I don’t have a lot of nice things to say about Stassi Schroeder, who was fired from Vanderpump Rules along with Kristen, Jax and Brittany for — among other things — filing a false police report against Black castmate Faith Stowers. Stassi has a long history of questionable-at-best behavior: describing herself as “Nazi chic”, diminishing the #MeToo movement, and making fun of the push to diversify Hollywood.
But credit must be given where credit is due. Stassi was a fantastic villain. She was messy, petty, and vengeful, indulging every bit of her selfish, chaotic id. Not once did she try to act like the bigger person or hide her baser instincts. She may have been a devil, but she owned every bit of it.
That honesty that made her a watchable villain. Unfortunately, it’s starting to feel like Janet, Valley newbie and icer-out-in-chief, is the other kind: messy, petty and vengeful, but unwilling to own her shit.
Her first sin is sending Jax to do her dirty work for her. We open this week back at the James Mae party, where Kristen is sad after learning she is banned from the babymoon, doubtless having flashbacks to Sandoval and Ariana forbidding her from going to Hawaii. Zack is taking it even harder and crying. He thought he and Janet were in a better place than this.
Brittany says Janet just wanted to keep the trip couples-only and encourages Zack to call her, but he’s rightfully unconvinced. (Even if that were true, it would still be a shitty reason to exclude him.) As Jasmine and Nia point out, he’s clearly collateral damage in Janet’s feud with Kristen.
While they talk, one of Janet’s friends, Simon, is off to the side, shooting furtive looks at the group as he types furiously on his phone. Jasmine calls him out: “You’re not involved in this,” and sends him scurrying off in his hot pink boots. “Now we have Harriet the Spy reporting back to you?” she deadpans in a confessional. “That’s messy as hell.”
Janet’s second faux-pas comes when she puts Zack on speakerphone without telling him so she can have an audience for her conversation. After summoning Jared and pink-booted Simon to her lair, she calls Zack to hash it out. Zack wastes no time letting her know he does not appreciate being lumped in with Kristen and Luke. “You’re coming in aggressive right now for someone who’s expecting an invitation from me,” Janet says, as Jared and Simon smirk and nod like Mother’s favorite little flying monkeys.
Their argument is rife with subtext. Not inviting someone to an hours-long event that will get 10 minutes of screen time is not the same as leaving them out of a multiday cast trip. What’s more, if you’re going to exclude someone, you should tell them yourself instead of sending Jax Taylor in your place. Is Zack being aggressive with Janet? Sure. But it’s because of something she did. Rather than just say that she doesn’t want to be around Zack right now, Janet is trying to portray herself as an innocent bystander in her own decision — and it’s not convincing.
In Big Bear, the act continues. “Do you guys hear that?” Jesse asks, cupping his ear to the breezy tranquility of chirping birds and gurgling brooks. “It’s the sound of no drama, because Kristen’s not here.” Janet declares that they’re not going to spend the weekend talking shit, and that anyone who mentions Kristen’s name must put $20 in a jar. (Stassi would never pretend to be above talking shit.) As her own husband declared her a total gossipmonger, I do not find Janet’s posturing at all convincing.
The minute the women go for a boat ride, Janet breaks her own rule and asks Jasmine for the scoop on Kristen’s event. She’s clearly expecting Jasmine to be on her side, but Jasmine tells Janet that her “little spy’s” behavior “was giving creep.” A queen with integrity.
Janet then brings up a whole host of grievances with Zack that she’s never vocalized to him: she’s wary that he’s a “package deal” with Kristen, hasn’t forgiven him for his involvement in Racismgate, and thinks it was presumptuous of him to expect an invite in the first place. This is all fine, but there’s no reason Janet should be telling Jasmine this and not Zack. It feels a lot like Janet is trying to recruit people to her little army to her side so she can avoid confrontation, a familiar reality stratagem that I do not respect.
Janet further uningratiates herself to me when Jasmine — who is nothing if not a loyal friend and a committed reality television worker — presses her on how she handled the situation: “You guys were getting in a good place, and to send Jax to drop a message?”
Janet does not take kindly to this mildest of pushbacks and snaps, “Do you want to let me talk or not?” Watch your tone, missy! She eventually admits that she should have talked to Zack sooner and on her own, but it takes so much effort to get to this shred of self-awareness that it’s not even satisfying.
