If the season premiere was about how everyone in the group was doing with Tom Sandoval gone, this episode was all about how they’re doing with Tom Sandoval being back in the “friend group†mix. The answer, to quote the legend Dorinda Medley, is not well, bitch.
The episode starts with Tom returning to his and Ariana’s shared house, each of their rooms more disastrous than the others for completely opposite reasons. Tom is colluding with his assistant, Ann, a saint with pointy white nails. Tom tells her that he wants people over for his birthday and that Ariana is invited if she wants to come. Ann just drawls, “Yeah … she’s gonna be busy.†This woman has the hardest job in Hollywood, having to answer to the whims of a madman and narcissist.
When Ann asks Ariana if Tom can have a party, she tells her that if Tom does, she’s going to call the police and lodge a noise complaint. Can you imagine that 911 call?
“911. What’s your emergency.â€
“I’d like to report a noise complaint.â€
“Okay, where is it coming from?â€
“The noise is coming from inside the house.â€
“Can’t you just, I don’t know, go shut it off?â€
“No, it’s my ex-boyfriend’s party, and he won’t stop it.â€
“Well, can you ask him to stop?â€
“I tried, but his assistant, Ann, is not answering.â€
“So you called 911?â€
“It’s an emergency!!!â€
“Please hold, ma’am. The police are coming … to arrest you for misusing public resources.â€
Listen, I get it. Ariana has a very valid point, which is that Tom used to throw these ragers until 6 a.m., not clean up any of the trash, and sleep with her best friend in the guest room while she was in an Ambien coma. I wouldn’t want that either, but Ariana can’t have the final say on everything that happens in a shared house. But I also get her point: Tom should not have a party in that house because he owns two bars, and maybe he can just have a party at one of those? Well, not at Schwartz & Sandy’s because he’s persona non grata there.
I think Lala had it right when Ariana talked to her about the party at lunch. She said that it’s Tom’s house, too, and he should be able to have a party if he wants. Lala asks, “Can’t you text Ann and tell her to have everyone gone by this time?†Ann had already texted saying that Tom was only going to have about 12 employees, sorry friends, over at the house, and they’d all be gone by midnight. There is no way Ariana could say no to that. Then we find out that she, Katie Maloney Schwartz Maloney, and Scheana No Tea All Shay were DJ-ing Emo Night that night anyway, and she wouldn’t even be home.
Okay, okay, okay, okay. I get that Ariana is mad and all, but couldn’t she have started with, “I’m DJ-ing Emo Night and will be home at 1 a.m. He can have a party if everyone is out by 12:30 p.m. and the place is clean when I arrive.†It seems like Tom is being reasonable and willing to compromise, and Ariana is not.
Also, there is the whole thing going on with the house. When Lala asks Ariana why she won’t move out, she says that Tom is the one who broke the home, and she doesn’t want to just get a sum of money from Tom so that he doesn’t have to move. She doesn’t want to make his life easy. Lala says that Tom seems to be getting off on having Ariana around and driving her crazy, but I think the opposite is also true. I think that Ariana is getting off on still being able to make Tom’s life miserable even though she’s not in it, and that might be the reason she doesn’t want to clear it out yet. Yes, what Tom did to her was terrible, and he deserves a lot of what he’s getting, but it seems both of them are enjoying stewing in their misery a little bit too much.
Speaking of getting out of the house, Lisa has a party for the last day of Pump’s existence and, in all of my years cruising the WeHo gay bars, I’ve never seen more than a dozen people in the joint, so I don’t know who these throngs are, but it looked like a good send-off. Lisa says that if they renewed their lease, which was going up considerably, Ken would be working at the bar into his 80s. What? Ken Todd is still alive? Will someone please tell him?
The only thing to come out of this party, other than a flashback to Katie’s killer dig at Schwartz that even Jax could manage to be a bartender when he couldn’t, was that Lisa and Schwartz get to talk about what is going on with Sandoval and S&S’s. Schwartz says he’s very upset that his partner and their other business partners don’t want him even coming by the bar. Schwartz says he’s surprised that Sandoval checked out. Really? The partners are literally saying, “Don’t come here,†and you think he’s still going to do work on the place? Sandoval deserves some punishment, but let’s at least be realistic with our expectations here.
