What is that foul stench that just wafted in from the past? No, it is not the smell of jet exhaust that keeps billowing from DJ James Kennedy’s Burbank bungalow; it is the man musk of serial liar, serial cheater, and cereal eater Jax Taylor. Oh, that reminds me …
Meanwhile, in The Valley
Girl, it is popping off in The Valley. Jesse — a Realtor with the body of a Peloton instructor, the soul of a demon, and the nips of a leather daddy — came for noted empath Kristen Doute and her boyfriend, Jake, the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine that LibsOfTikTok thinks Anthony Fauci is using to control our minds. The episode starts with Kristen saying, “Seeing a negative pregnancy test sucks,†and that is the only time in her life she has said it. For every negative pregnancy test that upsets Kristen, there are two dozen negative tests that leave her soul absolutely relieved.
However, when we’re not focused on Kristen’s fertility journey and how Jason is low-key the sexiest catch on Bravo, we’re entirely focused on Jesse and Michelle’s marriage falling apart. It can’t be saved even by magic mushrooms and ayahuasca like Jesse’s therapist advises. It all goes down at the Mondrian, the breeding ground for Scandoval, when Jax has an event for guys losing their hair. Tom Schwartz shows up hoping that he can lose the terrible dye job Jo gave him, but then he realizes it’s not that kind of party.
Jesse spends the whole event flirting with some girl who is selling terrible clothes for Burning Man. As the whole cast goes to dinner at the hotel, drunk Jesse is considering the revelation he had two hours ago that his marriage is doomed and his wife is going to leave him. After antagonizing everyone, he slams the table, and Kristen wants to leave because she feels like she’s being “abused†by his aggression. As Kristen storms out, she and Jesse are in the hallway together, and she says she doesn’t want to “out their whole marriage.†Jesse then says if she airs any skeletons about his wife that he doesn’t know, then he will bury her.
That’s when Luke gets up from the table and joins the fray. After Kristen tells Michelle that Jesse is going to leave her in two months (which is information from Jax that she is misinterpreting) and Luke tells Jesse to talk to his wife, Jesse lunges for him, first whacking Zack out of the way. Luckily, Zack’s hair helmet prevented any head injury from occurring. Production keeps Jesse off Zack, but it can’t keep Kristen from spreading the secret that she kept alluding to “protecting†Michelle from. It turns out that Michelle had a boyfriend for a year while still married to Jesse. They would meet up, text, and hang out (and I presume take the 101 freeway straight to Pound Town, though Kristen doesn’t say it explicitly).
We hear all of this in confessional, and we can only marvel that Michelle, a woman who I assume has seen Vanderpump Rules, would trust Kristen with any stale crumb of information about her life and think that it wouldn’t be aired right here on the Bravo network for all of us to gawp at. As Kristen and Luke are leaving and Michelle is about to address the assembled dinner, Kristen says, “I didn’t come back to deal with all this shit again. I’d rather be on Vanderpump Rules.â€Â I have seen the fourth wall be broken before, but I have not seen it be broken, pull itself back together, and just stand there applauding the display of the reality television arts and sciences that we just witnessed. Good work all around.
Back on Vanderpump Rules
Jax shows up to make fun of James’s house for being under a flight path and says that he’s a father 18 times as if that changes the way he behaves or thinks about himself. He tells James that Katie was spreading rumors about him cheating on Brittany. These rumors are like my legs when Brock is around: No one has to spread ’em because they have already been spreadin’. I could tell you from the moment they got married that Jax was going to cheat on her. He cheats on everyone. That is what he does. That’s like marrying a furry and then being upset when the sex costume keeps ending up in the wash. Now, he’s supposedly banging their publicist. Girl, it is popping off in the Valley.
Jax has an obligatory scene with Katie Maloney Schwartz Maloney where she tells him to his face she doesn’t like him and that she doesn’t need to spread rumors about him because, well, the rhythm is gonna get him, and that rhythm is every action he’s ever taken. Then he has an obligatory scene with Lisa where she proves that she is not superfluous to the show by having someone who is not even on the cast come and have a discussion with her that has nothing to do with the current story lines on the show. There’s our Lisa, front and center, let me tell you.
And that’s enough of Jax and Brittany, who brought her permafrown to Scheana’s house so Scheana could complain about Brock. Oh, Brock. Did you see him lounging in the pool in his Speedo? I couldn’t stop drooling but also couldn’t stop wishing he wouldn’t yell at his wife like that. Can’t I scoop out Brock’s brain with a melon baller and replace it with a really smart dog’s?
We saw a lot about Brock and Scheana’s marriage this episode when they went for an anniversary dinner at Barton G, the novelty steakhouse that has featured fights from the casts of many Bravo-centric shows. Brock is upset because he’s failing his family by not bringing in as much money as Scheana. Scheana tells him something that was heartbreaking in two different ways for two different reasons. First, she starts telling him that what he does for their daughter so that she can work is the most valuable service he can offer and she’s thrilled that her daughter can have such a good relationship with her dad. Then it takes a shift, and she says Summer is maybe his “second chance to be a dad†since he failed his two older kids back in Australia. I have never needed the “And I Oop†video more than I need it right at this minute.
