Though it is starkly the middle of the winter, I am finally back in my happy place. No, my happy place is not a summer in the Hamptons; it is my imaginary husband, Kyle McGill Cooke, talking about taking fingers up the butt on national television. (Isn’t all television national these days? Is it even television if we all just watch it on our computer screens?) Kyle and his group of summertime yahoos are back in their happy place, living in the cardboard Burj Dubai of Amazon boxes littering their front yard as they arrive at the beach.
There are lots of changes in the house. Not only is there new sod and new zoning regulations so that everyone can have their own rooms again rather than snuggling together like Charlie’s grandparents in Willy Wonka, but there are also some new people. Kyle picks up West Conrad Wilson, a man with a name so white it both plays pickleball and uses “scrapbook†as a verb on their way to the beach. West is just my type of guy, the kind of muscular-but-not-ripped guy who looks like he would fuck you into next Tuesday and then eat Domino’s with you in bed and not even care if you stained the sheets — either with pizza or something else. Also a mustache. Where’s the drool emoji when I need it?
The other newcomer is Jesse Solomon (always both names!), who arrives at the house a day late after West has already cooked dinner, wooed Ciara, wowed the crowd, and climbed into bed with the entire house, making every single cast member an honorary Bed Sore sister. Jesse Solomon is six-feet-five, which makes him taller than Carl. He shows up with a giant smile and looks like a Barry’s Bootcamp instructor (derogatory). He’s all gristle and smarm, and I have taken an immediate dislike of him because I may possibly be in love with West.
The women of the house do a perfect job explaining the two guys. When they have a moment alone together at the Fourth of July party, Amanda says, “West fucks. Jesse humps. West knows where your clit is and Jesse’s on your left lip being like, ‘Is this it?’†Paige then joins in with, “Jesse asks, ‘Did you come?’ and West knows that you did.â€
That’s exactly it; that’s the difference. As soon as West gets in the house, this sports journalist takes the reporter’s favorite tactic: asking questions. I do the same thing in a new situation full of strangers; I just start interviewing, and the more queries, the better; it doesn’t matter how mundane. People love that. It makes them think that you’re nice and you really care, when you’re just trying to get over the awkwardness by directing it in the opposite direction. After helping him cook dinner, Ciara says that he’s inquisitive, and some guys in New York take women on dates and just talk about themselves. See, this is why West fucks.
I think it might have to do with West being raised by a cattle-rancher dad (that Ciara wants to marry, apparently) and a mother who is an OB/GYN who would talk about vaginal tears at dinner. West is a dude. He loves sports, played football in college, and definitely knows how to save a horse and ride a cowboy, I mean girl. (West wants to ride cowgirls no matter how much I wish it otherwise.) He knows how to be tough and bro down, but he’s also cool hanging out with an intelligent, empowered woman and wants her to thrive equally. I’m not going to say that my imaginary husband Kyle has anything to worry about, but he is surely facing some stiff (ahem) competition this summer.
I also love that West has been in the house for two days and has already done more work than Paige or Ciara have done in their entire tenures. He gets in the kitchen to make dinner and asks Ciara where a strainer might be. “Honestly, who’s to say?†Ciara says. Sister, you have spent several years in this house; you don’t even have a vague notion where the strainer would be? When West is done cooking, he teases Paige, asking her if she is going to do the dishes before or after they go out. She responds, “I haven’t done a dish since ’08,†which is a year so specific you can tell the trauma of washing up has tattooed the date in her mind.
Why can’t all men be like West? Why do some of them have to be like Craig Conover, Paige’s long-distance boyfriend, whom she treats like a puppy that can talk? (What is Craig if not a puppy that can talk?) Paige tells us that in Italy, Craig had to Google “rigatoni.†Seriously? If you’re eating pasta in Italy, don’t even worry about the shape. I promise you it is going to be good.
Later, she has a FaceTime with Craig, and he tells her that he is going to buy a racehorse. “No, you’re not,†Paige says, thinking that if they get married, she’s going to have another 50 years of fielding phone calls like this. “This is the dumbest decision you ever told me. It’s dumber than the soccer team, it’s dumber than the restaurant. You’re going to lose all of your money, and I’m not marrying a broke man.†Perfect advice. Maybe you can get Craig to embroider it on a pillow.
