Watching this episode of Vanderpump Rules, a morality play starring crash-test dummies, is a little bit like trying to make a meal out of passed hors d’oeuvres: As soon as we get a tasty morsel of one story, it is whisked away and we are presented with a tasty morsel of another story. It is just a swirl of little bites, all of which deserve more examination but each of them removed almost as quickly as men dump Scheana No Tea No Shay. (Sick burn!)
Look at the triplets’ visit to Los Angeles. This is the first time that Tom’s brothers Brendan, Billy, and Burt Schwartz managed to crawl out of their sink hole and go visit their brother across the country and we barely got to see them do anything. The most that happens is that Burt (or Billy or Brendan?) ask DJ James Kennedy if he can request songs when he DJs at See You Next Tuesday, a party that is so popular the DJ has to tell total strangers about it while he walks to the gig carrying his own turntables strapped to his back like he’s Frankie Knuckles and his underground rave party just got busted by the cops.
Seriously, what the heck is going on with these guys? Why is Tom Sandoval so intent on buying each of them a new wardrobe from H&M, complete with new sneakers, new jeans, and new suits. Suits? Buying these guys suits is like buying a three-legged dog an ice-cream cone. What are they going to do with suits? They live at home with their parents in a city with a population of 13,037. He should buy them new mud flaps for the pick-up truck that they share — they’d get a lot more use out of them. Heck, they’d have more occasion to use snake antivenom than a suit. Sandoval’s idea of what sort of style they should have is as divorced from reality as Raquel thinking that a college degree will make people think that she’s smart.
Also, what is up with the one brother who keeps dropping hints that he’s dying to move to L.A.? Just do it! All three of them should do it. Can’t Bravo make this happen? I would watch the hell out of a show about three 30-year-old triplets who have never lived on their own finally moving out of the swamp and into the big city. For that to happen, though, one would have to get a mustache and one a beard so that we could tell the three of them apart. And even if they got that show and it was nominated for an Emmy, they still wouldn’t have an occasion to wear suits, so just leave them alone.
The next story is the SUR fire. Um, excuse me? SUR just sort of sets on fire and everyone is like, “Oh, never mind. It’s cool. Happens all the time.†What? No. SUR should not be setting on fire. How are we fixing this? Also, Stassi is in the burned-out remains of the restaurant while Lisa is trying to figure out whether or not she should reopen the business that is the ostensible excuse for this entire reality show and Stassi is like, “Boo-hoo. People are mean about my podcast.†If I were Lisa, I would have reached across the table, pulled every one of her hairs out individually, and then woven them into a suit for the Brothers Schwartz.
This bullshit about Stassi’s podcast is just ridiculous. She said something awful on her podcast vaguely related to the Black Lives Matter movement. Basically, she asked why only African-Americans use speeches at awards shows to criticize their lack of representation in the media while Asians, Native Americans, and Latinos don’t do it as well. Well, here’s the answer: There are so few roles for people of color that they can’t even get nominated for these awards, nevertheless win, and if you actually listen, these groups do criticize the lack of representation.
It was objectively a bad and ignorant thing to say, but it seems clear that Stassi has learned her lesson. When Ariana finds out that Billie is going to do the podcast, she says she hopes Billie “schools Stassi’s ass on her privilege because she takes pride in being ignorant.†When Stassi hears this, she assumes Ariana called her a racist, which she didn’t. Stassi then admits to her ignorance, but says she’s not a racist. I don’t know, but that sounds like she’s proud of being ignorant, which is the only thing that Ariana really accused her of.
Stassi cries about it the whole time she’s working at the party for Lisa’s new role as the editor-in-chief of Beverly Hills Lifestyle magazine, the publication voted Most Likely to Be Ignored in Your Dermatologist’s Office three years running by LA Weekly’s readers poll. At the party, we find out she’s taking over the role from Kimi Applegate after her husband Gary recently died. Wait. How are we skipping over this whole intrigue with the Applegate family? I need a whole episode on this magazine, how Gary died, how Lisa ended up with the job of a woman who still seems entirely capable of doing it on her own, and just what the future of this business is. I would like an entire season of American Crime Story: The Applegate Investigation, but instead we just get some passing references in a toast.
This episode misdirects us all over the place. Yeah, Jax is late and goes to see a reiki specialist. Big deal. Ariana has to make buckets and buckets of Big Pinkies, whatever those are. Whoop-dee-doo. Party planner Kevin Lee calls Katie fat. Yeah, that sucks, but that’s not what I care about. What I care about is this little story that Katie cut her face open and had to have her jaw wired shut. How did this happen? She fell through a skylight.
Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Back it up. Just back it the fuck up for one second. I need, like, 19 moments to process this. Pre-reality-show Katie (calling herself Kate) made a YouTube video about cutting her face open because she fell through a skylight. How the hell did she fall through a skylight? I need every single detail of this entire story starting right now. Sure, we can talk about how beautiful Katie is on the inside and out. Sure. Fine. But first, I’m gonna need to learn how she fell through a skylight. This is just casually mentioned like it’s refilling your gas tank or getting a McGriddle for breakfast. No. One does not just go falling through skylights. Did no one think that we would have a lot of questions about this?
Just like so many other things in this episode, we are just left questioning so that the people of Priv, apparently a service that lets you order homosexuals to your apartment (question mark), could have another infomercial. As these three nice men with hair dryers gave the Brothers Schwartz haircuts on the living-room carpet, leaving clippings that no vacuum will ever get out, Toms Schwartz and Sandoval huddled in a corner watching the makeover happen. “Being a triplet must be weird,†Schwartz said. “Imagine there not just being, like, one of me, but there being, like, three of me.â€
Sandoval entertained the thought of three Tom Schwartzes for just a second and he spontaneously got an erection so powerful that he could feel the heat radiating off of it like it was a giant mug of hot cocoa. Just that one mental image sent all of his neurons racing at once and his body sort of bent toward the center, lead by his tumescent groin. He reached forward and braced his hand on Schwartz’s back, as all of the feeling in his body rushed toward the center, beat after throbbing beat, and he thought once more of three Schwartzes, and that feeling then burbled up in a million little pinpricks of light, like bubbles bursting forth from Champagne bottle, and Sandoval let everything in his body relax as a small spot of wetness near his front pocket slowly began to spread, with sticky pride, like a snow angel that somehow managed to melt itself.