Why do fools fall in love? I don’t ask this as a rhetorical question, because on this show we have seen it so many times: literal fools falling in love and not knowing what to do once they have. The biggest example, of course, is Jax and Brittany, a union with the assembled IQ points of all of the prickly inhabitants of a hedgehog café. Brittany is a beautiful, charming, and lovely young woman, but she can’t have done that well on her SATs if she’s willing to marry a man who not only cheated on her while lying next to an old woman under hospice care, but also claimed that his family owns a percentage of CVS and that he used to be roommates with Channing Tatum. But what fools they are, because most of this episode revolves around their fairy-themed engagement party.
Then there is DJ James Kennedy and his girlfriend Raquel, a stalled Barbie Ferrari. First we have to sit through James’s therapy session, where his well-meaning therapist tries to get him to completely quit drinking and care less what people think about him. James swats off that advice because both drinking and caring what people think about him lead to the “huge” “success” of “DJ James Kennedy” as a “brand.” Ugh.
When he and his girlfriend aren’t invited to the engagement party because of how poorly James has treated everyone at SUR, they celebrate by going to … SUR. It’s as if there is only one restaurant in the Greater Los Angeles area. Well, there’s also that one that hovers over LAX, but that is currently closed, so I guess SUR is the only restaurant in L.A. As the waitress so deliciously points out, James doesn’t even get an employee discount there anymore. At dinner he goes through his usual paces about not really caring that he didn’t get invited, but “maybe we’ll get invited to the wedding.”
Raquel, the human equivalent of Sweetgreen transitioning to a tech company, rightfully tells him that if he wants that to happen, he’s going to have to “change his approach to, like, everyone.” She can say some wise things sometimes, but then she tells us that she wants to have babies with James but also have a job, because “women in the workforce are, like, a thing now” and I want to impale myself on a million penis-shaped straws from a bachelorette party.
But the dumbest — the absolute dumbest — of all the couples has to be Scheana and Adam. Their love story this season has been a bit like super-gonorrhea: I’ve been actively trying to avoid it, but it’s become so prevalent that it will inevitably hit me where I live (and by hit me where I live I mean hit me where I pee).
The insanity starts when all of the girls are getting ready for Brittany’s $15K engagement party and Lala is deciding to wear a rather unfortunate Cher cast-off rhinestone tiara. Scheana says, “Is Mercury in retrograde, because Adam won’t text me back?” Ugh, I hate people who blame things on Mercury being in retrograde. It’s so … retrograde. Also, this condition always seems to be happening and you could just tell people that it is and they don’t know. It’s not like they’re fucking Joan Quigley. Then Scheana says, “I just spent a weekend with a male model. What’s the big deal?” Oh, so Mercury isn’t in retrograde. You know exactly why Adam isn’t texting you and it’s ’cause you were Snapchatting videos of making out with this model to your friends who you knew were sitting right next to Adam. Got it.
At the party, Adam is sitting all alone and moping and Tom Schwartz goes to intervene and tells Adam that Scheana sleeping with this model doesn’t have to be a deal-breaker for him. That is the most Schwartz-y advice that has ever been given, next to “liquor before beer, you’re in the clear.”
When Adam pulls Scheana aside to chat, things really get heated. The whole argument seems to stem from the stupid reason that both of them are saying they’re not in a relationship but neither of them wants the other to date someone else. Scratch that — actually, Adam is saying he doesn’t want to be in a relationship, and Scheana is saying she doesn’t want to be in a relationship just to spook Adam, but she really wants to be in a relationship. The problem is, if Adam wants a relationship, he needs to lock it down and not get mad at Scheana for sleeping with someone else. He wants to have his cake and eat Scheana too, which is apparently something that he doesn’t do at all.
While Scheana is trying to defend hanging out with this model, Adam is getting more and more upset until he screams, “You fucked him!” right in front of Brittany’s MeMaw’s salad. That leads us into one of the most brilliantly comical exchanges ever on the history of this program.
“Do you love me? Answer the question,” Scheana asks.
“No,” Adam responds.
“Answer it!”
“I just did. No. I don’t love you.”
