Our new man, West, continues to impress me and turn me on in a way that Kyle McGill Cooke, my imaginary betrothed, should be really concerned about. But the best moment of the whole episode is when Ciara rides the mechanical shark, and West walks over to it and says, “Ciara, how long did you ride it for?” She answers 22 seconds, and he walks into the little inflatable ring with the confidence of a man who is not only going to beat her but also maybe impress her at the same time. He gets up on that shark and falls faster than if he was hit in the face with a sharknado. You have to love when a dude tries to mansplain an activity by trying to do it better and ends up stinking worse than a cheese fart in a Smart Car. Ciara even tells him she is covered in lotion and still kept it up a whole 20 seconds longer than West could have.
I’m really digging the West/Ciara situation that is going on. (Should we call them “Cest”? “Weara?”) When Kyle asks him after the big Fourth of July party if he kissed Ciara, West says that he just wants to plant the seeds and take things slow, which I think is the exact right way to play it with a customer as cool as Ciara. It also allows Kyle to make a Vitamin D joke, and considering he also described his weiner as “rad,” this very episode, I believe Kyle feels my attention slipping and is trying to get me back where I belong. But yes, West and Ciara are at a simmer, and given their little flirtation in a darkened hallway, I think that there is at least going to be a make-out before the summer is over. He’s definitely way more into her than she is into him, but I have faith in my man West.
Things aren’t looking as good for Amanda and Kyle. The rest of the party goes off without a hitch … except Jesse Solomon (always both names!) tries to flirt with Paige maybe a little too hard, but it isn’t as bad as the trailer made it out to be. There must be something more down the road? Anyway, at the party, Kyle is walking around going, “Where’s my wife,” and she’s up in the closet bitching about him with Ciara and Paige. She’s mad because Paige told her that Kyle said she’s not ready for children.
We all know this is a projection. Kyle is a commitmentphobe. We know this. We watched seasons one through five of this very program right here with all the evidence of this. Kyle is never going to be ready for children because he will never be able to make that commitment. Kyle is saying that Kyle isn’t ready for children. Even if Loverboy was available in Whole Foods across the country … Oh, wait. It is? Okay. OKay. Even if Loverboy regularly sold out of its merch … It does? Okay. Even if Loverboy got him a pile of money big enough that he needed a Money Bin with a diving board for gold swimming, he would say they’re still not ready. It has nothing to do with the money and everything to do with Kyle.
I can see why Amanda is pissed off about this. Of course she’s going to be a great mother. Do you see the way she treats those dogs? She’s ready, and for Kyle to insinuate she isn’t when she cares for those dogs and Kyle himself is super annoying.
That said, when they wake up the next day and Amanda is still pissed off, it’s not fair to Kyle to demand they go home and be in a lousy mood all morning without telling him exactly what it’s about. He says that he has the same guilt and sinking feeling he used to get when he went out and partied too much, but he didn’t do it this time, so he has no idea why she’s mad.
They have a little dinner together and … I don’t know. I feel like Kyle and Amanda have been having the same fight for about eight years now, and maybe they should just cut each other some slack. Kyle should stop riding Amanda for not working as hard as he does, and Amanda should realize that Kyle loves her even if he has to vent his disapproval sometimes. Every married couple needs to talk shit about their partner. I have several friends where all we do when we have dinner is slag off those we’re married to. It’s healthy, and it’s important, and the only problem is that Kyle did it with one of Paige’s friends, which was his own stupid mistake.
As bad as it is for Kyle and Amanda, it is even worse for Carl and Lindsay. Oh, boy. What did you think would happen when America’s premiere sandwich artist finally showed up in the Hamptons? It was always going to be chaos, but this wasn’t the chaos I was predicting.
