Finally, after about 86 million hours of witnessing the parties leading up to it, Jax and Brittany — oh, I’m sorry, Jason and Brittany — walk down the aisle. Well, it takes them about 45 minutes to get down the aisle; watching their bridal party filter in is like watching the U.S. Olympic delegation arrive at the opening ceremony. Only after that can they say their vows, and what they say is that the reason they’re getting married is because they both love their dogs, Hooters, and Friends. That is enough to tie them together for eternity. And what happens after they get married? More parties!
Of course there’s a reception, which, for my money, is the most tasteful of the parties. Everyone’s seated in an air-conditioned tent out of the Kentucky sun while enormous candelabras pop out of the table, as if Liberace were a guest at Alice in Wonderland’s tea party, and flowers hang above their heads threateningly, like a Sword of Damocles made for Instagram perfection.
At the reception, Tom Schwartz gives a 17-minute speech that covers everything including Jax’s abs, his group chat just for gossip, and how much weed he has in his house (a topic that bothers Brittany’s mom, but significantly less than when Sandoval made a joking allusion to Jax’s gay roommate at his roast several seasons back). After that, Brittany and Jax leave the reception venue amid a sea of sparklers held by their guests, which is an adorable image. It seemed like they would retire to a car that Sandoval had painstakingly decorated with “Just Married†shaving-cream slogans and a bunch of cans from the open bar, and maybe a Jennifer Aniston as Rachel Green bobblehead on the dash. But, no. This is not the end. This is just them going to another party.
Brittany and Jax are apparently hosting their own after-party in a little gatehouse next to the castle. While arriving, the guests have to pass a gauntlet of Hooters waitresses holding both the restaurant’s signature chicken wings and their boobs high. At this after-party is when Jax finally loses it, running around yelling that there’s a cash bar at his after-party when he paid $100,000 for the wedding. Then he says he has 40 bottles of vodka and guests should be drinking those.
I find this befuddling. Did Jax set a cap on the open bar and then when it was reached he had the 40 bottles of vodka as backup? Was the after-party supposed to be a cash bar, but to save money and face Jax went and bought a Costco-size pallet of Svedka (the official vodka of fancy frat gatherings and second-tier Fire Island pool parties) for guests to drink? What if people don’t want vodka? This is Kentucky. Shouldn’t he have bourbon as well? And since we’re asking questions, why does Jax refer to Brittany as the “prince charming†when she is clearly the Cinderella/Snow White/Mermaid-That-Lives-in-a-Castle-Not-in-the-Sea of this story?
Also, if Jax is so worried about making sure everyone has free drinks because he spent $100K on the wedding, why is he kicking them out of their rooms at 10:30 in the morning? Didn’t he already prepay late checkout? And is anyone really shocked to see that Scheana, Kristen, and Carter all shared a bed? The only person who had a bigger shock is the nine-foot-tall bald guy with a head like a dented football who scored with Scheana the night before. Tequila sodas and desperation have never served this guy, clearly punching above his weight, better.
Ugh, Kristen and Carter. I would rather gargle Rita Wilson’s COVID-19 bathwater than talk about Kristen and Carter. I would rather self-quarantine with Idris Elba for two weeks than talk about Kristen and Carter. I would rather sell my last roll of toilet paper on the black market after eating Indian food for lunch than talk about Kristen and Carter. But here we are, once again, talking about Kristen and Carter. I finally understand why Stassi and Katie are so sick of this.
Carter says that he loves Kristen and wants to stay together. He is also a person who is calling her “selfish and unkind†in text messages and showing up, needily, while she has to get ready to be one of 19 million bridesmaids in the wedding. Then, after making fun of him with Scheana for showing up early to hang with her, she welcomes him onto their balcony and clutches him with one gaunt arm, like a chicken wing trying to beat an octopus at arm wrestling. Kristen says that she doesn’t want to be with Carter, but also is the one who keeps sleeping with him. Neither of these two can make up their minds about what they really want, and they just keep torturing each other, swirling around and around like a neti pot filled with poison.
Kristen’s only justification for sticking around is that all of her friends are in couples, and she is “four years into a relationship and far from my happy ever after.†Girl, that means to get out! Or stay in. I don’t care. Just make a decision and stick with it. That’s all we ask for. It’s black or white. Pick one. Not even S&M fans want shades of grey anymore.
