Just like acid rain falling from the sky, the radon gas leaking from our basements, or the ozone hole threatening to suck us all into outer space, a bygone natural disaster has returned to try to eliminate humanity once and for all. Yes, I am talking about Jax Taylor of the Mee Maw’s Beer Cheese Taylors, and he has reentered the chat to remind us that his very own spin-off The Valley is premiering right after this hour of television. Just as Scheana was the bridge between Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and Vanderstupid Drools so is Jax Taylor the bridge between a night out with the boys in West Hollywood and humping a diaper genie and telling his wife it isn’t cheating in Valley Village.
I don’t have much to say about Jax’s return since we just got a tease of it, but I will say that he makes my scrotum want to fall off my body and hide in a cupboard from secondhand embarrassment. We’re left with a lot of terrible people on this here show, but at least they’re terrible people who seem to be striving toward something better, hoping that, one day, they will drive past the Hollywood sign and it will cast a spell on them making them famous, kind, balanced, and ready to settle down with one person for the rest of their life that they will only cheat on occasionally. And then there is Jax, a man with such a lack of self-awareness he doesn’t even realize that the poop emoji was modeled after him. I don’t know that I have time for this again.
As for the actual guys’ night he crashes, Jax arrives to take issue with Tom Sandoval, who is pissed that Jax has been talking about him relentlessly since #Scandoval erupted. Jax rationalizes to Sandoval that the whole world is talking shit about him. Yeah, that’s true, but the whole world wasn’t his best friend who turned on him at the first opportunity so that he could get back on television and chase that relevancy like Wile E. Coyote chases the Road Runner.
With Jax back, this was an episode about everything old being new again. Katie and Lala, two sides of the same coin minted in eyeliner and animosity, have a lunch where they agree to stop being so mean to each other before one of them says something so mean there is no coming back from it. Scheana and Ariana have a sit down where Scheana apologizes for everyone thinking she’s mad at Ariana. Ariana says she’s sorry she didn’t personally tell her about Dancing With the Stars because it was her lifelong dream. Same old fights, brand new resolutions.
That said, Scheana and Ariana’s conversation was more than that. Scheana also hints to Ariana that she wants to normalize relations with the rouge nation know as Sandovalistan. Ariana interprets this as Scheana wanting to be “friends†with Sandoval again. I use the scare quotes because what Ariana seems to fear more than Scheana talking to him is Scheana filming with him, and that is the diplomatic red line that she refuses to let any of her friends cross. But at least to Scheana’s face, she says, “You in danger, girl,†and I don’t think she’s wrong.
Just like old times, Sandoval throws a “sexy singles†pool party, as Ariana calls it, but the only people who show up are Schwartz, Billie Lee, Kyle Chan, and some girls that Sandoval met at See You Next Tuesday the night before. We saw so many scroungy parties at this house but this is, by far, the scroungiest. Even worse is when Sandoval tries to flirt with the girls while they’re wading in his pool. He tells them that he has a roommate, but it’s actually his ex, and he keeps her locked in her room and feeds her crushed-up chips that he shoves under the door. First of all, this is giving me major, “It rubs the lotion on her skin†vibes. Second of all, if he met these girls at SUR then they know who he is, know who his roommate is, know she’s the ex, and know they are only there to get a glimpse of what is happening firsthand and have no intention of coming within a pube’s throw of Sandoval’s unmentionables.
Speaking of unmentionables, I guess we are forced to talk about Jo, what would happen if you fed Teddi Mellencamp a steady diet of bath salts and Dave Matthews Band concerts. The only thing I like about her is that Schwartz calls her “Joseph,†which I find endlessly amusing. Otherwise, I don’t think Katie is wrong about her and her “crackhead†energy. When Ally reads her chart, Jo tells her that after Katie posted a mean tweet about her, her mother called to ask her if she actually did crack. This seems more like a Jo’s mom problem. (Is her name Marmee? Does she have a dead daughter named Beth?) If she can’t figure out that Katie wasn’t talking about actual crack and more of a vibe she gets from Jo, then maybe she should have her reading comprehension levels checked. But I think there is nothing wrong with Jo’s mom; I think Jo made up this whole entire thing, and, deep sigh, I would rather not be with Jo. (I am coming around on Ally, though. Watch this space.)
