All right, I’m just going to come out and say it: Joint dog custody is not a thing. I know it is a thing in that plenty of people (especially gays) do it after a breakup, but it is a dumb thing. It’s a dog, not a human being. It’s going to love whichever of the couple is feeding it, loving it, and not erroneously returning it to Vanderpump Dogs like its name is Lucy Lucy Apple Juice. Give it a month, and it will hardly recognize the difference. But if you share, these people still have to see each other and have proxy battles about their old relationship over the dogs. I know it will be difficult, but one of the couples has to take that poison pill and just not see the dogs anymore. If you love the dog so much that you can’t live without it, then maybe make your relationship work? Or get a new dog. I don’t know.
Shared custody is already causing friction between Tom and Katie, who live in a land of delusion that their divorce will be so amicable that they’re still going to be sending each other good night texts and dirty pictures. Katie, who has no discernable job other than perfecting her Amy Winehouse eyeliner, is pissed because Schwartz keeps dropping the dogs off at her house when he’s supposed to take care of them. You get divorced (especially if you don’t have kids) to never see this person or deal with their stupid bullshit again. Are they going to wade back into this minefield over some dogs? Sorry, Katie needs to ovary up and tell Schwartz she’s keeping the dogs, which is easiest for everyone.
The situation with Raquel and James is less complicated. Raquel, who I have grown to love even though she will always be a scam Instagram account that’s trying to get you to invest in crypto, owned Graham, the dog, so it’s hers to do with as she pleases. She decided to set a boundary and not let James see the dog. Of course, she should. It’s her dog! James can move on with the new love of his life in six weeks or however long it was before he met Ally, but he can’t get over a dog just as fast? Come on.
Speaking of which, James does not seem at all over his relationship with Raquel. Naturally, this is a crazy situation. In regular life, if Tom and Katie divorced or James and Raquel broke up, they would never see each other again. They would never talk, they would not meet each other’s new partners, and it would just be deader than Pump on a Monday night. But because they’re on this show, they’re thrown into all sorts of circumstances where they need to talk again. Why add dogginess to this, which you have to continue doing off-camera?
James goes to lunch with Ally and is making fun of Peter, the last remaining full-blooded pirate in West Hollywood, and talks about Raquel. Dude, you don’t tell the new girlfriend about the old girlfriend. Why? Cause it looks like he’s still hung up on her. Even Ally thinks that James said he loves her too quickly. I mean, there are flags, and there is the color red, and when those two things collide, it’s time to run!
Meanwhile, Raquel is out on a date with Peter, and she mentions that she was in her last ever pageant because she’s 27, and Donald Trump told her she needs to hang up the Vaseline for her teeth. She also tells Peter that she’s still not over her breakup with James and that she is trying to figure out her life now that he’s not there to pay for everything. Wait, James was footing the bill for Raquel and all the Botox she got, so she can’t even cry properly until she reaches 30? Is James saving any of this money? He better be because Lisa is going to turn this tap off eventually, and he’s going to be fucked. Next, Raquel starts crying when she talks about her deep depression. Yes, Raquel can at least admit she’s not over her ex, but she has just as many flags, and they are just as red. I would tell Peter to run if this weren’t an entirely fake relationship.
Thankfully it is all wrapped up in a nice bow at the Daily Mail Party, an entirely fake event held for a reality television program, and I don’t even care about its unseriousness. I’m happy to see all our kids back where they belong: living in shitty apartments and going to parties like it’s their job because it is. For the past two seasons, everyone was just hanging out in soulless modern farmhouses in the Valley. We need our Pump-sters struggling, living in a studio, and unable to use their microwave and air conditioner simultaneously, or else the power goes out.
