Vanderpump Rules Recap – 2/15/16

I’ve always been kind of fascinated by the idea of time travel, but only in a theoretical and romantic kind of way because the actual science behind it makes my head hurt. I’m guessing it all started with wishing it were me getting into that DeLorean with Michael J. Fox, but then it progressed into an idea that I started to associate with second chances and who doesn’t crave a few dozen of those? I know exactly the moments I’d return to and in some I’d say something different and in some I wouldn’t say anything at all. Without question, all of my elective time traveling would involve me going back to the past and not hurtling forward into the future. When it comes to the future, I just figure that I’ll get there eventually.

It’s probably regret mixed with the understanding that comes from retrospect that makes me daydream about getting a redo, another life, like I’m Mario trying to save the Princess. (Fun fact: when I was in the 9th grade, I could get the Princess with one life. I was in my gawky stage then. It was better for society in general that I stay indoors and I had to pass the time somehow.) Now I’d like that extra chance to go back to right some wrongs, in some cases against myself. I guess I just don’t subscribe to the idea that negative experiences stem directly from fate. I think they begin with bad choices and I think I’d sleep better if I had the opportunity to correct a few. The time traveling me would be braver in some of the moments to which I returned. In others, I’d stop worrying about how I looked. I’d stay awake in a few. I’d never have entered the room in one.

Before the movie should have had a real effect on me, I loved Peggy Sue Got Married. I got shivers when Buddy Holly played over the credit sequence. I wanted to wear the silver fifties-style dress Peggy Sue wore to her prom to the mall. I managed to pretend that Nicolas Cage wasn’t in the movie. And the line, “If I knew then what I know now, I’d do a lot of things differently,” haunted me, even though I hadn’t lived nearly enough life yet to be haunted by anything. My biggest fear became that I would do life wrong, that the choices I would make would lead to roads I wouldn’t get back from. I became determined to at least think things through and try to meander down the right paths so course correcting would be less necessary in the future.

I’d be curious to know which moments of their lives the Vanderpump Rules cast would go back and correct, and I’d like to suggest a couple as a purely sweet gesture on my part. They don’t have to take my advice; after all, it’s their lives and their imaginary time travel, but if they get to a point where they’re having some sort of inner conflict about deciding, maybe my ideas can push them over the edge. My perspective? Stassi should go back to that time she was in middle school so she could respond with anything but, “I want to be on a reality show!” as an answer to a question someone asked her about her long-term goals. Jax should have been severely punished for whatever was his first major offense against another person that I’m guessing the person instead allowed him to get away with, setting up a behavioral pattern that is antediluvian. Katie should have put down the orange hair dye she bought a few years ago and bought Pringles at that CVS instead. Kristen never should’ve broken the social media stalking seal on that long ago twilight when she first broke into her boyfriend’s Myspace account and instantly memorized every feature on the face of every girl who messaged him so she knew for sure who she should scrawl on her newest hit list. And James? He should bypass his entire history and crawl back into his mother’s uterus so that he can do the whole thing over again and maybe not end up a badly dressed evil troll.

At any rate, I’m not crawling into a time machine with any of them. I call shotgun on that f*cking DeLorean. They can call an Uber.

Maybe one of Stassi’s stops on the Correct the Past tour will be to the day when she must have broken down so severely that she made the insane choice to crawl back on this show at the point when she was almost out. That had to have been a sh*tty day, but is it worse than ending up on Kristen’s couch while pleading with people she publicly deemed beneath her to maybe just call her every once in a while and invite her to every single one of their gatherings? If she can go back in time, I’d suggest that she hop into a soothing bubble bath or go shopping for yet another heavy necklace or lock herself inside a small airless closet or do anything besides say, “Yes, my life will be way better if I’m on a show that titles an episode about me Bitch Ghost. These producers definitely have my best interests at heart! Where’s that contract?”

Now, one of the things I guess I’d go back and change about my own past would be to watch this week’s episode live instead of going out and DVR-ing it because the first ten minutes of my playback was black and I have no idea what happened or how it came to pass that Shay commented that seeing Stassi in someone’s living room was like seeing a bitchy ghost. Thank God my reception came back by the time Sandoval asked her if she was living with Kristen and Stassi nodded with the same kind of abject humiliation she would if she were asked her if it was really necessary that she had to murder someone with a chainsaw.

