Despite what every showrunner, producer and network executive might want you to believe, reality television is not that real. Plotlines are storyboarded, conversations have call times, and while emotions may be genuine, the circumstances in which they’re expressed are not.
It takes a while for reality stars to learn how to be authentic while still playing the game. As Racismgate continues for a third straight week on The Valley, the divide between those who understand how the sausage gets made and those who don’t is the clearest it’s been all season. It’s a meta look into the machinations of the genre and what it takes to play at this level.
Happily, we pick up right where we left off — in the middle of the Capri dinner. Michelle is still going on about how her heritage means she can’t be racist; Kristen is standing firm that her only sin was repeating what she was told; Luke insists he heard Zack on the phone with Kristen; Janet is egging on Michelle; Brittany is doing shots in the corner. In a confessional, Jax calls Janet a “silent killer” who likes to stir the pot, then watch everyone else fight. “She’s similar to me,” he says, and unfortunately for Janet, I believe him. Jax will lie to protect himself all day, but when it comes to his friends, he’s a sharpshooter, and his assessments of their flaws is rarely wrong. It takes one to know one.
Kristen tells Michelle that she has done nothing but protect her. This pisses off Jesse, who retorts that Kristen and Luke are having conversations about starting a family and need to learn some lessons before they do, which is true but rich coming from this guy. Kristen, who never reacts well to low blows, decides to ask the table how they could bring up the racism in her past. This is perhaps the most nonsensical place she could take the argument, and to a man the table yells back, “Because you did it!” True!
Michelle flings her chair aside to stand, demanding Kristen apologize and say she made it up. Kristen refuses again, and leaves the table.
That’s when Jax intervenes. We watch as he coaches Kristen through getting to a place of resolve — which, by the way, she should know how to do. “Get to the bottom of it with Zack and call him out for lying,” he instructs. Kristen, fully crying at this point, agrees and allows Brittany to herd her and Zack to the balcony, where she tells him that she is “beyond disappointed” in him. “I understand I hurt people, but I’m not a liar,” she insists.
Zack, who seems like a guy who’s trying really hard not to admit to anything, spews a bunch of word salad about how everyone has to take responsibility and that “we’ve all said shit,” but does not clarify exactly what was said. “You steamrolled me!” he exclaims. As Zack and Kristen are going at it, Janet listens around the corner, a smirk on her face that makes her seem like exactly the kind of silent killer Jax described her as.
At Jesse and Michelle’s the next day, the unhappiest couple in Los Angeles is actually happy. Jesse thinks it’s hot that Michelle threw her chair, and jokingly imitates her screaming from the night before. Michelle is loving it, and says they haven’t laughed together like this in years. Racism allegations bringing a couple closer together is some true white nonsense, but here we are.
Unfortunately for Michelle, she flies too close to the sun. She reads Jesse a text from Kristen: “I just wanted to assure you that your secrets are safe with me and I don’t retaliate for the sake of my own mental health. Wishing you the best.” She wonders aloud whether Kristen comprehends that her life is “so much bigger than this,” but naturally the only thing Jesse is curious about is what secrets Kristen has about his wife. Michelle’s face goes blank, and she mumbles unconvincingly that she doesn’t know.
Kristen’s threat may be wrong and immature, but it’s also the most interesting thing we’ve learned about Michelle so far. On reality television, skeletons never stay in their closets for long, and I will always throw my support to the messy, volatile cast member who reveals a secret they shouldn’t have, over the one who tried to hide it to begin with.
Before the episode’s main event — a charity gala for Be the Match — we take a break from the fighting to explore the cast’s family dynamics.
Brittany and Jax share that their son Cruz has speech regression. One day, he simply stopped talking in full sentences and now, he’s almost stopped speaking altogether. Brittany shares how sad it makes her to know that her child is struggling with something and that her feeling that things have gone “off plan” is massive pressure as a mother. Jax says his Achilles heel is that he compares Cruz’s progress to other children, which is a “parenting 101” mistake. It’s an out-of-body experience to hear two of the drunkest and most dysfunctional people on reality television talk about parenting, but it’s strangely touching too.
A secondary problem for the couple is that since Cruz was born, romance has taken a backseat. Brittany just wants Jax to plan a date night, which he keeps putting off to focus on work instead. Sex has dwindled from a daily occurrence to just a few times a year. Brittany compares their sex life to a dusty tumbleweed rolling around in the desert: “I’m the tumbleweed!”
Some time later, Jax, Danny and Jesse take their offspring to a fair, where they have a far-more-graphic-than-is-appropriate-in-front-of-children conversation about sex. Jax says all the jokes they made when Brittany was pregnant with Cruz about how they’d never have sex again have seemingly come true. Jesse says Michelle recoils when he touches her. “I used to tie her up and pour hot wax down her back,” he recalls, right in front of a stall selling Thin Blue Line art pieces and Isabella — who speaks in full sentences and can understand at least Jesse’s words, if not their meaning.
Danny, bless his heart, asks if they have heard of the love languages test. Without an understanding of how their wives want to be loved, he explains, Jesse and Jax will never be able to make them happy. Jax asks if he can take it at CVS, which leads me to believe he thinks it is some kind of medical procedure. In any case, neither he nor Jesse seem to have heard of it nor have much interest in learning more. Go figure.
