I have to admit that I fully don’t understand the logistics of Summer House. Why are each of the housemates bringing out crates of luggage each week when they clearly have voluminous dressers and closets to store at least a summer weekend’s worth of outfits, accessories, bathing suits, Instagram-acquired workout clothes, various theme-party costumes, and atrocious wigs? Also, when they’re bringing out so much luggage, why are there still mountains of Amazon packages each week when they arrive at their shore house? And why are there FedEx slips for missed package deliveries clinging to the front door like a Nebraska cat in a tornado? How much shit do each of these people need for 48 hours at the beach?
Their diet is also a little suspect. Yes, we see them regularly eat seafood dinners out on the town, greasy eggs on hungover mornings, and late-night leftovers, but during the day it seems like the entire cast subsists on a diet of Goldfish right out of a giant milk carton and free Loverboy that is stacked up in the living room. Considering how every one of them is regularly seen with a can of Loverboy in their hands, how is it that stacks of it keep blossoming in the living room like an outbreak of herpes in a fraternity house? I don’t get it. I don’t get it at all.
Other than supply lines (remember going to stores, guys?!) this episode is really about couples, mostly falling apart but sometimes coming together. Kyle and Amanda brought their moms, Jane and Donna, out for a weekend of intimate chats over wine and the palpable tension between them. They go out to dinner to talk about wedding planning and the couple’s relationship, and Kyle brings up, yet again, his awful idea of Amanda quitting her job to work on Loverboy full time. Amanda breaks out in slow tears in the restaurant and rightfully tables this discussion for later. This was kind of a dick move, putting her on the spot like that in front of both of their moms, and I don’t think Kyle should have been let off the hook so easily.
They don’t talk about this decision again, one that Amanda is not taking lightly, nor should she. It is okay for them to have their own careers and their own businesses. Rather than pulling them apart, I think it will bring them closer together, because then their time as a couple won’t be marred by Kyle’s nagging and expectations about how much Amanda should be doing. Both Kyle and Amanda take some time to talk to their respective mothers. Jane tells Kyle that what she’s hearing is how Amanda can change and what Kyle needs to focus on is what he can do better for Amanda. Give this woman a Panera Bread gift card and an advice column, already.
Next up is Carl and Lindsay, the beaten dead horse that we used to call Larl. Carl has repaired things with fitness instructor Sarah after their awful date, and I don’t know how that happened because he is wearing his new hat, which is an enormous fedora that looks like something everyone’s dad wears to play golf, and I do not mean that as a compliment. (I would apologize to my dad but getting him to watch Bravo would be harder than getting him on TikTok, so there is no way he is reading this.) At dinner with the crew, Carl swerves the question about his budding relationship with Sarah and instead says that he wants to work on his friendship with Lindsay. She says that she has friend feelings on one side and romantic feelings on the other side and the week before, when Carl was talking about inviting Sarah out to the house, he activated her feelings on both sides. “I’ve never been activated on both sides before,†says Lindsay, who clearly has never engaged in a spit-roasting, Eiffel Tower, or, God forbid, a Lucky Pierre.
The odd thing is that her feelings for Carl don’t really bubble over until the next day, when everyone returns from a drunken afternoon at the winery. She starts sobbing in her bathroom because she has lost her best friend and doesn’t know how to get him back. Carl goes to console her and finds her on the phone talking to her Aunt Rhonda about the situation. As Rhonda is explaining to Carl how he needs to be more compassionate about Lindsay’s feelings, we see Lindsay let out the longest, wettest, chunkiest snot that has ever been recorded in human history. It was like one of those Family Guy jokes that goes on so long that it’s funny and then it’s just awkward and then it’s finally funny again.
Lindsay wants Carl to stay home and comfort her while she suffers through a medical condition known as beer tears, or in this case, wine weeps, but instead he goes out to Montauk to party with the roommates. Lindsay reacts by bludgeoning a frozen pizza while wearing a hoodie with the hood up and a Kyle Richards fedora on top of it, which is an outfit so sad that it will one day appear in a meme account about being single. What Lindsay doesn’t know is that at this point Carl has already invited Sarah out to the house the next weekend. This is sort of why Lindsay was mad in the first place. Carl should have the decency to ask Lindsay if she’s cool with this before inviting Sarah, but it seems that he has learned nothing from the blowup last week or the tears this week.
Carl pulls her for a chat, which is where we end the episode. They try to get it back to friendship footing and come to a truce, when Carl springs the news that Sarah is coming the next week. But Lindsay does not freak out. She smiles and he smiles and butterflies release from the larvae and it seems like everything is good in the Hamptons sunshine for a second.
