Famous People #69: Summer House S1E9, Kyle finds a blonde
Kaitlyn: No, we did not watch Summer House last week. Actually, I’m lying—I personally watched several episodes of Summer House at about 11 pm on Election Night because it is what I find most soothing. I was pretty drunk and very full because Ashley and Lizzie gave me an entire Wegmans birthday cake for my personal use!! (Don’t worry, I’m still younger than almost everyone on Summer House.) But writing about season 1 episode 9 of Summer House while watching it would have been, to borrow a phrase from Everett, a “flagrant impossibility.” I spent that whole day looking at MAGA Twitter and dumb threads on r/conspiracy until I felt like Everett’s hairstylist had dragged a comb through my brain. I really felt weak!
Anyway, here we are. We open on the simultaneous dinner fights—remember those from two weeks ago when Lizzie described them? Lindsay and Everett were fighting because he slept in a friend’s bed and then someone named “Kim” was there too. Christina and Lauren and Ashley and Jaclyn were fighting because everyone blames Christina for their problems, which is easy to do because she just has sort of an irritating way about her—though I am on her side! As Lindsay stomps out of the restaurant, Carl says “Never let the girl leave, like by herself.” So Everett follows her outside and then the lovebirds come back in giggling and kissing—it’s not clear how much time elapsed in between but it can’t be more than three minutes because Kyle is still eating his sea bass. Carl says some inspiring but incredibly false things about Lindsay and Everett’s relationship and then they cheers.
Back at the house, Christina has left the room crying, which did not soften Lauren in the slightest, and in fact prompted her to say “Nobody cries unless they think they did a little bit of something wrong.” I would argue that people also cry when they are bullied! Christina goes to bed and everyone else goes skinny-dipping. They call Kyle and he’s like “We’re pulling up right now, keep your tops off.” Does anyone have a male friend who talks to them this way? I’ve never experienced this and definitely would not like to. Of course, we should all make our friends feel beautiful and important and perhaps that is what Kyle intended—it’s not for me to judge the dynamics of the Summer House friendships and I never would. I report them with the passivity of a 1970’s Beltway journalist, I think we can all agree.
Kyle sees some boobs, and then he does a pee dance while waiting for the bathroom. Something tells me the editors weren’t pleased with him this week. Lindsay and Carl are making out horizontally on a pool chair and he’s like “give me all your weight,” and she’s like “babe, stop.” Agree! We cut to Kyle, drunk, scootering around the kitchen alone at 4 AM, and that wraps up this night in the Summer House.
In the morning, Christina—whom I have recently learned used to work at BLADE, that startup that’s an app for booking helicopters—announces in a talking-head clip, “Lauren is being delusional. I’m done trying to help.” Got it? She’s done! The crew piles into a large yellow van that takes them to a “Hamptons mansion” party. The DJ is named DJ Rosé, which Kyle just loves. Lauren and Carl canoodle by the pool and Lauren tells him, “I’ve never not had one minute of not fun with you.” This was a hard lmao for me.
Christina—whose side we are on, as we have to be—makes the sort of baffling decision to approach Lindsay, right now, at a party, and ask her if she’s moving out of their apartment back in New York at the end of the summer. Lindsay, who is visibly drunk, demands that Christina tell her what she wants out of life. She’s 32 and has two roommates. Why doesn’t she move out? She repeats this line of argument at a higher volume as Christina calmly repeats that Lindsay had previously suggested she might be moving in with her tall, angry boyfriend, and that 30 days notice is polite in NYC rental situations, so she was just asking. Lindsay is like, “Of course I’m moving out and the reason is because of you” Then we cut to a talking head where Christina says what she did not say at the party: “Bitch, you just turned 30. I’m only two years older and I act much more mature than you do and I look much better than you do.”
Wow!! This is one of those mean-but-true-but-super-mean things you should really save for a small group text. But I guess all of Christina’s friends have abandoned her so who is she supposed to send it to?
