I’m surprised Lisa Rinna didn’t try to inject this episode into her face because it is filler. It starts off with a stupid fight that segues into a giant piece of gossip from Austen, but the rest of the episode just dithers as everyone goes ice-skating and makes dinner and, I don’t know, talks about Carl and Lindsay making out just when their relationship started. It felt like all foreplay and no climax. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some foreplay, but this episode needed to squeeze the balls a little bit tighter, kiss my nips a little softer, and tell me I’m a very bad boy for eating all the Cheez Whiz. But it did not. I guess Kyle and Amanda aren’t the only two on Team Blue Balls.
Let’s start with the dumb fight, which is a continuation from last week and is about whether the girls are icing out Jessica. Why does she think that? Because they aren’t giving her enough compliments. Seriously? This is a person whose self-esteem is so low even sexy Namor can’t pick it up from the ocean floor because it is just that deep. Paige immediately freaks out and leaves the room because she doesn’t want to hear ever again that she has resting bitch everything. This girl said Jess could use her bathroom whenever she wants — what could be more welcoming? This is really an empty gesture from Paige, though, because she would have to get out of her bed to use the bathroom herself, so the toilet is always free because Paige uses a bedpan.
Once she freaks out and Ciara, Amanda, and Rachel interrogate her feelings a little bit more, Jess confesses that she does isolate herself with the guys and that she hasn’t given the girls a fair shot. She says this is because she’s had so many women in her life say they don’t want to be friends anymore, and this has made her insecure. Maybe she should think about her life choices if she is hearing this from multiple people. I’ve never had anyone tell me, to my face, they don’t want to be friends with me anymore — and I am an asshole. What is Jess doing that’s even worse than me? She admits she doesn’t ask people a lot of questions. Well, that is a good place to start, Jess.
The next day, Paige goes into Jess’s room and apologizes “for my tone,†which is the most adept non-apology in late-stage Bravosity. Paige says she didn’t want to make her feel bad and was trying to get her to be a part of the group and Jess says that she was venting about her own issues and that she didn’t really have issues with the girls and it is squashed like Amanda’s right boob when Kyle passes out on it after a night of 27 too many Loverboys.
The main action of the episode, though, is not about Jess but about her doppelgänger Lindsay. (How cruel was it when Jess was like, “She could be, like … my mom or my aunt� And she wonders why girls hate her?) Lindsay and her now-fiancé, then-boyfriend, Carl, drop into the house for two nights even though there is no place for them to sleep and apparently a three-way with Luke is out of the question. The night before, Austen tells Ciara, Amanda, Rachel, and the ghost of Jess that the night of Amanda and Kyle’s wedding, in the fall, Lindsay came back to Austen’s room afterward and, while they were in bed together, she put his hand on his, ahem, southern charm. We then get corroboration from Jason that this is Lindsay’s go-to move. And why shouldn’t it be? Nothing moves the night along like a hand on the old Stowe ski pole.
The problem with this is the timing. At the wedding, Lindsay and Carl were telling everyone that, after a false start, they were going to take another stab at a relationship. However, at the skating event, Amanda asks Lindsay when she and Carl say their relationship started, and she says they track it to the first week in October, when they first went all the way together. (I would pay 27 Larsa Pippens to watch that OnlyFans.) That leaves a gap of two weeks between the wedding at the end of September and when they officially started “dating.â€
Everyone sees this as a red flag because Lindsay told Austen not to tell anyone about her hand-on-the-D trick, and they think it’s because it undermines her love story with Carl. (Lindsay crying because she wants everyone to know the love she feels? Doesn’t she know there is a cost of living crisis?) They all ask, How could she and Carl be so into each other if that night she was trying to play foosball with Austen’s … um, soccer player on a pole. Ugh, that’s awful. I really should have thought this metaphor out until the end.
I have an alternative theory. I think Carl and Lindsay were talking about their relationship at the wedding because, well, it was the season finale. I’m sure the producers also had no small part in them addressing it for the camera. So, yes, they might not have been exclusive but were inching toward each other in a way that would not preclude Lindsay from hooking up with a dude she had already hooked up with. But they had to talk about it because they were nine months away from their best friends being back in their lives. In case it wasn’t clear, those best friends are the cameras.
But all of this is moot because what we get is everyone talking about it behind Lindsay’s and Carl’s backs and not to their fronts;, if they did, they wouldn’t get a word out because they’d be too distracted by the enormous dick-print Carl leaves in his skating tights. One thing is for sure, though: With Austen bringing this up, he has decided he doesn’t want any friends in the house or any allies in the public sphere. He is just happy to be as universally detested as cancer, the Game of Thrones finale, and coconut La Croix. Ciara is right: Austen is just going to throw this grenade, but the only thing that is going to blow up is him.
Jason also wants to have a chat with Lindsay about their relationship that kicked off last season and ended just after Lindsay had a miscarriage of their baby. Being the nicest man on Bravo, Jason says he was supportive of Lindsay when she went through her difficult time and checked in on her several times, but he’s confused how they went from almost having a kid together to nothing to her being so deeply in love with Carl. But once again, here is another conversation we have to wait for him to have next week.
He had a nice chat with Rachel, his current paramour, about it at the skating event, which was a very fun time. Paige arranged to have everyone go to a rink and have a figure-skating competition and Luke got so wet his knickers are still frozen from that day in Stowe. He finally got to whiz around on the ice and show everyone he can do something more than make fires and himbo into the camera. Paige sets all the couples up in teams, and they compete against one another with the skating instructor choosing who does the best. Paige and Craig win, which seems like it’s not a shock because Paige is the one who orchestrated all of this. But she had a secret weapon. Apparently, Craig took figure skating in college, most likely to get out of a phys-ed requirement and definitely because he was like, “Think about how many girls are gonna be in this class, bro.†Ugh, the heterosexuality knows no bounds.
I sort of love these fun events, though. Yes, we tune in for drama, confrontation, new relationships forming, and old relationships falling apart — that and shots taken by surveillance cameras of hot people changing clothes in their bedrooms. But I love to watch them having fun. I love to watch Kyle put on a silly outfit and totally commit to whatever dumb thing they throw at him so he can sell a few more cans of sparkling alcoholic ice tea. But don’t worry: There is confrontation on the horizon.
It’s probably going to be at dinner, which Lindsay and Carl are throwing, and they’re calling it “foxtails and mocktails†because neither of them is drinking. Wait, does that mean no one at the dinner table is drinking? Oh God, if I wanted to watch a bunch of hot, sober people being completely boring, I’d just open Instagram. To suit the theme, all of the boys put on coonskin caps, which are made from raccoons not from foxes, but whatever. The girls put on fox ears and fox tails, which makes more sense, but Ciara paints her face as if she’s Sean Young trying to get cast as Catwoman on The Joan Rivers Show. (Sorry, this is a joke for the olds.) But we’re going to have to wait for next week for the action. This climax better be worth it or else I will not — I repeat, will not — be finishing the Cheez Whiz.