I wake up every day and thank the Catholic Jesus that he made me gayer than Megan Thee Stallion in a “Thank You for Being a Friend†T-shirt, but I said an extra-special thanks after this wonderful episode of Summer House in which everyone is either trying to get laid or having relationship drama. I am even happier to be a gay man because there is something I fundamentally don’t understand about women. Not all women. I totally get Lindsay walking up to hot dudes and just randomly kissing them and walking away. I totally get Mya wanting to tease all the cute boys at the party as her way of flirting and it totally going awry. I also totally get Ciara wanting to hop up on the kitchen table and dance like she’s doing a recap of the finale of Finding Magic Mike. What I don’t get is some of these ladies in relationships.
First up is Kyle and Amanda, who are in the same place we left them at the end of the previous episode. The morning after their big fight, they’re not even talking, and Kyle goes off with Carl and someone else to a brewery while Amanda stays home to burp and fart on the sofa with Paige, who thankfully identified herself as a Willy Wonka grandparent who never gets out of bed because if she didn’t, I was going to have to do it for her. Amanda says it’s been four years since Kyle cheated on her, and she doesn’t understand why he still can’t change his drinking. While she is saying this, Paige is playing a game of Taboo where she has to get Amanda to guess, “Call off the wedding†without saying “You should call off the wedding.â€
Later in the episode, Amanda continues to not talk to Kyle, and then when he tries to apologize and find out what is wrong, she says, “Do you realize we have a problem? I don’t want to talk about it this weekend.†Kyle, this is a trap. If you take one step further, you will be suspended from a tree in a rope net like Yogi Bear trying to steal a picnic basket. Do not go there. Do not venture into that territory. It is lethal.
Here’s what I don’t understand: Kyle is trying to apologize, talk about it, somehow make things better between them, and Amanda is stewing in her anger, holding onto it, and using it to torture Kyle. She wants to make him feel as bad as she does without acknowledging any of her own bad behavior. Why not just address it? It’s like your boss emailing on Friday afternoon that you need to talk Monday and just letting your taint tingle for the entire weekend waiting to find out what you need to talk about and whether it’s good or bad.
Also, after four years, Kyle has spent longer in their relationship not cheating on her than he ever did cheating on her. When is she ever going to trust Kyle again? He has done everything he could to make her feel better about his drinking by not making out with another girl; when is Amanda just going to let it go? At some point, when she realizes the behavior is not going to change, the only thing that can change is her reaction to it. She either needs to let Kyle have his turnups and trust him not to cheat or get the hell out of there. He is not going to change. No one’s partner is ever going to change. They may improve in some areas or get worse in others, but fundamentally, this is who he is. Amanda needs to stop hoping for a better Kyle because he is not going to suddenly appear with a can of Loverboy in one hand and a mullet wig in the other.
Meanwhile, Kyle is out in the car crying to Danielle (and bless us for having someone with the patience of Saint Danielle), saying that he’s doing everything he can to save his relationship and that Amanda just blames all of their problems on him. He’s sick of her holding the cheating over his head. He’s not wrong. I haven’t seen her apologize for breaking his things in the bathroom and throwing his luggage on the front porch. At least he’s trying to talk it out while she’s just trying to avoid responsibility.
Danielle does not get out of this unscathed, however. Her boyfriend, Robert, shows up just for the Fourth of July, and as soon as he gets out of the car, everyone is like, “Hey Robert, get your chef’s hat on and start cooking for us.†He’s been doing that all week. Give him a break. It’s not like Paige shows up and everyone is like, “Hey, great to see you. Could you influence for us on your days off?†Then Danielle and Robert get into a little fight in which she says she wants him around more or at least wants to know his schedule. He’s being very direct with her, saying he doesn’t know his schedule and his job is currently very demanding. I think he’s doing a very good job managing her expectations and being realistic with her, and she’s still upset. Would she rather he say, “Yeah, I’m going to be around a lot more,†and then when he’s not, start yelling about how many sandwiches he’s made for her?
I also don’t get Paige and Andrea. He is clearly pining for her more than he initially let on during Winter House. He even drunkenly tells her at the pool party that he loved the “memories†they made in Vermont. (In Italian, the words for sex and memory are the same.) He is open to more, but he wants Paige to be happy. Meanwhile, she’s telling the girls it’s not her problem if Craig shows up and they get all lovey-dovey and Andrea sees it. You would think she would care enough about him as a friend and a person not to shove her relationship with Craig in his gorgeous and perfectly symmetrical pasta hole. Also why wouldn’t she want to sleep on a hard surface like Andrea’s abs over the waterbed that is Craig’s midsection? I have no clue. Girls! I tell ya!
Lindsay, though a gaping maw of brokenness, continues to be my favorite girl. She’s in the car talking to Carl and Kyle about how she has not only “eaten another girl’s box†she has also had her box eaten, and she loves it. Does that mean Lindsay is Bi? Does that mean she is also part of the LGBTQIA+ rainbow? There is no one on Earth I would rather have on my Pride float than Pedro Pascal, but Lindsay Hubbard is a very, very close second. In last week’s recap, I said it had been six months since her miscarriage, but I heard her wrong. It’s actually only been six weeks, and that she manages to have so much fun at the gang’s Fourth of July party is an absolute miracle.
As for the boys, I’m not really loving our new friend Alex. I feel like they should give him the Armie Hammer in the Death on the Nile trailer treatment and just totally erase him in post. The most interesting thing about him is that as a kid, he had to take abacus. What? Where do you even find an abacus instructor? Is there like a local abacus club? Alex is giving us nothing other than a crazy diet, no sleeves, and a body I would sell my soul in this and all the other lives to have for like seven hours. At the party, Alex is talking to a girl, and when she says she likes a “Bear Grylls type,†he just turns around, flashes deuces, and IRL ghosts her like he’s one of the Paul brothers. Please tell me he then turned around and continued their conversation. Please tell me he did that as a little gag to make her laugh. Please tell me he did not disrespect a woman like that right to our faces.
Speaking of disrespecting women, the tensest scene of the pool party isn’t Carl and Ciara shamelessly flirting and Ciara telling Mya she knows Carl has a “huge thing.†No, that is not tense at all. If I have faith in anything in this world, it is that Carl Radke has a massive hog. I have no reason to know this, but I feel it all the way down to my short and curlies. No, the tensest thing is when Andrea pushes a girl in a red bikini into the pool while she is holding her phone and her pink one-piece friend comes back, bends over Andrea, who is still in the phone, and slaps him with such force it would send Jeff Bezos’s penis-shaped rocket into space. Then she tries to stomp on his hand and says, “Fuck you. You’re an asshole.â€
We see Red Bikini and Pink One-Piece standing in the kitchen, ordering their Uber, plotting their escape, and wondering what kind of dude just throws a girl in the pool when she’s holding her phone. Amen, sisters, but attacking the guy isn’t the right answer either. Of course, Paige is ready to get into a fight with another girl and swizzle’s her gold-lamé-coated ass inside to tell them they should leave immediately. I would have done the exact same thing but probably would have shouted some unkind words after them. Hmmm, maybe I do understand women after all.