When the cast arrives for the second weekend, everyone is already uneasy, and Lindsay is not on her best behavior. She has a little clash with West, who is coming in as Larl’s friend, mind you. He left some things in the room upstairs that had been theirs last year and he asks that he can keep the fan because he is hot at night. Lindsay asks if it’s a hot room. West tells her to check the temp and let him know, being kind and deferential the whole time. She says, “I know the house. I’ve been here for years.” This is not about the actual house. This is about Lindsay’s resentment for starting this show, making it popular, and then sitting back while everyone else gets along except her. Let’s be honest, Lindsay is nuts, but there’s no show without her, and I bet she feels disrespected.
At dinner with the cast, we find out that West has been to all 50 states and that Jesse “Jazz Brunch” Solomon is a two-time cancer survivor. I have nothing to add here, except West is adorable when he says, “Imagine if he went first and I was like, ‘I went to all 50 states?’” He’s a good egg, our West.
Then it’s 12:30, and it’s time to go out. Lindsay Hubbard is ready for her first meltdown of the season because she’s been drinking and even more insecure than usual. Everyone’s dividing up to go to the club and Lindsay ends up in the Lyft with Carl, Kyle, and Jesse Solomon. We don’t get to see what happened next because it happened in the car without cameras. Couldn’t we have gotten a reenactment like this was Dateline or something? According to cast interviews, Lindsay expresses to Carl she is afraid the women in the house would hold it against her that she was in the car with the dudes. He tells her it’s no big deal and not to worry about it, and she turns to him and says, “What are you on?”
It gets worse at the club. Amanda takes out her notes (this is an experienced practitioner of the reality television arts and sciences) and says Lindsay was saying it seemed like Carl was on cocaine. She’s saying this to everyone in the cast that can listen. She gets Gabby, almost immediately heads home, and then freaks out on Carl from the house for the rest of the evening. Carl texts her on the way home, saying he would like to talk about it in the morning because he thinks they had different experiences of the night. She responds, “Let me know when you’re sober.”
This is terrible on so many levels. First, I want to acknowledge that, yes, Lindsay was probably right to be concerned about the women in the house because, yes, they are always riding her jock. But her friend Gabby and her sorta-friend Danielle were both going to be in that car. I’m sure that no one could bitch about Lindsay because the smell of pheromones West was emitting while flirting with Ciara the whole way probably made them all deaf, blind, and dumb. Anyway, that is no reason to take this all out on Carl.
Lindsay goes to the place that she knows is going to hurt Carl the most: his sobriety. Now, we don’t know if West or Jesse Solomon or someone else was doing cocaine, and that’s why Lindsay thought Carl might have added a little sugar to his boogers. (But let’s be honest, if anyone is bringing coke into this house, it’s West and/or Craig Conover.) But how would she go there so quickly? How would she accuse this man, whom she has witnessed work very hard on his sobriety over the past several years, of dropping it all the first weekend they were in the Hamptons?
While Lindsay was wallowing in bed, Gabby called Carl to see when he was coming home, and after a short conversation, she said, “That sounds like a sober man to me.” Yes! Everyone thinks Carl is sober. Given how invested they all are in his sobriety, I can’t imagine any of the veterans just blithely turning away when Carl either took a sip of alcohol or reached for a bump. What is wrong with Lindsay? (That is a rhetorical question.)
The worst is that Lindsay said this to everyone in the house. Now they’re all questioning if Carl is sober or not because Lindsay was mad that he didn’t just agree with her and tell her that she is being persecuted when she thinks she is. And by telling the house, she also told the audience, so now we’re all having to evaluate Carl’s sobriety, and I have a feeling that is the exact opposite position that he wants to be in.
As they’re getting into it the next morning, Kyle and Amanda are in bed discussing it, and they’re both like, “How could Lindsay say that about the person she’s going to marry?” Dude, if Kyle and Amanda are coming for your relationship, then your shit is entirely busted. The fight is terrible, with Lindsay continuing to lash out for no reason and Carl leaning into passive aggression in a way that isn’t healthy for either of them. It seems like we’re up for a whole summer of this and at least another week of this fight. Shouldn’t summer be fun?
Brian Moylan , 2024-03-01 03:00:42
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