Here’s the thing about liars: after a while, they start to get really f*cking boring. It doesn’t start out that way. At first, there is sort of this fascination with all that they say. Their tales are vivid, their anecdotes crackling. It’s the specificity of the stories that draws you in and you’re left with an impression that this life you’re hearing about – this life you’re temporarily and peripherally connected to – is a life far more interesting than your own will ever be. See, your stories have fewer characters weaving in and out. Your stories don’t sparkle like a sequined skirt rustling around a thigh gap. Your stories eventually wind down because that’s what happens in real life – and right there is your first clue. A liar’s story has way more chapters because they write it as they go along.
Still, there’s no denying the captivating appeal of being in such close proximity to an agent of deception. If you’re anything like me – and some of you are fortunate that you’re not and you never will be – you can’t help yourself. You go back for more and you become an even more captive audience as you attempt to take in all of the glistening fragments and organize them into something linear. You want it to make sense. You want to solve this puzzle of a person and there’s a big part of you that really thinks you can. But then time goes by and the moments you consume from someone else’s life begin to taste like flat champagne. And it’s when those bubbles no longer tingle on your tongue that you admit certain things to yourself, like the fact that every story this person tells goes into extra innings. The stakes involved in each story are higher stakes than any you’ve ever encountered. And every single person mentioned drives a really nice car.
I don’t quite know if every liar lives with the knowledge that one day he or she will be exposed, but I do know that one of the ways to avoid having to face the truth is through that tried and true method of escape. I suppose that if someone is skilled, she will initially try to project disbelief that she is not being believed, an act that could potentially cause the accuser to apologize and slink away, leaving whatever power has been gathered in a pathetic puddle the liar can then stomp through for extra impact. But sometimes there is no audience left – there’s nobody who even cares to find out if any of it was true – and that’s when liars become runners.
There appears now to be no way to deny that Lala Kent is a liar. Perhaps we would have figured it out much earlier, but she spent so much of her time onscreen with Jax and James and their abject duplicity is so pronounced that it was really kind of hard to focus on anything Lala said or did in their presence. But now that she’s been banished from the rest of the cast and only permitted to sit in small groups where she pretends to make amends or to offer a bit of digital penetration as penance, her ridiculousness has become clear. Look, the truth is that most of the people on this show are relatively awful and they have had five or so seasons to come off as sane and delightful and many hiatuses in which they could have done philanthropic work that would make me think that some of them are not truly dead inside, but that kind of sh*t never happened. When I say that Lala is entirely full of chunky horsesh*t, it does not mean that I believe the rest of them are as pure as the snow before Jax pisses his name into it, but – for tonight anyway – we need to focus on the fun bitch’s untruths. Her false tales involved minor things, like getting off of work to go on a modeling assignment when that modeling assignment didn’t actually exist and the only thing she really showed off was her clitoris while she was aboard some rich guy’s yacht. The stories then grew to include debatable facts, like how she is rolling in luxury because she lived at home for a long time and apparently the interest levels under her mother’s roof are more massive than anything the financial industry has ever witnessed. And then there are the accounts, the ones studded with holes the size of craters, about a boyfriend who may or not be married and could or could not be famous who does or does not break up with her every other day who loves her madly or doesn’t even know she exists in the first place.
I guess what’s so offensive to me, a recapper of this show, is that I don’t actually care about any of this and that sort of infuriates me. When lies told on a reality show are not even interesting, that’s when I become done. Such a thing occurred last year on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills when the entire season devolved into a fight about something that was maybe said by somebody off-camera and the cast fought about nothing but that one unseen moment for months in a way that was so irritating, I chose not to recap the show this year because I was afraid I’d end up punching my fist through a wall if I had to type the word “Munchausen” one more time. (By the way, while I’m not recapping that show, I do still watch it because I shall take my light escapism in any form I can get it – and because I really like seeing scenes that are shot inside of Lisa Vanderpump’s closet. Nobody is focused on Munchausen’s this year, but the crux of the season so far appears to be the new girl rocking an accent for no reason whatsoever and saying in that preposterous voice how f*cked up it is that another Housewife didn’t wear underwear under her dress. Hey, new girl? I just bought a crotchless lace thong. Quick: send the villagers!) But getting back to Lala – a girl I once expected to rather like because my guess is she also has got herself a pair or three of crotchless undies – is that she has turned out to be a massive disappointment. It didn’t have to be this way. Here’s a girl who is surrounded by some seriously unappealing creatures who claim to be human and she should have risen above them and said nasty things in an articulate manner during her interviews and come out of it all looking like an angel and smelling like Bobbi Brown Beach. Instead, Lala aligned herself with a f*cking doofus, dropped hints about her life that never managed to coalesce into a fully-developed narrative, and wore so much lip-gloss that it became almost impossible to concentrate on anything she said because her puckered and shiny lips all but turned into the kind of hybrid mythical creature that makes me want to hide underneath my bed while I chant safewords to myself. (Those words include chocolate, man-scruff, and Balenciaga.) And now Lala is leaving the show and much of me does not blame her in the least, especially since all of me questions why she’d even bother being on it in the first place. Saying goodbye is not at all difficult. Sayonara, Lala! May you continue to get free Range Rovers for the rest of your natural life. May you eventually lose the entire memory of that time you allowed James to stick it inside of you. May my television blow up before you appear on another reality show because something tells me you’re the kind of liar who requires an audience.
Before we are able to actually witness the origin of final straws that eventually cause Ms. Kent to grab her bat and ball and go home, first we need to head back to two birthday parties so horrific that I spent my own birthday this last weekend blowing out candles and wishing hard that I’d never be stuck in an RV with Jax or adjacent to any body of water while standing beside Stassi, Kristen, and Katie. (That last wish was especially important. Should I ever mysteriously drown, the police should probably question Kristen about her whereabouts during the time I went under. Listen: I’m not saying she will have done it, but I’m willing to admit the woman’s got a motive.) Anyhoo, tonight’s episode begins back in Montauk where Katie chooses to start her day with a beer while Stassi sits beside her and laments the fact that she is the only single girl in the entire universe. She also tosses out what she clearly hopes will be a leading question that will help spark the social fatwa she’s been trying to wage against Scheana for about a century: “Did Scheana have fun last night?” Yes, if Stassi is not busy being adored by a guy before he realizes that he should really know better, she will spend her time planting seeds about why Scheana is the absolute worst. And when she’s done with that, she will then spend her free time ruminating over the very things that make her attractive to the opposite sex. Turns out Stassi’s finest qualities are that she is consistent in her blowouts and she really likes murder, so should Charles Manson make it through his latest bout of gastrointestinal bleeding and make parole in 2027, Stassi’s got a shot at nabbing a soulmate after all.
Across the country at the Sonoma Raceway, we visit an RV that makes me applaud the day Smell-O-Vision disappeared from our nation’s consciousness. Seriously, that thing looks funky as hell and I’m rather sure at least three new strands of fungi are growing in whatever bunk Jax just crawled out of. My horror is momentarily tempered by seeing how adorable Schwartz looks when he first wakes up – he’s all rumpled and so very cute – but the sight of Jax showering behind a plastic accordion door ruins the entire moment.