Yes, by some strange turn of fate (or, more likely, through a producer setting up a scenario that everyone agrees to take part in), Stassi is at a gathering with people who despise her and Sandoval takes the opportunity to tell her that the fact that she’s bunking with a girl she claimed to hate – one she slapped in public no less! – takes away any and all credibility Stassi ever had. “I don’t think so,” the discredited one mumbles back meekly to a guy she could have avoided forever if only she hadn’t made the choice to go back on this f*cking show. But see, Sandoval is on a roll. He wants her to know that her staying with Kristen kills everything she has ever stood for. He wants her to know that his new take on her is that her former friendships – the real ones – were constructed out of bullsh*t and that it’s clear that if someone is not benefitting her, she wants nothing to do with that person. Um, yeah – that’s exactly who Stassi is, and I suppose it’s all kind of sad, especially the part that hearing the truth is actually a shock for her, though I’m more apt to give her credit that she knows the truth quite well but hearing it stated to her face by someone she feels is beneath her has to hurt like a mother*cker. See, this is why she should never have signed that Bravo contract, why she never should have squatted on Kristen’s couch and why she never should have looked at Jax in the first place because it all always comes back to regret over Jax, doesn’t it? Oh, but Sandoval is not finished. He knows full well that the only reason Stassi is at someone’s house where his friends are too (seriously…my DVR was blank for the first eleven minutes and I really have no f*cking idea where they are) is because she’s desperate and she’s homeless and she’s pathetic. Had she been going around and making amends with people she once claimed to be above while all was right in her world, her gesture might be seen as one of pure goodwill. But since she’s got nothing except for the undisputed knowledge of what Kristen’s sofa smells like going for her, her motives for reconciliation are more than suspect and let’s face it: only a truly desperate person wouldn’t have left that party already.

I don’t know if it’s the same evening or if it’s another evening, but Jax heads out for dinner with Schwartz and Katie. I’d focus on being hopeful that the betrothed couple has actually had sex by now, but I’m far too busy not being surprised that Jax has decided to make his brain-surgeon girlfriend believe that she needs a breast enhancement. The girl has been in California a few months and she’s working at Hooters, living with Jax, chalking up his arrest in Hawaii as him having a bad day, and supporting the two because the guy got suspended. Did Brittany win a Lucky Girl contest in Kentucky and this was the prize? Can she trade this prize in for a pregnant badger or something whose offspring will be literate?

After they’re done discussing his girlfriend’s nipples and how they need to be changed, the three delve into a conversation about Lala. Seems Jax is now fully into demonizing this girl – you know, the one he tried for weeks to f*ck? Anyhow, apparently she approached Katie recently and told her that she knows they’re not friends and that it shouldn’t shock Katie that she’s having a party that Katie is not permitted to attend. As for Katie – who has never invited Lala to anything – she doesn’t even want to go to Lala’s stupid party and both of them all but stick out their tongues out at one another and snipe, “So there!” Okay, so through deductive reasoning, I’m realizing it’s Lala’s party that Stassi is at and I’m not sure how such a thing transpired. Let’s see…Lala (I think) lives in Stassi’s old apartment and they (I think) have some friends in common and there is a production team (I know) who will foster conflict amongst these morons even if it f*cking kills them and so all of that must be the answer to how Stassi ended up at Lala’s kitchen table being yelled at by Sandoval. Cheers!

At some point during the saddest party ever, Stassi carefully pours two shots and brings them into a room where Scheana is sitting. The smile on Scheana’s face that spreads wide when she thinks Stassi is being kind to her looks genuine and I think there’s a hope that is always growing inside of Scheana that she and Stassi will one day be best friends and she waters that hope daily with tears. Once they finally sit down together, Stassi makes sure that Scheana knows that her issue with Katie was not about Kristen; no, her issue was with Scheana and it all comes back to the sex tape that wasn’t really a sex tape, the one that none of us has ever seen – the one that none of us would even know was out there if Stassi herself hadn’t announced it to the world while wearing a plaid dress during a reunion. It seems that Scheana showed that tape around. Maybe she even held viewing parties where it was the feature attraction. Perhaps she wrote an online critique that said that Stassi has no idea how to handle a dildo. Who even knows? What we do know is that Scheana comes right out and tells Stassi that, while she didn’t like her then, she was never involved for a second in trying to shop that tape around because she could never be a part of something so low. Stassi’s eyes fill with tears. See, she believes what Scheana is saying, but more than that, if Scheana had just screamed such a thing loud enough that someone as willfully deaf as Stassi might have heard her, Stassi never would have lost Katie as a friend! Such circular logic is giving me a terrible headache because it doesn’t f*cking make sense and I wish Stassi would just shut up and go night-night on Kristen’s futon.

Back at the restaurant, Schwartz tells Katie and Jax all about his recent meeting with Stassi. Katie is not appreciating that this girl has returned like they’ve all gotten into a time machine created by the devil. No, she mourned the loss of her friendship with Stassi and she’d like to move on now. That forward momentum might be complicated by the fact that Schwartz invited Stassi to the engagement party and listen, not one aspect of that is okay, but I can’t really focus on anything besides the ring through Katie’s nose and her terribly parted hair and the fact that she’s got a style blog that is meant to give advice on how to look pretty. Shutting her tragic side-braid out of my mind, I’ll pretend to jump back on board with Katie’s decree that Stassi should not be at her party, but following along with a decree that you know will be broken just strikes me as exhausting, you know? This will be an engagement party covered by production and you know what that means? It means that Stassi will be there, so let’s not concern ourselves with a will-she-or-won’t-she, okay? It’s basically in her contract to show up and try to either ruin someone’s night or make fake amends.