Photo: Bravo
I don’t know if you remember way back to 2008 when the economy was crashing, “Womanizer” was banging at the gay bar, and you couldn’t swing a Kardashian without hitting a Hervé Léger dress, but it was the same year the Real Housewives got their very first spinoff series: Date My Ex: Jo & Slade. On it, early RHOC standout Jo De La Rosa went on a series of dates with new dudes as her ex, Slade Smiley, watched. Just look at the title of this thing, and you can see it’s just begging to be an anthology. I have a serious pitch for Bravo, and it is Date My Ex: Katie & Tom. Seriously, people. Make this happen.
I’m not sure what the format should be, but maybe Katie and Tom go on dates with the same women and we see which ones they prefer. Maybe Katie and Tom pick dates for each other and they’re both so spiteful they pick the worst possible people. Maybe they have sex with each other’s best friends and then tell the other about it. I don’t know, but I feel like this Vanderpump Rules episode was a backdoor pilot for the dating show we didn’t realize we needed.
It all starts at the beach day from the previous episode, when Schwartz takes Sandoval off to the bar early to get him away from Ariana. Katie calls Schwartz while they’re sitting at the bar flirting with a bunch of blonde girls who are all named Madison. “You left your stuff here,” Katie tells Schwartz. He assumes that means she’s bringing it to him, and she says, “This is your call to say it’s still down here.” I love that Katie still feels responsible for Tom but has no accountability for him. She’s going to tell him his shit is there but mostly to annoy him and make him come and get it himself and behave like an actual person for a change.
At the bar, Tori, Scheana’s 24-year-old ex-nanny with hair that is one Pegasus away from being a Lisa Frank pencil case, comes up and starts flirting with Tom. I love her attitude. She’s silly and playful but also totally direct. When Tom asks what she wants to drink, she says, “You know what I like,” and when he guesses Champagne, she says, “Go get it.” This is a young woman totally in control of her faculties. Next, Tori just flat out asks him when he’s going to ask her on a date, to which he obliges.
Then Katie arrives and tells Tom he’s being rude because the Madisons are trying to talk to him and he’s ignoring them. She kicks him off the table so she can flirt with Tori and eventually suck face with her like they’re two theater kids sitting at a picnic table in the school courtyard during study hall. They definitely have Lisa Frank Trapper Keepers. During all this, we learn Katie has never dated a woman but has had sex with one (or more!) and was always attracted to them but never did anything because she was always with Tom Schwartz.
Now, I love this story line so much that I want it to become a whole show, but it does reek a little bit of producer interaction. We never even heard a whimper of Katie being anything other than straight, even when the story lines included Lala eating Ariana’s cookie in the back of a car. Also, this Tori character seems to come a little out of the blue, ask them both out on dates, and then goes on those dates over two consecutive days. That just all sounds like, I don’t know if it was prearranged, but let’s say it’s … convenient. Know what, though? I don’t really care that much.
Both the dates turn out to be duds. We see nothing of Schwartz’s except his kiss with Tori at the end, and we see Tori and Katie painting on tiny easels at Katie’s apartment (as I always say about Julia Lemigova: Lesbians are gonna lesbian, even when they’re bisexual), but there doesn’t seem to be that much to it.
Things are a lot more complicated with Schwartz and Jo, whom he calls Joseph. He goes by her salon for a haircut and a dye job and emerges as a blond. Well, not really a blond. I once had a fungal condition in my left armpit where all the hair turned neon yellow. That’s what Tom’s hair looks like. Is this supposed to be an advertisement for Jo’s hair services? As Scheana pointed out earlier in the season, she’s not really selling the audience on her skills. When he’s there, he tells Jo he’s going to a singles mixer at the Mondrian, the site of several huge events in the Pump Rules canon. Jo wants to come too.
Jo is under the impression that they’re going only to support Sandoval, but Schwartz is clearly flirting with other women, including one lucky lady who wants to be on camera so bad she essentially forces Schwartz to suck her face like it’s a pickleback. When Jo discovers this, she storms out of a party at a Sunset Strip hotel for the second time this season.
In the episode’s final scene, Schwartz calls Jo to his apartment to basically break up with her. It seems she thought they were a lot closer than he did. He enjoys her friendship and hanging out with her but doesn’t want a relationship and wants to keep dating (i.e., fucking) other people. Ugh, remember how hard Katie had to work to get this guy to commit? Jo, get out of there now and save yourself years of agony. Bullet dodged. She thinks they’re actually dating, but he’s embarrassed to be seen with her — either with his friends or on television, it’s unclear. But since he welcomed her onto the show, it can’t be just that. She leaves crying, and Tom, always wanting to please everyone, is shouting “Joseph, Joseph!” after her, but she darest not turn around lest she turn into a pillar of salt.
