Leo Tolstoy famously wrote that each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. As the sun rises on the fifth week of everyone’s favorite California gothic horror about heterosexual marriage, I find myself thinking of the Karenins, the Oblonskys, the Vronskys, the Lyovins, each clan unhappier than the last. The Lallys and the Taylors (née Cauchis) may not be living in Imperial Russia, but they are miserable all the same.
This is the darkest episode of The Valley yet. There is no screaming or fighting, no yelling or throwing of things, but we are deep enough into these peoples’ lives to see the cracks in their relationships, and shit is bleak.
We start with Jax and Brittany, who frankly have beat all expectations simply by lasting this long. All the girls are going to Malibu for the night, and while they’re gone, their husbands and Zack will be at Jax’s for a pool day. Jax is passive-aggressively cleaning, muttering to himself as he tidies the backyard and unclogs the sink. In a confessional, he admits that he’s “obsessed” with his leaf blower and is in the yard multiple times a day, seven days a week.
Apparently, Jax is in a snit because he’s always upset with Brittany after a night out. He tells her she deserves a night away with her friends, but as she gathers games and liquor for the night, he sneers, “God forbid you forget the tequila.” Yeesh.
Brittany hits the road with Janet, and she gets a text from Jax that she should have fun and get drunk. Brittany waves her phone around in glee: “Now we have it in writing, he can’t be mad at me!” She tells Janet that Jax has double standards when it comes to their drinking: He goes out plenty, but when she does it, he acts like it’s the worst thing in the world. We flash back to nine days ago when Brittany was hungover. “You want to have more kids?” Jax barks as Brittany languishes in a towel beside their pool. “Act like a mom.” Double yeesh.
In Malibu, Brittany pulls Michelle aside to dish on their awful marriages. We’ll get to the unhappiest couple in Los Angeles in a bit, but the gist of what Brittany says is this: Even when she and Jax fight, she still feels like he’s her best friend and her number one. (Maybe Brittany moved out six months later because she finally realized Jax’s number one will only ever be himself. Considering he told her family that and she married him anyway, I’ll believe they’re done when the papers are signed.)
During a game of truth-or-dare Jenga, it comes out that Brittany and Jax last had sex a month and a half ago. This is certainly a bit of a dry spell, but the level of horror the other women react with is more befitting a revelation that Jax fucks his leaf blower. Brittany says Jax is always putting her down about her hangovers and her looks: “Your partner is supposed to lift you up, and he does the opposite.” Triple yeesh.
The next morning, Brittany is sick. So, so, sick. She blacked out on tequila, and lies prostrate among her pillows and sheets as the rest of the women, who seem bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, pack their things and make breakfast. Moments after she emerges from her bed cave, she runs to the bathroom to puke. Things are not much better when she arrives home and leaves a bag of vomit in their driveway for Jax to find.
By nightfall, Brittany seems to have normalized, and she and Jax sit down for a debrief. He starts in on her, demanding to know why she got so drunk and sick. “Not only is she my wife, she’s a mother,” Jax tells us in a confessional. “We need you. She’s going to destroy her body!”
Brittany, if you will remember, was told back in summer 2018 that she had ulcers and serious stomach issues. She was warned to abstain from alcohol, citrus, acidic or spicy foods, etcetera etcetera. She was about to leave for Mexico, though, and within no time at all she was chugging margaritas, shooting straight tequila and noshing on chips and salsa.
As a child of GERD who rarely drinks anymore because of how it affects my body, this all concerns me. Putting aside the fact that alcohol in any quantity is a neurotoxin, the violence of Brittany’s sickness — a bag of driveway puke is bad no matter how you slice it — plus her medical history suggests that she is subjecting her body to unholy inflammation every time she drinks. If things keep going like this, hangovers will be the least of her problems.
Though none of this absolves Jax of his mom-shaming behavior, this was the first time I heard him express something I could understand. The problem is that Jax seems to be twisting this into another excuse for him to put Brittany down, instead of expressing the underlying concern he has for her wellbeing.
