Over at SUR, Jax announces to Lisa that spreading rumors isn’t a nice thing to do – and then he tells her that Scheana and Lala were just fighting. When Scheana is given her cue to wander over, Lisa explains that she doesn’t care why she doesn’t want to be Lala’s friend; this is a workplace and Scheana has to remain cordial. Scheana attempts to communicate that she is scared to death of Katie’s wrath and it’s Jax who nicely sums everything up: in order to be close to the one-brained creature made up of Stassi, Katie, Kristen, and Adderall, one must agree with everything that creature says. God, I f*cking hate it when Jax sounds smart. I also hate it when Lisa Vanderpump, the closest thing we mortals have to faux royalty, says something so preposterous like, “We don’t want to make this place a hostile work environment.” Yes, everyone’s behavior immediately improves the second a camera crew is brought into the mix – that’s why there are so many reality shows about people doing random acts of charity.
Now that his therapy session is over and he’s spent the last four hours repeating positive affirmations to himself in the mirror of a bathroom at a gas station, Schwartz arrives home so he can tell Katie that he spent the afternoon talking about his problems with a professional. As they sit on the couch together, the words come rushing out of Schwartz’s mouth. “You know when you go to that dark place that’s it’s f*cking scary as hell,” Schwartz says. “I feel like you just dropped a f*cking bomb on me,” Katie responds. “Do you have anything else to say because I’m done talking to you,” she finishes, and their conversation is cut off and Schwartz’s balls might as well be, too.
It’s a brand new day and Jax and Brittany are bickering in their apartment. It’s not that he minds supporting his new girlfriend in the manner to which she’s become accustomed (f*ck, that was the saddest sentence ever), but he would like twenty-five sandwiches lined up for him the second he walks in the door. As that seems like a rather reasonable request, let’s just focus on how badly Jax wants to beat the sh*t out of James and how the breasts Jax bought for Brittany cannot possibly be contained by a top with little buttons.
At her makeshift recovery clinic across town, Katie and Stassi arrive to see Kristen. She’s up and talking after her veneer procedure and she was given a parting gift of some Valium! (Kristen? Take two right now.) Scheana shows up next and Katie is immediately ready to interrogate her so everyone in the room can listen and then vote to decide if Scheana is “the kind of friend we need her to be.” (Scheana? Run for your f*cking life, sweetheart. These people are just looking for the first excuse to banish you and your rational explanations for having to be cordial to a coworker will never be embraced.) Instead, Scheana gets to sit there and listen to Stassi’s Rules of Friendship (on Wednesdays they wear statement necklaces made out of your crushed dreams!) that include prefacing mean statements with a qualifier and not listening to a single nugget of truth that Scheana attempts to communicate.
Now it’s nighttime and James has made the very wise decision to get sh*tfaced at a job he was told he’d be fired from if he ever showed up sh*tfaced. Jax watches his nemesis do shots across the room and then says – with a completely straight face – “I don’t know how he gets away with half the sh*t that he does.” And speaking of sh*t James gets away with, cheating on his girlfriend is one of those things. Yes, he hooked up with Gigi, some girl who now works at SUR, and he called her “a whore” just a few nights ago. This girl confides her anger about James to Jax, Brittany, and at least two cameras, and Jax is so excited to get this information that he immediately sweats six pounds directly out of his forehead.
Since he was without question a town crier (and a moldy barnacle) in a former life, it only takes Jax one short commercial break to share the news of James’ cheating with Ariana and Sandoval. They listen to him and all, but Sandoval explains to us that he’s got a hunch about why Jax hates James so much. Looking at that tool reminds Jax of himself and it’s hard to gaze hard in the face at such total grossness. Anyway, the point is that Sandoval’s flowing hair has definitely made him smarter. When the rumor makes its way to Lala, she confronts James. Please, he all but sighs. He would never have sex with that girl! Then, to better explain his standards, James makes a bullsh*t car analogy and allow me just to say that I’m glad that little quote of his made it to air because that sentence is the closest James will ever come to an Aston Martin.
