Famous People #63: Summer House S1E3, you want to lock horns?
Kaitlyn: I’m going to admit off the top: I don’t like this episode. It’s incredibly tense, all due to people treating each other badly in ways that aren’t even particularly original, but happen all the time to most of us, and we’ll never be totally healed from it. Anyway, please read the next 2,000 words.
It is Saturday, July 9th, in a year that could not possibly be more remote from this one. It is also three a.m., and Kyle “Cookie” Cooke is alone in the kitchen, with no shirt on, eating something by the handful, possibly raspberries. This is how he is recovering from the heated exchange with Everett we saw at the end of episode two, which was primarily an exchange of expletives and armfuls of hot tub water.
Ashley (married twin) crawls into bed with Lauren (single twin) and Carl (TALL), to tell them the whole story. “Everett went nuts on Kyle,” she explains, waving her arms in the air, as if she is an adult man, charging at another adult man while submerged in a chlorinated bath. We wait for morning for resolution, and of course it comes, but in a way that makes us all feel, if anything, much worse. Kyle approaches Lindsay while she’s pouring vodka into a wine glass (11 a.m.) and Kyle tells her in a very calm voice, “The vibe in the house is being affected by your relationship. I feel like I’m watching… a soap opera.” It is a joy and an honor to watch Kyle Cooke quickly recalibrate his sentence so that he doesn’t accidentally say “reality show.” Lindsay claims not to know what a soap opera is, so, unfortunately his careful diplomacy is for naught. “The things on TV,” Kyle offers weakly.
At this point, Everett charges in—hair parted so severely that you can see where his comb scratched into his brains a little bit—and demands to know the problem. Before Kyle can offer an even more delicate summary of his needs—for people to stop screaming, for summer to be fun—Everett cuts him off, telling him that this is “no bueno” and “a no-fly zone.” Everett absolutely just continues yelling phrases drawn from a Ted Cruz tweet generator until Kyle gives in and offers to make everyone a margarita. Hopefully he got some satisfaction out of the Everett impression he was asked to do later for the camera: “epic! elite! kick rocks! you want to lock horns?” I did! I laughed so hard! Everett will not be on this show forever, please believe us when we say this.
At this point we’re introduced to Jaclyn, a fit model who is friends with Kyle. At least four times, she informs us that people get confused when she tells them she’s a fit model. I’m certainly not going to steal her spotlight by explaining what a fit model is. You can look it up, or you can watch Jaclyn explain it with nearly her every breath. With her other breaths, she is flirting in a way that only extremely hot people can get away with. “I don’t know how good I am but I’m a natural born athlete... I love getting it in the hole,” she tells the crew when they ask her to play some kind of yard game. “I’ve been hit by every single ball possible in life,” she shares, even though the game involves a frisbee. She later tells the camera “I’d rather be called a cock tease than a whore or a slut.” Okay girl?????????? I mean this sincerely: Jaclyn will also not be on this show for very long.
Anyway, the crew gets ready for a night at one of Montauk’s local tequila bars. Kyle and Carl are wearing identical jeans and off-white Henleys, but only Kyle tries to buy a drink for an insurance broker in a hoodie, who says no. Meanwhile, Jaclyn is telling Carl that her mom called her a whore for getting her ears pierced. I literally long for footage of Everett whenever she is talking. Kyle joins them, and she touches both of their faces while they eat tacos. “This is really sexual, sitting between two men eating some meat,” she observes. Honestly, what the fuck.
I bet you can guess what she says next. Please, seriously, guess.
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guess!
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She says: “I get along with guys more. Women are competitive and catty.” You can’t make this stuff up.
Anyway, Lauren is forced to pretend that she’s unbothered by this absolutely surreal display. I really felt for her in this moment, despite not thinking that pursuing Carl is a good idea for her generally. It sucks to have someone crowd in on your crush! Especially if that person is a woman who assumes that all other women dislike her because they’re jealous, and not because she has been totally unkind to them and is boring. In the car, Lauren asks Kyle to ask Carl if she’s a good kisser, then she and Carl make out. You go, girl! As my dad would say during any board game that he is winning, “one point for the good guys!”
Back at the ranch, Kyle climbs into Jaclyn’s bed with his shoes on and they kiss for one second. Then he ties an American flag around his head and calls Amanda. He is a man of habit: namely climbing into beds with his shoes on, incorporating entire American flags into his outfits, and drunk-dialing Amanda after saying he’s not gonna do that.
