At this point in the season, I feel like Vanderpump Rules is a little bit like Cadbury Crème Eggs. While I was delighted to binge on it for several weeks, I’m now sick of the sickly sweet sameness and I’m ready for them to go away for about nine months so that I can start to miss them all over again. Seriously, this episode we just talked about the same things for the quadrillionth time. Is Jax good enough to marry Brittany, is Lisa treating the Toms like crap, should James get his job back, what is going on with Scheana and Adam (two humans with about 19 vowels between them), will Kirsten ever stop being cringey? I don’t care to answer any of these questions. The only answer I can give you is “Maybe?†and then like three GIFs of small children falling on the ground.
Most of this episode is consumed with Brittany and Jax’s engagement party, which kicks off when all of Brittany’s relatives from Kentucky show up for this thing. Why are they all spending money to come out for an engagement party? They don’t seem like rich people. Shouldn’t they be saving that plane fare for when the actual wedding happens (if it happens)?
Anyway, Brittany’s family is huge and she has a bunch of dopey brothers who all sort of look the same, and I’m not entirely convinced that they’re not being played by Tom Schwartz’s triplet brothers. She also has a college friend named Lyndi, which is not a series of letters that make sense, and a sister-in-law named Melisha, like she was either named by a mother with a lisp or a father who has 13 lifetime memberships to the NRA.
That means Militia’s father has one NRA membership for every member of Brittany’s wedding party, which is bigger than the cast of Game of Thrones. She convenes them all at SUR for a brunch, where she gives them each an enchanted rose, just like in Beauty in the Beast, as well as some fairy dust and some other bullshit. I’m not going to tell Brittany how to live her life, but the princess theme for her wedding is a little bit ranker than a spoiled tub of MaMaw’s Beer Cheese.
There are only two people at that brunch who I really like, and the first is her Kentucky gay Zack, who wants to walk down the aisle accompanied by Tom Schwartz. Wait. Doesn’t that make him my rival? Oh, fine. I hate Zack too. The only other one I like is Kristen Douty, because at least she is craven in her desire to use her “OCD energy†as the world’s best maid of honor. Alas, that duty goes to Cara, Brittany’s lifelong best friend. She also makes Katie the Matron of Honor. It is the most Katie thing to have no idea what that title means and also think that it comes with the duties of wearing a bonnet and churning butter. Does she think that a Matron of Honor is also a pioneer woman? Did she choose to be the Matron of Honor every time she decided to play Oregon Trail while I always chose to be the banker from Boston?
While Brittany is off at brunch, Jax is having lunch with all of the male members of Brittany’s family, a.k.a. the long-lost Schwartz triplets. One by one they essentially tell Jax that they don’t trust him for cheating on Brittany and they don’t think he’s good enough to marry her. As the Declaration of Independence said, we hold these truths to be self-evident. Even though Jax brings up his dead father and how that changed his him, he still won’t apologize or make up for what he’s done.
He ruins that brunch by telling everyone that he is going to take care of “number one†first before he loves and cherishes Brittany. He tells Brittany’s father he’s going to have a bachelor party where nasty horrible things are going to happen. He also intones that maybe Brittany should love and cherish him a little bit more and that he’s going to continue to yell at her as long as he’s married. The thing that I will never understand about Jax Taylor is that he is capable of lying to everyone about everything, but at no point does he actually do this in service of himself. He is not one to really level with people, so why can’t he just lie about how nice he’s going to be to Brittany and make her father happy and keep him off his back?
Jax will never get his own father off his back, or rather off his arm. He and his sister Jenny, who is a very beautiful woman who seems to have much more intelligence and dignity than her broken flip-flop of a brother, go to get tattoos in memory of their father. Let’s not even mention the fact that his father said he would “never step foot in a tattoo parlor,†so getting a tattoo in his memory is sort of like honoring Gandhi with a WWE extravaganza in Mumbai. Jax decides to get some ink that says, “Make good choices. Love you, Dad.â€
I assume this is something that Jax’s father used to say to him regularly, so it’s something that should be internalized. However, after watching Jax for these past seven years, I feel confident saying it is clearly not something he has ever considered when it comes to things like being faithful to his girlfriend or not walking out of sunglasses shops with things that don’t belong to him. Does he think that externalizing this message is going to help him make a good choice? Considering his father’s feelings about tattoos, even this choice seems to be a bad one.
Speaking of making bad choices, DJ James Kennedy shows up to beg for his job back once again and, once again, Lisa tells him to take a hike. He even has some ludicrous idea for See You Next Tuesday that includes lasers to make SUR look like outer space. I don’t know, man. I can’t even bother. James can’t seem to focus at all, both with Lisa and later with Lala, who wants to have a talk with him to get their friendship back on track. He practically blows off Lala. While she’s attempting to make some kind of connection with him, he’s staring off into space like there’s a woman in a thong holding a free bottle of Stoli somewhere off in the distance. It’s just all so sad and rotten and James’s immaturity continues amaze me.
Ugh, do we have to talk about Scheana and Adam and that hot dude who she made out with on-camera? I don’t want to. Mostly it’s because this whole thing seems more contrived than anything Stephanie Pratt ever did on The Hills. I also don’t care. I think as soon as Scheana moved to Marina Del Ray they should have just cut her off the cast list. I don’t care about her, I don’t care about Adam, and the two of them have about as much flavor as a marshmallow soaked in SmartWater.
The last thing we need to address is that Ariana is mad at the way Lisa treats Tom and Tom and is going to do something about it. Did Lisa Rinna get to her or something? What is this all about? I don’t disagree with Ariana, but Lisa can’t have bad seasons on both of her shows, especially the one she’s an executive producer on.
It’s strange that Ariana gets more screen time talking about the Toms than either of the Toms get. We don’t even see Tom Schwartz this episode, and Tom Sandoval only pops up to play a waiter to Brittany’s family when they come to Tom Tom with Jax. I guess that explains the moans and whelps coming from behind the closed door in the office. Lisa walked up to the door and heard a strange rhythmic slapping, like someone throwing a wet ball of dough on a counter over and over again. “Tom? Tom?†she asked, rapping lightly on the door with the bent second knuckle of her index finger. “Are you in there?â€
The slapping stopped for a second and Lisa could have sworn she heard at least one of them mutter, “Oh shit.†“Yeah,†Sandoval finally shouted. “We’ll be out in a bit.â€
“All right,†Lisa said. “But I really need you out here with the customers.â€
“Will do!†Schwartz shouted. Lisa began to walk away, and after a little bit of rustling she heard the dough slapping start all over again, this time considerably faster.