Jax sidles into the conversation next and what ensues is a fight between two of the worst men ever captured on film. There’s zero doubt that James is even more unlikable than Jax by now and I realize Jax is on probation and he needs to keep his actions clean and all and I also acknowledge that I can’t f*cking stand the guy, but if Jax decides to knock James’ teeth out, I want Jax to know that I will visit him in prison where he has been locked up for manslaughter and I will bring him a bracelet made out of James’ tiny, bloody-stumped molars and I will sit on the opposite side of heavy bulletproof glass wearing a shirt low-cut enough that it will remind him of Sweet Brittany. (By the way, I wrote that sentence even before James declared himself a rock star.) Oh, James also decides to perform a little chant with punctuating claps of his hands in the way straight men always do and I can only hope that when this show is finally cancelled, James will appear on some reality stars boxing show on FOX so I can watch him get his face smashed straight in. Don’t listen to me, though. I’m just jealous.
Schwartz shows up at SUR to visit Sandoval – and maybe get him to contact a shelter on his behalf – and then explains that he’d like to ask Ariana to be one of his groomsmen. He realizes she was banned from being a bridesmaid because she has the audacity to speak to THE FUN BITCH WHO SHALL NOT BE NAMED OR COMPELLED TO SUCK C*CK FOR A FANCY CAR, but Schwartz likes Ariana and he’d love her to be by his side on his wedding day. He decides it would probably be best (translation: the guy is f*cking scared out of his noggin) to not inform Katie of the newest addition to the bridal party and to also present Ariana with some steak that was shoved between his ass cheeks because she’s a dear friend and it is the dearest of the dear friends who are willing to pry a steak out of the ass of their loved ones.
Someone who feels less exhilaration and more tequila racing through his bloodstream is James. He rudely wanders over to Gigi, the girl he hooked up with while Raquel was probably busy at baton-twirling class, and flat-out denies anything ever happened between them. Then he turns on his heel and flips his scarf to make the moment appear both dramatic and staunchly heterosexual. (If this guy is acting, he’s gonna need to get himself some lessons because it’s hard to even buy him anymore as a human being.) Once their voices get louder, the manager comes out and tells them to stop. “He’s drunk,” sneers Gigi, and I just realized that I can’t like anything about a person who just willfully outed herself on national television and admitted to hooking up with James. The entire scene is getting ugly and stressful for everyone and Lala would love to comfort one of them, but she’s way too preoccupied with thanking the good lord above for other people finally being the target of the burning hatred at SUR for once instead of her.
Lisa walks in and is immediately told that James once again is acting like an assh*le. Evidently intent on proving this news absolutely correct, James oozes over to Lisa’s table and describes the people who hate him as “thirsty thirsty little girls who need a drink.” The problems here? 1) That comment makes zero f*cking sense 2) He looks like an animated version of the Big Bad Wolf when he says it 3) He exists in the first place. Lisa refrains from giggling at his moronic bullsh*t, but she does tell him that he’s turning into an assh*le before her very eyes, to which I wonder how she could possibly use the word “turning” in this context. What exactly were her eyes focused on before?
“Go back to the DJ booth, play your little discs, and shut up,” Lisa tells this prick she pays in a measured tone and he gets up and stomps his feet before reminding himself that Lisa is probably just speaking to him harshly because she hates that he’s winning. Sure, having a moat and some swans is a lovely thing, but does Lisa have a bendable screen that she uses as a bedroom door? Envy comes in many forms, people.
We haven’t yet visited the alley behind the restaurant, so I am totally relieved when Schwartz uses it as the setting to ask Ariana to be one of his groomsmen. She agrees and then takes a bite of his ass-steak, something that should sound like a creepy euphemism, but I’m only reporting what actually went down. As that joyful moment unfurls outside, Sandoval is inside watching James slur drunkenly about nothing. At some point, James wanders to the street and Ken, Lisa’s husband, confronts him. This is a man who believes the sun rises and sets simply because his wife exists in the world and he informs James that he will knock him out if he disrespects Lisa. James’ response is to immediately burst into tears and he’s in fact so upset that he doesn’t even remember to do the claps and hand gestures that usually accompany one of his emotional breakdowns.
The next day, James shows up at Lisa’s manor to apologize for being such a drunken assh*le the night before and it appears Lisa’s finally had it and she fires him. For the briefest of seconds, James takes ownership of the terrible behavior that led to this outcome. In the very next second, he calls Gigi a whore.
“You should never have another drink in your life,” Lisa says evenly and honestly before she dismisses him from the premises and James weeps one more time before walking out of Villa Rosa and into a world that will never ever understand him because pretend rock stars are just so very complicated.
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.