When the Toms finally meet up to talk about what is going on, Sandoval apologizes for Schwartz and their business being collateral damage in the business. Sandoval tells Schwartz that the reason he still went on tour with his band is because he needed to make money because his bank account was overdrawn and Ariana wouldn’t pay him back for things. I don’t know, guys. I find this about as believable as Lea Michele writing a memoir. Ariana has that UberEats money for singing the world’s greatest jingle, “Good As Gold (The Scr-emo Remix).†She could give him money if she wanted to, and probably did. Can we trust a thing this man says ever again? Correction. Can we trust a thing any man says ever? No. That includes me. I am a man and a liar.
The conversation ends with the question that I think this whole season is truly asking. Sandoval says, “Are you going to stick with me or what?†Schwartz says, “I think I’m going to do what’s best for me.†I can see how everyone would choose Ariana. Not only was she the one who did nothing wrong in the situation, but she was also the one who was cashing checks. When Scheana asked the Emo Night guys if she could DJ, they said, “Can Ariana come, too?†Yeah, exactly. The name on everybody’s lips is gonna be Roxy. Why would you side with Sandoval when that is a money-losing proposition?
Scheana doesn’t seem to want to get back in his good graces, and you know, if she would rather hang around with Katie, the meanest person on television, then things have to be really bad. I think it was a good episode for Sche-Shu, though. We got to hear more about her OCD, which expresses itself in excessive worry about her daughter, and how her pregnancy brought it on. I suppose I’m glad this is postpartum OCD instead of post-#Scandoval OCD, which I made plenty of fun of last week.
But even the question of whether or not James will come back into the fold is still a great one. Sandoval reaches out and invites him and Ally over for his birthday party, and James says he can maybe come by for an hour but isn’t sure. This all seems right; this all seems appropriate. However, when James arrives at the party, he doesn’t like what he sees. First of all, the guests seem to be mostly Tom’s employees: the manager of his band, his wife, the guitarist, the sound tech, and his vocal coach. If your only friends are the people you pay, are they really friends?
James calls the party a “who’s who†because he’s like “Who is that?†It’s punctuated perfectly by two guests. One is Billie Lee, the former SUR hostess who butted heads with Lala and was shipped off of this reality coil after season seven. She’s getting in where she fits in! Also, there is a dude, Brett, who is a server at Tom Tom, who says to James, “I wanted to talk to you about the friend-group situation because Katie obviously pushed me out …†Um, what kind of main-character syndrome is this? Friend group? I don’t remember seeing his pretty bearded face even once. Is he one of Katie’s secret gays? But this is the level of Sandoval’s hangers-on now that he’s back.
James and Tom go off to the side, and James asks him point blank, “Are you sorry for betraying me? Like the ultimate betrayal.†Okay, come on now. The ultimate betrayal is what Tom and Raquel did to Ariana. This betrayal is not ultimate; it’s not even moderate; it’s like a mediocre betrayal at best. I’m not saying James shouldn’t feel betrayed, but of course the White Kanye thinks what happened to him is the worst of all time.
Instead of just saying yes, as he should have, Tom brings up what happened with him, James, and Kristen back in the day, the way that James got onto the show. You know, the old “Sleeping with her in my bed using my condoms†thing. Yeah, we were real mad about that back in the day, but can we even care now? I do think that Sandoval has a point: If he forgives James for that, then James should forgive him for Raquel. However, this is not how he explains it. Tom goes back to his old formula for arguing, trying to paint himself as the prince by making everyone else look bad. Sorry, dude, but you have been exposed. That trick isn’t going to work anymore. Yeah, James is shitty, but Sandoval is shittier, and right now, he needs friends way more than he needs to be right.
James leaves the party to find Ally waiting in the car. Oh yes, she knows that being his friend is such a losing proposition she wouldn’t even get out of the BMW for some coveted camera time. After James storms out, he decides to take a tinkle on Sandoval’s shrub, with Ally shouting from the car, “It’s Ariana’s tree too.â€
The next morning, when Ariana is back from Emo Night, and all of Sandoval’s bandmates have fled, Ann is going to show up to work. She’ll find a Solo cup or two on the front lawn, the balloons she hung with care over the sliding glass doors all popped and in a sad coil laying underneath this bush. She’s going to wonder why they smell funny, kind of like the gross subway car, an unemptied litter box, a stinky ATM vestibule with a sleeping bag in the corner. Ann will pick them up with a thumb and an index finger, holding her nose the whole way.