Poor Jo, in her hippie top and printed pants, sitting cross-legged in her confessional like she’s at a yoga retreat instead of on a reality show. I feel a little bad for her after this episode. I agree with Lala: Jo is entirely harmless. Is she annoying? Yes. Does she try too hard? Yes. Would I avoid her if I were to run into her at a bar? Yes. But she’s trying to be an asshole or steal anyone’s man.
That’s why I didn’t understand why Katie freaked out on Lala just for sharing a hot dog with this woman. (Well, in a different way than Katie and Jo have shared the same hot dog, but similar.) Lala says Jo reached out to her, and she wanted to get to know her a bit better in case she was actually dating Schwartz. Katie sees this as some betrayal, but for what, exactly, I don’t know. Jo didn’t do anything to her other than sleep with her ex-husband, but considering Katie is fucking his best friend and kissing the girl he just went on a date with, she can’t really care about that.
Is it because everything she thinks she knew about Scandoval was because the news broke? She explains to Lala that when hanging with Tom, Tom, and Raquel, she focused on Schwartz, not on what was going on with Sandoval. And she thought Sandoval and Ariana were broken up. Really? It seems Jo has been around this “friend group” for years. Even if she thought they’d broken up, wouldn’t she have whispered to Schwartz, “Dude, what happened with him and Ariana?” I don’t know, I’m still suspicious of all of this.
While that is a reason to be mad at Lala for hanging out with Jo, that’s for Ariana to get upset about, not Katie, who seems more upset that Lala isn’t consistent. She says one day she hates Schwartz because he still plays pickleball with Randall; the next day, she’s trying to make friends with Jo. And Katie is clearly centering herself in this debate, saying that Jo means nothing to Lala but that Katie should mean something. Okay, but why are you mad at Jo? I don’t get it. But Katie isn’t wrong. Lala, like a weather vane with lip implants, always goes whichever way the wind blows.
Most of the episode is not Scandoval focused, thank God, but there are a few interesting scenes at the beginning, mostly with Ariana and the rest of the crew. Now, you know I love Brock’s thighs, but I sure don’t love his mind, so when he tells Ariana that Sandoval is “castrated in a corner,” I wanted to tell Brock to do what he does best: shut his mouth, take off his top, and throw a rugby ball around.
At the bar, Lala and Scheana talk with Ariana about her living situation, and Scheana says they have to get her out of the house. Ariana says she knows the amount of anger she has toward him is unhealthy and adds tearfully, “I put so much time and money and effort into making this my dream home, and not only did he wreck it but the way that he is acting like he deserves to stay there or keep it.” She’s right. Many on the show (even me in the recaps) keep telling Ariana to move out. But what about Tom? (“Don’t let it be about Tom.” “It’s about Tom.”) Why can’t he vacate the premises? Is it because we all know he’s not making any money? Is it because we’re all products of a misogynist society so we’re blaming Ariana for a problem she didn’t invent? Probably both. But just like the great King Solomon faced with two mothers trying to claim the same baby, it’s time to cut this damn house in half and move on. Sandoval is making it way harder than it needs to be for no good reason, and she’s right, he shoudn’t get to keep their home after breaking it apart.
It became clear to me that Ariana cares about the house, yes, but what she’s mourning isn’t the address but her relationship itself. She’s upset about the years she spent building this moron into something close to a human man, then he threw her away and made her feel unworthy, like it was somehow her fault for not buying batteries and pens (that old chestnut!) that led to her own betrayal.
Meanwhile, back at the house, Ann shows up for work after a few days off and finds a hot, mustached man named Craig sitting at the kitchen island. “Can I help you?” Ann asks, taking off her sunglasses and placing her car keys in the dish on the hutch where she always puts them.
“Hi, I’m Craig,” he says. “Tom’s assistant.”
“No, I’m Tom’s assistant.”
“I’m Tom’s assistant too.”
“He didn’t say anything about you.”
“He didn’t say anything about you.”
“Toooooommmmm,” Ann shouts up the stairs, but she knows her screams are drowned out by the StairMaster’s drone. “Toooommm? Did you replace me? Tom? Are you breaking up with me? Is it over? You just replaced me and can’t even have the decency to tell me to my own face. You wait for me to figure it out by discovering your new assistant in my place on the island. Tom? Tooooommmm?”
Kristen leaves the Capri Room dinner that is not in the Capri Room because she refuses to say that she made up that Zack told her that Janet said that Michelle is a racist Republican even though she clearly extrapolated a lot of that from errant comments that each of them made. Basically, she made it up. Later, at a gala that looks like it’s being held in the courtyard of a suburban high school, Kristen apologizes again for hurting Michelle but won’t say she didn’t hear what she says she heard. Jesse, who is dressed like the gay Riddler for the event, gets so upset he has to leave the conversation. “Do you want to keep doing this over and over?” he asks. “Repeating things and making trouble.” Yeah, dude. Of course she does. That’s, um, kinda the job.
