Loyal readers know that my series-long obsession is the cardboard boxes that are always piled next to the door. (What are those boxes that have been sitting there for days? Guys, it’s Saturday. Take in the mail!) That said, I have a new obsession with whatever is happening in West and Jesse Solomon’s Always Both Names Bathroom. Last episode, we had West peering at Jesse while he was pooping. This time, after the explosive dinner in the backyard, we see West hopping in the shower and Jesse going in there to talk about it. Okay, I get it; some guys are used to being in locker rooms, used to seeing each other naked. Fine. Sure. But there’s something else about your friend coming into the bathroom while you’re mid-shower to have a conversation. It’s insane. These two might as well be a go-kart track that is about to get shut down because they have no boundaries whatsoever.
I shouldn’t say that, though, because West displayed some great boundaries in this episode. On Friday night, only a few people in the house were going out, but West snuck out to hang out with a friend before they could leave the house. (You couldn’t text Danielle from the car to tell her you bailed? Come on!) He says he’s going to hang with a dude, and when he arrives back home at 7 a.m. in an Uber that surely smells of ball sweat and Kiss FM, he says that he slept on a couch at a friend’s house alone. These are all little white lies so that Ciara feels a bit more comfortable in the house. West can still have a good time and go out, but he doesn’t need to share stories and make life uncomfortable. Good for West. Smart move.
I’m not sure how that goes for Imrul, though. On his first night in the house, he goes out with Carl and Danielle, wearing two of the worst outfits that have ever happened on Long Island. That is saying a lot because I remember Princesses: Long Island. He brings home a girl from the club to shag her in the house with a cowboy hat he got at Burning Man over the camera in his room. What is her name? It’s Janet, Ms. I Didn’t Sign a Release So You Can’t Show My Face if you’re nasty.
Don’t get me wrong, if I were a politician, I would run on a Sluts Rights platform. I believe in ho-ing it up one side of the street and down the other. I also love that Imrul says he’s not good at relationships and instead has entanglements with different women who all know about each other. Ethical non-monogamy and its far chattier sister polyamory are great, but there’s something about his urge to prove that he is a certified stud that seems a bit performative. He already missed the first weekend to go to a sex party, now he has to bring a girl home the first night? This is a house that is full of strangers, and it seems like the only thing Imrul wants them, and by extension, the public, to know about him is that he has more pussy than the Tiger King documentary.
Who else is boning in the house that I can talk about? Oh, Jesse Solomon! He is quite funny when staying home with Lexi, and he marvels at how last summer, the only time he stayed home was when he thought he had cancer. “But this summer is different,” he tells us. “There’s a pregnant lady here.” He tells the girls that he’s worried about Lexi being jealous and that he doesn’t want to get too entangled in a relationship and have it blow up the house like he saw happen to his shit, shower, and shave buddy, West. It seems destined to head that way. You could see Lexi bristle when the other ladies brought up Jesse’s ex-hook-ups.
I am really getting red flags from Lexi, though. Why? She and Jesse went out to the club until 2 a.m. with her parents. That is just bonkers. I don’t trust anyone who describes either or both of their parents as their “best friends.” Your parents should not be your friends; they should be your parents even when you’re well into adulthood. Then she says that her mom and her sister work with her and that they always come to New York and stay with her. This is way too close for comfort. And just what kind of work do they do with her? I have so many questions, and it all seems a little too much like an ’80s sitcom with a killer theme song. But what do I know? They’re Canadian. They do things differently up there in the 51st state. Haha. Just kidding. I don’t think Canada should be the 51st state. Obviously, that’s such a dumb plan. Clearly, we should give Québec back to the French, make eastern Canada the 51st state, then everything west of Montreal is now Alaska. That’s just as plain as the lip liner on Lexi’s face.
Okay, so we did all the relationships; we got to Lexi’s parents. What else? What else? Oh! Lindsay had a gender-reveal scavenger hunt, and it was really dumb because everyone just ended up at the big box out back at the same time, so why did we even need the scavenger part of it? Lindsay’s having a girl. We knew that because she is currently a human that exists on the planet and her name is Gemma Brit Kuffe. Sadly, it is not Dale. I want a whole generation of Dales. Every baby girl for the next year should be a Dale. That is the tribute Tinsley Mortimer’s mother deserves. During the hunt, everyone is concerned about Carl and his well-being, but he and Lindsay are doing shockingly well so far. She even got him “non-alc” (ugh!) Champagne.
What happened after the gender reveal? Do I need to talk about it now? Can I no long procrastinate talking about how my imaginary husband, Kyle McGille Cooke, was wrong this episode? Well, it turned out not as wrong as I imagined, but it still wasn’t great. The fight between him and Paige is a pretty good reality-TV fight because they’re both right and wrong, though Kyle is more wrong than Paige.