A few other quick notes on this wedding before we put it to rest, hopefully, forever. First of all, it’s really cute that Brittany wants to get this one right because she thinks she’s never going to do it again. Oh, honey. We all know this is a trial run. Also, Lisa Vanderpump has never looked better than in her black-and-white ensemble that includes both a hat and a headband, a cape, and white opera gloves. Never has so much looked so elegantly simple. Let us never forget that Tom Schwartz does not think “dawdle†is a word. And finally, I will never forgive Jax for not inviting his mother. Seriously. Walking down the aisle, with his father in his oaken ice bucket and a seat reserved for him in the front row, Jax talks about how he has finally grown into the man that his now-sainted father raised. So that means the man his father raised is the kind of man who doesn’t invite his own mother to his wedding and then complains when she doesn’t text him on the day of the event?
Oh, I almost forgot my other favorite part of the wedding. It actually happens at SUR, when Charli asks Dayna, “Oh, why aren’t you at the wedding?,†and she says something about how she has to work. Um, no, bitch. You weren’t even invited to that wedding because the people there barely even know you, and the ones who do, you lied about making out with them in the bathroom last season. Charli is watching the wedding on Instagram and talking about it with Monica, yet another new girl we have never seen before. Stop it with all of these new people.
Speaking of the new crew, we have to deal with the fallout of Dayna and Max’s breakup. When Dayna meets with Danica and Raquel for lunch, the last vegan pizza left in Whole Foods during coronavirus hoarding, she tells them that she made a mistake. No, the mistake was not that she broke up with Max; the mistake was when Max was out to lunch with this girl, she thought they were at Jones, a romantic WeHo restaurant with good pizza and better apple pie, but they were really at Joan’s, which is basically a glorified deli where you can eat in and is quite popular for brunch. In Dayna’s mind, it’s the difference between an intimate dinner and friends just grabbing a croissandwich.
Danica points out, and illustrates with a very handy stick-figure animation, that it doesn’t matter where she caught Max cheating, whether it was at the nice dinner the night before or the brunch after they banged — she still caught Max cheating. I think we seriously need to reconsider Danica. This is a girl who almost got fired from her job for beating up her boyfriend when he proposed a three-way and has a Breathalyzer attached to her car that she has to blow into every 15 minutes to keep driving. This is our kind of girl. Between her eye makeup, which is always smokier than Joni Mitchell’s recording studio, and her offline commentary, I think she might need to graduate. Leave the rest of these losers behind, but save Danica. Hashtag Justice for Danica, Hashtag Give Marlo a Peach, Hashtag Bring Back RHOM.
Back at Tom Tom, Max is talking to yet another new girl about his breakup. This one is named Valissa. Of all the stupid names on all the stupid reality shows that we have stupided in front of over the stupid years, not one of them is as stupid as “Valissa.†It sounds like a species of cactus that someone is trying to make popular on Instagram, or a brand of something that women would use for their intimate areas. “I was scaring all of the boys away, until I got Valissa,†the commercial will tell us.
Whatever. Who cares about Max and Dayna? She goes and tells him she was wrong. He says that he needs more time and shows off a new tattoo that says “Shaken to Death†and has a martini glass with a skull in it, which looks like something from a 2004 Ed Hardy shirt, and that is all you ever need to know about Max.
Back at the Kentucky castle, as the after-party wrapped and the sounds of distant sirens were the only things that could be heard in the complex, Lance Bass was woken up by an insistent knocking at his door. When he opened it, he saw the Toms Schwartz and Sandoval standing there sheepishly. “I told you already,†Lance said. “Now that I’m married, I can’t have threesomes with you guys anymore.â€
“It’s not that,†Schwartz said. “Since I’m technically still single, we wanted you to marry us while it’s still legal. Is it legal to get gay-married in Kentucky? I mean, probably, right?â€
“Yes, it’s legal in all 50 states,†Lance told them.
“All right, let’s do it,†Sandoval said, barging past him into the room.
“Sure, but only if you take your shirts off,†Lance said, looking to get at least a little titillation out of this late-night intrusion. They complied, unbuttoning their shirts and tossing them on the half-slept-in bed. Lance positioned them facing each other and did the traditional vows that we have all seen in movies a million times, though rarely with two people of the same gender. Honestly, he was rushing through them so that he could get back to bed. “I now pronounce you married,†he said. “You may kiss.â€
Sandoval lunged for Schwartz, their sudden legitimacy the ultimate aphrodisiac. He cupped Schwartz’s face in both hands as they kissed deeper and deeper, their bare chests pressing against each other like a battering ram against a stubborn door. They necked and writhed, their arms switching positions as they journeyed a few feet around the room, landing on the bed together, with Schwartz on the bottom and Sandoval between his legs. Sandoval finally broke their embrace only to sit up a bit and remove his belt and unbutton his pants. Lance had gone from annoyed to resigned, sitting in a chair next to the bed and letting his bathrobe fall open, deciding, as the stillness of the night gave way to a new heated intensity, that watching wasn’t cheating at all.