Famous People #62: Summer House S1E2: Counting down the days until Everett is gone (is this too long?)
Lizzie: Poor Kyle. All Kyle Cooke (aka Cookie aka Cookie Monster aka Cold Feet Cooke) has ever wanted was for summer to be fun. And yet something always gets in the way…
Episode 2 begins with our boys and girls waking up in Montauk after another night of questionable outfits, and even more questionable decisions (i.e., sleeping with Carl, in Lauren’s case). Lauren shuffles into the bedroom where Ashley and Stephen are recapping the night’s events and Stephen tells her, “You look really rough.”
Meanwhile, Kyle and Carl exfoliate the bottoms of their feet with a morning jog on the beach. After the cameraperson gets enough footage, they sit down to discuss the matter at hand: Carl hooking up with Lauren. Kyle reminds us that the first rule of Summer House is: NO COUPLES IN THE SUMMER HOUSE and Carl has basically already broken that rule. Kyle is disappointed in Carl, since this is not why he invited him to be a cast member on his show. Carl tells Kyle that he doesn’t want to get in any hot water with Lauren (except for the hot tub) and that he wants to be a gentleman “to some degree.”
Meanwhile meanwhile, we get a scene of this season’s doomed couple Lindsay and Everett at the gym. Lindsay tells us that she went to a psychic right before she met Everett who told her she would meet someone who was “very tall and thin.” They discuss moving in together while doing forearm planks.
I don’t mean to start this thing off on a negative note but I do just want to mention for anyone who might be a first-time viewer of Summer House: This show is ultimately award-winning but it honestly takes a while to sort out its cast. And I’m sorry but this goes for Everett and probably anyone even named Everett, but Everett really should have never been allowed on television. I think they kept him around because he gets unreasonably angry when he has an emotion, most frequently brought on by romantic love, threats to his masculinity, and thoughts of America. He is also, as previously mentioned, very tall and thin.
Now it’s Sunday night and our crew goes out to the clubs because tomorrow is July 4th and they have Monday off. I’m not going to look up the specifics, but what I can recall from early reports is Bravo failed to find any club in Montauk that would let them film inside. So what we get instead is a bunch of grainy iPhone footage shot by the cast that basically just acts as a 30-second breather to let us know they left the house. This will continue through every season. I think the cast is contractually obligated to keep their teeth as white as they do so we can tell who they are under the blacklights.
After they get home, Carl asks Lauren to jump into his arms, and when she hesitates he tells her, “I'm fucking strong as fuck.”
Next morning, Christina cleans the kitchen and is mad that Lindsey, her current roommate back in the city, might be moving in with Everett. That’s basically all we get from Christina this episode and gives you a good sense of what her storyline (and her future as a Bravolebrity) will look like.
Stephen drinks a carefully placed Red Bull (labels out!) in the pool and tells Carl and Kyle that his dad’s name is Cleatus McGee. This provides the perfect transition for the producers to dig into Stephen’s backstory: He’s from Alabama and he dropped out of a Christian college to move to New York, and he came out three years ago. I also have some foggy memory that he’s an event planner, although I don’t think that’s been confirmed yet.
For July 4th, the crew will be having a “low-key barbecue,” for which Kyle wears a kind of ‘80s hair metal beach bum wig, Carl wears a sailor hat, and Lindsay wears a denim vest and a straw hat. Amanda shows up, amazingly also wearing a hat, and we learn that Kyle made out with Lindsay and Christina’s third roommate, Katie, last night, even though Amanda will be sleeping over tonight. It’s kind of hard to follow, even for me. This, folks, is what we call a Summer House love triangle. [Speaking of love triangles, has anyone seen that Paul Rudd, Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson movie about softball? Please respond to this email if you can help.] At the end of the party Everett says, “Hey guys, I just wanted to make one last cheers to America” and he does.
Wham! We zip through the work week and get some footage of Carl pretending to talk on the phone saying, “I’ll cook up a quote and send it over to Suzanne.” He’s supposed to sell $2 million in dental supplies this year. If you need dental supplies, go to Carl pleeeaaaaase.
The twins go shopping for wrap dresses that they can wear “as dresses and as cover-ups” and Ashley tells Lauren she should play hard to get with Carl. Ashley is supposed to be the mature, logical one here, but later she asks if it’s okay to put chicken in the freezer.
Lindsay, Christina, and Katie sit in their apartment and talk about how Katie made out with Kyle and Christina has also made out with Kyle. “Making out with Kyle is like making out with a gay guy,” Christina tells us. Lindsay says she and Everett fight all the time because they’re passionate people and “that’s what you do at the start of a relationship.”
They follow their passion on Friday night back at the Montauk house and begin fighting almost immediately because Everett has been texting “a girl who works in his building.” Kyle does a cannonball, interrupting their fight, which is taking place in some kind of indoor body of water, and tells them, “This summer isn’t about your relationship.” He also says, in a sort of desperately gloomy way that really cements his position as the hero of the show, “I just wanted to have a normal summer.” Everett responds by splashing Kyle and yelling, in his patented communication style of intense escalation, ‘‘I will drag you through the fucking dirt before you talk to me like that.”
Everett closes the episode by swiping away a camera in disgust because he doesn’t understand what kind of reality show this is, confirming our long-held suspicions that he’s not right for the role, girls!
I should also warn our readers that Carl will be absent next week, as he’s attending a family friend’s wedding and will definitely NOT be bringing a date.
Key Facts & Figures
Is Carl still employed?
Yes.
Does Kyle wear a wig?
Yes.
Drink of choice?
BBCs, aka Bailey’s Banana and Cream, which Kyle notes can double as a meal replacement.
Summer Fun levels:
4/10 big boy pool splashes.