I am so glad that Molly O’Connell is on this show. Yeah, she hasn’t done much, but she’s up here on our television screens talking about how she can’t hit the high notes on her tuba — sorry, euphonium — because she has too much lip filler now. I love this weird-ass, geeky girl with all my heart, and I pray that they give her something to do so she doesn’t leave. Of all the reality shows I’ve consumed over a lifetime spent mostly consuming reality television shows (porn counts as reality, right?), never have I once seen one that hinged on a tuba solo with a community orchestra. Even Molly knows it’s stupid, saying, “This is so lame, I’m crying over tuba,” but yes, please cry over tuba! Give us something else to believe in. Show us the healing power of music. Feed us, oh great Tuba Goddess.
Sadly, the star of this episode was not Molly, her euphonium, or even her lips. The star of this episode was JT, Donald Trump Jr. Jr. himself. It’s crazy that not one single person on the cast seems to like him, bar Venita (and it seems like that is no longer the case), but he’s managed to weasel himself into every storyline. As opposed to Molly, who is a lovable nerd on her own, he’s a risible dork who is somehow central. Is this man some kind of reality television genius and we don’t even know it yet?
The first storyline he inserts himself into is the ongoing feud between Austen and Craig. He shows up to go fishing with Craig and Shep and they find out that the captain of the boat is ironically named Austin [sic]. JT doesn’t even like fishing, but he’s doing it to hang out with the boys. They teach him how to bait a hook as both Shep and Craig laugh at him and wonder why no one ever taught him to fish. I grew up on the east coast and no one taught me to fish either. Some families just aren’t fishing families, guys, that doesn’t make us weird. I think that makes you weird.
Anyway, JT catches a big ol’ fish, the guys take a picture with it, and you just know that JT immediately uploaded that to his Hinge profile. When Austen sees the photo he thinks it’s a big middle finger from the guys aimed straight at him, and maybe it is. I don’t know. I am of two minds about this, and it would take me just a nudge to go in either direction. It’s like choosing between cake and pie. Maybe Austen should get over his JT bullshit, and they should just try to get along for the show’s sake and for Austen to try to repair his friendship with Craig while in a group setting. But then the other part of me is pissed at Craig and Shep for hanging out with this loser that no one likes for the sake of the show and not backing their boy Austen. Let’s just do a coin flip and see where it lands today.
As much as Craig and Shep enjoy their fishing trip with JT, he ruins all that goodwill with the way he behaves at the afterparty for Molly’s tuba solo that he throws at his event space. As everyone arrives and Whitney immediately breaks off the door of the minifridge, JT and Taylor take a moment to catch up in the kitchen. JT says he knows a lot about the relationship between Salley and Taylor’s current boyfriend, Gaston. “Fling!” Taylor shouts back, as she’s been conditioned to do any time anyone refers to what happened between them as anything more than that. JT tells her it was more than that, that it was months-long and Taylor doesn’t know the truth. He also says that Gaston was cheating on his previous girlfriend, who is a friend of JT’s, with Salley. I find that story hard to believe. Oh, the Gaston part totally rings true, but JT has …friends? Sorry. Don’t buy it.
Taylor immediately storms out of the kitchen and says she’s not going to be there for people trashing her boyfriend and says that JT is being “diabolical” and pulling this information “out of his asshole.” Taylor also accuses Salley, who is sitting innocently on the couch not talking about Gaston, of doing this too, and Salley is giving full NeNe Leakes “Now why am I in it?”. But Taylor can’t make these assessments about what JT knows and why it may be wrong because she didn’t even bother to get JT’s information. She didn’t hear the full story, and she certainly isn’t going to listen to either of these two Disney villains talk about her boyfriend.
I hate to say this about reality show rumors, but where there’s smoke, there’s fire. JT’s friend got cheated on by Gaston. Salley, an unreliable narrator at best, says her time dating Gaston overlapped with Taylor’s. And then there is Shep saying there are all sorts of people around town who don’t have nice things to say about Gaston and his track record with women. Couple that with his not wanting to be on camera in a group setting and I think that Gaston is very afraid about the things that might come out about him on television. Sing along with me!! “No one has arms like Gaston, no one harms like Gaston, no one gets all up in Southern Charms like Gaston. Oh, what a guy, that Gaston.”
After Taylor leaves, JT says that Salley was the other woman and had a “full-blown affair” with Gaston when he was dating JT’s (imaginary) friend. Salley says that is not true. She says she met him in a bar, made out, and then went to the car and “sucked his dick a little bit.” First of all, that sounds like a half-blown affair to me. Secondly, Rodrigo asks, “How do you suck his dick a little bit?” Oh, he knows. You just put it in your mouth for a few seconds to test it out and don’t take it to completion. If Rodrigo doesn’t understand I will happily demonstrate, though most of my affairs end up being, ahem, full-blown.
Salley says she didn’t know about the girlfriend during her parking lot BJ, but when she found out she kept with him because she was hooked. Gaston then broke up with his girlfriend, Salley introduced him to her dying grandmother, and he broke up with her after he met Taylor. No matter how you slice it, this guy sounds like bad news, and yes, someone needed to tell Taylor.
However, this does not seem like the time, place, occasion, person, fiscal quarter, awards season, or house of the moon for anyone to be talking to Taylor about this stuff. That is exactly Craig’s point. He says that JT keeps taking things that aren’t his business and getting in the middle of it when he has no reason to. Craig also thinks this makes him look bad for going fishing with JT, but there is nothing that is going to make you look good about spending time with JT.
JT’s defense is that he is sharing the truth. He is telling his friend something difficult to hear and, even if it hurts her, it’s better that it be said. He says this is like keeping a friend from getting in a car crash or getting them off heroin. He’s right to some degree, but Shep makes an excellent point: there are lots of ways to tell someone this kind of news without shoving them into it, as Venita threw herself into that pool in the last episode. JT could have told her the truth, but he needed to wrap it up in pretty little bows so that Taylor could feel safe. He needed to tell her this on her own, have all the receipts backed up, and have his case fully made so that she could take this information on. Now she doesn’t think that Gaston is a jerk, she thinks this guy who was in love with her all of last season is taking digs at her boyfriend. This is only going to drive them closer together.
As everyone is telling JT that his delivery sucks, he runs out the door, and Venita chases him down. He says that people are telling him, “Don’t tell people the truth.” No, that’s not what they’re saying. They’re saying (cue Jack Nicholson voice), “She can’t handle the truth!” That’s the thing about JT, he thinks that the truth is the ultimate marker of success. Has he never heard of Cassandra, the Trojan who was cursed to see the future but no one would believe her? That is JT, and just as much as the Trojans hated old Cassie, the SC crew equally hates JT. The truth will not set anyone free, the truth will not make a difference. Haven’t we learned that in the past decade? The truth is malleable, it’s bullshitty, it can be made to say anything certain people want it to say, or it can be ignored completely. The truth is a sham, the truth is a lie, the truth is nothing but annoying to most people and those who continue to stand for the truth and only the truth, much like JT, will forever stand alone.