overnights

Vanderpump Rules Recap: Old Hollywood Sham

Vanderpump Rules

Either Him or Me
Season 7 Episode 3
Editor’s Rating 3 stars

Vanderpump Rules

Either Him or Me
Season 7 Episode 3
Editor’s Rating 3 stars
Photo: Bravo

We’re going to spend this entire season talking about DJ James Kennedy, aren’t we? I mean, it’s fun to hate on this guy, just like it’s fun to hate on The Greatest Showman or Boris Johnson’s haircut, but there’s only so much I can take, only so much of that uncomfortable, taint-quivering loathing that he brings up in me before it needs to stop forever. It’s amazing when he says things like, “I’m all for equality but those bitches can go fuck themselves,” because the blithe wrongheadedness of it just makes me chuckle, but how long can you listen to that before you need to stop him and say, “No, seriously, James. That’s really screwed up.”

Katie reached that point after DJ James Kennedy told her she needed to lose some weight while the two of them were working at the SUR Pride celebration. First of all, I need to give Tom Schwartz props for finally standing up for his wife for maybe the first time ever. When he goes to SUR and James is working there, he tells her that Katie isn’t fat, she’s “luscious and gorgeous.” He sort of lets James off easy, excusing his behavior as something that only happened because he was so sauced. But we have to remember that Schwartz is a man who gets so drunk so often that he has a house muumuu to wear when he’s hungover. This is a man who is sympathetic to blackout indiscretions.

Luckily Katie doesn’t need her man to stand up for her. She decides that she is fed up with the way that James speaks to her and all the other women at SUR and says something to Lisa. “This has been my home for almost nine years,” she tells their boss. “I don’t think I am willing to work at a place where this is tolerated.” We then get a genius montage of James making fun of many of his female coworkers and telling them to shut their mouths. This montage doesn’t even include the coworkers he’s slept with and later slagged off.

Their sit-down seems very contrived for the show, but I think it’s also essential, because Katie is absolutely right. It’s one thing if James said this while everyone was just hanging out at the bar, but these are things he’s saying to his coworkers while he’s ostensibly on the clock. If Lisa is going to continue to allow him to talk to women like that and show a pattern of behavior where he is cruel and denigrating to them while collecting a paycheck, she might as well be calling Katie fat herself.

Based on the preview for next week, it looks like Lisa is going to can him again and I really think she should, not only because I can’t stand DJ James Kennedy, but I think we really need to send a message to the straight guys who watch this show (and straight guys love Vanderpump Rules like they love not washing their jeans) that it’s not cute to act like this anywhere, but especially at work.

Earlier in the episode, James’s girlfriend Raquel, a sentient human being made entirely of lip fillers, tells him that his behavior has consequences, but so far the only consequences we see from his drunken rampage at Pride is getting disinvited from Peter’s birthday party. When that happens, James says, “Sometimes people invite me to things and then disinvite me and I’m always gutted.” I mean, how does anyone know what it feels like to get disinvited from things regularly? I feel like the only people who would understand this are Ann Coulter, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Kevin Hart. I have never been disinvited from anything, except that one time when Sonja Morgan meant to have a small cocktail party at her house and accidentally emailed every single person in her address book.

My problem with Raquel, the pocket that hangs out from a pair of Daisy Dukes, is that the way James treats her doesn’t really have any consequences at all. When she joins the girls for a night out, where they’re all in “Old Hollywood Glam” for no reason other than Katie got some new dark lipstick shades in her Birch Box, she tells them that James is only bad when he’s drunk. When he’s sober he treats her like a queen but after a few Red Bull and vodkas he makes little jabs at her. Um, that’s not treating her like a queen. That’s still treating her like shit some of the time. If anyone treated me like he treats people at all I would be headed for the door faster than you can say 80-percent-off closing sale at Kyle By Alene Too.

Her mistake is that she’s blaming it on the alcohol, thinking that if he sobers up he wouldn’t be like that. But all of the girls, including his ex, Kristen, know that’s not true. He’s that kind of awful when he’s sober too and he needs a whole lot more help than an apologetic rehab stint. If Raquel, an Instagram picture of avocado toast with 23 likes, really wants him to sober up she would say, “Stop drinking or I’m leaving.” She is not forced to be here and she can have an effect on James’s behavior if she wants to. Right now it seems like she’s too weak, or too thirsty, to do both.

Yes, both she and her boyfriend want her on the show really badly. That’s why she’s talking to Scheana about how she wants to be invited to all of the events. I think she’s probably had a similar talk with Brittany. This girl wants to be front and center in the cast portrait, but I don’t think she’ll ever make it. She’s going to need to be more than a mouse cowering under the foot of a belligerent elephant if she wants to make an impression.

The other insane casting maneuver is having Teddi Mellencamp, one of the rich women who do things on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, show up to ask Lisa to give her brother a job. You might as well just announce that he is going to be added to the cast right away. Why even have this meeting other than to announce that he’s coming, unless it was so Lisa could have another opportunity to talk about the loss of her brother and how it affects her?

Everyone on this cast is getting a little bit more craven. Scheana is dating Adam, the hot bartender from last season she tried to set up with Brittany. I guess if she couldn’t get him on the show that way, she’s going to get him on the show by dating him herself. Also there’s the sad scene of Peter telling Jax he has his job at SUR back, when we knew that was going to happen. It’s as inevitable as Kristen flashing her panties the next time she’s blackout wasted.

Speaking of Jax and Brittany’s craven plays, what do we think of MeeMaw’s Beer Cheese, coming to a “dairy” section of Ralph’s near you? I don’t know what beer cheese is, nor have I ever tasted it, but of all the things I want to buy from reality stars (and I do own a vial of Vicki Gunvalson’s perfume) the last thing I actually want to own is a processed food product made by two of the world’s most famous waiters.

Tom Schwartz has Sandoval and Jax over for some sort of cheese-filled meat product called Juicy Lucys, which looks about as appealing as Steve Bannon’s moose knuckle. Jax left on his motorized cooler after dinner and went back to his apartment to search for Realtor porn on XHampster and the Toms were left alone to develop the cocktails for their new bar.

They began reminiscing while standing close in Schwartz’s galley kitchen and Sandoval said, “Remember when you invited us over and cooked us steaks and then told us you had coddled those steaks in your butt cheeks.”

“Yeah,” Schwatz said, with his goofy laugh, while brushing his floppy hair away from his eyes. “Those were delicious steaks.”

“Absolutely delicious it made me … It made me wonder if it was the steak or something else,” Sandoval said.

Schwartz laughed again, and swooped his air again, while thinking of exactly what to say. Then he slowly turned around, braced himself against the cabinets, and stuck his ass out toward Sandoval. “Go ahead. Give it a taste.”

Sandoval knelt down on the sticky kitchen floor and slowly pulled down Schwartz’s track pants and underwear. He looked up at the beautiful mounds of flesh above him and the very messy and packed counter that Schwartz was leaning over. He was wondering just how they were going to do this and not have it end up so sloppy, but then he decided not to worry about it. Maybe getting sloppy was the whole point.

Vanderpump Rules Recap: Old Hollywood Sham