The issue is that Kyle ragedly texted Paige about her boyfriend, Craig, and her best friend, Hannah, but the fight quickly got deeper and more complicated than that. It starts when Paige expresses her dissatisfaction with Kyle at Lindsay’s all-pink gender-is-a-construct reveal party. Kyle says, “I see you’re upset. About?” Um, Kyle. You know! You already talked to Carl about it. You know what you did, that Paige will be pissed, and, given your history with your wife’s friends, that you shouldn’t have done it at all.
As the fight gets heated, we learn some more details that seem to exonerate Kyle. Hannah said on a podcast that Kyle is the reason she got fired from this show, but we see in just the one teeny-tiny little clip of her that she was so bippity-boppity-boo the last season that she got canned on her own merits. While Paige is correct that Hannah and Kyle will always have their own version of events, it seems like Kyle is mostly right, which Amanda wants Paige to admit. Amanda also says people were mad at Loverboy because of what happened with Hannah, but I have a feeling this didn’t really “hurt the business.” This was probably a bunch of people talking shit on social media, and if you look at the sales of Loverboy, they probably weren’t affected at all.
The details about why he’s mad at Craig for investing in another hard seltzer company (which has so offended Kyle that he wants its name blurred like it’s Imrul’s date’s face) had been fuzzy until now, but I see why Kyle is mad. Paige says Craig told Kyle he was going to invest, then he did it. Kyle has a different story. He thought Craig had told him about an offer he was considering, and Kyle had asked for some time to put together a proposal to invest in Loverboy, something he says anyone in the house can do if they have $25,000. That’s a lot of money. That’s like five sponsored posts! Kyle alleges that when Craig told him it was a done deal, he wished Craig had been more honest. Kyle then calls Craig a liar, which is harsh, but we have all watched Southern Charm. It is demonstrably true that Craig has a loose relationship with the truth and isn’t always good at expressing his intentions. I have to say I take Kyle’s side on this one, too.
Still, Kyle should not be rage-texting Paige about any of it. First of all, none of us should be rage texting. Secondly, Kyle specifically should not be rage-texting Paige because he knows that he has already fucked up his wife’s relationships with her friends by flying off the handle, so maybe he should knock it off entirely. Kyle says he wants to know where Paige stands on these issues, but it doesn’t matter. She is not at all a part of this, and if Kyle wanted to preserve his relationship with his wife and his peace in the house, he would let Paige stay the fuck out of it where she belongs.
To Paige’s credit, she keeps most of her criticism of Kyle to how he’s treating her and doesn’t aggressively advocate for either her boyfriend or her bestie. (Maybe Paige knows they’re wrong too?) She does call Kyle two-faced after he lodges the same complaint against her, but she is totally right that Kyle was rage-texting her and then being like, “Why are you mad?” at the same time.
Paige tells us what she’s really upset about. She says, “Kyle is going to blow up his relationship with Craig, then Amanda and I will have to pick up the pieces.” She’s correct because that is what happened with Hannah and Amanda, and it will happen again because Kyle can’t get his emotions under control. Paige isn’t mad about the texts; she’s mad that he put her relationship with Amanda in jeopardy. I felt bad for Paige when she said she couldn’t even have a bachelorette party because she couldn’t invite Hannah and Amanda. Paige’s other concern, which she expresses to the girls in her room, is that if Kyle and Craig never talk again, then she can’t be in the house. This is not only affecting all of their relationships, it’s now affecting Paige’s job, and you know that she is a boss bitch who likes to make her own money. Kyle, of all people, should know better than to fuck with someone else’s hustle.
The one I feel horribly for in all this is Amanda, who continues to be the emotional center of the show. She goes to Paige, and they have a crying hug. They say they don’t want to fight with each other, and it’s a very sweet moment. Amanda can see her friendship slipping away, just as she knows there is nothing she can do about Kyle when he’s in a rage. She just lets him spin out with Carl skulking nearby on cleanup duty.
In the morning, she tries to explain her position to Kyle, but he keeps interrupting her. Finally, she says, “You don’t need to have everyone know where you’re coming from all the time.” Exactly! I love Kyle like Imrul loves vibrating cock rings, but this is exactly the problem. Instead of explaining himself all the time, why not ask about other people? Why tell Amanda how he feels when he can ask how she feels? Why come after Paige when you can ask her how she feels about all of this (and then apologize for raging at her)? It’s always about Kyle and his feelings, and if he spent just a fraction of the energy managing everyone else’s emotions that he is using on his own, he might be better off with the whole house. We leave the episode at the beach, where he pulls Paige for a chat, but I have a feeling that Kyle is going to keep talking; one more sound on the beach with the seagulls cawing, the Frisbee throwers screaming, the lifeguards whistling, and the surf, the never-ending surf, pleading with him, relentlessly, to “shhhh … shhhh … shhhh … shhhh.”