Yes, this episode had Chrishell finding a house for an NBA player, everyone driving around in their cars talking on a party line about a party, and a trip to a fashion archive where Chrishell committed treason, heresy, blasphemy, conspiracy to enrage the Twitter gays, and impersonation of a celebrity in the first degree when she tried on the J.Lo dress. What we’re really going to remember about this episode is the epic showdown between Mary and Christine at the episode’s end that will leave us skittering toward next season with a level of anticipation that is higher than the hems on all of Christine’s dresses.
There is a lot of craziness to get through first. We need to talk about Christine’s white, knee-high boots that have the words “Rich AF†on them; they make me want to climb the walls with the scratching of a daddy long legs, grab my anus with one hand, and flip my entire body inside out with rage. The best don’t have to try this hard. They really don’t. Christine is not just a try-hard, she is a try-diamond. Her try-hardness has been so compacted by centuries of pressure that she tries so hard that no substance on earth can pierce her tryingness.
Heather and her fiancé, Tarek, an Ed Hardy T-shirt that was fed after midnight and turned into Turtle from Entourage, are talking about the Christine situation, and Heather says she needs to get all of the girls together to confront Christine. She wants the whole group so that Christine can’t peddle any more of her lies or stories about this ex who may or may not exist and these fake DMs that we have never seen.
Heather asks him, “Do you think she’s sad that she’s losing friends?†He responds, “She’s sad to look bad.†That is exactly it. Wow, Tarek is right. Do I need to start watching HGTV? Or should I just have my mindset coach watch the channel and report back to me on any non-firepit and backyard water feature advice that the network has to offer? He’s totally right. Christine has behaved poorly to almost everyone on the show. She got caught lying by the ladies on the show and making lame excuses for not apologizing for any past behavior. She’s built herself up to be a queen so much that she is living off of this reputation of being Ursula the Sea Witch who can turn around a $12 million glass box. She can’t admit that anyone has her number.
Everyone shows up at the party (except Amanza, who has a doctor’s note for life after this season). Mary is wearing a black lace dress that looks like it’s from Frederick’s of East Hollywood. Chrishell is in a short, shiny silver dress with dangling beads that she stole from Dancing with the Stars. Emma is in a blue dress with a halter top that is so precarious, so ornate, so cantilevered it’s just like every house they sell at the O Group. Jason makes his big announcement, and we all know what it is: the spinoff Selling the OC that is happening soon. We even get to see some of the agents and, exqueeze me, there are hot guys on this show? We get a glimpse at Austin, who is what my friends like to call a murder twink. Yes, he’s young, lean, and adorable, but he’s also covered in tattoos and looks like he definitely has some kind of rap sheet. He’s like Nicholas Hoult with a less symmetrical head and worse taste in pants.
The main event starts when Christine walks into the party and Heather tells her all of the ladies would like a word. “I’m so good,†Christine says. Mary said earlier in the season that Christine’s actions and words don’t match, and this is a perfect example. She keeps saying she wants to get along with the women and move past things, but she won’t have the conversation that will get her there. Instead, Heather storms off with Tarek and nothing gets done.
Christine says she won’t talk to the group, only to the women individually. “When I walk in and those girls don’t even pretend to say hi, that’s horrible,†she says. “I would never do that.†Ha. No. Instead, she’d pretend to be nice and say hi and then scream at them a minute later and talk shit about them right to their faces. So that’s what she wants: people being fake to her so that she can then yell at them for being fake. Christine really is the last of the Catholic martyrs.
Emma, Chrishell, and Mary stroll over to talk to Christine, who literally won’t even face them. “My baby is home sick and I’m here for this. You guys are monsters,†she says. Seriously? This same baby you kept leaving at home weeks after its birth to film scenes for your reality TV show? Later Mary says that she wants the old Christine back. Does she mean pre-show Christine? Is she saying that the show has really changed who she is, or did it just exacerbate her various and sundry psychoses that were manifesting previously? Is this all … a show thing?
Finally, Mary and her giant horse mane of a phonytail (that’s a fake ponytail, y’all) decide to meet Christine on her own terms and talk to her. The whole conversation needs to be seen to be believed. Christine tries to prove that she really was engaged to this guy that we’ve never seen in front of her husband, who she said it was disrespectful to talk about it in front of just the last episode. She uses dates and apartments, and she and Mary go back and forth, and it’s like Siri glitching trying to give you directions to two places at once.
Mary says what she wants, which is for Christine to own what she did, apologize, and not do it again. Christine says, “I don’t want to talk about these things.†Of course she doesn’t. A criminal wants to visit the scene of the crime, not read her own confession in court. I wouldn’t want to list the things I did wrong either. Christine says what she wants: to rekindle her love with Mary without addressing any of the problems that led them to fall out in the first place. That’s sort of like trying to lose weight without going on a diet, but what would Christine know about that? She’s too busy eating “pounds†of “Betty Crocker†“frosting†right out “of the jar.â€
Eventually, Mary says that she can’t do this anymore, and Christine leaves with no allies left and her future in question, and without ever uttering the name of this man who she brought up to start this whole drama in the first place. In Jason’s backyard, overlooking one of the many canyons, Mary holds her tequila and soda and looks out across the crowd. All of these women in their impossible dresses and their ever-sinking heels. All of these stars twinkling in the sky like promises unfulfilled. All of these buildings in the far-off glimmer, phasing in and out of reality, somehow shifting with each blinking light but somehow staying anchored, staying stationary. Mary has a bit of vertigo, and instead of looking out, she looks down, through the scrabbled brush of the canyon down through the parched dirt, through the roots of the grasses and shrubs through the corpses of so many forgotten animals, their bones slowly decaying and turning into something else — something great.