Now we get to our fun couples, starting with Hannah and Luke. After their kiss last weekend, Hannah was all ready to finally cuddle and make out with Luke, which honestly seems like it would be one of life’s greatest pleasures. However, Luke went out to dinner with Lindsay and “his girl†Jelena the Sunday before, and Lindsay insists that he tell Hannah that he’s seeing this other girl. While the crew is out to dinner, when asked if everyone is single, Luke gives the back-and-forth hand wave that universally means “kinda.†Hannah is instantly confused, and you can practically feel the bottom fall out of her stomach, like we’re on the first bounce on the Tower of Terror.
He tells the table that he’s been seeing this girl for a few weeks while Hannah was still with Armand and wasn’t giving him the green light. This is clearly a conversation that he should have had alone with Hannah before talking about it in front of everyone. They don’t get a chance to do that until the next day at the winery, when Hannah tells him that she was excited to get with him but she doesn’t want to be the girl who gets between him and the girl he’s dating. I think this is the difference between boys and girls. When the summer started, Luke was in the position Hannah is in now, but that didn’t stop him from being the boy to get between her and Armand. If I were Hannah, I would also get right up on Luke, because whatever he has going on with Jelena is between the two of them, and as long as I get mine, who cares.
The girl code is strong with Hannah, however, and she sticks to her guns even though she’s mad because she’s been “blueballing†herself for months. When she gets back to the table, Paige and Amanda rush to her side and the three go strolling in the vineyard. Paige is wearing a pleated yellow dress and chunky white plastic sunglasses like she just stepped out of a colorized version of La Dolce Vita. Amanda is wearing a nude dress with white polka-dots that looks like a sexier version of something from Pretty Woman. Hannah is wearing a brassiere top and high-waisted pants set in light blue gingham that makes it look like she’s dressed for Halloween as slutty Wizard of Oz. I want to be all of their friends and dress just as well with them and be lesbian sister-wives without men (except me) and have this summer never come to an end.
Finally, we are at Jules and Jordan. Oh, what an awkward knot this thing is, like a million nettles stuck in one of Liza Minnelli’s wigs. Jules lets us know that earlier in the week, she and Jordan had sex “to completion†for both of them, which I assume means orgasm/ejaculation, which would be visual/physical proof that Jordan finished. The thought of Jordan’s orgasm face is so yucky it makes me want to toss all of the cookies, including the ones that have not been baked yet and the ones I allow my computer to accept every time I visit a new web page.
However, when they arrive at the house, Jordan tells everyone that he’s sexually attracted to Jules, but he doesn’t see it going anywhere. The first night in the house, Jules is trying to make out with him and he pushes her off, saying he’s exhausted. Too exhausted for one kiss or even a few minutes of making out to appease her? Apparently so.
Jules has a surprise in store, however. She tells the girls that Jordan likes to be choked, so she’s going to choke him and then chain him to the door naked with a pair of fuzzy handcuffs. Note to all of the ladies out there: No man wants to be tied up with red fuzzy handcuffs. If they are going to be tied up they want something that is going to make them feel more Navy Seal and less Frederick of Hollywood. Think ropes, think shackles, think butch restraints. When Jules tries this move, Jordan freaks out and says, “No no no no no,†and storms out of the room.
I wound understand if Jordan didn’t want to have sex on-camera, but he already did, so what’s the point? Why does he keep rebuffing Jules’s advances? If he’s sexually attracted to her, as he claims, then why not just have sex with her? She’s not pushing him for anything more. Why is he pushing her away? None of this makes any sense. I mean, I don’t want to imply that Jordan is gay, but if he’s not, he’s sure missing a good chance to be.
After the incident in the bedroom, Paige tells Jules what Jordan said about her and she confronts him in the living room. “The girls tell me you have something you want to say to me,†Jules says in front of the group.
“No, everything’s fine,†Jordan says, which elicits groans so loud you can hear them in Alan Turing’s grave. Jules then tells Jordan to get out, and he moves all of his things into the living room to sleep there. Sorry, Jordan, but if you’re not sleeping with Jules then you are not on the show. You should get an Uber and go right to the train station and back to the city. Then you should take the F train from Penn Station to the Second Avenue stop and get off and walk to Second Avenue and Fourth Street and walk into the Boiler Room. Then you should meet a nice man named Michael who is wearing a polo shirt and has Barry’s-toned abs and a job at an advertising agency. Then you two should go home to his place in Carroll Gardens and put on some Robyn and make out and gyrate and be sexually attracted to each other but know it’s not going anywhere, but attracted, so attracted, like a suction cup on glass, like a magnet on metal, like a fuzzy red handcuff on the door of a closet that is strong enough for a woman, but pH balanced for a man.