Photo: Casey Durkin/Bravo
This super-sized episode really should have been chopped into two parts. The first half focuses on Jax’s soft opening. No, I don’t mean any of his physical orifices, but the soft opening of his bar, Jax’s Studio City, which looks like someone put a handful of picnic tables out in front of a Lowe’s so you could do shots while staring at succulents. This wrapped up all the drama in the group.
The second half of the episode gives us codas into Jesse and Michelle’s and Brittany and Jax’s breakups. Picking up the cameras six months after filming finished (which is usually around when the first episodes start airing) is something a Bravo show has never tried before, but I think I may like this even more than a reunion. What we get is realer and rawer, making me so excited for the show’s second season. (Yes, it’s been renewed, supposedly with the same cast.)
Jax’s “soft opening” (a phrase I hate as much as “cool beans” or “fur baby”) starts with Tom Schwartz showing up and saying, “Wow, it’s so rustic.” That’s the sort of adjective — like “cozy” or “comfortable” — that you only use when you’re trying to cover up a poor reaction. Never call something “rustic,” even if it’s a mountain view, a log cabin, or an abandoned summer camp that clearly still houses a psychopath or two. Jason arrives and says, “It’s a lot more done than I thought it would be,” which is a compliment so backhanded that Zendaya learned it when practicing for Challengers.
The drama really starts when Michelle, Janet, and Jasmine are having a convo, and Janet asks what is up with Zack’s post about being in Big Bear. Jasmine tells her that it was just trolling, and Janet says she doesn’t like that because, let’s face it, Janet didn’t think of it first. Zack comes over and says he wants to have a private chat with Janet. They all tell him he can talk there. Janet says that she was going to invite Zack on the babymoon, but when she called him, he was very aggressive, and if he didn’t believe her, then her other gays, Flotsam and Jetsam, were listening in, and they thought it was aggressive too.
Zack screams, “I don’t care what Croc of shit boots said. I could literally give less of a shit.” He is referring to Janet’s gay Simon, who wore a pair of Croc boots to an event. Imagine if you get three scenes on reality television and you use one to show off your Croc boots, and that’s all anyone will ever remember. My heart goes out to all the background players stuck with gross associations. Anyway, Janet, who says she’s not dealing with any drama that night, says, “Done!” and gets up and walks away. Zack tells her to get the fuck out, and then Jason threatens to mess Zack up if he talks to his wife like that again, which is deserved but also very high school.
The weird thing about the Zack and Janet fight is that Janet keeps alluding to them having some big beef in the past that she got over to hang out with Zack, but we don’t know what it is. She also calls Zack trash and says she won’t hang out with him again. Zack also says her stunt of letting people listen to their chat without telling him is classic mean-girl behavior, and he’s right.
Here’s the thing about these two: they hate each other because they are exactly the same. They’re petty gossips who like to stir shit, blame other people for it, and get right up in that mess. They’re at their best when they’re in a confrontation and they think that the other person is wrong. Whenever we meet people just like us, we become instant friends or bitter enemies. That’s why both Janet and Zack are (or were) friends with Kristen Doute because she is the same as them, except she lies a lot more. This is also why all three of them are excellent practitioners of the reality television arts and sciences.
Jasmine is upset that she feels like Janet is making her choose between her and Zack, and she tells Jax to clear up whether or not he was sent to disinvite Kristen and Zack at Kristen’s T-shirt relaunch flop event. Jax goes to talk to Janet and is a bit heated. “Be careful with your tone right now. I’m pregnant,” she says. Michelle said something similar to Zack earlier, and I have some sympathy for Janet dealing with pregnancy, hormones, and all of these idiots. However, she signed up for a Bravo reality show when she was fifteen months pregnant. What did she think they were going to do? Sit around and build Barbie Dream Houses and talk about renewable energy? No, they signed up to fight, and if you can’t do that while pregnant, then maybe wait for season two.
Kristen is across the bar saying that Janet is the one who started all the shit between her and Michelle. Zack also says that everyone was good until Janet started spreading gossip about everyone, which used to work until all the friends started comparing notes, and the viewers at home got to see it. By no means is Janet an innocent, but all three of these dipshitted wildebeests are horrible and stir up all sorts of shit.
What’s odd is that Kristen and her boyfriend Luke, a toe shoe with a Clif bar for a brain, were largely sidelined both in the finale and the coda. Kristen was one of the stars when this started and a lynchpin for the drama for the rest of the season. I’m a little sad that Janet seemed to successfully sideline her by not inviting her to Big Bear. But I guess Kristen also successfully sidelined herself by pissing off both Janet and Michelle, which is why she wasn’t invited to the all-girl gathering to talk about the splits. And while we’re on the topic of invitations, why did Jax only talk to Jason about his separation? Where were Jesse and Danny? Why wasn’t Zack invited with the dudes?
