For its first nine episodes, The Valley has focused on the women. They’ve been the ones fighting, their relationships and conflicts with one another the primary driver of the show’s drama (with the exception of Jesse, who will scrap with anyone with a pulse, gender be damned). Kristen vs. Michelle, Kristen vs. Janet, Michelle’s maybe affair, Nia’s postpartum depression, and Brittany’s growing frustration with Jax have been the centerpiece of the show — until now. This week, we get our first male-centric episode, and the deeper look it provides into the husbands is fascinating.
First, we have to dispense with last week’s cliffhanger. Just as I remembered, production made it appear as if Michelle confessed to sexy-texting multiple men who are not Jesse, but actually she’s doubling down. She tries her most absurd defense yet: That Kristen “doesn’t understand the concept of networking” and that she’s confused because she “isn’t a businesswoman.”
According to Jax, Michelle sent pictures of herself in dresses to a specific person who called her “sexy” and “hot” in return. In any case, Jax doesn’t understand why you would need to text pictures of yourself to clients in order to sell houses. Michelle thinks he’s just bringing this up to deflect from his own marital issues, which is correct but doesn’t mean it’s not true. I really wish she would just lean into it — her affair is the most interesting thing about her, and we’ve all seen how Jesse operates. We get it, girl!
Jax also tells Michelle to “handle” things, a clear shot across the bow: Talk to Jesse or I will. Turns out, she doesn’t have to — the second she mentions the conversation, Jesse bellows for Jax so they don’t have to play the telephone game. He plays it cool after hearing the details and backs Michelle up: Kristen doesn’t understand “farming leads for new business”, and he sends Michelle to flirt with potential male clients all the time, so he doesn’t care. Jax doesn’t buy it, and neither do I.
The truth starts to leak out at a weepy heart-to-heart. As Jasmine, Janet and Michelle prepare dinner inside — Brittany is incapacitated in her bedroom from carsickness, and of course Jax is yelling at her instead of helping — the men head outside to light the grill. Everyone but Jason is wasted: Jax has had two bottles of tequila, Jesse’s had one, and Danny can’t even properly string together a sentence. The long and short of their drunken fireside chat is this: Everyone (except Jason, who is either too evolved to relate or too sober to go there) is struggling with their masculinity.
Danny is up every two hours, changing diapers and “putting kids on boobs.” He’s not getting the recognition or thanks from Nia that he wants, and bemoans that we’re all living in “a different time, where women expect different things.” I have all the sympathy in the world for Danny’s three-under-two torture chamber, but his whole speech was giving “father who calls caring for his own children ‘babysitting’” to me.
He also, we learn from Michelle and Nia inside the house, wants to move the family to Valencia, which Google Maps tells me is over an hour’s drive from Los Angeles. Nia is adamant that she doesn’t want to live so far from everyone she knows, but feels Danny isn’t taking her concerns seriously. The more we learn about the Booko-Sanchezes, the more I wonder just how traditional their marriage really is — and what that means for Nia.
Meanwhile, Jesse is starting to realize his marriage is over. He spent a great deal of time at the beach earlier play-fighting with Danny, chasing him around, kicking him, and lassoing him with his towel. When Danny expressed displeasure, Jesse called him the “most sensitive man I’ve ever met,” apologized “that you got offended,” and told him to “shut the fuck up” when Danny pointed out that actually, that isn’t an apology.
One nap and one troubling piece of information about his wife later, Jesse seems a bit humbled. He gives a genuine apology, and tells Danny that he’s “the most amazing father and husband”, someone the whole group should look up to. It’s the nicest thing we’ve heard him say to anyone on the show, including Michelle, who we haven’t heard him compliment once this entire season. He starts crying too, and admits to the group that despite his best efforts, he thinks he and Michelle are done.
It’s hard not to read Jesse’s aggression toward Danny as anything other than deep insecurity about his own performance as a husband and father coming out sideways. Desperate to prove his own alpha male status, Jesse can’t resist getting in one last dig: “I was thinking you’re thick-skinned and you’re not.”
All season long, Jesse has bemoaned the state of his marriage, painting himself as the one who’s trying everything to save it and Michelle as the one who doesn’t appreciate him. In his mind, it’s Michelle’s apathy toward him that is the problem in their relationship, not that he seems to have left her to raise their daughter mostly alone.
His expectations of his wife seem transactional — I haven’t forgotten when he asked Scott, the marriage coach, how many compliments he would have to give Michelle for her to be attracted to him, which is not how love works at all. He claims to want a second child (and seems to feel Michelle is withholding one from him), but hasn’t once reflected on how his absence in Isabella’s early years may have affected his coparent. His attachment to their relationship seems grounded more in his disbelief that anyone would choose to walk away from him than any genuine affection for her.
