I would consider myself a Danielle Olivera fan. I have defended her since she started as a background player on Summer House, better known as the Lindsay Hubbard whisperer, rather than for her own feelings, feuds, or flings. I like that Danielle always seemed smarter, realer, and more authentic than your average reality-television yahoo. Well, after this season of Winter House, and this episode in particular, I may have to reevaluate my assessment of Danielle and my fandom.
Things start badly for Danielle when the whole crew goes to meet Captain Sandy and her girlfriend, Leah, for a day of skiing. Danielle ordered everyone Evel Knievel–inspired red, white, and blue jumpsuits for their version of “Gaper Day†costumes. Last season, I explained the holiday as “a day, usually in April or late spring, when everyone who lives in a ski town dresses up crazy to make fun of all the tourists on the mountain. The problem is it isn’t April, none of these people lives in the ski town, and they’re just the stupid tourists.†A year has gone by, and none of this needs to be amended or rewritten. It’s not plagiarism to quote yourself, so here you go. Enjoy my complete and utter laziness.
Everyone looks cute in their costumes, and at least Captain Sandy is wearing a red jacket so she matches most of the goons as she shreds her way down the mountain. We don’t get to see much of her, though. At one point, Malia says, “I just got my Ski-Doo 5000, and then I’m getting my charter certificate of compliance at Manatee Bay, and I enrolled in sea-flag school, so pretty soon I’ll be a captain like you.†Sandy seemed to understand all of this jargon, but I just went back to fantasizing about Kyle McGill Cooke skiing naked on Gaper Day. (In this episode, he did tell Amanda his weiner is dope, and I am inclined to believe him.) Then Sandy goes back home with her lovely soon-to-be bride. We got to see more of her in the trailer than we did in the whole episode.
At the après ski, Danielle, Alex, Jordan, and Amanda stay back to (unsuccessfully) make the slopes look like a beach picnic. Danielle is talking to Alex and asks if he wants to come to Brooklyn to hang out with her sometime. His answer: shrug emoji. In his confessional, Alex says the two of them are not on the same page anymore because he wants to just have a little bit of sexy fun on the trip but leave single and ready to Pringle.
In her confessional, Danielle says she wants the same thing and she’s inviting him to Brooklyn only so they can have a nice weekend of casual sex. The problem is that Danielle’s mouth says she just wants to keep it easy, breezy, beautiful, Cover Girl, but every other part of Danielle’s body says, “Will you be my boyfriend? Circle one. Yes. No.†Because of this, Alex is trying to dial it back, but as he pays less attention to Danielle, she gets increasingly frustrated.
As if Captain Sandy as one mother figure weren’t enough, Kory’s actual mother and father are stopping by the house. It turns out his dad is an airline pilot, so they just hopped a jet plane to Denver, scored some legal weed at a dispensary called There’s Something About Mary Jane, and drove up to meet the crew. Kory’s parents seem way cooler and more chill than I would have guessed based on the big fuckboy energy their offspring emits. Kory’s dad, Brian, is asking his son if he wants to make it official with Sam. When he says he’s thinking about his business, Dad reminds him there is always time for a social life. Meanwhile, Kory’s mom, Tracy, asks, “When do I get to meet Sam?†because moms can never play it cool, and we love them for that. And then they’re gone because the parents are awesome, but we don’t want them to stay too long at the party.
Speaking of staying too long at the party, Kyle may be ready to be a dad. Amanda is still feeling nauseous all the time, and she doesn’t think she’s pregnant but she knows if she goes to the doctor, that’s the first question they’re going to ask, so she wants to rule it out. This is the first time in Kyle’s life that the pregnancy test doesn’t have a right or wrong answer. This is the first time he isn’t saying in his head, Please let it be negative. Please let it be negative. I’m not ready. I have no money, on repeat for the whole two minutes it takes for a Clearblue Easy to be clear, blue, and easy. Was Kyle sad? I don’t think he would say it out loud, but yes.
