I am really disappointed in Summer House. No, it’s not because the kids ordered so many Amazon packages this week that even they were amazed at how many cardboard boxes were crowding their front steps like monkeys lining up for a feces-throwing contest. No, I’m disappointed because no one got thrown out of the house.
The preview both for this week’s episode and the season as a whole tricked us into thinking that someone was going to get evicted at some point this year. I want the ousting I was promised, damn it. The preview for this week’s episode in particular made it look like either Jules or Jordan were getting a one-way Uber ride back to Manhattan. But it couldn’t be Jules getting kicked out. Didn’t we see her in the same season-long preview crawling into bed with Carl? Since that hasn’t happened yet, she has to stick around.
Maybe Jordan is the one who’s going to get the ax, and that would make sense since, you know, Jordan isn’t even on the show this season. Yes, it is a fact that nearly everyone needs to be reminded of, but neither he nor Danielle are actual cast members. What they’re doing popping up every episode, like a YouTuber reminding us to like and subscribe, is absolutely beyond me.
The feud between Jules and Jordan seems like something of a production issue as much as a personal one. When the girls all get together for a wine party at Paige’s apartment (which has its own sunglasses wall, just like Lindsay’s), Paige and Hannah tell Jules that Jordan basically texted them and told them to pick a side between him and Jules. Amanda says she feels bad for Jules “being manipulated.†Does she think that Jordan is manipulating her into a relationship to stay on the show? Does she think she’s manipulating him because he’s really not into her and using her to prove something to the public at large? I don’t know.
When everyone gets to the house, Jules confronts Jordan about the texts. He goes looking for them in his phone and can’t find them. It’s because he deleted them. God, what is wrong with Jordan? It’s like he doesn’t have a brain and is powered by a Roomba that’s gummed up after trying to clean an enormous puddle of chocolate pudding. If he deleted them, why go look for them knowing they aren’t there, which is just going to look even more suspect? And when he finds out that they’re gone, why insist that he “deletes texts all the time.†Who does that? Not even drug dealers do that. Not even promiscuous teens do that. Edward Snowden does that. Jordan is especially bad at the reality-television arts and sciences. He makes the No. 1 mistake, which is trying to mold reality or paper over the truth. The thing about reality TV is that it will always get to the true story, and if he thinks he is stronger than the medium, well, this medium will snap his limbs in an arm-wrestling match like they’re all made from overcooked linguine.
Luckily, Paige still has the text, because she is a normal human person, and shares them with us during her interview. “Let me give you some CliffsNotes for your party tomorrow. Jules is boring. She only complains, no deep convos. I really need you two to go to bat for me tomorrow,†he apparently said. He knew they were going to see her while on-camera and wanted them to defend him. He also keeps referring to how he introduced her to all his friends and got her into the summer house. She then reminds him that Hannah is the one who invited him. This looks mostly like behind-the-scenes shenanigans.
What this sounds like to me is that Jordan wants back on the show at the expense of Jules. He seems pissed that he brought her into this and then got sidelined himself and, based on Amanda’s comment about manipulation, has been faking a relationship with Jules to stay relevant and on-camera. When Jules finds out Jordan is coming for the weekend, Hannah says that she was talking about Kyle’s party in front of him and felt bad not inviting him. What, he can’t make a day trip? Just because he heard about the party, he has to come all weekend?
Jordan sabotaging Jules’s tenure on the show is pretty shady, and for that, I think he deserves to be thrown out of the house for good. What is missing from all the conversations about who comes and who goes is some discussion about contracts. Was Jules given a full-season order? Can they even chuck her if they want to? Jordan, I assume, is getting paid per day he films, so he is much easier to get out of there. That they’re pretending that the logistical issues of making a show are different from the personal issues of who can’t stand whom in the house is pretty weird.
None of the housemates want the drama these two are serving, and they all scurry off to Paige and Hannah’s room for an impromptu house meeting. What I love about this is how no one told Jules, Jordan, or Danielle, and they have free range of the house just wondering why they’re being excluded. What I don’t like about this is how Jordan being a jerk to Jules has somehow become a referendum on Jules herself. Hannah calls her insecure and too eager to be everyone’s friend. Kyle — who notes what an awful librarian he would make because he does not know how to whisper — wonders if anyone has bonded with Jules. Carl, who is about three episodes away from banging her, repeatedly calls her “Julia†and wants to throw both of them out of the house.