Jax is uncharacteristically supportive. He has plenty of bile for Brittany — thanks to her cameo on Vanderpump Rules this season, we know that he reacted poorly to her becoming the breadwinner after they were both fired. This resentment only seems to have grown, and we’ve seen his alternating apathy and disgust for Brittany shoot out all over the place.
Tonight, he can’t help but kick her while she’s down, going off on her in front of the whole group: “You’re the only one of all the women doing this. Stop fucking drinking! What are you, in college? You’re a mom!” No matter what the group says — Brittany didn’t drink anything, she’s carsick, she’s sober — he’s relentless, going after her like a dog with a bone. Not only does he yell at her as she’s puking her guts out, he continues the tirade to the rest of the group in direct earshot of their bedroom. I loved when she burst out and told Jax, “I can hear you, go fuck yourself!” in front of everybody.
But when it comes to Jesse, Danny and Jason, Jax is the picture of a supportive friend. He’s a shoulder to cry on, full of reassurance, generous with his words of affirmation. It’s a stark contrast to how he’s treated Brittany all season. Much like Jesse, it feels like Jax is upset Brittany hasn’t held up her end of the bargain. Not only has she surpassed him professionally, her body has changed, she dares to stand up for herself, and he finds her embarrassing. For all this and more, Jax has made it his mission to humiliate her in front of all their friends and take her down a few pegs.
The next day, the incel convention continues when the men go “fishing,” AKA sit on a boat and drink beers. Danny and Jesse’s brief truce is over: Jesse feels the need to tell Danny that Nia “wears the pants” in their relationship and that this is the reason why he doesn’t feel confident. When Jax tries to claim that Brittany wears the pants in their relationship too and he’s still happy, Jesse points out that their marriage mostly consists of Jax needling Brittany: “If she says the sky is red, you say she’s an idiot.” It’s incredible to watch Jax and Jesse interact — they see each other so clearly, yet are totally incapable of working on their own faults.
Jax shows a mote of self-awareness when he acknowledges that he tends to get aggressive and that his delivery is terrible. In a confessional, he briefly wonders if he’s driving Brittany to drink: “If that’s the case, we got a whole other issue to deal with.” (Yes, Jax, you do.) When Danny starts giving advice, Jesse chimes in that they’re asking the wrong person, because he’s the one who’s dealing with these issues in his own relationship.
“You’re right, we’re not asking you,” snaps Danny, who is many beers deep and still smarting from Jesse dogging him all weekend. “You are the wrong person to ask,” he continues as he slowly shakes his head from side to side. “I’m never going to ask you for any marital advice, ever, ever, ever,” Jax agrees. “Jesus Christ, your marriage is on the fence too.”
Jason lawyers it up and points out that Jax’s use of “too” implies he and Brittany are also on the fence. He thinks Jax is stuck in 1950s-era thinking that unhappy couples should just tough it out. “All of our parents were kind of messed up,” he observes. “Somebody needs to reverse that cycle.” I never thought the name “Jax Taylor” would ever be used in proximity to “breaking the cycle,” but that’s how dismal things are.
If anyone’s going to be a cycle-breaker, it’s going to be Brittany. Jax rants abouthow she will have to “bury me in the backyard,” and how divorce isn’t an option in their world.
It’s delicious to know how this all ends. Jesse and Jax — who are both in a place of “here comes my bitch wife” — have both been left by the women they were certain would never walk away. Danny and Jason seem to be doing better, but until we get a closer look at their marriages next season, it’s hard to tell whether their relationships are actually solid or if they just appear better than they are next to Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
Overall, the men on this show are in a sad state of affairs. I may have plenty of smoke for Michelle’s unwillingness to own her messiness, but I’m still on her side against Jesse. Nor does Brittany, who is deeply flawed, deserve to be terrorized by her even worse husband. With only two episodes left in the season, I’m excited to see these women to finally break free.
Balls and chains
- Easily the funniest thing to happen this week was Zack’s Instagram Story of a black screen, geotagged at Big Bear Lake, that sent Janet into such a tailspin she couldn’t sleep the whole night for fear that Zack would burst out of the bushes and break into their Airbnb. “I’d call 911 if he shows up,” she says. Okay, Ariana.
- It was nice to see all the women come to Brittany’s side as Jax raged at her, a lovely contrast to how the women of Vanderpump Rules used to treat one another. The sheer gall of Jax barge in and yell, “I drank two bottles of tequila and you don’t see me acting crazy!” Um…look in the mirror, dude.
- Another much-needed bit of comic relief came this week with Danny’s complete bungling of the Napoleon complex. To be fair, I would be surprised if a guy suffering from short-man syndrome wanted to date a woman taller than him, but we really need to reopen the schools.
- Jason may be a better husband than Jax or Jesse (and it’s not yet clear if he is), but let’s not forget that he is also a lawyer who defends corporations against workers’ comp claims. That’s pretty damn darksided, and it’s important for us all to remember that coming off better than Jax is no achievement at all.