After jumping ahead six months from Jax’s party, the first scene is Michelle dropping by her and Jesse’s old house with their daughter to pick up her bike and some toys. Michelle and Jesse have a conversation about what is going on with their life and their business, and you can tell that Michelle is done. She is doner than done. She already has a Hinge profile and a bikini wax and is ready to hit the Chateau Marmont pool to find her a rich Hollywood director so she’ll never have to work again. She’s also sick of Jesse’s shit. He’s trying to maintain any control he has, telling her that he’s not going to go with the mediator they used and that he wants to talk to a lawyer before he signs anything. Michelle says, “We are getting divoooooooorced, which means you need to siiiiiiiiiiiiiign,” stretching out her vowels like the elastic panel on a pair of maternity jeans.
Jesse, however, still tries to condescend to her, talking about the “11 times I explained it to you” and telling her that her request for a list of whose clients are whose in writing isn’t necessary. But all of the fucks in Michelle’s bank have been spent. She’s now talking to him like he always talked to her. At least, I assume. While I’m glad we got this season with them together, I think we missed years of Jesse treating her like crap. If you were to just watch the show, it might seem like Jesse was trying really hard, and Michelle kept shutting him down, but I have a feeling this was way too little and way too late. I mean, this guy wears a non-ironic headband around the house. Come on.
We then see most of the ladies congregating at Janet’s house while her new baby boy, Cameron, is asleep. It makes sense that Janet and Brittany are talking about their breakups together because, well, they’re basically divorcing the same man. They both married a narcissist with anger-management issues who can’t speak to a woman with respect and has no intention of changing. The only difference is that Jax is also a malignant liar.
Brittany tells us that when the cameras stopped rolling, Jax started being even meaner to her, exacerbated by spending a lot of time at the bar and getting hangovers that made him especially cruel. She said one day, after he had been yelling at her for hours, she just thought, What am I doing here? She packed up a bag for her and Cruz and left to go live in an Airbnb. (I think it’s worth noting that both Jesse and Jax refused to leave the marital home even though that means less displacement for their children.)
Finally, we get Jax and Brittany’s scene together, and to tell you the truth, I was so convinced these two had made up their separation to get us to tune into The Valley that I had a hard time believing this was true. Brittany had stood by this man for so long; why would she leave now? But I’m so glad she did, and I’m so glad it’s real. You can just see the decade of fatigue on Brittany’s face as they sit in their bedroom, hashing things out. (You think her perma-frown is from plastic surgery, but let me tell you, it is from Jason Cauchi.)
Jax tells her that he booked an appointment for a therapist. She asks him when, and he says it was the day before. “You made it yesterday, right before the cameras came up,” Brittany says. Then we find out that Jax never even went to the appointment because it was too far. Do we think that there was even an appointment in the first place? No. Of course there wasn’t. Brittany asks him what he’s done to change and he has no answer. She also says that as soon as the cameras are down, he will rage-text her once again and that what he’s doing right now is all a front. I totally believe her.
She also points out that he can’t go on TMZ and tell them that they’ve reconciled and moved back into the house. He counters that he didn’t; he just said that she was at home when they asked him. Brittany, ever resourceful, pulls up the recording, and he said it. Of course he said it. This is a man who, as Brittany says, lies for attention. He lies about everything; he lies about nothing. Why? I don’t know. Neither does he, because he won’t go to therapy.
Jax says, “I don’t know what else I can do to show you I’m trying here.” I don’t know, Jax. You could actually drive to the therapist’s office, even if it’s on a moon or Mercury. You could find your own apartment and let Brittany and Cruz move back into their house. You could start facing the truth and treating your wife like a human being who loved you against all odds instead of like a half-dead slug wrangling about on your front walk. But you won’t do any of that. You’ll put on a show and say you’re different, but you’re not. We’ve seen it every season. Jax 2.0 is Jax 2.never. That is why, as fascinating as Jax is to watch, he’s ultimately a boring character. It’s the same cycle repeatedly, like eating a PB&J daily for school lunch. Even if you love it, eventually, you crave anything else.
The show leaves us with a little montage of their time together, from when Jax first dragged her to the SUR alley, a future UNESCO World Heritage Site, to his cheating, their engagement, their wedding with Lance Bass standing in for a homophobic pastor, and eventually Brittany leaving in her SUV go to start a new life as an Airbnb spokesperson. He opens the door and runs after her, “Brittany!” he shouts, holding his phone in his hand. But she’s in the car, the window is up, and as Jax struggles to remember the lie he was going to concoct to reel her back in, the gate closes behind her with a barely audible thwap.
