What?! Ooooh. Ohhh. I’m so sorry. I must have fallen asleep somehow. I’m sorry. Let me wipe the drool off of my cheek. Oh, that’s better. I’m not sure how that happened. One minute, I was watching Southern Charm, and the next, I was just, well, passed out. It’s like this episode emitted a noxious cloud of gas that some Batman villain would release on Gotham to make the entire populace pass out right where they were standing. Wow, I guess I missed about half of it. How am I going to write a recap? Should I go back and finish the episode? No, that seems like a waste of time.
From what I saw it’s not like I was missing much. Craig visits his new Sewing Down Sloth warehouse and his hot employee will help him back his Lesbian U-Haul into the parking spot without losing a mirror. Then he has a meeting with his hot business partner, Jerry. I don’t think I want any of Craig and Co’s pillows, but if the boys of this pillow empire decided they wanted to launch an OnlyFans, sign me right up.
What else happened? Venita has everyone over to her backyard, and they all wear ribbons, pink spangles, and little rectangles of faux fur that are supposed to look like stoles. They sit around and talk about, well, how civil Taylor should be in the future. How she shouldn’t blow up like she did at Madison’s party. She shouldn’t yell at her ex-Shep, her ex-friend Craig, or anyone. They tell her (I know you might never have heard this before, so take notes) that living well is the best revenge. They also tell her that looking good is the best revenge. While none of these women are wrong, the advice doesn’t seem to fit with their careers as practitioners of the reality-television arts and sciences. This is like a bunch of silk weavers saying that they should all be a lot nicer to the worms.
We got to see JT’s apartment, which also doubles as a set for the ongoing documentary series Fraternity X. (Warning to straights: Do not Google this.) Mini-a-Lago is at his kitchen counter talking to his mother on the phone and injecting himself with insulin as he looks out over the floor to find it covered with random electronics, branded polo shirts in every color, and the entire size-six inventory of a DSW. We also learn that his main business is owning a string of Airbnbs in downtown Charleston, so in short (HAR!), we can say that JT is the cause of the ongoing housing crisis. Good to be able to put a face to it.
Shep and Craig go to get pedicures, and Craig has to pay extra for the blue nail polish he only wants on his left ring finger. He read in an old issue of Sassy magazine that if you only paint that one nail your crush will propose to you. He’s been waiting for Paige to get down on one knee for about a year now, and I think it will finally happen. Shep says, “Ew, don’t paint my nails. I have to go pheasant hunting tomorrow, and I don’t want to look like an F-slur. Also, Craig, did you know they let women have jobs now? What is wrong with the world? I can’t allow women to have something that I have never had in my entire life.”
Austen meets my new man-crush Rod and they both wear backward caps, drink tequila shots, and talk about how Rod hung out with Olivia, and they might have been made out a little bit. Austen asks Rod, “So, are you going to ask her out or something?”
“Yeah,” he replies.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
“Mmmmhmmm.”
“Yup.”
“You know it.”
“Sure do.”
Oh, we meet Taylor’s dog Penelope, who has to wear a little diaper because she is in heat and Taylor doesn’t want her bleeding all over the furniture. Yes, her dog is not spayed or neutered, and Bob Barker just returned from the dead to murder Taylor with a Plinko chip. We also learn that Taylor is throwing a party where the theme is “ski après,” which is what Yoda does in Gstaad each winter.
Speaking of Taylor, we also learn the three requirements she has for any man she dates. He must be funny, be smart, and love Jesus. Um, she does know that she dated Shep for like three years, and he literally is only one of those. Also, she was interested in Austen, and based on Taylor’s dating criterion, he is a triple non-threat.
If this episode was about anything other than trying to pad out 42 minutes without commercials, it was about the budding love rhombus between Taylor, Olivia, Shep, and Austen. Shep is a little concerned about the friendship between Austen and Taylor, particularly because when he asks Austen if they ever hooked up, he hemmed and hawed like Lea Michele trying to read in public.
Shep shows up at Olivia’s house, which apparently is down the street from his, with a Ziplock bag full of freshly killed pheasant with the feathers still on it. “It’s warm!” Olivia says when she grabs the bag, and the entire bag of chocolate-covered pretzels comes up and makes a horrible technicolor stain all over my fresh white shirt. Yeah, I eat meat and everything, but if you ever show up at my house with a plastic bag full of fresh carcasses, then you will most likely be shown the door.
Shep mentions to Olivia that he thinks something might have gone on between Austen and Taylor at this overnight that JT exposed to the group. Olivia says that if something were going on with the two of them, she would know about it because she is like every 13-year-old in America: Taylor is her bestie. Shep tells her that he’s having some questions about Austen’s trustworthiness. Um, Shep. Have you met Austen? This man will steal your girl faster than his enormous tongue moves saliva around his mouth. Of course you shouldn’t trust him.
Olivia decides she wants to talk to Taylor about this and goes to meet her in a coffee shop. When Olivia arrives both she and the audience see that Taylor is very into sustainable fashion. She’s wearing a yellow turtleneck sweater with a chevron of tassels across the chest that was clearly made from every bathmat my grandmother had in the 1970s. Olivia asks Taylor what is happening with her and Austen, and Taylor says that nothing happened between them.
However, she does say that “after New York” (which is Bravoese for “after the reunion taping”), she was in a bad place with Shep, and Austen was in a bad place with Olivia, and she and Austen were using each other as a crutch. Why? Because Taylor’s other crush, the lord and savior Jesus Christ, was busy at the time trying to land a new job, setting up all his social-media platforms, and studying for the bar exam. He was a little too busy for Taylor, so she had to call Austen.
She tells Olivia that during this time, she asked Austen if their bond was deep enough and if it was something they should explore romantically. She called her brother to talk about it and he called his sister and they both agreed that they shouldn’t do anything, that they weren’t really friends like that. That’s not enough for Olivia, who seems more upset that they talked to their families about these emotions than that they had these emotions in the first place. Olivia doesn’t seem to care that, at the time, Taylor and Austen were both single and within their rights to explore something. Also, Olivia is upset about the family connection and seems to be missing the fact that they didn’t do anything with each other, which seems to be the point. The episode ends with them both taking long, silent strolls to their cars, where they probably drove right home and crawled into bed for a long, bored nap, just like the one I had to take through half of this episode.
