This was an episode all about awkward conversations. Well, a bunch of awkward conversations and one great one, which was when Madison and Patricia sat in a canopy bed drinking Champagne from coupes, eating caviar on chips with mother-of-pearl spoons, and annoying the hell out of the new butler with a bell that tinkles more than a toddler who just drank a gallon of SunnyD.
Before we can get to the good one, we have to start with the first of the bad ones, and that is when Madison meets Craig to talk about JT, Austen, and this mess that we’re all in called reality television. Madison is upset that Craig tried to bring JT back into the group after he talked shit about her and Austen. After his fight after Molly’s tuba concert, Craig is mad that he did too. Then Madison basically tells him to give Austen another chance, that he’s really hurt that Craig isn’t around, and that they can work this out. Craig says that Austen is taking his friendship for granted. What? Are we sure that’s not the other way around? Craig tells Austen that he’ll only hang out with him on his terms, wants to kick him off their podcast, doesn’t want to be his drinking buddy anymore, and thinks Austen will still be his friend at the end of it. Please. All Austen ever said was that he wanted to hang out with Craig more, and this is the response he gets? I have taken lots of things (drugs, liberties, the piss, as the English say), but I have never seen granted taken as hardcore as it is taken here.
Next up is the awkward conversation that Molly has with Salley, her hard nipples, and a crop top. Okay, it wasn’t so much awkward as each of the women talking about what medical procedures they’d had done. They’ve both had Botox and chin filler, but Salley also got breast implants to please her former fiancé who cheated on her anyway and now she wants them taken out. Is she sure this is a good idea? She might not be able to go braless in a crop top afterward and, well, that would be a shame. Rodrigo, the other hot gays they added this season, and I were all turned on by what we see here. It would be a shame if that all went away.
But I think Molly takes the cake. Not only did she get the fat sucked out of her ankles, which she thought were too fat, and injected into her boobs, but she also had her gums cut, which, what? Is that even a thing? How do they do that? Is it painful? Do they grow back like Meredith Mark’s unsinkable breasts? Why would you do this to yourself? And do I need my gums cut? Quick. Someone check my gums.
This conversation has no point other than to continue setting Molly up to be a love match for Shep, who doesn’t seem at all interested. That brings us to our next awkward conversation, which is between Austen and Shep, who is having some problems with his new girlfriend, Sienna. Shep is angry that she got back from a trip and didn’t text him. When she responded to his “Where are you?” text by saying she was at home in the Bahamas, he replied, “I miss talking to you because I love you and I’m thinking about plans for our future,” or something like that. This is the way that girls have probably been texting Shep for years as he ignores them and breadcrumbs them on, only to dump them as soon as some hotter co-ed enters the bar. It’s such wonderful irony that Shep is now getting a taste of his own medicine, and he’s gagging on it.
She eventually says she was going through some stuff and needed some space, which is the kind of bullshitty boy answer that Shep has saved on his iPhone so he can just copy and paste it twice a month to different girls. But she’s throwing it back at him and I love it. Torture this man via iMessages until the next Summer Olympics. He’s earned it. Shep asks Austen’s advice and Austen reminds him that she is a 26-year-old woman that he’s only hung out with a handful of times. He says to chill out a bit, let her miss him, and she’ll come back. Though Shep thinks Craig gives better relationship advice than Austen (really?), I agree with Austen on this point. If Shep gives her a bit of space and she comes back to him, then she’s interested. If it fritters away, then, well, it fritters away, and Shep knows her intentions. Either way, give her the space she requests.
Speaking of her intentions, that’s when we finally get to the good conversation. Madison visits Miss Pat and tells her that she met Sienna at a party, and Sienna told her that her grandmother is the president of the Southern Charm fan club in the Bahamas, and that is why she went on a date with Shep. Exqueese me? Okay, that is not promising, but there is a world in which she was like, “I’ll go on a date with a reality star. It will be a lark. Let’s see what happens.” Then she actually likes the guy and Shep gets to live out his colonial fantasy of a bunch of Bahamian children in a nice little house on the beach.
Patricia drops the other Malibu-covered kitten heel. She says that Sienna had reached out to Whitney on Raya before she started dating Shep. Whitney said he wasn’t going to tell Shep and Patricia shouldn’t tell anyone either, but lounging in a four-poster bed two coupes of Champagne deep will make a gal’s lips a little loose in the best possible way. Now, it looks like she’s using these guys to get herself on a reality show. I’m not saying there’s anything against that, but that doesn’t seem to be the kind of relationship that Shep thinks they’re having, which isn’t a great sign.
