Wait. That’s it? Tom and Tom were airdropped into the Winter House for one night of partying, one day of snowboarding, and one night of throwing a ’90s-inspired rave, then extracted after about 36 hours as if this were some kind of reality-television military operation? The money they spent on their plane tickets wasn’t enough to justify this whole journey. I got to write only one Tom-and-Tom slash-fiction scene. Just like lovers of natural toothpaste, the public demands more Toms.
After a long day of shredding, the Toms tell everyone they’re throwing a rave, and everyone asks about the dress code. The Toms say it is “whatever you want it to be.†No, sorry. That is not how this show works. You set a theme for the party, everyone dresses for it, and then we sit around and make fun of them for their outfits. This is the natural order of the universe, and for the Toms to upend it is ridiculous. Everyone basically decides the theme is “shiny,†but it really just looks like the marketing photo shoot for the movie Go minus Katie Holmes.
Not much happens at the party, though Tom tells Kyle and Amanda that things with him and Katie are “complicated,†but he respects her privacy enough not to tell them she is planning to divorce him. To be fair, this is the one time Tom has ever respected Katie, so at least he’s doing something correct in retrospect. However, it was foolish to sit and listen to all of Kyle and Amanda’s relationship advice (which is sort of like taking financial advice from Nicolas Cage) when he knew his proverbial goose was already proverbially cooked.
Paige and Craig have a moment at the party when Craig says he spent days yelling at all of Paige’s friends and she didn’t say even one thing. He says this as if it were a good thing, like it’s a compliment. Um, maybe he should stop yelling at his partner’s friends, and if he can’t, maybe Paige should start saying something? She leaves this chat saying, “As long as Craig admits what he did was wrong and takes any amount of ownership, I’m such a peach.†But, wait, he hasn’t apologized or taken any amount of ownership. Did Paige hear the same conversation I did? Is she just looking for reasons to forgive him?
Most of the action at the party, however, is between the new couples. Rachel and Jason have a nice little make-out right in front of everyone that leaves them both giddy and heading for a little bit more snogging in Jason’s bedroom after hours.
That was cute and all, but Jess and Kory are really bringing the bom chicka wow wow like a CD-rom of Leisure Suit Larry. They’re lying on the couch together and Jess says, “I really want you inside of me.†(Same, sister.) I can’t believe Kory’s plan is actually working. He’s been playing it so cool with Jess that she is now all hot and bothered for it. Up to the very end, he says he’s just going to tuck her in — he’s not getting in bed with her. She literally says, “Why won’t you sleep with me?†Some men struggle to get consent, but not our Kory. He is making them beg for it. He wants consent that is so powerful it could be in a Marvel movie. And then, when he finally relents, he’s enough of a gentleman to cover up the camera in the middle of the night.
The next morning, Jess is full of good reports. She says that not only was he so good in the sack that he made her “squirt everywhere,†his — ahem — ski pole is so long that she couldn’t even hold all of it with two hands. Oh, Jesus. Is Kory’s going to be the first Bravo OnlyFans I don’t subscribe to ironically? (Sorry, Larsa.)
It’s so funny to watch the different trajectories of our burgeoning relationships. Jason and Rachel seem truly smitten. He says that he would totally hook up with her but that she also isn’t the kind of girl you just hook up with. Rachel, too, seems like she’s actually developing feelings for the nicest guy on all of Bravo.
Meanwhile there is Jess and Kory, the Shannon Tweed and Gene Simmons of the house. She’s so dickmatized that she is going all in on Kory. The next day, she’s upstairs in his room showing him her ta-tas while Paige is downstairs in the kitchen trying to teach Luck, a grown human, how to pronounce the word bagel. The night after their first hook up, Jess says to him, “Let’s make a sex tape,†to which he says he doesn’t like blood, meaning she’s on her period. Did he not like it the night before either, or did they not go full P in V? Anyway he insists on her giving him head, and wouldn’t you know it, he gets it. Is Kory an asshole or some kind of dating genius? Some of each? Neither? I don’t know.