So, yes, the Daily Mail party. Lisa attends and gets an earful from Greg, Tom and Tom’s business partner in Schwartz & Sandy’s, who tells Lisa what she already knows: they are horrible businesspeople who couldn’t find their assholes with two hands, a flashlight, Google maps, and an Introduction to Proctology textbook. Lisa also hears that Peter and Raquel are dating. Lisa goes to the bar and tells Peter that it’s not 2012 anymore and he can’t sleep with the staff. Thank you! Finally! Did no one show Peter She Said? Maybe he should watch it in a salon when someone gives his ponytail the euthanasia it is pleading for.
While this is happening, Raquel is talking to Scheana Shay — who has been nothing but a wisp on the wind this season — and decides that Peter isn’t the one for her and she shouldn’t string them along anymore. She walks over, they end their relationship, they turn the page on their script, the director yells cut, and Lisa Vanderpump considers it another non-scripted triumph that she entirely orchestrated.
This is how Lisa uses her reality-TV powers for evil. She also used them for good, like when she had Lala over to her house to talk about her relationship with Randall. Just like Kyle Richards, Lisa is an expert at getting someone to spill everything fans want to know in an organic way and to ask all the questions viewers at home want to ask the person. We see this when she presses Lala about whether or not she knew what she was getting into with Randall.
I admit, last week I was on the side of Tom and Tom. How could Lala not know what was going on? He literally tried to cast her in something so that she would sleep with him. How didn’t she know he was running a casting couch? This dude even looked slimy. How could she not know? But I’ve shifted my perspective a bit. Yes, Lala should have known this thing would end poorly, but as Lisa says, she wanted it to be real so badly that she didn’t see the signs. Also, Randall was actively trying to deceive her into thinking he was a good man. She tells a story where Randall took her to this shrink who told Lala about how awful his ex was, but then she found out that the shrink was the same one they used for their couple’s therapy. Okay, I don’t see how that makes Randall a monster unless he was paying this professional to manipulate the women in his life, in which case he is a monster, and that person should not be practicing psychology. But her point was made. A bad guy fooled her and she didn’t see it coming. I’ll be a bit nicer to Lala, but only if she starts shagging that hot dude Tai and gets him to take his top off.
There were several other atrocities at the party. First, one of the servers is named Khai, which is a little unusual but not entirely awful. The second is that one of the servers is named Daisye, and I’m sorry, but that is not acceptable. That is not the way letters should be arranged. That looks like a Wordle that got drunk, fell on its face, and somehow pictured up an extra letter and is now entirely unintelligible. The other atrocity is that Tom and Katie sat down and talked about their relationship, and it was so sad when she asked him if it was worth losing her and his family to open the bar.
I have to say, yeah. It was worth it. These two never had a good relationship. They were always acting like they hated each other and, for as much as I want to make out with Schwartz until they finally cancel SVU, he was never going to give Katie what she needed. She even says to him that he chose everything over her. Yup, that sounds right. Sounds like it should be over.
After their chat, Schwartz got up from their ecru banquette and went into the bar’s walk-in refrigerator. He just needed to pace. He just needed to move, to feel something on his skin, to feel the oppressive cold pecking at his body because that was a lot nicer than feeling whatever it was that was wrung out of him by his conversation with Katie. As he was doing short laps close to all the chilled garnishes, the door opened, and Sandoval entered. “Buddy, are you okay?†he asked as he pulled Schwartz close, more in a bro hug than in an embrace.
Schwartz let out a chuckle. “Actually, yeah,†he said. “I can’t focus on what I lost; I just need to focus on everything I gained.†With that, he planted a kiss on Sandoval, his lip rasping against his mustache as they tried to fuse together through their mouths. Sandoval spun Schwartz around and pushed him, hard, against the door, but it didn’t open. He just stood against it, his shoulders on the freezing metal and his hips pointed toward Sandoval’s face as he knelt down. He removed Schwartz’s belt, undid his pants, and freed a growing soldier from his briefs. “I think it might be a little cold in here for that, buddy,†he said while Sandoval grasped him in his hand. But as Sandoval guided his lover to his ultimate destination, it wasn’t cold anymore, and Schwartz’s moans came not just with noise, but with steam.