They move on to discussing their (lack of) sex life, and Brittany admits that she feels like Jax is no longer attracted to her post-baby body. I believe Jax when he says he’s overwhelmed by the number of projects the couple has taken on after several years of the phone not ringing — their podcast, their beer cheese line, their bar, their regular schedule of sponcon — but there’s obviously more going on here. Even as he assures Brittany that he is attracted to her, he can barely look her in the eye. It feels like he resents the life he’s found himself in, is disgusted by the woman he chose to spend it with, and unable to spin even a halfway convincing lie.
As dark as things are at the Taylor abode, the situation at the Lallys’ is worse. As she packs for the Malibu trip, Michelle — still riding the high of her racism-allegation-induced-closeness with Jesse — shows him some Adidas she’s bringing. He doesn’t even look at them, and musters zero enthusiasm for the “yeah, amazing” he deigns to throw her way.
In Malibu, Michelle confesses to Brittany that she’s been more unhappy than happy since Isabella was born. Jesse was a hands-on dad in the brief period of COVID shutdowns, but once things opened, he “just left” and she’s found it hard to swallow the resentment she felt at being alone. She doesn’t know if they can ever get back to the way things were, and is debating whether it’s better for her daughter to have two parents together who bicker and fight all the time, or two parents who aren’t with each other but are happy in their own lives and capable of being good friends. (Hint: It’s the latter.)
At Jax’s pool day, we hear Jesse’s side. Though he claims at first that he and Michelle’s issues are “superficial”, it becomes apparent that he has some awareness of just how bad things are: A year ago, Michelle applied for an apartment, and only stayed because Jesse begged her for a second chance.
Jax brings up that Michelle has been hanging out with [redacted], a famous director she met at Chateau Marmont, who apparently declined to allow Bravo to use his name. It seems that Michelle and Jesse go to the Chateau bar every day to scope out potential real estate clients, and one of these trips resulted in Michelle and Director X going on a multi-day bender.
“I told her to hike up her skirt and drop her blouse, do whatever you have to do,” Jesse deadpans. Jax isn’t buying his nonchalant act, and neither is Luke, who suggests that not everyone would be comfortable with their wife getting wasted with an A-list celebrity.
Jesse declares that he’s secure in himself and trusts Michelle, but that if she cheats, he’ll be able to tell Isabella that “mommy fucked everything up.” Love a good triangulation! Luke asks Jesse if he could get past infidelity, and Jesse replies that it’s his one dealbreaker: “I’ll remedy anything else but cheating.”
Suddenly, Jax is preoccupied with gazing off into the distance. We cut to a Luke confessional, where he smirks that he’s “holding a secret that could end everything.” It sure seems like Michelle is cheating, and I don’t blame her. If my Republican husband from Boston forced me to sleep in a separate bedroom for a year so that I and I alone could be responsible for our daughter’s midnight feeds and nappy changes, there’s no telling what I would do.
As soon as Michelle returns from Malibu, she and Jesse sit down for the most uncomfortable conversation of all time. Michelle feels like she and Jesse are living like they’re brother and sister, not loving partners. “I’m not exactly…happy,” she confesses.
Jesse isn’t quite ready to throw in the towel. He made vows and believes there’s “always a way through it,” citing his grandmother and grandfather who were together their whole lives. (Probably because she white-knuckled her way through it, bolstered by quaaludes and 3 p.m. martinis.)
Michelle knows he wants it to work, but she’s not so sure, and doesn’t know if she can deal with this the rest of her life. Now it’s Jesse’s turn to cry: “I’m here doing what I have to do,” he whimpers.
Is he? Jesse seems like a guy who would be listing out every single change he was making to producers to build himself a case, and so far we haven’t heard a single concrete example of anything he has actually done. “I want it to work,” he continues. “You’re in a place where you can’t really answer that right now.”