Luckily, a better villain than Janet is here to move the plot along: Jax. His talents aren’t the same as Stassi’s. He lies a lot more than she does: on Vanderpump, he was always forthright about being a terrible person, but on The Valley he’s changed tack to insisting he’s evolved, a respectable father and responsible homeowner.
This is about as believable as Michelle’s old wives’ tale about being faithful to Jesse, but Jax at least redeems himself with his complete and total willingness to bring any rumor to light. While Janet pretends to be above the drama so she can avoid conversations she doesn’t want to have, Jax does it to construct the minimum viable shield of plausible deniability to hide behind while stirring the pot every chance he gets. He may only gossip to distract from the wreckage of his own life, but as a viewer, it’s for the best.
While their wives are on the boat, the men frolic on the beach. The moment Jesse floats away in a tube, Jax brings up Michelle’s alleged boyfriend again. At this point, Jax has told this rumor to everyone except the unhappiest couple in Los Angeles in hopes that someone will pick up the thread and spare him the effort of getting involved. Alas, it is not to be.
“Why are we sneaking around like little bitches?” Jason asks. “If we have information that our friend should know, we should tell him straight to his face.” True! Jax is still pretending that he’s kept mum because he hates to gossip, but he finally realizes that this will go nowhere unless he takes matters into his own hands.
Once the group returns to the house, he pulls Michelle aside to deliver the performance of a lifetime. “I hate doing this,” he grumbles, throwing in some head shakes for the drama. “I have to get this off my chest. I’ve known this for too long.” Having (poorly) established himself as a guy who is too good for this kind of carrying on, he drops the hammer.
Michelle admits that she did meet and subsequently text a celebrity, and that they went for coffee. Unfortunately, that’s when Jax pulls his tried-and-true trump card: revealing that he actually knows more than he let on once he’s caught you in a lie.
You see, what “Kristen” “told” Jax was this: Michelle wasn’t just texting a man who isn’t Jesse. She was texting multiple men, and sending them pictures to boot. Michelle, who has the same blank expression on her face as she did when she was lying to Jesse, pauses for a moment and says, “She is right. I have texted multiple people.” Jax looks stunned. Frankly, I was stunned. Could it really be that after weeks of bad lying, Michelle was so easily broken with one statement from Jax? I seem to remember this cliffhanger being a tricky bit of editing, but for a moment she had me gooped and gagged. Imagine admitting on a multiple-day trip out of town with your husband that you’ve cheated on, that you’ve cheated on him? That’s reality gold waiting to happen.
Last week, I wondered whether the Valley newbies would be able to deliver quality television while icing out chaos agent Kristen and her apprentice-in-pettiness Zack. So far, they’re not doing great. I’m grateful to Jasmine and Jax, who put in work to get the flop alliance to confront the issues they’ve been hiding from. Next week, we finally get to the bottom of Infidelitygate (maybe), it’s the boys’ turn to boat, and Brittany yells at Jax. Let’s hope the rest of this trip brings us something juicier.
Balls and chains
- If Jesse’s takeaway from his ayahuasca therapy was that “Jesse is enough,” it didn’t work, I fear. Michelle says she thinks he’s really changed, but that’s just called a psychedelic comedown. He will be back on demon time soon enough.
- Back in LA, Kristen and Luke have a troubling session with premarital counselor Allen. They’ve made zero progress on deciding where to live, and we also learn that they’ve never discussed finances. “Talking about money makes my vagina close up,” Kristen confesses. They also don’t have family around, which Allen warns them can be lonely: “You spend a lot of time with a human being that can’t give anything back. The support system is important.” Kristen jokes that she’d never considered Colorado, but with the way things are going with her friend group, she might as well just move. This is probably the right call for her and Luke, but for the good of the show, we need her in Los Angeles.
- I knew Jesse and Michelle’s slap fight was going to end in disaster. They hate each other. Throw tequila in the mix, and of course one of them was going to land a real hit. Hope Michelle’s nose job is okay!
- Jax continues to be the meanest man alive to Brittany. I get that he’s activated by seeing the video of Cruz crying at swimming class, but does he really need to punish Brittany for those feelings? No, he does not. It’s even sadder when Brittany — who actually doesn’t seem to have drank anything all day, at least not on camera — asks the women to not tell Jax that she’s feeling carsick because he “will not let me live it down.” One can only assume that this is why she’s screaming at him next week.