This episode of Fire Island opens like pretty much every other episode of Fire Island: Patrick wanders around the island, alone, talking to his dog, while Khasan is in yet another New York City dance studio. No one is expecting any of these guys to end up on Barbara Walters’s list of Most Fascinating People of 2017, but surely to God, you gotta find something else for them to do at the top of a new episode.
Speaking of tops, Brandon isn’t sure what to do about the My Giant guy he’s been seeing. Jaylene is apparently his name, but I’m not going to stop calling him My Giant because, frankly, he’s enormous, and furthermore, I mean the reference as a compliment. My Giant has a 19 percent Rotten Tomatoes ranking, which is a full 12 percent higher than that Reese Witherspoon–Sofia Vergara movie Hot Pursuit that literally NO ONE asked for. Anyway, Brandon is torn between wanting to be single and have fun and his growing feelings for this very handsome guy he’s known for barely one week.
The boys arrive on the island and go straight to tea, a.k.a. happy hour. They have all their luggage and Justin volunteers to lug it all back to the house so that, one can only assume, he can complain and victimize himself about doing so later. (Spoiler alert: He does.) At tea, Jorge invites random people to a party they’re throwing and we see a flashback of Jorge’s last house party where he flipped out on people for being too wild in front of “girls.†Cheyenne mentions that he feels bad about missing Patrick’s pageant the previous weekend, but he also tells us, with decidedly villainous eyes, “I’m not sure I missed anything.†MEOW, KITTY GIRL!
Back at the house, Patrick and Justin catch up. Patrick succeeds in being the first person I’ve ever seen to wear a leather strap around his bicep for absolutely no reason in broad daylight. Justin reveals he’s purchased his first Speedo in an act of defiance against his insecurities and body shame. Good for him! Patrick is sweetly encouraging, but also uses the encounter to stir the pot over the whole Cheyenne feud, and I’m momentarily distracted as I attempt to cast the Ryan Murphy Feud adaptation of this nonsense. I’m not really sure who is who, except that I know for a fact Sarah Paulson isn’t touching it with a ten-foot pole. Emma Roberts is on hold for Bodhi the dog, though. Speaking of Bodhi, we watch him hump a stuffed animal.
The boys arrive at a friend of Justin’s house with pizza for a pizza party. The guys know Justin from, as he puts it, “the hairy-boy social scene.†Imagine basing your social life on the amount of body hair you and your friends share, then once you’re done visualizing that nightmare, come back to reading this.
Back at the house, Patrick and Cheyenne go head to head over Cheyenne missing Patrick’s drag pageant. Patrick is being extremely passive-aggressive and ends up coming across as the worst of the two feuding gays, despite the fact that they both have valid points. Patrick tells Cheyenne to have some accountability for the way he treats the people in his life, and Cheyenne retorts with the fact that they aren’t the “people in his life,†but merely the people in his “share,†a.k.a. the people on the reality-television show he’s being paid tens of dollars to be on. The argument ends with Patrick passively leaving with a lime-green purse hanging off his shoulder, because of course he does. The reality is that these two need to get over it and have sexy times already. It’s quite taxing to watch an argument between two people clearly infatuated with each other based solely on the narcissistic fact that they look vaguely similar. Honestly, 15 minutes, a jar of coconut oil, and some run-of-the-mill poppers would fix everything for these two.
They prepare for the pool party and Jorge, once again, brings up not wanting people to get their dicks out. He spares us from his previous misogynistic opinions as Patrick begrudgingly helps Cheyenne set up the drinks. I’ve never seen someone so passively angry while wearing striped overalls, no shirt, and grasping a red, white, and blue bottle of Svedka. But then again, I was homeschooled.
Brandon is making the rounds, talking to all the cute boys at the party. The My Giant guy is upset because he’s clearly more into Brandon than Brandon is into him. He opens up to Patrick about this before going on to have the exact same conversation with Justin, who only makes matters worse with his prying.
Meanwhile, Brandon opens up to Cheyenne about not knowing what he wants and it’s the first genuine conversation about this we’ve heard the whole episode. Despite his Backstreet Boys cosplay and mumbling diction, Cheyenne is beginning to grow on me as one of the only people on this show who isn’t exhaustingly needy. Mind you, a maximum of five seconds on his Instagram proves otherwise, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. He actually gives Brandon good insight into his deliberation as to what he wants. The consensus is that Brandon doesn’t know. And he doesn’t need to. He’s 22 years old and on FIRE ISLAND.
They go dancing, and Jorge runs into the caterer with the tattooed angel wings that Patrick had a thing with. The guy (who looks completely different every time we see him, except for the angel wings) tells Jorge that he and Patrick were never even together. Jorge is shocked.
After dancing and after 3 a.m., they’re back at the house, swimming and partying in the pool. Eventually, Khasan and Justin get into the ocean with Justin telling us he’s not sure what came over him, but that he’s just had this urge to jump in after their wild night. I’ve always called that “urge†by its Christian name: MDMA.
Eventually, Justin opens up to Khasan and reveals how he struggled with a health crisis and attempted suicide. While I feel for him, I do have to say: This is NOT the conversation anyone wants to have at 3 a.m. Khasan gives Justin a pep talk in a scene that looks like a Norman Rockwell painting about coming down from party drugs.
Meanwhile, Jorge and Patrick talk about Jorge’s issues with his long-distance boyfriend and they discuss the caterer with the angel wings. Patrick tells Jorge that he sometimes feels nervous to be alone after his rough breakup a few years prior. Which is always the most awkward moment of the show to watch with my fiancé, as he’s talking about me once again.
Brandon and the My Giant guy have a moment on some stairs and nothing is really resolved but they both look really cute. Then it’s the next morning and they’re already drinking margaritas and my liver is so sore. They decide to play in the pool while Brandon lays in the lap of some nameless hot guy. Patrick arrives with the My Giant guy and Brandon is, rightfully, annoyed that Patrick brought him over. Justin then tells Brandon he’s going to “Mom him†for a moment, a term I’ve never heard and one that if I ever did hear, I’d cut off all communication with the person who spoke it. Justin loves to meddle in Brandon’s life and complain about his own and honestly, it’s just, like, calm down … you’re on Fire Island.
By the end of the episode, my patience with these carnies has worn just a bit thinner than it was the previous week. By feeling such, I realize this show is doing exactly what a show like this is supposed to do: make me love to despise watching it for 42 minutes (without commercials) while showcasing the largest array of novelty tank tops ever assembled on any television show in the history of cable. So on that note, congrats, Viacom!