And now we’re halfway through the season – Dear Lord, is that all? – and, like all the political battles currently abounding, I can’t really see any of these conflicts getting resolved. Most people are not willing to change an entire mindset, especially when they find it terribly inconvenient to have to admit that they were wrong. Still, though no resolutions loom, we must continue to march ever forward, not only down the avenues of major cities, but also through the cul-de-sacs of Vanderland, a place I strongly urge you to pass through without ordering any food because I’m worried that food was prepared in an RV that now haunts me even in my waking hours.
Speaking of the setting of a waking nightmare, tonight we begin at Sur. I’d been under the impression that Scheana had lost all that weight from working out or removing gluten from her life, but I think the real story is that the girl can’t eat because now she has twelve ulcers and each one of them was a gift from Stassi and Kristen. Seems they’ve been sending her some cruel texts about how she’d better kick in money for Katie’s bridal shower, money Scheana doesn’t remember agreeing to spend. Looks like Stassi and Kristen now require a fee to pretend to be Scheana’s friend and my guess is the money they demanded will be in their pockets by season’s end.
At their apartment, Ariana is getting herself ready for Sandoval’s fund-rager. For those of us who don’t make up words and therefore have no idea what any of this is about, a “fund-rager” is a party that helps raise money for a charity. Sandoval is hoping his party will help support a foundation in Haiti and he mentions that he wants the event to go really well while he’s hanging upside down in a doorway. He eventually hops down because it’s time to get his hair braided and while a stylist I hope is making a fortune for sticking his fingers into that monstrosity, Sandoval and Ariana discuss their upcoming week of debauchery that begins with a party Stassi and Kristen were somehow invited to and ends with Jax’s roast, an event that had to have been suggested by the production team because I don’t know if even Jax is stupid enough to conceptualize an event where everyone holds a microphone and then tells him to his face how much he sucks.
While Sandoval gets cornrows, Katie and Schwartz head over to the paint store. Seems Katie failed miserably in her initial choices of pink swatches that she presented to Lisa and she’s back to make it all okay by choosing something like Tulip Pink instead of Ballerina Pink. The selection of paint is a truly complicated process, and the stress of the moment begins to creep inside both of them. They’re already sort of annoyed at one another and both are hung way over and they are stuck together in this small store and soon they are going to be married so it’s really no wonder that the screaming starts eventually. My take is that Katie had a right to be annoyed that Schwartz wouldn’t help her carry the shower gifts in from the car, but I’m not sure the best response was to send him a litany of nasty texts. That said, I sort of hope those texts will be included in their vows because this wedding needs something to make it interesting and the dishtowel invitations didn’t quite do it for me. Proving these two communicate as well as a drunk mute doing interpretive dance, Katie deals with her fury by driving away from the store and leaving Schwartz on the street before eventually swinging back to pick him up. Um, can someone please call a local shelter and see if they have a bed for Schwartz?
Sandoval’s fun-rager is about to start and nothing says fun like James Kennedy’s presence. Yes, he oozed up from some damp sidewalk somewhere on the side of town where there are no bedroom doors and now he’s at the party with his Mensa girlfriend, Raquel. Katie and Schwartz are also there, the buried details of their latest brawl just another hazy memory. Into the room that’s filled with barely contained resentment comes Scheana and she approaches James to say how surprised she is to see him with his girlfriend – you know, considering. “Considering what?” he foolishly asks a person who was probably double-dog-dared by the friends who hate her to approach these two in public so she could help bring about the ruin of their lives. (Who says charity events aren’t fun?) Anyway, Scheana’s not very subtle line of questioning is meant to let this Raquel chick know that James –
a man I still cannot fathom gets any ass – did in fact get with Ellie while James was committed to Raquel. “Ellie says she has a picture of you in her bed from March,” Scheana announces, to which James responds by explaining, “She’s saying that because she’s a DJ groupie.” Wait – is a DJ Groupie actually a thing? Raquel doesn’t believe any of these stories and she also doesn’t see the flares or emergency exits and the reason for that is because she’s an idiot, the kind of person who doesn’t realize that what she should do in this situation is point at James and then laugh the instant he announces that he’s off “to do his residency.”
Lisa shows up and promptly donates $500 to Sandoval’s charity, but there’s really no time to focus on philanthropy. It’s far more essential to concentrate on the way Scheana runs over to Stassi and Kristen to proudly report what she just did to try to destroy James’ life and how she would have succeeded had his girlfriend not been dumb as a box of rocks. But her hero’s welcome is pissed upon the instant she tells them that she’d like to discuss the nasty barrage of texts they sent her way, you know, because it was a Tuesday and because they just really hate her. If Scheana’s expecting any sort of apology here, she’s barking up a tree she mistakenly believes kind people live in.
You’d think Scheana would be the one having the worst time at that party, but it might be Jax who would rather be anywhere else. He goes to pay for something with his credit card in front of Brittany and her mother and his card is very publicly declined. “Why does sh*t like this always happen?” he asks. Now, I realize his was a rhetorical question on some level, but I’m just gonna go ahead and respond that breast surgery and drugs both cost a lot of money and the result is that one is often not left with a ton of extra cash and it might therefore be tough to impress the woman who bizarrely still wants to be your mother-in-law.
On the other side of the room, Stassi, Brittany, and Schwartz throw back Jagermeister shots so enormous that I’d be dead on the floor just by smelling that sh*t, but all of these people need to momentarily escape the knowledge of who they are or who they’re going home with later, so I’m more impressed that they didn’t break out an IV and pour the alcohol into their bodies that way. This is restraint, people! At some point, Lisa saunters over to Sandoval and Ariana to announce that Lala is missing in action yet again – has anyone checked every private plane in Los Angeles or a store that sells kneepads? – before asking Ariana how she’s getting along with Stassi because Lisa is an executive producer of this show, dammit, and she will keep those flames of conflict sizzling even if she has to rustle up the kindling herself. “I don’t like her very much,” Ariana says bluntly and she goes on to explain that Stassi tries to tell other people how to live their lives. And you know what? There’s legitimately no way to look at this situation and come away not fully agreeing with Ariana.
Also: Jax is wearing Brittany’s camisole.
Because she will do anything to avoid having to make eye contact with Kristen and Stassi including scaling the sides of buildings or calling Elon Musk and asking him to please send a flying Tesla to the roof of the premises immediately, Lisa scans the room and briefly sits down with Katie and Schwartz. Hearing about yet another fight they had and the details about the way they speak to each other and how Katie suffers from “agitation,” Lisa tells them directly that it’s time to work out their sh*t. Over in another part of the bar, Scheana seeks out her one real friend. She tells Ariana that Shay has been out making music a lot lately and he’s been keeping some odd hours and his time away is worrying her. She can’t tell the others, she explains, because they’ll just end up throwing it in her face at a time they deem convenient. “If they don’t love you, they’re not your real friends,” Ariana patiently explains at the very same moment Stassi toasts herself in the darkest corner of the room.
The next evening, James appears at some hotel I’ve never heard of because he’s ready to redefine what it means to play a record. I’d discuss more of the grandiose things he says about himself, but it’s very hard to translate stupid.