Brock and Scheana annoy each other later when the whole gang goes to James’s for a pool party after the SUR brunch that James and Jax host together. (That monstrosity of a sentence is brought to you by goat-cheese balls and bad decisions.) Scheana wants to go home and put Summer to sleep, but Brock is having fun and wants to stay. He says Scheana should let the nanny do it. Wait, did they get a nanny? At the beginning of the episode, Scheana says that she didn’t get a nanny because she is afraid that Brock is going to have an affair with her. Oh! All this time, I thought she didn’t want a nanny because she was worried about her kid. No, she doesn’t want a nanny because she’s worried about her marriage. That makes so much more sense. I swear I am going to move to L.A. and start an agency called “Ugly Nannies,†where we don’t hire anyone over a 3.5. All the child care, none of the worry. I’m going to make a fortune.
This episode had more filler than Zack Efron’s jawline — James worried about leaving his dog to go to a wedding with Ally; the incredibly amusing pilot for Bravo’s next show, Date My Ex: Tom and Katie; and Schwartz telling Ariana that he knows it’s a bad idea to move in with Sandoval and he is not going to do it — but the fight that Scheana gets into with Tom Sandoval after her fight with Brock about the nanny is by far the best part of the episode.
Scheana is talking to Kyle Chan and Tom Sandoval, who is dressed like Donald Duck going to a Boogie Nights party, and says she is going to perform both of her songs at Kyle’s event in San Francisco in the next episode. She asks if Tom heard her song “Apples,†which is potentially the worst song in the Bravo firmament, and I’m including Danielle Staub’s lesbian duet in that. Tom says he heard it, and Scheana says that the song, which has one oblique line about Scandoval in it, was about how she felt after the scandal and, yes, she wanted to capitalize on it.
This is the thing that seems to upset Sandoval most of all, that someone would capitalize on his pain. But they all have. Lala sold hoodies, Katie has the sandwich shop, Scheana has her little song. Shit, even Sandoval has the continued success of Schwartz & Sandy’s and all of his band’s gigs, not to mention the “Dipped Out†T-shirt he wore in last week’s episode. He might not be getting Uber Eats jingle money, but every single person under a Spirit Airlines jet in James Kennedy’s backyard has milked this scandal for every single penny it’s worth, and may the great goddess Dula Peep bless them for it. That is what they are here for.
Sandoval is still bitter and says, “Scheana, I need you to understand something; You weren’t involved in this.†Say motherfucking what now? Yes, we love to play our favorite game, HDSMTAH (How Does Scheana Make This About Herself?), but she actually was involved. She can’t help that she was in New York taping Watch What Happens Live the night that Ariana found out about the affair. She can’t help her justified reaction to throwing Rachel’s phone in the street. Tom Sandoval showed up and took a giant dump in the middle of their workplace, and they’ve been smelling it for a year. Don’t tell me these people aren’t involved. If Tom had cheated with some rando, this would have been a blip. But he didn’t, and it became bigger than Gronk’s jockstrap. So, yeah, Scheana is involved, and it’s Tom’s fault.
There’s also, you know, the restraining order that had Scheana in a trailer eating Pringles while the rest of the staff screamed at Rachel during the last reunion. But Scheana also tells him that it involved her because it made her think differently about her husband. She thought if Tom could cheat on Ariana, then Brock could cheat on her, bringing the episode wonderfully full circle.
That’s when Tom takes it too far, that’s when he wraps the night up into a tiny parcel, places an M80 inside of it, and blows it to White Claw–scented smithereens. “You’ve been the other woman in a relationship,†he says. You could hear the “OH!†coming not just from everyone in the yard but also from everyone on Southwest’s 9:48 flight to Cleveland that just flew overhead. We know what he said was wrong and don’t need to make Scheana’s arguments for her: She was 21, it was almost 20 years ago, she didn’t know he was married, and Lisa Vanderpump made her pay her wages of humiliation to get on this here reality-television program.
This is Tom’s go-to move, to show everyone that they were horrible at one time, too. Yes, Scheana slept with a married dude. So did James. Well, I don’t mean that he slept with a married dude, I meant he also cheated. But Tom’s point continues to be spurious because, well, what he did was worse. It was worse than all of them. It’s like Tom is being convicted of murder but says the jury can’t judge him because one of them stole a pack of gum from a CVS when they were teenagers. This is dumb and continues to be dumb, just like Tom, who will never find forgiveness from others because he can’t, even for a tiny little second, turn his eyeballs inside out and look at himself.
Just as Ariana is hugging Scheana in the driveway and Brock is calling an Uber, they all look to the street to see a Toyota Corolla speeding by with the windows down and Lorde blaring from the speakers. It doesn’t slow; it doesn’t even look at them, but they hear a woman screaming, “Wheeee! Freedom!!!†as it zooms past them. Ann is getting the hell out of the Valley for good. It’s popping off a little too much for her taste.