I have been all around the world and have learned many (dirty) words in many different languages. However, there is one language that I will never know how to speak, and that is straight boy. This episode starts with Carl and Luke kicking off at the batting cages over Sarah, the Barry’s Bootcamp instructor who launched maybe not a thousand, but at least two competing ships. Maybe not even ships, but definitely novelty pool floats.
The fight is a bit of a nonstarter, but when Carl is throwing insults at Luke he says, “You’re a fifth-liner. You’re a fifth-liner. You’re bended,†I have no idea what any of that means. Does that mean that Luke is on the fifth line of a hockey team, which means he’s not very good? Does it mean that he’s, like, the least attractive member of a boy band, so he would be on the fifth line of a meet and greet? Did Carl just call him Chris Kirkpatrick? And what about bended? Does that mean he’s drunk? A deviant? Does that mean his penis has a funny shape and bends to one side? If that is true, how does Carl know this, and why is Jordan not more interested than he appears?
There are so many questions, but the biggest question from the fight is when Carl says, “Why are you asking [Sarah] out while you’re trying to finger Hannah?†Okay, just because the furthest we’ve seen Carl get in two seasons is hitting a triple, that doesn’t mean that is where everyone else on the ball field is aspiring to go. I have a feeling that Luke, who doesn’t seem like a stranger to a fingerblast, is trying to hit either a home run, which is full sex, or a grand slam, which is full sex and then a Denny’s breakfast afterward.
The best part of this whole fight, really, is Kyle’s reaction to Luke. As Luke explains that he just wanted to take Sarah rock climbing and that Carl should trust him, Kyle says, “You don’t have the trust with Carl to be like, we’re just going to be friends and you’re going to take her rock climbing so you can stare up at her cameltoe and say, ‘A little to the left.’†There has never been a better description of rock climbing.
The next day, Luke sits Carl down and apologizes that he didn’t make his platonic intentions with Sarah clearer to Carl, and lets him know that if he has a problem with him in the future to just talk it out. Carl accepts his apology and the two of them join their meaty hands together and give each other a bro hug and it is squashed. That, right there, is why there are no reality shows about groups of male friends, because every episode would be about 90 seconds long. I mean, good for these guys, but the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills have been fighting about a fucking rescue dog for 18 seasons now, so …
While last week we were left with the cliffhanger of how the Carl and Luke fight would escalate, the biggest fight of the night isn’t even between the two of them. It’s between, quelle surprise, Kyle and Amanda. It seemed like Amanda was having so much fun with the girls building cheerleader pyramids and dressing up as the boys. Their impersonations of the guys are ludicrously good, particularly Lindsay’s Luke making out with Hannah and Paige’s Carl, who says, “It’s okay that I lost my job 45 times because you’re hot, you’re hot, and you’re hot. More life!†I added the “More life!†myself, but that is the only thing that could have made it more withering.
While the fun is wrapping up, Amanda calls Kyle, who says that he’s going to Southampton Social to try to sell some Loverboy and have some fun with the boys. At some point drunk Amanda decides she wants him home, calls him, and leaves a voicemail saying, “If you don’t come home right now, I’m leaving you for someone else.†When he doesn’t pick up she calls him again and again, in excess of 25 times, annoying everyone and asking where Kyle is. You know where he is. He’s at Southampton Social having fun with his friends. Just chill. The point is that you two are supposed to be apart that night, and that is fine.
I feel like there is definitely going to be a guy/girl divide in this fight. While Amanda is calling Kyle, Luke tells her to leave him alone. The girls, of course, take Amanda’s side. I’m on Kyle’s side because I don’t understand why you would repeatedly call someone who obviously wasn’t answering, especially if she knew where he was. What, exactly, did Amanda want to say to him? Did she just want to feel like a priority? What? I don’t get it. Then again, I am a man.
I can sympathize with Amanda a little in this specific instance, since Kyle has been caught cheating in the past and Amanda wanted to make sure he was on the straight and narrow. But if she can’t trust him to go out with his friends occasionally without her, then they have no business being in a relationship together.
When Kyle finally gets home, they have a drunken fight, which is the dumbest thing any couple could possibly do. They say you should never go to bed angry. That is true unless one or both of you is drunk. Then you should go to bed angry and have the fight over a regretful bacon, egg, and cheese in the morning. Instead, when Amanda asks Kyle if he wants to be single he says, “Yes,†and you can hear the gasps from around the house echo throughout the seaweed-gummed reefs of Montauk Bay.
