When I was the “house mother” for a Fire Island share for about a decade, there were only three rules: (1) No high heels in the pool. (2) No hooking up with other members of the house. (3) Do not go to sleep on a mess. Our favorite summer stooges seem like they have broken all three during one party. I am assuming the girl Andrea pushed in the pool whose friend booted his beautiful Romanesque nose was wearing heels when she went for a dip, and you can’t prove otherwise. (You could. There is actual footage of the event.) As for hooking up in the house, the montage of all of Carl’s misadventures that we get for the second time in four episodes is a good encapsulation of that.
But what we really need to talk about is the mess. Oh, Lordy. Amanda is ushering everyone out of the house by giving them a direct-to-mouth pour from a Fireball handle and seeing them out the front door. Then the camera pans to the absolute atrocity that is the house after a party. It was like Venom: Let There Be Carnage up in that piece. Every flat surface is covered with empty Loverboy cans, red Solo cups, and probably more than a few bikini bottoms that lusty women threw Carl’s way. Instead of addressing absolutely any of it, they all go to bed, letting all of the shmutz dry, the beer fizzle, and the cigarette butts in half-empty red cups curdle into a disgusting mixture that could peel your face off.
The only one who is semi-concerned about this is newbie Mya, and for that, she will forever have a little place just next to my left ventricle. Drunk as she is, she stays up until 1 a.m. making sure the kitchen is as gleaming as Paige’s complexion. “I may not walk away from this summer with a man, but an empty sink and a clean dishwasher — those are life’s simple pleasures,” she says. Every house needs a Mya, someone who is a little warped in the head and will clean up after everyone not out of a sense of duty but to quiet their own psychotic minds.
Now if only we could unleash her on Paige and Ciara’s room. When they are getting ready to leave for the weekend, Ciara comes down with an empty pizza box, a half-full two-liter of Pepsi, assorted cups, hair ties, scrunchies, a hot pink Caboodle, a poster of ’N Sync, an old copy of Tiger Beat, and a Tamagotchi with a dead battery. These are all the things Paige wouldn’t clean up. Sister, if Ciara — the creature who lives in the trash compactor on the Death Star in Star Wars — thinks that you are messy, you need to rethink your life choices.
Know what every house doesn’t need? An Alex. A gaseous cloud made out of protein-powder farts, Alex is not only totally worthless and out of step with the house, but he’s also completely wrong about, well, just about everything. As they’re cleaning up the backyard, shoveling uneaten shellfish into trash bags with their bare hands, and crying over three-quarters of an uneaten Funfetti cake, Alex is pouring out a bottle of vodka because it didn’t have the cap on it. In a moment of sanity, Lindsay says you don’t pour it out; you just put the cap back on. Paige seconds this, saying she would eat a pizza that was left out overnight. Ugh, Alex. These ladies are right. This is alcohol. You could use it to clean a wound. It is not ever going to go bad. Unless a dragonfly fell in it and is floating around, pickled like Kyle J. Cooke on a sunny Saturday afternoon, there is nothing wrong with that booze.
After this episode, I think it is safe to say that the only sane person in that entire clapboard house is Carl. It’s the day after the party, he’s already been up and for a hike, and like six hours later, all the girls come downstairs hungover with hair so disheveled it looks like a scarecrow’s pubes. Carl is smart enough to let his flirtation with Ciara go. He says he’s looking for a relationship, and considering Ciara is still harboring feelings for Austen Kroll, a pickup artist who is too dumb to turn it into a full-time career, he decides it’s best not to get involved in a love triangle.
But is this house even a love triangle anymore? We need a new shape for all of this. A love rhombus? A love dodecahedron? I don’t know. I failed geometry. We have Paige dangling between Craig and Andrea, we have Ciara loving Austen but also jonesing for Carl, we have Lindsay supposedly dating Austen secretly for four years while seeing other people, and there is not only a bromance between Andrea and Craig but both Craig and Austen are rumored to be dating a reality star who isn’t even on this show. There is so much horniness on Summer House that it can’t be contained in the Bravosphere. We had to go dragging The Hills into this.
Yes, for all of you who aren’t bottom-feeders with notifications turned on for the Daily Mail app, Craig and Austen were rumored to be getting it on with Kristin “Blurry Letters” Cavallari, whom Paige follows on Instagram. Cavallari denied it, but Craig says they made out and maybe hooked up. She only denied being in a love triangle with the two Southern Charm stars, though. Maybe she was only screwing around with Craig? Maybe she was in a love hexagon with Austen, Craig, the Property Brother who isn’t with Zooey Deschanel, and whoever wins the next season of The Challenge. Who can say?
Lindsay talks to Austen, and he says Craig was the one getting it on with Kristen, which Lindsay tells Paige, which is absolutely the right decision. Craig then handles the entire situation wrong, telling Paige that if she lets Lindsay get into her head, she is “weak,” and Craig says he wouldn’t have come if he knew the weekend would play out like this. Craig probably means that if he didn’t know that Paige was a guaranteed lay, he never would have taken the planes, trains, and automobiles necessary to get out to the Hamptons. Gross, Craig.
What is also a little gross is Paige getting teary-eyed when she finds out Craig is hooking up with Cavallari. She’s the one who is all “I love when dudes fight over me” and has no problem flirting with Andrea then making out with Craig right in front of him. Then she’s like, “Now I’m in a love triangle I didn’t want to be a part of.” Um, yeah. How do you think those boys feel?
Paige and Craig keep saying to each other, their friends, and us as viewers that they’re nonexclusive and they can hook up with whomever they want. Craig thinks he can do whatever with Kristen and also give Paige some southern hospitality. (That’s what we call any oral action south of the border in my household.) Paige wants to date all the boys and make out, too, but when Craig exercises his God-given right to be a flesh dildo for everyone with over 20,000 Instagram followers, Paige gets her Boohoo all in a twist.
A few people are saying one thing while doing the opposite. Not Danielle’s boyfriend, Robert. He says he’d try to spend more time with Danielle and then shows up with a surprise anniversary picnic for her the next week. Get you a man that does both, and by “both,” I mean pepperonis and sour candies. Kyle, on the other hand, is doing neither. We catch up with him and Amanda at home, and she shows him some new case designs for Loverboy. He gives her a whole lecture about how he doesn’t bore her with the details, but she needs to make their deadline to get boxes made. Kyle, my dude. Don’t treat her like she’s an employee. Treat her like a partner, bore her with the details, make her understand, let her help alleviate the stress — but this isn’t going to work.
When Amanda explains that his drinking really triggers her and she needs him to be a little bit less indulgent, he says, “I don’t need a whole lecture.” Oh, so he can mansplain box design but can’t let Amanda womansplain her own feelings? I may not agree with all of Amanda’s points (because I will always be a Kyle Cooke apologist), but she is entitled to how she feels, and Kyle needs to change his behavior accordingly. Maybe then he won’t get so wasted that he can help clean up all of the Loverboy cans bobbing in the pool.
P.S. Where the F is Luke? Did he get secretly fired?
