This week’s episode marks the third consecutive week spent documenting the girls’ two-night trip to Solvang, making Solvang officially: this season’s Playa del Carmen!
Yay! When we find the girls, hungover the morning after the night’s “Crazy Kristen” festivities, Katie is in her SUR uniform. Why? Because she spent the night in Scheana’s extra bed rather than sleep in the same room as Kristen (finally, a roommate for Scheana!), and the uniform was the only clothing she had in her purse. Fair enough. Apparently Kristen spent the night banging on everyone’s doors and threatening to go home, but woke up feeling contrite. She tells Katie that she knows she fucked up, and that she needs to not let stuff with James get to her.
Of course, the problem is that last night — on last week’s episode — the rest of the girls concluded that Kristen’s problem was, in fact, not James, but instead her awful, deadbeat, rude-as-hell, not-even-hot (my opinion) boyfriend Carter. Later that day, Stassi takes her aside to tell her that she deserves to be with someone who isn’t going to yell at her and make her miserable. Kristen knows, but she says when Carter isn’t yelling at her and making her miserable, there are good times. Oh, Kristen.
I guess we should wrap up the Kristen story line while we’re here, then jump back to the rest of Solvang. The day after the girls return from Solvang, SUR-adjacent friend Kristina Kelly holds a BBQ at her Santa Monica apartment. This is where a few deep talks happen (on Kristina Kelly’s green couch) for, I assume, scheduling reasons. The first deep talk is between Kristen and Carter. She’s like, “You can’t be mean to me all the time.” And he’s like, “The first thing you do when you get home every day is bitch at me for twenty or thirty minutes about your bad day.” And she’s like, “You’re my boyfriend, I’m supposed to be able to talk to you when I have a bad day.” And he’s like, “You have a lot of bad days!”
The fight ends when Carter tells Kristen that their couple’s therapist always takes his side, and Kristen explains that “taking sides” is not the objective of a couple’s therapist. She then postpones the rest of the argument for later. Ugh. Everybody please break up with the Carters in your life. They’re not even hot!
Kristen wasn’t the only one who had a Stassi aside-conversation back in Solvang. In an even more heartbreaking talk (near horses that a few of the girls rode briefly) (sure), Lala told Stassi that her father’s death, which happened about four months before, has been fucking with her and that she doesn’t really know how to deal with it, even with the help of her boyfriend Randall. There isn’t really anything you can say to that, and the moment is just quiet and sad. One positive thing, though, is that Lala’s mom told her that before her father died, Randall asked him for his permission to “take care of” Lala, and he gave it. (Whether Lala is talking around a potential engagement or whether Randall did ask to take care of her is unclear.) This has brought her some comfort.
Fast-forwarding in time, again, to Kristina Kelly’s BBQ: Lala is the subject of the second deep talk. She didn’t drink on the wine-tasting trip in Solvang because she and Randall had decided that they should no longer drink. When she returned home she found Randall still drunk after a night of partying, and she was upset. She brings Katie and Brittany onto Kristina Kelly’s green couch to talk about it.
Apparently, after a fight that included Randall demanding Lala give back a pair of shoes he bought for her (very nice), the couple decided to take a break. Lala notes that there are a lot of dicks out there she can suck if she wants to take fancy vacations and ride in a private jet. Indeed. Of course, we’re in the future and we know they get engaged eventually, but we at least now know to like Randall even less.
At Tom Tom, Lisa has decided to bring in expert mixologist Sly Cosmopoulos to work on the cocktail list, which angers Tom Sandoval greatly. Cocktails were supposed to be his thing! (I do find his reaction understandable — plus, it’s nice to see a member of the Vanderpump Rules cast display passion for a job.) Over drinks, Jax asks the Toms what, exactly, they’ll bring to Tom Tom if not the cocktails on the menu. “My heart and soul, which is invaluable!” says Tom Schwartz.
Sly’s main goal is to make it so the cocktails don’t cost a million dollars each, and don’t each take 400 years to make. Oh no. But that’s all of the Toms’s cocktails! Sandoval threatens to quit if they don’t get at least one of their cocktails on the menu (yeah right, and do what else?). Luckily, after a very tense meeting with Sly, she reveals that they will have not one but ten of their cocktails included on the menu! (With some slight adjustments.) The menu currently only has eleven cocktails on it, so I’m not sure if the ten number is a lie or if the cocktail menu is genuinely mostly from the Toms (and Sly). In any case, amen; Tom Tom lives to see another day.
Oh, the last thing I wanted to mention was that when Schwartz was trying to pick out clothes for the meeting with Sly he said he wanted to look like “a young CEO — Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg.” Young style icons, both of them.