Though I facetiously call Katie Maloney Schwartz Maloney the meanest person on reality television, I was glad she was using her powers for good instead of evil, criticizing Jo and telling Sandoval right to his face what most of us were thinking. When she comes by the house to hang with Ariana, Tom comes downstairs and tries to apologize to her (but not because he feels sorry, because he’s sucking up to Scheana). Katie takes in Tom’s apology but knows it’s worth as much as half of a Chuck E. Cheese ticket. She tells him to stop doubling down on what he did, to stop feeling sorry for himself, and to start “moving differently.†He doesn’t want that, though; he wants back in now. He doesn’t want to prove himself through his behavior, which will never change and continue to be as rotted as last year’s jack-o-lantern sitting on your front porch. I thank Katie for not letting him off the hook and telling him how he continues to be wrong even as this thing loses steam.
The worst of Sandoval, however, happens at what would have been an old-fashioned hang with the whole crew. It wasn’t just Tom and Tom, Ally and James, Lala and Scheana, but also Ariana and Katie and every single gay in West Hollywood because we know that Ariana does not like to hang out with straight dudes, which is the best thing about her. Ariana wasn’t supposed to be at the event, and everyone was holding their breath for an altercation with Sandoval that never happened.
Instead, it’s an intense conversation he has with Scheana that makes him storm out. She tells him he needs to take accountability not just for cheating on Ariana but for hurting Rachel in ways that he might not even fathom, for being part of Tom and Katie’s breakup, for all the reasons that people grew to hate him over the past decade that have nothing to do with cheating on his girlfriend. Tom says that he’s “tired of being the scapegoat.†The scapegoat? Dude, you are the goat goat. You are the animal. You are the reason this all happened, and no one is trying to place unnecessary blame on you. He’s so upset by this that he has to go take a massive shit in The Belmont bathroom and then leave as he calls the EPA to come clean up yet another mess he made on this show.
It’s at this party that Ally tells everyone she’s going to hang with Jo and Ariana says, “You’re in danger, girl.†(Did she just learn this? Did one of her gays just send her the GIF for the first time? Why is she wearing this out?) As Tom is on his way out, James Kennedy tells him not to burn every bridge around him, and this comes from a guy who doesn’t leave the house without a torch that has “For bridges†embossed into its handle. “We’ve all done fucked-up shit,†Tom says as he leaves. Yeah, we all fuck up. We all do fucked-up shit. But there’s a difference between, you know, stealing a Bonne Bell Lip Smacker from CVS and, you know, sleeping with your girlfriend’s best friend in her house while she’s away at her grandmother’s funeral. In the realm of fucked-up shit, that’s pretty high up there, mama.
Back at his house, Ann is wearing her pretty gray dress and still scrubbing the floor after his sexy singles party. She finds a chunk of hair adhered to the floor in what must be a spilled Loverboy or something. She finds someone put a cigarette out in the guacamole. She finds a bikini top slung over the back of a chair. She finds someone’s dignity cowering in a corner and someone’s self-worth trying to make itself vomit in the bathroom. She finds desperation soaking in the pool like a toxic tea bag and adds extra chemicals to make it go away. She finds it all and she throws Sandoval’s frayed self-esteem in the laundry with all of his dirty sock and says a little prayer that, when she returns in the morning, he will have folded them all himself, but she knows wishing for that is like hoping that the sun will come and swallow us whole.
Meanwhile, In The Valley
• While Jax is sweating fake tan into the pits of his white T-shirts, he’s also insinuating that Kristen Doute will be a horrible mother because he doesn’t like her boyfriend, Luke, a tree stump wearing a ginger beard and a backward ball cap. Also, there are lots of babies and people living in condos. Isn’t this a show about growing up? Why are we in condos? And while one overly sensitive woman cries that Jax pants her husband, a character named Jesse calls Lala a “mistress†and somehow escapes with his life.