This has been an excellent season of Summer House, as they all are, but it seems a little bit as though we’re limping to a conclusion. We know Kyle and Amanda are getting married (though in my head, Kyle and I just adopted our third gay baby and are shortly moving to an organic kale farm, petting zoo, and mini-golf course upstate). We all know Paige and Craig are exclusive. We all know Carl and Lindsay are going to get together. With all of these questions answered and the major questions out of the way, what do we have left? Apparently, just watching Paige and Ciara spend even more time wilting into a mattress.
Since we know so much about these three things, let us take them on in order. Kyle and Amanda are stressed out about wedding planning, but they get to do the best part: cake tasting. Luckily, Amanda’s parents, Donna and Frank, come over to help them and once again have the prenup conversation. Can we talk about the cake instead?
We have yet another conversation about the prenup because Amanda says Kyle has to take it up with her dad because he handles her finances. I will not get on a grown woman about who does her taxes. My mother (a retired CPA) still handles my retirement planning and tax preparation, and I am a decade older than Amanda, so I will sit in my glass house and not throw a stone. However, I am sitting in said glass house naked, so don’t drive by. (Or do!)
At the end of the conversation, Kyle says what he has said for the past three episodes: “I will get in touch with a lawyer and find out what that entails.” Um, Kyle. Shit or get off the prenup, my brother. This should have been resolved by now, or at least you should have talked to the lawyer. It’s been several weeks.
But Kyle is a busy man and, based on the merch and product on the industrial shelving in their living room, also a bit of a messy one. Not only are they getting married in 28 days, the length of an average rehab stint, but their florist dropped out at the last minute, he is being sued, is $4 million in debt, and has to deal with everyone at the dinner table ordering expresso martinis for him when they (slams table) KNOW he only drinks Loverboy-branded espresso martinis!
As the gang gets together for their first dinner out in a long time, you can tell Kyle is just looking to get worked up on the drive over there. He’s seething even when they sit down, and Carl collects everyone’s phones in a tiny little purse. (Someone comments, “The dick pics on all those phones in that purse,” and I would like to see every one. Make an OnlyFans. Sonja Morgan will show you how.) It’s no doubt he storms out twice. Over what, I’m not really sure. It’s something about everyone talking over Luke and having side conversations. Or it’s Amanda once again scolding him in front of the group. Who can say? All I can say is it is totally inappropriate.
There is one thing I want to add about this, though. When Kyle mentions how stressed he is and how he’s only sleeping four nights a week, Paige says, “We’re all working, Kyle.” Usually, in these circumstances, I would agree with Paige. When one Real Housewife says to another, “I’m dealing with a divorce” or “I’m stressed out dealing with my autistic son,” I like to refer them to a line from Dreamgirls where someone says, “Effie, we all got pain.” Yes, you may think your pain is more intense and relevant than someone else’s, but all of our pain is personal and hurts at the same frequency.
But we are not talking about pain here; we are talking about work, and, I’m sorry, Kyle works more than most of the people around the table. We see Kyle working. We don’t see everyone else do much, though being on this here television program is their work. I’m not saying that “influencing” is not a real job and that Paige doesn’t put in hard work, but she doesn’t have employees. She doesn’t have a $4 million small business loan. Being on the show is essentially her job. Kyle is on the show and has another job. When we do see Paige’s work, it’s a spot on Access Hollywood, which is owned by NBC, which also owns Bravo, so this is basically just integration between the two shows that some publicist set up for Paige, and she just had to arrive and read a teleprompter.
Yes, they all work, but can’t she at least realize that Kyle has a bit more to think about than when to do the next Amazon Live, which I refuse to admit is a thing? All of that said, yes, Kyle is overreacting and should find a better way to destress than drunkenly yelling at all of his friends while out at a fancy restaurant.
Speaking of Paige, we get the announcement that she and Craig are officially only hooking up with each other now. Yes, they are exclusive. They’re not “boyfriend-girlfriend,” but they aren’t dating or hooking up with anyone else, so they’re what now? As Paige points out, they’re essentially “boyfriend-girlfriend,” but they can’t use that eighth-grade label yet because Craig is still shaking in his pillows about commitment. I swear the hoops we have to jump through for men.
We know that things with Paige and Craig will take off, but the Lindsay and Carl thing still seems a little bit murky. We do get a little clip of them having breakfast together and Carl thinking she dates all the wrong dudes. He thinks that because the dudes aren’t him, I guess.
There is a lot of talk about Lindsay and how much she’s dating and if she’s giving too much of her heart away to each man so that when she finally finds the right man, she’s not going to have a heart left. I don’t know if that’s how it works. I don’t think someone’s “heart” is like a pie with only eight slices. I get Lindsay’s dating philosophy that the people who really love her won’t be scared off if she’s herself. She says that when the universe finally opens the door, she’ll be standing there, ready to jump through. The problem is, with the way she behaves, the universe is not going to open that door because it would never subject someone to what Lindsay is about to put them through.
Just look at how she deals with Ahmed. She’s known this guy for two weeks, and she’s already fighting with him two days in a row because he’s not giving her adequate attention. The next week, she tells everyone they are “taking a break” so they can “learn how to communicate with each other.” Girl, it’s been two weeks. At this point, you should have gone on 2.5 dates and done some heavy petting. You shouldn’t already be in couple’s therapy.
I think that is what Amanda and Kyle are alluding to when they say something with Lindsay seems off. At the dinner table, Luke says he’s hooked up with a “handful” of girls this summer instead of one girl who was a handful like last summer. (Hi, Hannah!) Paige and Lindsay talk about how there is a double standard between men and women. They are right that such a double standard exists, but I don’t think this is an example of it. I think this is specifically a Luke and Lindsay thing.
We haven’t heard about one of the girls that Luke has been dating or hooked up with all summer. Some of that might be a trick of editing, yes, but Lindsay brought Ahmed on the show, she invited Austen to her birthday, she brought home that hunk of a man whose name I forgot and fucked him on camera. She has been talking about all of these guys, saying how into all of them she was, assessing their future as possible partners. That is why it seems like something else. Luke is, well, just sleeping with girls and not bringing it up. Is that a double standard between men and women or just Lindsay making her romantic efforts much more apparent than Luke? Is it some of each? Probably.
That said, if Lindsay says she’s having the best summer of her life, I think we have to believe her, and we definitely, definitely do not need to bring up her miscarriage in public at a group event. And if Lindsay wants to sleep with every dude on the tip of Long Island, then I am happy for her. But it does seem as though she’s searching for something more and maybe looking for it in the wrong places. Oh, how I can’t wait for Carl to come in smelling like night-blooming jasmine and optimism, put his long arms around her, look the considerable length down at the top of her head, and tell her he loves her and her mess and her need and the abyss that lies inside that only he can fill, hopefully, this time with more than just his fingers.