Oh, girl, I felt that pain about 6,000 miles and eight time zones away. (I am writing this from a Buddhist monastery in Mongolia.) Scheana thought that he was going to say that he did love her and she was somehow going to use this to trick him into a relationship and it backfired. Adam might have loved her before, but after she called his bluff and went off with this model for a whole weekend, it doesn’t seem to have worked. It is even worse when Scheana tells Adam that the whole time she was with the dude she was thinking of him. “Oh, thank you for your consideration,” Adam says, dripping with sarcasm like a piece of Papa John’s crust drips with garlic-butter dipping sauce.
Scheana ends the whole conversation with sarcasm of her own, saying, “I’m so sorry to make you realize you do have feelings. I’m so sorry. But if I didn’t, you wouldn’t have spoken up.” Using sex with another dude as a way to wake up the dude you really want to be your boyfriend is some ridiculous college-freshman bullshit that no one should ever try. If the relationship wasn’t working out for Scheana, she should have told Adam that if he wants to keep sleeping with her, he has to be her boyfriend. Instead of direct communication, she went around and played games and, honestly, I think that both of them got what they deserved.
The only people who really look good at the engagement party aren’t even a couple: Ariana and Lisa. Ariana decides she wants to say something to Lisa because she doesn’t like the way she publicly disparages the Toms when they’re talking about Tom Tom. I totally agree with Ariana about this (and most things), and the way she brings it up to Lisa is calm, considered, and respectful. Lisa tells Ariana that she has a playful dynamic with the Toms and it was just a joke, but Ariana counters that other people hearing the conversation might not know that. “I just hope that they can someday earn the same love and respect that we all have for you,” she tells Lisa. It’s sweet, sincere, and articulate, and I hate when my reality-television personages behave like actual real human beings.
Lisa shows off just how playful she is by agreeing to funnel a beer with the Toms out of a beer bong that they rhinestoned with her initials. I love this Lisa Vanderpump much more than the chilly and imperious one that she displays on Rich Women Doing Things. I want to see way more of this woman who is silly and game but also, you know, chilly and imperious in the best possible way. After funneling said beer, she and her husband, Ken, whose batteries are fully charged for this event, get up and leave and Lisa says, “That is how you leave a party.” Indeed!
Oh, I nearly forgot that there is one couple there whose love I support, and that is Stassi and Beau. They have a very sweet moment with Lisa where instead of everyone telling Stassi not to mess it up, Lisa tells Beau not to mess it up because she can see how good they are for each other. Stassi even comes to the realization that everyone (especially her mother) telling her that she would sabotage this relationship was making her want to sabotage it. But she hasn’t. Beau has accepted her for the crazy basic that she is, and she has flourished because of it. She has grown and become a regular, trusting person, which is great for her and Beau but, let’s be honest, is probably bad for this reality-TV endeavor that we all enjoy so much.
Once Stassi got off of Beau’s lap to go into the party and try to explain to Brittany’s concerned father, Don, why he shouldn’t shoot Jax Taylor before he marries his daughter, Beau went off on his own to find the men’s room. When he pushed the door to open it, it seemed stuck, so he put his shoulder into it and pushed harder. The door opened up and pushed a large gray plastic trash can out of the way.
“I thought you said you locked it!” Jax yelled. He had his shirt unbuttoned, his pants around his ankles, and his hard member sitting gently in his right hand. Beau looked down and saw Adam on the floor of the john in a Tom Sandwich. Beau didn’t know what to do. He let the door close behind him and all of the guys seemed confused, not quite putting themselves away but certainly stopping whatever fantasy that was currently playing out.
Beau just sort of stood there as Schwartz stood up, tucked himself back into his Polo boxer briefs that Katie buys him in three packs from TJ Maxx, and walked toward him. “Beau,” he said. “Man, it’s not what it looks like. Okay, it is what it looks like. But sometimes this is what we need. You know how girls can be. No. You know how our girls can be. It’s hard. They’re hard. It’s not all sunshine and unicorns and sometimes, you just need to be with your guys. You just need something easy. Something you don’t have to think about. Something fun.”
Everyone straightened up a little bit, proud but uncertain of where this was going. Beau looked Schwartz in his melty brown eyes and took a moment to speak. Finally he said, “You got room for one more?” Schwartz leaned in and kissed him on the mouth. Jax resumed his jacking, but then slowed and shouted, “Hey, Schwartz, will you make sure it’s locked this time?”