After Jules spends all of Kyle’s frat-themed birthday party roaming around looking for a friend to talk to, she finally pulls Carl aside (of all people) and he tells her that he doesn’t want either of them in the house and drunkenly kicks them out. That, of course, is where it ends, and I want to know what happens next, but, of course, I’m not going to like the answer.
When Jules approaches Carl, he’s already in a bad mood because Sarah, his Barry’s Bootcamp instructor lover, didn’t show up to Kyle’s birthday party. I feel really bad for Carl. After always making the wrong move, he finally did the right thing and invited Sarah out the one weekend that Lindsay would be away in Mexico. (But imagine how amazing it would have been if Lindsay was around for that house meeting?!) Then, hours before the party, when Carl calls Sarah to check in, she tells him she can’t make it because she has “early classes the next day.â€
That just sucks. There is no worse feeling than when you have a burgeoning relationship with someone and they prove that they may not be as interested in continuing things as you are. It’s not a dumping; it’s just a soft turning away that is somehow more pernicious and destabilizing than actually being dumped. Poor Carl. My poor beloved Carlito, who looks so sexy in a toga that it is almost criminal.
Also, how good does Kyle look in his toga? He’s so handsome, and I love him so much, particularly Party Kyle, who is like a beer tsunami at the party. He gives all the roomies a good talking-to about how they need to turn the house into a frat house. That Kyle was a Greek in college makes so much sense. The first time he ever got any positive validation was for drinking too much and having casual encounters with women in college, and now that is the only kind of validation that he craves. It’s kind of sad and kind of amazing and kind of like an adult-video webpage that I subscribe to and I love it all so much.
Kyle really knows how to turn a party out. This is what a production budget can do for your backyard shindig. You can ransom a waterslide away from a little kid’s birthday. You can order all of the novelty floats in all of Amazon Prime. You can requisition a petting zoo to be set up on your tennis court, making every girl at the party swoon. And then, as everyone is reeling from the party high you created, you can piss all over your leg and into a Solo cup that your girlfriend holds under your toga. That is the American Dream. That is 37 years old.
Shep, Austen, and Craig, the boys from Southern Charm, are hanging out in Sag Harbor, and Carl invites them to the party. He explains that he met Shep in a “bar in New York City†and fails to mention that it was probably after they all appeared on Watch What Happen Live together or were shipped in for one of Andy Cohen’s infamous “bottoms only†parties. (I made these parties up, but if they exist, I would like to be invited.) When they arrive, we hear the theme music from their show play, but we couldn’t have even one “Bah Ba Doo?â€
They seemed to have fun at the party, particularly Austen, who flirts with Hannah like a swarm of ants on a dropped ice cream cone. Then Luke shows up and says, “Oh, by the way, hi,†to get her attention and then whips her in the face with a nasty rat tail that is clipped onto his head and looks like a Slim Jim that was stuck in a drain for about three decades. Their relationship is developing apace, and Hannah even admits to Paige that she’s starting to get feelings for him. It’s not just that she wants to bone, it’s that she actually likes him, too.
Luke had his chance the night before, when the two were drunk in the hot tub and he said, “I would like to take you up to my room right now and have sex with you,†to which Hannah replied, “Okay.†That sure seemed like consent to me, but Luke said that he needed to wait. “I need a week to figure it out.†Does that mean he is no longer deciding between Hannah and Yelena and is going to let Yelena go this coming week so that he and Hannah can finally strum each other’s guitars well into the night? I hope so, but I worry about this. Paige isn’t wrong that Luke is playing this nice midwestern gentleman, but he is using that goodwill just to get into Hannah’s pants. We shall see what the next week brings — a love, an eviction, a deadly plague that will wipe out humanity or make us all sit in our homes sharing banana-bread recipes? Who knows? These days everything seems to happen all at once and then not ever again.