When Ma and Pa Keefer show up on the mountain, everyone goes night skiing with them, but again, Danielle, Alex, Jordan, Katie, and some others skip the mountain part and go right to the drinks part. This is when it all goes downhill quickly for Danielle, and that pun wasn’t intended but it’s perfect, so pun intended. (Laziness wins again!) Danielle senses that things with Alex have gone cold, and she asks if he wants to go home and if everything is all right. He says it is, but his face is as sad-looking as the western hat meets macramé wall art in Danielle’s boudoir.
Then she pulls Jordan away for a little chat, in which she unleashes a series of sentences that are supposed to be nice but are all slightly offensive. She tells Jordan she wanted to be friends, but then things happened with her and Alex and she feels like that got in the way of them. Then she tells Jordan she’s happy with things with Alex right now, as if he were some stuffed dog she won at the winter carnival and now she’s lording it over Jordan’s head.
Next, she tells Jordan that Jordan is being low energy because she doesn’t have a guy she can crush on or a dude who is giving her attention. Exsqueese me? This is not the Danielle I know and love. This is a weird, tone-deaf, insecure girlie who is torturing one of the other ladies in the house because the boy she’s boning is being mean to her. Is this the reason she understands Lindsay so well? Because she’s been slowly turning into her all of these years? Jordan is right to be pissed about this because, as she tells Alex, this is basically boiling her whole personality down to whether or not she’s into guys.
I’m sorry, but the whole house has been pretty low energy this entire day. What do you expect? They’ve been gone for about ten days at this point. Everyone has been drinking, skiing, and partying every single day. They all just need 24 hours to recover. Danielle, just let everyone be low energy for a second, and they’ll get back to partying. Back at the house, though, Danielle is a little bit wasted and ready to turn up, if only to get her mind off her deteriorating relationship with Alex and the weirdness between her and Jordan.
Because this episode is really all about mothers, Brian (Benni, not Kory’s dad or your incredibly handsome and famously hung recapper) gets a package with a bunch of new clothes from his mother. I hope none of them are from Forever 21. Yes, Brian is right; they have unisex clothes, but why would you order something that will fall apart after one wash and is just adding to the textile pileup in our landfills? I mean, at least go to J.Crew or the Gap!
Anyway, Brian gets his package and says to Kyle, “Look what my mom just got me?†The rest of the conversation has such a level of ’90s middle-school kids that I can barely even function. Danielle rips the clothes out of his hands and says, “Who cares? We’re trying to party.†No, Danielle. You’re trying to party. You are the only one.
Brian then shouts, “Hey, my mom just got me that,†like they’re on the school bus and she just stole the Pokémon cartridge out of his Game Boy. Danielle again tells him they’re trying to party and throws his new possessions all over the hall floor. Kyle tells the two of them there’s a fine line between making fun of Brian for having his mother still do his clothes shopping and being a jerk about it, and Danielle is clearly being a jerk about it.
Brian tells Alex he needs to “check on his girl,†and you can hear Alex say in his head, She is not my girl, and I do not want to check anything except when my flight leaves. Alex goes upstairs to ask Amanda if she knows why Danielle is upset. (I think the reason is at the bottom of a dozen cans of Loverboy.) Amanda tells him she doesn’t know but just to stay away from her because even asking her what is wrong will backfire.
Meanwhile, Danielle is still downstairs fighting with Brian, telling him, “Don’t ever get anything I say twisted ever again,†but with a tone like she just asked him for protection money and will probably break his kneecaps. When Brian tells her they’re going to have fun now and gets out his fun glasses to show her, she asks, “Does Alex like me?â€
This is the problem, and Amanda totally clocked it. Danielle can’t even admit to herself that she’s starting to have feelings, so they come out in these weird, aggressive, drunken moments when she ends up looking more like a jerk and just driving Alex even further away. Since I’m into doing the least this week, here is something I wrote last season about Kory and Jess (remember her?!): “They’ve been messing around on vacation for a week. They barely know each other, they live in separate cities, they’re both young and hot and like to screw. This is not the setup for a relationship. This is an ‘if it works, it works’ situation.†The same thing applies here. If Danielle wants more, that’s cool, but she needs to say something to Alex. If she doesn’t want more, then she needs to chill the fuck out because not only is everyone in the house starting to turn on her, those who have always been on her side are turning too.