The next day there is a bunch of “organized fun.” The boys go deep sea fishing—Stephen brings a watermelon inner tube, the boat captain says “whoa whoa who’s the fruit loop,” and throws the inner tube off the boat. This is… pretty bad, but Stephen does end up catching the largest sea bass of anyone, even Everett, who is wearing a camouflage hat and of course screaming. The girls go to yoga—Jaclyn resents being lumped in with the other “vaginas.” Cool, that’s how I talk about women I’ve just met also. Later, Lindsay and Everett have a talk about their relationship that ends with him saying he’ll “overlook” her entire personality so they can continue being together. Mwah!
This concludes another weekend at the Summer House, so we cut to Everett walking down a New York City street, yelling into the phone, “What’s up, you nerd? Yeah, solid weekend.” Christina—remember her? the unhappy journalist?—is also on the phone, and has a “story due in the morning.” Stephen is picking up his dry cleaning. Kyle is doing clapping pushups on the floor of his apartment in between using his Keurig and looking at promotional photos of himself. These people really hustle!
Tragically, Kyle and Amanda have a quick weeknight hang to re-establish the parameters of their breakup over some rosé and the “smoked salt and pepper” drink that Kyle chose, I thought rather rudely, since everyone knows you don’t order something fun when you’re having a tough conversation. The parameters they decided on were: no more sex calls. : (
(Don’t cry! [SPOILERS] here is a picture of them at dinner just last week, at a restaurant I went to with Ashley one time:
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What happens next is really hard to talk about. It’s a new weekend, and Carl is at a family friend’s wedding in Milwaukee. Hopefully you recall him saying he was going to that, and insisting to Lauren that he was bringing his mom as his date, even though she hadn’t really expressed any concern about who he was bringing. To establish some tension, we watch her discover that someone has put a bunch of bananas in the freezer, and they are now rock-solid and impossible to use for anything. It’s the stupidest thing she’s ever seen, and she throws them across the kitchen. Kyle says, unconvincingly, that he was not the person who put bananas in the freezer.
While the crew is on the way to dinner, Carl sends Lauren a picture of him at the wedding with his mom. Then he sends Stephen a picture of him at the wedding with his date. Lauren sees this over Stephen’s shoulder, and Stephen—to protect his burgeoning friendship with Carl, who he refers to as his “hot older brother”—throws his own phone out of the window of the car so that she can’t get a good look. “I just actually really want to see what she looks like, I don’t care,” Lauren tells him, about as convincing as Kyle with the bananas. Again, I really feel for her. Carl lied to her for no reason. I mean, he could have just told her he was taking a date? Since they’ve only known each other for two weeks and are grown-ups? Then perhaps she wouldn’t have had this weird, frantic situation in which she looked like a sad fool on television, and her friend Stephen only made it worse?
Moments later, everyone arrives at RICK’S CRABBY COWBOY CAFE: Seafood And BBQ On the Water. It is currently open for Delicious & Socially-Distanced Outdoor Dining With Your Friends And Family, but at the time it was just open for regular delicious dining, as life was at least okay. Or so I thought. As soon as everyone sits down, Kyle and Jaclyn want to know what’s going on and Stephen is like, mind your own business. Christina is all, can I get a table for one? Then Lauren turns to Stephen and yells “no one gives a fuck about you,” pretty much unprompted, two times. It was so bad I honestly forgot it was from another era. It felt awful, like this one. This is not why we are watching Summer House, so I really hope everyone in the Summer House gets that through their thick and sun-kissed heads before Lizzie returns to recap episode four next week.
Summer should be fun!!!!!!!!!!!
KEY FACTS & FIGURES
Is Carl still employed?
Seemingly. (And I learned this week that Stephen is indeed an event planner! It said so on the bottom of the screen when he wandered into Kyle and Everett’s latest disturbing argument.)
Does Kyle wear a wig?
No. : (
Flag, though!
Drink of choice?
The recipe for the margarita that Kyle uses to smooth things over with Everett is, according to Kyle, “one part ice, one part sugar, one part I don’t fucking care.” I assume there’s tequila in there too. Everyone drank a bunch of those.
Summer Fun levels:
2/10 off-white Henleys worn by boys I’m not that pleased with at the moment.