I would like to offer a public service announcement for the cast members of Vanderpump Rules, a sanctuary for mixology-school dropouts: I think that they all need to can it with the adolescent drinking insanity. I don’t have any problem with getting crunk or really turning it up once in awhile, but as they all enter their 30s there must be a more … how can I put this … dignified way of doing it.
First of all, the shots really need to stop. They do shots everywhere, not just on nights out. Tom, Tom, and Jax take shots before a painting class. Brittany, Katie, and Kristen take shots during a normal lunch on a Tuesday. I always like to say that if you have a 401(k), you are too old to ride a skateboard, and if you’ve had a Botox treatment, you are too old for shots. These people do not behave like human adults (which is part of the reason we’re watching them on television, obviously) and part of the reason why is their attitude toward liquor.
Kristen needs to stop doing Jell-O shots. If you’ve ever discovered a grey pubic hair, there is no reason you should be drinking this frat-party staple. The same with a giant bowl full of “drunken gummies,†a shot-ski, or a round of “adult spin the bottle,†where people spin an empty nipper bottle to discover which shot they’re going to down. This is something that happens when you got a D on your biology lab and are trying to forget about it, not at a “housewarming party.â€
What’s so weird is that the people on this show are trying to act both adult and juvenile at the same time. They want to have grown-up apartments and the parties that come along with them, but those parties include chugging beers on a balcony like they live in a perpetual Mardi Gras. As they age into their 30s, it’s time to think less about blackouts, hangovers, and hookups and more about down payments, getting serious about your career, and settling down. I’m not saying that one has to lead a boring life — quite the contrary — but how about sitting around sipping from an expensive bottle of scotch rather than tearing into a handle of vodka so cheap that the Polish name on its label is based on a made-up town?
Nothing made me sadder than when Katie threw Jax out of her apartment and that 40-year-old man rode a motorized beer cooler down the hall to his apartment. Here is a guy who should be thinking about prostate-cancer screenings, not going to the emergency room because he fell off his toy cooler! And did you peep how sad and institutional the hallway of their apartment complex is? It’s like the set of American Horror Story: My Parents Won’t Let Me Move Back In.
Actually, the worst part about Katie kicking everyone out of the house when she gets home from Guillermo’s birthday party is that she lays into Schwartz for making out with some girl when he was blackout drunk and then using that state of inebriation as an excuse for his behavior. “This is the last time you use that excuse,†she told him. “You are never going to be wasted in your life ever again.†Of course Katie is totally right, sets a very reasonable barrier, and speaks to her husband firmly but correctly. It made me like Katie and think that she is a reasonable human being. That should not be how things go. I do not want to like Katie. I don’t want to think that an adult woman with a Cheetara print tattoo on her forearm speaks the truth. Please, Katie, don’t do this to me.
Then she goes to work at SUR and sits down with Lala and asks why Lala was talking trash about her relationship. Lala says it was because Katie talked shit about her relationship. Katie asks Lala how she found out about that, and Lala tells her that Scheana spilled the beans. Then Katie doesn’t get mad at herself for talking shit about Lala when she said she wouldn’t; she gets mad at Scheana for telling Lala that she did. And with that, Katie goes right back to the crazy person that I have grown very fond of hating. But then she apologizes to Lala for what she said. Damn it, Katie, stop being decent! I can’t handle it.
Lala is actually pretty decent in this episode, too. Why do I have to reexamine how I feel about all of these people? Is this just another example of the women maturing far before all of the boys? Lala has gotten rid of her talons, toned down the drag-queen makeup, and has reinvented herself as the voice of women’s rights on the show. She is actually empowering with all of her talk about thanking her “kitty cat for taking the D like a champ.†She was so sweet to Ariana when she opens up about hating her vagina because of a past relationship that it made me (kind of) want to be friends with her. I don’t like this trend at all. I’m telling you, I’m holding firm on hating DJ James Kennedy. He could cure cancer, AIDS, homelessness, and Cynthia Nixon not being an EGOT and I will still hate him forever and always. Know that.
But still, this whole season has been about women weaponizing rumors of their partners cheating. Katie said Lala was cheating with a married man, so she ratted about knowing that Schwartz was cheating. Then Katie was mad that Scheana told Lala, so she had Kristen and Brittany tell Scheana that Rob was cheating. (Of course Scheana, a human Snapchat filter, would not believe that was true, but whatever.) It just all seems so petty and juvenile, so I take back everything I said about these women maturing.
The only one who seems to do it right is Lala. She hears Jax treating Brittany like shit, which should surprise no one, considering the only person who Jax hates more than himself is every woman alive. Lala thinks they shouldn’t be together (no one does, really), so she plays an audiotape of Jax talking to Faith about how he’ll never marry Brittany and he’s not the one for her. We don’t get to hear the tape because of Bravo lawyers, but we do see Brittany go from happy hostess to spurned lover faster than Tom Sandoval can draw a penis on a smock. This is how it’s done, ladies. Use gossip to help your friends, not tear them and their relationships down.
We’re going to have to wait until next week for the fallout, but I know that as soon as Brittany started yelling at Jax that “you can rot in hell,†Tom Schwartz, oddly sober thanks to the ultimatum from his wife, grabbed the hand of his true love, Tom Sandoval, and ran for the door. “We need to get out of here, but where should we go?†Schwartz asked.
“I know just the place,†Sandoval said. They ran downstairs and climbed into his car, their fear vibrating in the silence as they rode across West Hollywood and the jasmine scent filled the car as they passed quietly into Beverly Hills. Sandoval parked at the end of a long driveway and they walked toward it, hand in hand. Sandoval stopped a few feet shy of the door. “Whatever happens,†he said to Schwartz, “Know that I will always love you the most.â€
Sandoval rang the doorbell and then put his hand behind Schwartz’s back, resting it on the slow decline of his ass. Rob answered the door, wearing only a pair of workout shorts, the grey stubble coating his pecs not making them stand out any less as he put one arm up and leaned on the door in a cartoon of seduction. All nine of the fireplaces in his grey box of a house were lit as he opened the door a little bit wider to let them in, forcing them to slink by his nearly naked body. “I knew you would call,†Rob said as the moisture-wicking fabric of shorts ballooned up just a little bit, as if it were possessed by a ghost.