Jess’s other story line is about how she doesn’t feel very welcomed by the group of girls; she tells the boys they are treating her like “mean girls.†Yes, it seems Jess would rather hang with the dudes, banging bent nails into logs with the world’s tiniest hammer. I mean, why? Why not go upstairs and just lie in bed with Paige and Ciara and talk about the last season of Love Island? That is where it’s at.
At the end of the episode, it finally blows up when Paige says she has tried to help Jess fit in and really checked on her but is tired of being called a mean girl. I think blame lies between the two of them. As Paige said last season on Summer House and both Mya and Ciara confirmed, it’s hard being the new person on one of these shows in which everyone is already friends. I would hope Paige, Ciara, and Amanda would be a little bit more tolerant of that and try to include Jess. I also think Jess is scarred from being homeschooled and doesn’t know how to get along with groups of girls. Rachel seemed to slide right into the group dynamic like a slippery butt plug, but she wasn’t sitting at home learning that evolution doesn’t exist, as Jess was. (Does that mean public school is like lube? I may need to revisit this metaphor.)
The episode ends with Rachel throwing a Garden of Eden–themed party for the crew and doing an enormous floral arrangement in the living room that looks like the Instagram wall of every budding influencer’s dream. In honor of the garden, Luke dresses up like an apple, which is adorable, and Kory goes shirtless with a snake wrapped around him. This is like every hot gay guy dressed up for Halloween searching for any reason to have his pecs out and then being like, “I’m slutty ‘Slave 4 U’–era Britney, bitch.â€
At the party, Austen pulls Ciara aside with the dumbest plan anyone has ever heard. He misses his “girlfriend,†Olivia, and wants her to come visit. As he spells this plan out to Luke, he admits that Ciara is the last person he had sex with. So Olivia is his girlfriend, but they haven’t boned yet? Make it make sense, but actually please don’t, because then I’m going to have to think about Austen’s ass, which is flatter than the pancakes annoying guests ask for at dinner on Below Deck.
Austen brings this plan up to Amanda, and she tells him she sees no problem here. Has Amanda lost her Loverboy-drinking mind? Of course there is a problem here. The problem here is that even if Austen and Ciara are “good,†no one wants this lady in the house. Austen barely knows her, but he is going to invite her to wade across the Great Chasm of Amazon Boxes, walk across Spilled-Beer-Pong Foyer, and then sleep on a Full-of-Craig’s-Farts Mattress?
When Amanda does her contractual duty and reports back to the girls, Paige’s initial reaction was the same as mine, which is basically every GIF in the “What?†section of Giphy flashing across my mug all at once. It’s unlike Amanda to miss the mark this hard when it comes to her girls, but maybe she’s off her game because her husband has been (mostly) behaving himself this entire trip.
When Austen brings the idea up to Ciara, she has the same reaction everyone at home had as soon as he came up with this plan. She says her initial reaction is that Austen “does not give a fuck about me, at all.†Yup, you are correct. But Ciara asks the most important question, which no one has asked up until this point: Would Olivia be comfortable in the house? Austen says she would rather crawl in a hole and die. Well, there we go. You have your answer, Austen. Why are you even entertaining this fantasy that Olivia is going to show up, absolve you of all the sins of last season and the summer that just passed, and squirt all over the bed like Jess having a three-way with Kory and a Super Soaker?
With that, Austen realizes it’s all a mistake, and Ciara is dismissed. In a confessional, Austen says, “I just get oblivious sometimes.†Sometimes? There is not one second of his time on Andy Cohen’s green earth that he has not been entirely oblivious. Wait, that’s not true. It’s not as if Austen had no idea what was going on, it’s just that he can’t think about anything other than himself long enough to determine how his actions are going to be perceived by others. It’s not that Austen is dumb; he’s just blinded by his narcissism. (And also maybe he’s dumb). Can’t wait until he throws bombs at Lindsay and Carl when they arrive next episode. Hopefully, they’ll stick around longer than the Toms did.