Photo: Bravo
When the group is out for drinks, Paige says that she doesn’t think that everyone in the house has gotten along as well as they could have this summer. I also think that’s true, and while many outside observers would erroneously think that we go to Bravo for the fighting, for the drama, I think just as many fans are happy with this season when there was not a fight this entire episode. Sorry, let me walk that back; there was no non-Kyle-and-Amanda fight during this whole episode.
The thing about Kymanda fighting is that, at this point, it seems a little bit like background noise. It’s like being at the beach; at first, you really notice the roar of the surf pounding into the sand, but after about 30 minutes, it’s just there, and you keep moving on with your life, knowing that the gravity of the moon will keep pulling at the water and this cycle will continue long since our ashes have been scattered in the SUR Alley, a future UNESCO World Heritage Site.
It starts at the beginning of the episode, picking up from last week when the group asks Kyle and Amanda about their inevitable move to New Jersey, and Kyle starts dissembling about moving to the suburbs and even starting a family together with Amanda. I know I always say that my love for my imaginary husband, Kyle McGill Cooke, knows no bounds, but, honey, I think I’m starting to see a bound or two. I don’t think it’s wrong that Kyle is rethinking having kids or moving to the suburbs when that happens, something that he and Amanda always planned on doing. However, if he’s having second thoughts, that is something he should be bringing up to Amanda privately off-camera. For him to hit her with this at a dinner party with her friends and the cameras all sitting around is some bullshit. Also, why not offer Amanda some alternatives? What about Brooklyn? What about Westchester? What about New Hampshire? Moving out of the city doesn’t need to be Rabbit, Run.
After dinner, when Paige, Ciara, and Amanda are sitting in bed together, Paige asks her, “When you get home, are you ever like, ‘You said that on national television, what’s your problem?’” Exactly! There is a time and a place, Kyle; when you’re at dinner, just pull out some platitudes and then have the real discussion later. Don’t stand some moral ground that you’ve never stood on before in front of everyone. That’s kind of like, I don’t know, putting on a women’s swimsuit for a lifeguard-themed volleyball game and then dragging the whitest possible ass out in a sea full of strangers. Actually, I don’t know how those two things are alike, but I needed a transition, so here we are.
Yes, the crew played a friendly game of volleyball on the beach together. Two trips to the beach in one summer? Did they double the production budget or something? Did someone finally get Ciara over her crippling fear of seaweed? The game, captained by high school volleyball quarter champions Jesse Solomon (always both names!) and Carl, is absolutely adorable, especially seeing Carl dressed up as a ‘90s surf bro, complete with a neon OP T-shirt. However, they only play to like six points. They drag the volleyball, net, and all the other gear out to the beach, set it up in the blazing sun, and then play for a collective 15 minutes. Oh, hell to the no, to the no, no, no. If I’m doing all that work, I’m going to need at least three sets. I would be pulling up strangers from other umbrella clusters and being like, “Think you can take these two former varsity athletes and a group of influencers? Let’s rumble!”
At the beach, Kyle and Amanda have another chat. Amanda says she’s mad at Kyle for coming home a few nights earlier at 4 a.m., and then, to deflect her anger, he brings up some nonsense to get himself out of it. Kyle says he wishes they were communicating better, and that is the exact bullshit Amanda is talking about. She says he doesn’t like when she has a stance on something, and he says that her stance is bullshit.
Okay, we have been having this same fight since the “Summer should be fun. Amanda? Not fun” days. These two aren’t allowing each other to express their personalities, and we’ve basically been spinning the same hamster wheel of a fight since season one. Kyle doesn’t understand that Amanda doesn’t want to work as hard as he does, likes to stay home, is a bit of an introvert, and is a founding member of the Bed Sore Sisters, Sag Harbor Chapter. Amanda doesn’t understand that Kyle needs to go out and party occasionally and stay out until 4 a.m.
They both just need to get over it, quite honestly, and by that, I mean compromise. Amanda needs to let Kyle have a bender once a month and not stress him out for days upon his return. In exchange, Kyle needs to support Amanda in getting her Jersey house where she can sit in her sweatpants and watch marathons of Love Island while grooming her absolutely adorable dogs.
