Nora Ephron’s parents, writers both, used to tell their daughters — writers all — that “everything is copy.” By this they meant that anything and everything that happened to them should be squirreled away for stories, transformed from personal tragedy into fodder to fuel one’s future art.
When reality stars have been on a show for too long, this is how they start to see the world. Everything gets filtered through the “this would make good television” lens. Arguments become about securing one’s place on a show or bolstering one’s allies, instead of about what actually happened.
When this happens, it’s not just that serious events get flattened into storylines; it’s that the people involved in conflicts can’t step outside the framework of scoring points with a reality audience. And that’s how we end up on a boat in Maui, with two women fighting over whether a man who already admitted that he sexually assaulted two of their friends, actually sexually assaulted them.
In the group’s last night in Hawaii, and everyone is scheduled to go on a cruise together. Janet thinks about sitting out because things are no less awkward between the Capernas and the Doutes than they were last week, but ultimately decides that she will attend. It’s awkward, awkward, awkward. Janet hunches in a corner like an urchin, unable to see that she could easily take command of this situation by congratulating Kristen and Luke on their betrothal. Instead, she grumbles under her breath and sits at a table separate from everyone else the entire time.
Technically, the big fight starts because of Michelle. Zack pulled her aside to apologize for bringing Jenna to group events, but then says it was really Janet and Scheana who “made it a thing.” I have no idea what is true, as Zack, Kristen, Janet, and Scheana are all equally likely to stir shit, and in any case Michelle gave it so little of a reaction that the attempt yielded nothing anyway, so who cares?
However, she does deserve some credit for bringing this accusation to Janet, lighting the spark that sets the entire group ablaze. Janet immediately calls Zack over, showing better reality television instincts than she has all season, Zack fetches Mother Doute to be emotional support, and we’re off.
The crux of this fight is basically that Janet and Kristen hate each other and don’t want to be on the same show anymore. Kristen is pissed about Janet’s behavior at El Coyote. Janet is pissed that Kristen spread a false rumor about her husband taking off his wedding ring.
“We talked about that!” Kristen slurs, hackles starting to rise. “You’re mad at the ring thing still?” She insists that she never spread any rumor, that she only repeated it.
“You did it to dirty [Jason’s] reputation,” Janet says. Kristen proudly replies, “Yep! Because you were attacking Danny and Nia.” Janet asks why accurately describing Danny’s actions is considered an attack: “He sexually assaulted Jasmine and Melissa.”
This is when all hell breaks loose. Fully activated, Kristen storms to the other side of the boat, where she spits in Jason’s ear what his wife has just said as though it’s some verboten slur. Jason shrugs it off, because after all, that is exactly what Danny did. Janet says she’s not going to be made the bad guy for speaking honestly about Danny’s actions.
We also hear a fresh Darkside Danny accusation. Janet says a bachelorette party approached Danny at a bar, and that he made them uncomfortable to the point that Jason had to pull Danny off them. When asked about his behavior, Danny apparently said, “Nia will always be up here, but I have a weakness for hot girls in little skirts.” (Jason says he did not hear this himself, but from the ever-present Jared Lips and Brittany.) I’ve believed from day one that Danny’s Halloween gropes were not isolated incidents — after all, no one starts their sex pest career by going after two friends and coworkers, so of course I believe this newest story.
Meanwhile, Kristen has gone rabid bug-eyed hysterical, spitting and screaming that what Danny did was absolutely not sexual assault and how dare Janet speak on Jasmine and Melissa’s behalf and, in an uncanny imitation of Jax Taylor, that she is about to knock Janet out. The intensity of her rage makes no sense, until you remember that Kristen loves nothing more than having a total meltdown on national television on behalf of a friend because she’s unable to function without an alpha to follow. (For the record, RAINN, the nonprofit that runs the National Sexual Assault hotline in the United States, defines “fondling or unwanted sexual touching” as assault, so put that in your pipe and smoke it.)
Both Janet and Kristen have taken up the mantle of something that does not involve them simply because they don’t want to address their own conflict head-on, and their performance continues to be exhausting.
Kristen is dogged in her insistence that repeating a rumor isn’t the same thing as spreading it. She believes that if she just admits she repeated a lie in a moment of stress or feeling defensive, then it undoes the damage. But it doesn’t. In a world where things that happened off-camera literally don’t exist unless a cast member brings them onscreen, repeating a rumor and starting one yourself — especially when, as in Kristen’s case, that rumor is not accompanied by an exculpatory “But I think it’s false” — are one and the same. As a viewer, I have always appreciated the chaos her utter lack of discernment brings to her shows. As a human, I understand why her castmates do not.
Meanwhile, Janet has realized that she completely overplayed her hand last season trying to ice Kristen out for repeating something I’ve always believed she did say about Michelle. The situation has now spun out of her control, and rather than fight with Kristen directly, she’s decided that cloaking herself in the banner of social justice is a more effective technique to deflect from being a shit-stirrer in her own right.
Both women are using Jasmine and Melissa to get at each other. Kristen hates Janet, and so it works for her to criticize Janet as speaking for Jasmine and Melissa, even as she does the exact same thing by diminishing what Danny did to them as not assault. And Janet hates Kristen, so it works for her to grandstand about being the only person to stand up for justice when her concern is less about Jasmine and Melissa and more about a storyline. Neither cares about Jasmine or Melissa. They just want to score points in a reality television fight. As Melissa yells, everyone needs to keep her and Jasmine’s names out of their mouths.
Though both women are approaching this argument with equal cynicism, I won’t brush aside the truth of what Janet is saying just because her motives are selfish. All season long, the entire group has worked to minimize and bury Danny’s actions because to truly grapple with them would disturb the peace. It’s almost a relief to see someone treat his behavior with the appropriate gravity, even if that person is at least 50% fueled by the desire to produce a storyline.
The whole thing also reeks of the misogyny that permeated Vanderpump Rules, where men would mistreat women only to turn around and make themselves the victims because the women dared to call it out or react, often supported by the other women. Nia’s comment that Janet should stay out of things that don’t involve her was not lost on me. Focusing on the proper procedure for calling out assault and declaring that no one is allowed to be upset about a clearly transgressive act besides its victims does nothing but recast Danny as the real victim here and convey the all-too-common belief that victims shoulder the entire responsibility of calling out harm.
One can only hope that Kristen and Janet suck it up and fight their own battle directly, instead of using the only two queer women of color in an all-white, mostly-straight cast over, and over, and over again. At the end of the day, it’s just bad reality television. Next week, when we return to California, Jax and Brittany are back, delivering a welcome respite from Kristen and Janet’s Karen-off. Til we meet again.