When they finally sit down to talk about it, Amanda tells Kyle that she’s feeling pressured between her full-time job, her responsibilities at Loverboy, and wedding planning. She needs less pressure from Kyle, and his solution is to quit her full-time job to come work at Loverboy. This is the worst solution I have ever heard. This is a solution that even Jared Kushner, the architect of our crackerjack coronavirus response, the nation’s full recovery from an opioid epidemic, and peace in the Middle East, heard about it and thought it was a horrible idea.
What Kyle needs to do is put some distance between them. What he needed to say was, “Well, let me hire someone to take over your Loverboy duties so you don’t have to worry about that.†Instead, when he’s talking to Carl later, he says that her working with him would be the best thing for their relationship. He is so wrong. Kyle has this fantasy that they are going to be this entrepreneur power couple. That is not in the cards. Amanda doesn’t want it as badly as he does so he needs to give up that fantasy if he wants his relationship to survive and focus on just being there and being supportive of each other, not conjoined twins who do everything personally, professionally, and romantically together.
While we’re talking about fighting couples, let us once again revisit the doomed union that was Larl. Carl mentions to the housemates that he wants to bring Barry’s Bootcamp Sarah out for the weekend. When Lindsay gets wind of this idea her immediate response is, “Hide the knives.†No way. Give her all the knives. If Carl brings that woman to the house just weeks after dumping Lindsay, he deserves all the stabbings.
Carl continues to care absolutely nothing about her feelings. As Paige says, “Just when you think Carl is going to do the right thing and come out on top, he does another Carl thing.†Lindsay tells him that she can’t just turn her heart off like he could, and then he asked this girl out in front of her, and now he’s going to bring her into the house and moon all over her in front of Lindsay. Whew, man, that is a tough sparkling hard iced tea to swallow.
Later, Carl has a spectacularly bad date with Sarah when he talks about how every girl he’s dated lately wants to go from zero to 100 immediately and wants to be exclusively dating in two months. He says he wants a relationship that is “easy.†Carl, that does not exist. No relationship is “easy†except the relationship where you are just banging, and if that is the case you need to meet these girls at the bar and just bang them. No asking them out, no taking out best friends, no taking out the exercise instructor you’ve been flirting with for months. Just banging. That’s it. It all goes back to what Lindsay said on their disastrous date: If he doesn’t want a commitment, stop trying to make girls make one with him.
After that, Carl disinvites her from the weekend and she leaves a bit upset and tells him that is the reason why he can’t make a relationship last. I have a feeling that is the last we will see of Sarah, and the last Carl will see of his beloved Barry’s.
Meanwhile, Lindsay is on a date with Stephen, who is Hailey Joel Osment’s buff younger brother. They play darts, they make out, it all seems like everyone is trying a little bit too hard. They also talk about what they want out of relationships. Is that what straight people talk about on first dates? On every first date I’ve been on I’ve just talked about sex, RuPaul’s Drag Race, Fire Island, and the queens we know in common. Maybe it’s not that I don’t speak straight guy, maybe I just don’t speak straight, periodddddttttttt. MMMmkkkkkkaaaayyyyyyy. [ALYSSA EDWARDS TONGUE POP]
Speaking of straight, Luke took Hannah for a ride on his motorcycle and then made out with her after playing a bad song on his guitar, and it is the straightest thing I have ever seen and I immediately had to do a hit of poppers while listening to Kyle Minogue and jerking off to a Tom of Finland drawing. Praise Bea Arthur for being queer.
Oh, I almost forgot about Jules and Jordan, who are by far my favorite couple because I do not understand them one bit. First they go to bed together and Jules is like, “Touch me,†and Jordan, purported ladies’ man who made out with three women in one night, says, “No, Jules, that is annoying.†What is going on with this dude?
Later, after a night out, they both get naked and get in the pool together. I love making out in a pool at night. It makes me feel like Kelly Taylor in 90210 and, aside from taking off a pair of fake lashes after a long night in drag, it is the best feeling in the world. While they’re naked in the pool and making out, Jules says, “Do you want to have sex in the pool?†and Jordan says, “I’m done,†and they get out.
I can understand that Jordan would not want to have sex with her either on-camera or in a semi-public place where any of the housemates could possibly see them. That I get. However, Jules then tells us that Jordan is having a “hard time getting the car in the garage.†Is it the cold water? Is it something else? Is it his virginity? Is it that he too wants to feel like Kelly Taylor and take his fake lashes off after a long night of drag? I don’t know. He doesn’t know. Jules doesn’t know. The crickets around the pool don’t know, as they chirp their pulsating evening song, which sounds a little bit like wooing and a little bit like taunting all at the same time.