Regrets are tough things to live with because they sting while they’re happening, burn when they’re swallowed, and they leave scars that no high-end BB cream can mask. Me? Oh, I’ve got a mess of regrets and they run the gamut from the utterly superficial to the psychologically damaging and can be empirically measured on a scale of zero to forever. Let’s see: I regret that time I gave myself a bikini wax and all the years I roasted in the summer sun covered from head to toe with baby oil. I regret the freckles I could have avoided and the overuse of filters to mask them in pictures. I regret all the nights I was too worried about liking my outfit to concern myself with making memories that were not colored by the sepia tone of body dysmorphic disorder. I regret not spending more time with people I love and I regret the years I lived by the doctrine, “In the grand scheme of my life, this will not matter,” because I was often very wrong. I regret going out on a few second dates and I really regret that time I went out on a twelfth date. I regret letting one guy sleep through the night in my bed without taking off his boxer briefs with my teeth. I mean, yeah, I did just that come the dawn, but I wish I’d done it in the darkness too because I was bored while he slept. Oh, and I guess I’m supposed to pretend to regret the fact that I sometimes lack any and all inhibition, but that regret would just be a total lie.
The thing is, regrets are something most of us have in common. We don’t always treat one another with kindness or compassion and sometimes our insecurities march like an army between ourselves and a far-off goal. I think you have to know yourself pretty damn well in order to recognize a pang of emotion as a twinge of regret and you have to be willing to go excavating through the clenching confines of your mind to dig out the source and origin of what caused the regret to transpire. It would probably be far easier to never take that hike inside of a dusty subconscious, but I still recommend doing so. Call it emotional cardio.
I’m not sure some of the Vanderpumpers are able to recognize the feeling of regret because some of them probably think what they’re experiencing is a pang of hunger or that itch they always feel around their nether regions after a bender, but I think maybe it’s time for them to pay attention. Acknowledging regret smarts like a dumb mother*cker, but it can’t possibly bring more pain than what the future will deliver to people who are making grave mistakes on television in exchange for a paycheck. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe being emotionally barren is the way to go. Maybe it takes someone ultra-evolved to prance around half-naked on basic cable and drink like a sloth suffering from acute alcoholism and steal sunglasses before, during, and after lying to your live-in girlfriend. Perhaps in the future, regret won’t exist in the slightest and that will be the platform under which President Jax Taylor will have campaigned. Seriously, people – it could happen. Did anyone really believe Donald Trump would still be in the lead for the GOP?
Maybe even more than regret, I really hate when people believe in the notion that what happens on vacation stays on vacation. Um, no…it doesn’t. Your actions follow you home and they will always be there when you apply for a real job or meet the parents of someone you care about or when you look into the mirror first thing in the morning. Actions caught on camera last – and for the record, let’s just say that sure, I regret throwing some of my own images on film. Still, I have to say that it continues to flabbergast me at how completely comfortable some people on reality television are in throwing caution (and self-respect and moral decency and any modicum of taste) to the whipping winds in exchange for an extra bit of screen time and it confuses me even more that the normal ones in their midst continue to be surprised by their behavior.
If you think the sh*t these people pull at work is bad, wait until you see them on vacation. I guess it’s kind of unavoidable, though. Add booze with enemies and divide that by the tropics and multiply it by a staggering amount of idiocy before subtracting it all by lenses pointed at your face and you wind up with math I’m not even gonna try to do. But as I have a job here, I will try to quantify and catalogue the bullsh*t that goes down when the cast of Vanderpump Rules heads to Hawaii, a state that might now attempt to secede from the rest of the nation in retaliation for allowing these cretins to swim upon its splendid shores.
You know how chemistry amongst travelers can make or break a trip? Well, on this particular vacation, we have the following conflicts simmering even before the plane lands: Jax vs. James;
Ariana vs. Scheana and Katie; Brittany vs. Lala; Shay vs. sobriety; and James vs. tees that don’t make me want to vomit. Now, I don’t care a lick about the ultimate outcome of any of these duels, but if one should end with James being deported, I’ll celebrate by wearing a low-cut tank top for two months straight (winter months!) in his honor. That said, I’m not so sure I want the guy shipped back to Europe until I get to see the scene we saw a second of in the coming attractions when he proclaims himself “the white Kanye West.” To miss that kind of hilarious self-aggrandizing could prove a major regret because that sh*t will undoubtedly give me more writing fodder than Kristen deciding to become a mental health professional.