Part of the problem is they think the other is purposefully doing these things to hurt them. Amanda tells their relationship coach that Kyle does this, knowing it’s going to upset her. For Kyle, staying out until 4 a.m. with strangers is like breathing. It’s not that he’s doing it to annoy Amanda; it’s that he can’t stop doing it, and he will never stop. He needs it for his ego to survive. Amanda just needs to learn not to get mad about it. The same goes for Kyle. He needs to help her embrace her slower speed. The biggest problem is that Amanda can’t see how partying like Kyle is a good time, and Kyle can’t see how chilling like Amanda is a good time. Just give each other more room to be yourselves. (This is my advice to literally all couples in the universe.)
Kyle’s other problem is that Amanda makes these digs at him and he doesn’t feel like she likes him. While they’re out, he tells Paige that he looked into Amanda’s phone and didn’t see one photo of himself on her camera roll. (I bet it was 300 photos of the dogs, 12 screenshots of manicures she liked on Instagram, and 45 pictures of her and Paige in bed.) He tears up a little bit at this and needs Paige to remind him that Amanda loves him, and if they were still on MySpace, Amanda would totally put him in her Top Eight. (Speaking of which, you just know that Amanda has an amazingly angsty LiveJournal out there somewhere.)
But that’s the thing about these two. As much as their fighting is the white noise of Summer House, I honestly believe that they really love each other and will make it work. While Amanda needs to ease up on Kyle a little bit, Kyle also needs to give up this thing about them “not communicating” to keep them from having kids or moving to the burbs. Just like he fretted for years about walking down the aisle with her, he’s never going to be comfortable doing it, so someone just needs to force his hand. But, seriously, Amanda, did you see Kyle sitting alone in his room, farting aloud, and then saying, “Who said that?” Do you want half of your precious baby’s DNA to come from this Mulleted American? Maybe reconsider before you call the relationship coach again.
Carl and Lindsay (a.k.a. Larl) weren’t fighting this episode, but Lindsay did say that her sex life is currently at a 2.5. She says that she and Carl had sex that day, and no one came. She also says that they should have more sex so that he doesn’t feel like he needs to get off every time they make the beast with two backs. Now, I don’t know that Carl is on antidepressants, but based on my own experiences with them, low libido and not being able to climax sound like the old Lexapro one-two-punch. But that doesn’t mean they need to have a horrible sex life. He could pleasure Lindsay and rock her world. They could have intercourse with the understanding that Carl may not make it to the finish line. They could just share some porn and help each other diddle those Skittles. There are a million possibilities, but it sounds like neither of them wants to explore those because, ah doy, they don’t really want to be together.
It broke my heart more than a little to see Lindsay look absolutely stunning in her Berta dress. Did you know her dress is from Berta? Did you see the sign in the store? Berta. It’s a Berta. Who made that dress? Berta! Okay, we’ve seen it enough times now that Lindsay got her dress for free. That makes me feel a little bit better since she never got to wear it down the aisle.
Not much progressed with West and Ciara, but he’s talking about how much he likes her to his great aunt and she’s, well, she’s signing a modeling contract in her managers 1BR in Hells Kitchen. Okay. Sure. Whatever, guys. I love you both. Keep doing you.
The one we really need to celebrate, however, is Jesse Solomon, who is bringing back the old Summer House sluttiness that we’ve missed so much. He comes home at 4 a.m. with a nice young lady named Camille, who loves fake eyelashes, thongs, and reality television programs. They arrive, and a twitter of texts goes around the house as everyone wants to know what is going on. He takes her out to the hot tub, and they have a bit of a canoodle. it brings me back to season one when Kyle invites Amanda over to the house so that they can go in that absolutely disgusting indoor hot tub they had at the old house.
After the hot tub, Jesse takes his new friend upstairs, puts a towel over the camera, and gets to work. “You’re so good at that,” he tells his new friend, who replies, “I know.” We don’t get to see the humping; we don’t get to see her wake up in the morning because there is an Uber waiting for her before the post-nut clarity even settles on Jesse. But we all have that clarity this summer. It’s the clarity of everyone getting along, the clarity of new friendships and old loves, the clarity of it mostly working but sometimes falling apart. It’s the clarity that every summer we’re making a movie, the dinners and drinks, the volleyball games on the beach, the little strumpets named Camille who show you just how good a hand job can feel. Thank god for the summer, because when our lives are over, all we’ll have are the DVDs of these memories, and I hope every single one of us fades out with at least one stinking hot tub scene preserved for eternity.