All seems well at Kristen and Luke’s, who are drinking delicious cocktails, eating a delicious meal, and planning to smoke weed, bang it out, then smoke some more. Luke is still firmly on Kristen’s side in Racismgate, and she and Zack have patched things up too, deciding to point their guns at Janet and not each other. Kristen thinks her friends (at this point, I use that term loosely) are only coming after her because they are threatened by her “hot, giant-penised 32-year-old” boyfriend. Okay!
They make a halfhearted attempt to discuss the future. Kristen says she’s moved three times in the last 18 months and can’t move again right now. She has no desire to leave California soon, if at all. On the other hand, Luke says moving to LA is a dealbreaker and that his college tuition cost the same as a 3-year-old’s preschool tuition in California. Of course, they resolve nothing.
Luke also brings up that Danny and Nia suggested premarital counseling, which he thinks will help wrap their heads around the level of commitment a child will require. Kristen seems on board with counseling but completely dismisses their parental preparedness. “That’s not something I ever worry about,” she states. “I just know I got it.” Delulu queen. I pray for them.
Meanwhile, Danny, the busiest man in show business, is at Kristen and Luke’s with Brittany. They fling rose petals, arrange electric candles and set up a massage table so their friends can have a romantic night. Brittany complains that this is what she’s been begging Jax to do for her, and Danny affirms that while children come first, romancing your spouse is just as important. They have fun friend chemistry, and I hope we see more of the two of them!
The group doesn’t all get back together until the Be the Match gala. Friend of the group and cancer survivor Jared Lipscomb, who is also a makeup artist and drag queen, seems to be a guest of honor after receiving a lifesaving marrow transplant through the organization. For some reason, Janet has a role in planning the gala, and has ensured Kristen will not be at her table.
Everyone rolls up to the gala in their charity best, except for Jesse, who arrives in the most heinous jacket I have ever seen. Zack’s description of it as what one would wear to a 1980s Miami club to snort a line of cocaine the length of the bar is devastatingly accurate. Kristen attends (sans Luke) because Jill got diarrhea, but Jax thinks Luke is looking for a way out of situations where he’ll be put into proximity with people who will make him lose their mind. Very Kim Cattrall of him.
Zack, who is seated with Michelle and Janet, apologizes for being part of the game of telephone. Michelle says she is sure there was a conversation between Janet, Jasmine and Zack, but forgives him and says she’s only mad at Kristen for bringing it up. After multiple episodes of Michelle demanding that Kristen say she lied, it’s bizarre to watch her admit that she’s just upset because she didn’t want things aired on camera. I get it, but that’s the job, Michelle. Sack up.
Sensing an opening, Zack herds Kristen and the Lallys upstairs for a private conversation. Kristen apologizes to Michelle again for repeating the comment. Michelle, in direct opposition to what she just said to Zack, replies that everyone is denying the comment ever happened and that Kristen can’t keep leaning on the fact that she “repeated” something. Kristen, who is just as confused as I am, says they’ve already had this conversation. Jesse, in an effort to steal the spotlight, says, “oh my fucking god!” and storms away, dramatically stomping around in front of the elevator bank.
“I believe you need some help,” Michelle sneers at Kristen, in an uncanny imitation of Ariana in Seasons 2-4 of Vanderpump Rules. Jesse returns from his huff, and Kristen apologizes to him as well. “Is it worth it to do this shit over and over again?” Jesse asks. “To make comments and talk shit and get involved and be in the middle of things?”
The whole exchange makes my head spin. Michelle keeps changing stories — is she mad at Kristen for repeating a comment she’s pretty sure was made, like she says to Zack, or is she mad at Kristen for making up the comment in the first place, like she says to Kristen? Is she unaware that the audience will see her making these totally contradictory statements? Is she just saying what she thinks will give her the most advantage in each conversation? As for Jesse, does he not understand that reality television is inherently about making comments, and talking shit, and getting involved, and being in the middle of things?
I don’t know, and to be honest, I don’t care. This storyline has been a bore from start to finish, drawn out far longer than necessary because of a few newbies’ inability to own up to talking shit and move on. Nor do I have much interest in continuing to watch a bunch of white people act like being called racist — rather than, I don’t know, acts of racism themselves — is the absolute worst thing a person can experience.
Michelle, Janet, and Jesse may feel as though they’ve bested Kristen, but reality audiences are savvier than that. Kristen’s story has been simple from the start, never once changing, while everyone else has provided contradictory, vague and unclear narratives that all seem to center on their reluctance to discuss this on camera. Let’s hope these people whip themselves into shape, and that when we return next week, we have something new to talk about.
Balls and chains
- Michelle and Jesse’s “love story” is nearly as dark as their racism-allegation-induced-bonding. Michelle says she knew immediately Jesse was not the one, but got drunk one night and wanted to get laid, called him over to her house and dropped her drawers. “Now I’m in the world’s longest booty call,” she deadpans to the camera. Inspiring.
- I’m grateful to the editors for sparing us the dirty details of Luke and Kristen’s romantic night. The cut to Kristen’s tiny dogs, Bowie and Gibson, sitting next to each other on the couch looking harrowed, told me everything I needed to know about this fuckfest.