Okay, back to awkward conversations. When Shep and Austen are having their lunch about Sienna, Austen gets a call from Craig, who wants to hang out. Austen seems practically giddy, like this is the friend he knows and they will repair things. Then, on the way to their hang, Craig picks up Shep so that he can be a mediator in his “amicable divorce” with Austen, where Craig is going to offer him $30,000 to $50,000 to butt out of their podcast forever. Ugh, this is just gross. Austen is trying to repair a friendship, and Craig is trying to extricate himself from a business deal and attempt to do it on the cheap.
When Craig walks into the restaurant to meet Austen with Shep in tow, you can see his face fall like Madison walking to her Uber after all of those coupes of Veuve at Miss Pat’s house. He thought this was a bro hang, just the two of them like the old days, but it is nothing of the sort. Craig wants to jump in and start talking about the podcast, and Austen is like, “Um, what about our friendship?”
This is a hard conversation because, well, Craig is just wrong the entire time. Craig says that Austen started this all by coming to Craig’s house and insulting him. Austen wasn’t trying to insult him, he was just trying to say that Craig no longer is making time to hang out with his friends and Austen was worried about him having a work-life balance. Then Craig goes back on the hard tack and says his life has changed and that Austen is “either going to be supportive or you’re going to fucking fuck off.” But that’s not the way support works. For a friend to want to support you, you need to support them back. Craig is not giving any reciprocation here. He is saying that if it’s not done his way, then it is not happening at all, and that is not a reasonable way to have any sort of lasting relationship.
Craig still thinks they want to hang out and booze with him all the time, but they tell him that’s not true. They just want to hang out and eat oysters in the middle of the day. They just want quality time with him. Craig mentions that they see each other recording the podcast and at the gym, but that’s work. They don’t want to be his co-workers; they want to be his friends, and he can’t seem to understand that. Shep — who was supposed to be there to support Craig but is now agreeing more with Austen — says they just need Craig to put in a little effort and they can build back up again. Exactly. These guys just want Craig to try. Even when he concedes that he should, he adds, “But my life isn’t going to look very much different than it is now.”
Here is Craig’s dilemma: He can have this life he has now filled with working, hanging out with Paige, gardening, and making more pillow content than even Mike Lindell thinks is a good idea, or he can have friends. That is his choice. It seems right now that he doesn’t want his friends at all, that he just wants to break up with both of them and retreat into his well-manicured bunker. But I wonder how long that is going to last. He’s going to pick up his head one day and want to have oysters at 3:30 p.m. on a Wednesday, but there will not be anyone there to slurp down those mucus-y bivalves with him. But there is a way for Craig to have both if he just wouldn’t be so stubborn.
Onto our next, and worst, conversation. Venita invites JT over because she has a crush on him and wants to take it to the next level. She makes an adorable branzino in her adorable kitchen with the adorable wallpaper and the adorable pink peppermill while her adorable dog Charles runs around her adorable feet. Then JT shows up, and no one wants to see him.
As they sit there eating, JT tells her that, yes, they have chemistry and attraction, but he says that he’s currently dating someone else so he can’t possibly date Venita. Wait, if Venita is one of his close friends, and she doesn’t know about this gal, how close can they be? JT needs to define this a bit more here. Is this a girl he has been seeing exclusively for three months? Is this some girl he met on Tinder and has been on four dates with? What? We need more info.
He says this new girl disqualifies them moving forward, and his logic is pretty sound. If he started dating Venita while she knew he was dating other girls, she’d always be worried he would dump her when someone better comes along. But this seems like a mess of his own devising. Why can’t he date two girls at once? I feel like these days, among young people in somewhat urban areas, that is widely accepted as long as everyone is playing by the rules of decency. If both of them know he’s dating around, why is that so bad? It only becomes bad if and when he’s breaking one of their trust. Yes, at some point, he’s going to choose, but why put Venita on ice unnecessarily? (Also, imagine you’re a prize like Venita, and you get rejected by JT of all people?) JT thinks he’s such a man of integrity — always playing by the rules, always telling the truth — but that rigidity is actually hurting all the people whose feelings he’s trying to save. Well, unless he’s just not as into Venita as he is letting on, that conversation would get even more awkward.