meant (I’ve always believed there’s a hairy mole on it that’s shaped like Kristen) and I also wonder why any of these guys spend even a nanosecond of time with Jax, a guy who so clearly has nobody’s interests but his own residing anywhere in his mind.
Back at SUR, Lala asks Faith about the party she wasn’t invited to and right as she’s being told how much fun it was, Katie, Scheana, and Ariana come and sit down with them. Ariana – who looks better as a human girl than as a glittery unicorn – is still pissed, especially since now she has to work all weekend to fill in for the bartenders who fled to Vegas. She’ll get back to her rage in just a moment, but she takes a break when Lisa comes over to quiz Faith on how the sea bass is prepared and to ask each and every one of them how the party was, prompting Lala to say that she wasn’t invited. And it’s not the first time our Lala has been left out! No, she has been bullied for her entire life and she lets us know that despite how devastatingly hot she is, she’s still vulnerable on the inside. Ariana can relate to feeling that way and she feels kind of badly that she put someone else in that position so I think the bonding session between these girls is about to start. Lisa counsels them not to sit back and get mad that their boyfriends took off without them. Instead, they should get all kinds of even and that’s exactly the kind of advice a boss always gives to her workers and again, none of it has to do with driving a storyline. This show could absolutely rely purely on candid and unscripted conversations between the cast because is anything more profound and enlightening than hearing Sandoval advise those around him on the proper way to contour?
Arriving at Dig This, the guys are so excited to wreck stuff. First they have to do a breathalyzer test and all of them blow clean, which is relatively shocking, especially for Jax who has never passed a breathalyzer, or really any kind of test. They are permitted to climb into bulldozers that spin and lift stuff and they all get to live out their construction worker fantasies and none of it has a homosexual subtext in the least so stop letting your mind go to that place.
Now that they can drink, the shots and the beers slide down their collective gullets and they gamble a bit at the tables. We also get an ass shot of Sandoval and then Jax pulls his pants down in Schwartz’s face and shoves his d*ck against the glass window of the hotel room. And none of that is weird at all, especially not the lap dance two of them give Schwartz or the way Jax brushes Sandoval’s hair like he’s a delicate pony.
Back at home, Ariana calls Sandoval (who is now clothed) to tell him she’s going to Scheana’s for a slumber party. Before she can get there, James approaches the bar. He claims that the only reason he’s not in Vegas with the rest of the guys is because none of them like him and wouldn’t deign to even speak a syllable to him if they weren’t all under contract to the same show. Oh wait – actually the real reason he’s not invited is because Jax is afraid that James will steal his limelight. As James blunders on and on about how Jax will never win Lala the Prize, Ariana sneers directly in his face. He finally leaves and that’s when Lisa comes over to once again nudge Ariana to feel bitter because her boyfriend left for the weekend. Ariana opens up to her then about the loss of her father and how scary it can be to invest so much of your adoration and caring into someone new, someone who can throw all of that love away like it’s garbage that no one even takes the time to try to recycle. All of this – everything she’s struggling with – is painful and it’s confusing and it’s maybe the most honest human sentiment I’ve ever seen on this show.
Over at Scheana’s house, the walls are still plastered with gigantic wedding photos in sizes like 440×640. The girls arrive for their slumber party and they’ve got limes and alcohol and they’re ready to play some sex question game. (My answer, by the way, is always “swallow.”) We find out that Ariana prefers giving head than getting it and that Katie and Schwartz don’t have sex all that frequently and that Scheana feels badly that Lala wasn’t invited to yet another event. To remedy it, Scheana calls her and tells her to come on over. If she brings James, I recommend that the rest of them freeze her underwear the second she falls asleep after sticking her hand into warm water so she pees all over herself and maybe all of it can happen after the séance to summon the ghost of Stassi finally ends. Lala shows up because an olive branch has finally been extended and she makes it just in time for Katie and Ariana to start kissing while Scheana takes pictures to send to their boyfriends in Vegas. I’m not sure it’s the right strategic move to send your boyfriend a picture that’ll get him hard when you’re not there to help him out and he’s partying at a hotel with hundreds girls who are hammered and not all that discerning, but I suppose it’s drunk logic that’s driving everything here. Lala jumps into the fray next and she kisses Ariana and manages to refrain from sucking on the back of anyone’s arm in the manner to which she’s grown accustomed. Shay gets on in there with a camera as his wife twines her tongue around Lala’s and soon Faith and Lala are full on straddling one another and making out on the couch and it’s so nice that everyone has finally made Lala feel welcome.
They send the pictures and the videos to the guys who become inspired enough to plant kisses on one another that they in turn send via roaming costs to the girls, making the real winner here AT&T. Then they congratulate one another for making it ten hours in Vegas without cheating on any of their girlfriends and they desperately want to make it back to their room before any of their penises can spring forth accidentally from their pants and just happen to land in the vagina of a stranger. Gripping one another for support (or because they are genuinely turned on by one another – not that there’s anything wrong with that), the guys leave the bar. It is three in the morning now and they are drunk and sweaty as could be and they’re shoving carbs into their mouths while Jax asks for a moment of silence to commemorate that his d*ck stayed in his pants all evening. This, my friends, is growth – or it might have been had they not all gotten up and wandered back out that hotel room door to head back downstairs towards all the temptation.
Next time, Sandoval can’t be found for a while in Vegas, Jax watches James slobber kisses on Lala in a manner so dominating that he should have just pissed on her to mark his turf, and Kristen meets up with Jax to once again announce that she is no longer crazy. Katie – who seems to be taking up the crazy slack – informs Sandoval that it’s so not a big deal and he should definitely invite Kristen along on his birthday trip because she just pinky swore that she wouldn’t try to murder Ariana even once.
I totally believe her. But maybe someone should take a quick gander at the journal her Secret Santa gave her just to be sure.
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.