After West’s dinner — where he entertained Ciara the whole time, much to everyone’s amazement, because even standing in the kitchen is the closest she’s ever come to household chores — everyone heads to the carnival, which was very sweet and wholesome. Oh, and it’s where we meet the third new guy in the house. His name is Mon, and he is a five-foot-tall stuffed banana dressed as a Rastafarian that Kyle won in some kind of carnival game. Kyle loves this thing so much that he took it on the Ferris wheel with him and made Amanda share the bed with him that night. In the morning, he was still there, lying in the canyon between the two like he had just joined a throuple. I have never wanted to be a plush banana so bad in my life.
Kyle and Amanda’s story line this season is that Kyle thinks they aren’t operating as a “team.†He says he wants to spend more time with Amanda, but she says it’s his own fault. He works so much that she is always begging to hang with him. When he wouldn’t make time for her, she started hanging by herself, and now she’s happy when he’s not around. She says that he whines about missing her but then spends more time at the carnival courting Mon than her.
Later, at the party, Kyle and Paige sit down and have a chat about his relationship with Amanda, and Kyle says that he is working so hard to get them financially stable for their future, for a house, for kids. Okay, I see that, but I feel like this is just how Kyle freaked out about marriage. He put it off for so many years waiting to be ready, but now that they’re hitched, he loves it. I think the same is true with the kids; they just need to pull the trigger because there is never going to be a convenient time.
The bigger issue is one that Paige points out, that what Kyle is upset about isn’t Amanda’s behavior so much as her personality. Kyle is a workaholic, always has been, always will be. Amanda, well, is a Bed Sore Sister. She would rather work less and have a bit less financial comfort and stability, and Kyle will never understand that. If they had separate jobs, they would struggle with this, but it wouldn’t be so bad because Kyle would have no idea what Amanda is or isn’t doing with her time at the office. I think the big problem here isn’t that they don’t spend enough time together; I think it’s the opposite, that they spend too much time together, but all of that time is spent working.
As for everyone else in the house, they didn’t do much. After losing her boyfriend, Robert, last summer and finishing her fling with Alex from Winter House, Danielle is doing her best Samantha Jones in the Hamptons impersonation. No, I don’t mean she’s throwing a watermelon through a window; I mean she’s sleeping with everyone she wants. Gabby didn’t appear that much other than to organize what appears to be a halfway decent party after last year’s disaster.
What was really missing from the episode were Lindsay and Carl (a.k.a. Larl), who didn’t attend the weekend because they were invited to the White House Fourth of July party. “Who gets invited to the White House?†Lindsay asks. “Maybe Ariana.†Seriously, sister? You’re going to compare yourself to the star of what is now the most-watched show on Bravo who has been on the cover of women’s magazines and Dancing With the Stars? Please. Thankfully, Carl was there to say, “We’re Z-list compared to Ariana.†At least one person in this relationship gets their position in the world.
Paige and Ciara are talking about the weekend, and Paige says it has been nonconfrontational and that no one has been passive-aggressive. Hmm. I wonder what’s different? I also loved when Paige said that her stance on Lindsay hasn’t changed since her first summer in the house. She is going to try to be nice to her, and then Lindsay is going to do something to her that will make her lose her mind. Thank Gosh and Golly for this because without it we wouldn’t have a show.
Just before the party, Lindsay FaceTimes Gabby, her only friend in the house, since she and Danielle are “being civil†in reality parlance. “Let me just say, everyone is having a good time,†Gabby tells Larl. “We know that you’re missing, but the vibes are really good. Lindsay, when I tell you it feels like a totally different house, it’s totally different.†Um, this is not what Lindsay wants to hear. Have you ever met this woman? What Lindsay wants to hear is, “OMG, it’s terrible without you here, no one is fun, and everyone is talking so much shit about you that you’re going to get to yell at everyone next weekend.†That’s what Lindsay wants to hear. She doesn’t want parties; she doesn’t want sunshine; Lindsay wants to be the black hole that sucks everything inside of her, including Carl, including the Hamptons, including every GIF of Kyle saying, “Summer should be fun,†because the Larl breakup, well, it’s not going to be fun, but we are going to love it.