Over at SUR, Lala chats with Peter about how she’s now reading Ayn Rand because she’s had the time to allow philosophy into her life after cutting James loose. Peter’s got some good gossip about the guy the planet at large will eventually name Earth’s Best DJ – so long as all the other DJs have gone missing first. Seems James and Richardson, Lisa’s head guy at Pump, got into a spat that might or might not have started after James decided to drunkenly profess his love for Kristen. Apparently, James told Richardson that the guy is below him and he tossed several other class-related insults the guy’s way. Upon hearing this information, Lisa is appalled and I hope that we’ll get to watch him be fired in slow motion after which he’ll ride off on a Pegasus into the animated heavens just like the Real Kanye’s mother did during his fashion show/album release/most recent pubic mental breakdown.
Back home and sore, Brittany needs Jax’s help and he’s not really a guy so accustomed to helping, but since new t*ts are part of the equation, he summons up all the kindness he can muster. She requires assistance bathing and changing and peeing and all I can think when I look at her is that she’s only been here for a few months and her boyfriend has already been arrested and she’s already had some surgery. Katie and Schwartz stop by next and they let Jax and Brittany know that they’re having a party at the beach while they take their engagement photos and Lala will be there because Katie wants to stop the invitation fatwa they’ve been randomly waging against one another. Schwartz is kind of dreading taking the engagement photos for reasons I don’t fully understand and this is maybe the most grumpy engaged couple I’ve seen since that girl I know got engaged to that gay guy.
On the beach, the happy couple meets up with Sandoval, Ariana, Shay and Scheana. Why there’s a crowd gathered to watch them take engagement photos confuses me, as does the fact that anyone feels the need to make sure that other people know that Jax’s account of things might not be totally accurate since he’s a f*cking pathological liar. Still, it takes Sandoval explaining things slowly to Scheana for her to finally understand that Jax is the assh*le in the latest scenario, not him. And then the assh*le arrives and he really wants to hear a story about someone who might be a bigger moron than he is, so Scheana puts on her Mother Goose outfit and tells Jax The Tale of James. The story goes that James wandered into work at Pump already drunk and insulted everyone in his eyeline and now he has to answer for his actions. The guy he verbally abused will be there as Lisa tries to get to the bottom of the guy’s latest f*ck up. She knows he’s going to be a ball of warped contrition – that he will beg her for another shot – and that’s just what he does. He tells her the Lure of Kristen made him behave badly and he’s sorry the night became a complete fiasco. In another language, Lisa implores Richardson to reveal just what it was James said to him that night and it turns out to have been some form of, “You’re nothing and I’m James Kennedy,” making the White Kanye slightly less grandiose in his assertions of self-mastery than Real Kanye. As for Lisa, she wants James to understand that those are the kind of words he speaks when he’s drunk and that he’s maybe not cut out to work at Pump. In response, James rolls his eyes and begs for just a suspension and Lisa tells him to go away and grow the f*ck up. His response is to cry and to ask about his Pump CD and then fold his arms across his chest when it’s revealed that the greatest DJ in the land has been demoted to being a busboy.
That sound you hear in the distance is Kanye West weeping about how he’s now the planet’s sole genius.
At a party she was finally invited to, Lala feeds right in to Jax’s blatant instigation when he asks her where James is and how he can possibly be involved with someone new when he was just shouting about his love for Kristen from the gutters. Desperately needing a friend because of that time she was ostracized in the third grade, Lala happily agrees that James sucks before the conversation changes to Kristin and how she brought a new guy to her comedy showcase where she made sure to tongue him in front of cameras just in case Sandoval stumbled across the footage. But Ariana could care less about the new guy in her stalker’s life. What she wants to concentrate on here is how Kristen is pretending that she knows anything about sketch comedy when that bitch hasn’t even taken a mother*cking class and nobody takes sketch comedy more seriously than Ariana and that must be why people always seem to have such a joyful time in her presence. Nobody laughs anymore, though, after Katie tells Ariana that she’s being really gloomy right now and Ariana responds by saying that she’s been pretending to enjoy Katie and Scheana’s company for about a year. There’s a beat of silence that tends to follow the truth and one is taken here as well and into that silence bounds James. He has shown up with some girl named Laurel, but Lala has vowed not to break and allow jealousy over this idiot to consume her. She glares at James who in turn glares at Kristen who is staring out into the abyss and wondering how long it will take for the tides to sweep Ariana away forever and this is what I’m talking about: there is zero reason for so many adults who dislike one another so severely to ever be in the same space and these people just keep thrusting themselves back into these questionable scenarios in an attempt to revisit relationships that are brimming to the rusty rim with toxins and they are getting f*cking paid to do it.
Proving once again that he is a garbage person, Jax immediately sits down with Kristen to tell her that Ariana was talking major shit about her and her new mastery of sketch comedy. See, Jax once accidentally stumbled into a Psychology 101 class after he stole a beer cozy from a campus bookstore and, harnessing his impressive education, he now has a plan. In an effort to redirect all of the problems he’s caused with Sandoval, he will instead blame Ariana for riling him up and to prove that Ariana is nuts, he will have Kristen attack her in public so Ariana can lash out and prove her total lack of stability in the process.
I didn’t say it was a good plan.
Nothing makes Kristen happier than the thought that Ariana hates her because that must mean that Ariana perceives her as a threat! But while she alleges that therapy has made her far less confrontational, the thought of verbally bitch-slapping her until Ariana eats sand gets her all tingly. (Guess ignoring the issue is just out of the question. Did therapy not cover that strategy?) They all start screaming at one another and it comes out quickly that Jax and Scheana have been talking about Ariana a lot (“It’s because you’re negative,” explains the crazy lady. “If you can just be positive and be normal…”) and see, that’s when I would have gotten up and either calmly stated, “F*ck this” and removed my microphone and walked away into the sunset or ripped every stringy hair out of Kristen’s head and made a dreamcatcher out of it that I would hang over the bed where I happily slept with the bitch’s ex-boyfriend.
As for why she’s so close to people who used to abhor her, Kristen wants Sandoval to know it’s because she has learned to own her sh*t and Ariana and Sandoval stare at her kind of blankly when she says that, but I think it’s because they’re just scared and I sort of don’t blame them because Kristen is so delusional that she has become a genuinely terrifying presence.
On another section of the beach, Jax laments to Peter about how there must be something wrong with him to be this age and still be so screwed up. He is not proud of himself for a lot of his actions and he wonders if there is “something wrong upstairs” because he is fueled by a mindset in which he needs other people to be talking about him or it means something is wrong. Maybe the guy has a narcissism disorder. Could be that he’s a common sociopath. Perhaps he’s just a jerk. Whatever it is, with an interior monologue like the one he’s got running through his brain, a reality show is either the perfect place for him to exist or the very thing that might eventually drive him legitimately mad.
Do I believe that Jax feels badly about the problems he’s caused for himself and for others? Sure. Do I think that anything will ever change? Not in a zillion years. But on the plus side, I have discovered that watching Vanderpump Rules can be both an edifying and soothing experience. I have learned that there is no limit to the damage former friends can inflict upon one another and I look back now at the people who are no longer in my life and I forgive every single one of them. Not one ever slapped me across the face or recommended that I puff up my t*ts. As far as I know, not one ever slept with my boyfriend on a couch I paid for or told me that she faked enjoying my company and what all this means is that I have officially decided to just move on. I even forgive the girl who stole my hoodie!
F*cking bygones, am I right?
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.com in paperback and for your Kindle. Also be sure to check out her website at nellkalter.com. Her twitter is @nell_kalter.
I always learn something from your recaps, not about reality tv but reality.