It’s unclear whether Michelle’s just had too much Botox or has just completely dissociated from this conversation, but in any case she slow-blinks at Jesse, expressionless. “I’ll try…” she gets out. “But I can’t answer anything.” They continue to stare at each other until Jesse slowly rises to his feet as if he’s shouldered with an Atlas-level load, and asks her to hug it out.
They do. It is awkward. It is so awkward. I got nervous laughter watching it, and I’m getting nervous laughter writing this now. What is with the men on Bravo’s pathological need to be hugged after terrible conversations? Ick.
As usual, the Capernas have nothing going on, and who knows what the Doute-Brodericks are up to, but we do get to spend some time with the Sanchez-Bookos this week. It feels like the show is using Nia and Danny as their “normal” couple in a sea of lunacy, and though their problems are nowhere near as bad as everyone else’s, my spidey sense is starting to tingle.
You see, Nia’s baby blues aren’t going away. We’ve gotten little hints at this throughout the season, but Nia doesn’t really come out with it until Malibu, when she says she needs “light and positivity” now more than ever. She was fine after 18-month-old Asher was born, but with the twins she feels like a wave smothers her and dissipates, only to smack her down again. She knows everything’s fine, but she’s sad all the time. When a producer asks her whether she’s “having a reaction to the family and kids and love,” she’s barely able to tamp down her tears, asking for a pause to collect herself.
In other words, our girl is going through it, and she really needs some time for herself. But just a few hours into the Malibu trip, Danny texts her that their air conditioner at home has gone bust. It’s 89 degrees in their house, which sounds awful, but Danny fumbles when he asks her to leave her girls’ night early to come home and help him wrangle the kids. Maybe I’m being ungenerous or maybe production edited out Danny’s valiant attempts to find an alternative, but either way I’m side-eyeing his decision to pull his wife away from some much-needed relaxation.
After the AC techs leave their sweltering home the next day, Nia and Danny have a chat. Nia seems to realize she’s experiencing postpartum depression, but isn’t quite ready to accept that label. Danny says all the right things as she cries — he’s here with her in this, he’s committed to them, everything she’s feeling is valid, and there’s no shame in getting help. After watching Jax mom-shame Brittany because he’s worried her esophagus will explode, it’s nice to see one of the husbands demonstrate a 101-level awareness of what it means to be supportive. The real test will come in the following weeks, where we’ll see whether or not his actions match up with his words.
Though it was a relatively quiet week, I left feeling more harrowed than ever. This, of course, can only be a sign that we have a hit on our hands. I can’t remember the last time a piece of media acted so effectively as birth control, and with no-fault divorce heading the way it is, the proposition of marriage is rapidly losing its shine as well. I can’t wait to see what these disasters have in store for us next.
Balls and chains
- Yet another indication that Michelle and Jesse’s marriage is doomed: She refuses to poop (except she calls it “going number two,” because of course she does) when Jesse is in their hotel room on vacations, going instead to the lobby. Girl, you are a whole adult. You don’t need to dump it while Jesse is brushing his teeth, but not feeling comfortable enough to go in your hotel room is wild. In any case, being scandalized by the word “poop” while cheating on your husband — even one who deserves it as much as Jesse — seems like a case of misplaced priorities, non?
- On the other end of the spectrum, learning that Jax stood guard for Brittany while she diarrhea’ed in stingray-infested waters might be the single most encouraging thing I’ve ever heard about their relationship. I definitely thought Jax would dump a girl over something like that, and though I still have zero hope that their marriage will ever work, maybe he doesn’t hate her quite as much as I thought.
- I am obsessed with the gulf between how Kristen sees herself and how others see her. This week, she calls herself an empath as Michelle, Brittany, Janet and Jasmine shoot each other “what the hell did she just say?” looks. Kristen certainly lacks emotional boundaries and projects her own trauma onto other people’s fights, but as Bravo’s excellent montage of her most terroristic moments showed, that hardly makes her an empath. That said, I’m certain the rest of this group also learned the definition of the word from TikTok University, so let’s call it a wash.