We’ll get to the lunatic’s plans to go for her doctorate later – you know, like whenever the apocalypse begins to fully descend – but for now, let’s journey to Hawaii. Oh, it’s glorious! The perfect beaches! The manicured landscaping! The flowers so lush I swear I can smell their perfect scent wafting through my TV like it’s the 1950s and my living room’s been outfitted with Smell-O-Vision! And here come the tourists from SUR who bring constant dissension and possible disease. Let the vacation from hell begin!
Scheana is the first to predictably say that she’s been leid as a garland of flowers is placed around her neck, but it seems it’s the betrothed couple who really need a lay. They’re doing their part to make an excellent case for the point that sex dwindles after marriage and they’re f*cking running with it by including some frigidness into their engagement as well. Now listen: I’m a nice person, so I have a few small hopes for this trip. I hope James gets his tongue ripped from his mouth by a shark. I hope Brittney will cold-clock her boyfriend for not only deceiving her with unrestrained glee, but for doing so on camera. And I want Schwartz and Katie to have sex so I can stop the small voice that’s piping up in the back of my head ever so regularly that the one Schwartz is really in love with is Sandoval.
When they arrive at the hotel, Jax stares at the magnificent vista before him and sighs. It’s so sad, he laments, that Kristen was not invited. Jax’s newfound loyalty to this girl is kind of confusing me. Isn’t this the same person who screamed, “I made you come three times!” to her in a crowded bar while her boyfriend listened to it all with a distraught expression on his face? Are these two just so desperate to finally look more appealing than somebody – anybody – that they have chosen to gravitate towards one another? In any case, Scheana is there to also weep for Kristen’s absence and if I were Ariana, I’d push the girl into a volcano for being so completely disloyal.
In the room Faith is (momentarily) sharing with Lala, our fun bitch reveals that James is as romantic as we’d expected. He suggested banging in the bathroom on the plane and he thinks he’s going to get properly laid on this trip. “He’s not,” whispers Lala. But it’s not that she’s just not that into a boy who falls out of condoms made for men with some girth. No, she’s also worried that Jax’s girlfriend will confront her for all the flirting that’s been going down. I know he’s been strategically lying to her and all about his experiences with Lala, but I’m still gonna go ahead and make the case that maybe Brittany should expect loyalty from her boyfriend, not some female stranger who promised her nothing. But who cares about any of it when it’s confirmed that Sandoval’s brought his flatiron to Hawaii? I tell you, this guy could be my very best girlfriend. I love having an extra flatiron around! Ariana doesn’t care about the guy’s hair care products though. She’s preoccupied by the bullsh*t correspondence that’s been exchanged between her mother and Scheana about whether Ariana is happy with Sandoval or not. (The volcano idea’s not looking so crazy now, is it?) Sandoval is pissed and so is Ariana and the whole thing is violating and kind of gross.
Dinner arrives and they all order drinks, but don’t worry; I’m sure the alcohol won’t do a single thing to compromise anyone’s judgment. Before Ariana can confront Scheana about being the very worst friend, a mariachi band comes out and then toasts are made to a great vacation. That joy and hopefulness are not, however, seeping inside of everybody at that table. Jax, you see, is growing more pissed by the second as he watches James and Lala paw one another. The guy’s girlfriend is sitting right beside him and he cannot stop looking at another girl. Is there room in that volcano for a great big overflowing bag of douche, too? Let’s all just take a moment so Jax can take some cleansing breaths so he can calm down and not say anything incendiary like how he wishes some people who aren’t there were there and how much he regrets that certain people are sitting at the table. “Who shouldn’t be here?” asks Lala, but Jax would never name names! That would be rude! It’s so much better to be transparently passive aggressive.
After dinner, Jax sits down in front of some of the other guys to tell James to his face that he simply doesn’t like him. While that bonding moment occurs, Sandoval and Ariana take the opportunity to ask Scheana about her conversation with Ariana’s mom. After insisting the talk was no big deal, Ariana tells her that she made her mom send her screenshots of their conversation – and Scheana goes white. She’s got good reason to be flipping the f*ck out because what she told Ariana’s mommy is that Sandoval is selfish and that Ariana has changed into someone exceedingly negative. To her (misguided) credit, Scheana stands by everything she said and Shay backs her up and Ariana truly doesn’t get what’s going on here and I think her confusion is a strong indication that Ariana is normal.
“Sorry, not sorry,” says the generic version of a Barbie doll you’d buy at the dollar store as she saunters out of the place and away from the couple who did everything in their power to help get her husband sober. You guys? Scheana blows.