Back at the party, Kyle is pouring wine into strangers’ mouths from a bottle of rosé the size of his torso. He is very drunk himself and struggling to lift such a large and oddly-shaped object, so actually he is pouring a lot of the wine into people’s noses, causing them to snort and choke. Fun! He is also running around the party attempting to find a blonde woman to flirt with. Stephen says he is “tugging on anyone’s dress he sees,” and this is pretty fair. Eventually he finds a 23-year-old named Darya, whose name he describes as “some Game of Thrones shit.” At this point he goes into his whole TED Talk about how blondes have to mate, and Darya is weirdly into it. She’s like “.0001 percent are natural blondes.” That is not even remotely true, but Kyle says “this girl is speaking my language.” They exchange numbers, though Kyle can hardly stand.
Meanwhile, Ashley and Christina are yelling at each other in the trees. “I’ve never not said you’re not a good friend,” Ashley tells her. The Wirkus sisters have a real thing for triple negatives! Then she says she’s going to lose her shit and pour a drink on Christina’s face. What are they fighting about? Well, you know. Christina’s whole thing I guess.
Kyle wanders over, eyes half-open, and puts a palm out into the middle of the conversation. Weirdly, this works. Ashley stops talking and wanders away. He has two glasses of rosé in his hand, and generously offers one to Christina. Then he gives her a very sweet and surprisingly cogent pep talk, swears that he is still her friend and she is a good person, and walks her back to the party in the ol’ one-arm side-hug that we all love to get from our pals. Kyle! As I’ve said previously, Kyle is pretty much a solid friend and a decent person who also definitely voted for Joe Biden even though in the comments on a recent Instagram post he said he always does one red heart emoji and one blue heart emoji on political content so that no one gets mad at him.
After the party, everyone except Christina plays beer pong. She goes to bed early again after yelling to the camera “Should I just be a bitch and an asshole and drunk all the time? Is that what works here?” Yes. Keep up!
The next day, as we know, Kyle has a date. He does not remember his date’s name, although I assume she put it in his phone and that’s how he contacted her about their plans? She is 23 years old and her name is Darya. They have lunch and he talks about his breakup and subsequent hookups with Amanda literally the entire time. I guess Darya doesn’t have much else going on because she makes out with him in the parking lot for a little bit after this conversation. Everyone else is also at a fancy lunch, shit-talking Christina, as she is running late. In a sidebar, Carl tells us that he does feel a little bit guilty for throwing Christina under the bus by implying to Lauren that she is the reason he started treating her like garbage. Then he says “I’m sorry but I’m not sorry.” Classic Carl! Eventually Christina turns up and everyone is so mean to her until she apologizes for whatever they think she did wrong. Lauren says “that’s all I wanted,” but continues to be visibly extremely angry about… what?—she is approaching “irredeemable” territory, and I don’t think she considers herself the villain of this show, but hardly any of us consider ourselves the villains of our own lives until we take a long, hard look in the mirror, which we should!
Later, Kyle invites Darya over to the Summer House for dinner and she ashes a cigarette in a plate of pasta salad. She breathes into her glass of wine and says “Why is it doing that?” referring to the condensation forming on the glass. Everyone is like, Kyle what the fuck. It’s really a “Kyle, what the fuck” situation on several counts because not only is Darya extremely young, tacky, and boring, Kyle is also not even putting forth the most basic effort to charm her. He brings up Amanda again, and she patiently empathizes. “It’s crazy how like, hooking up with your exes just like cluster-fucks you,” she says. “Yeah. That’s spot on,” he tells her. Then he calls her a cab and announces to us all that he has had his fun and now he would like to bring Amanda back to the Summer House to be his girlfriend. I’m glad Darya could help you with that, Kyle!
This episode is structured really strangely. With about 7 minutes left, the weekend is over and we go into a working-hard-in-the-city montage. These people love saying “gotta go” on the phone while hustling past others in a chaotic fashion, but we already knew that. Christina has an interview for an entertainment news website and it seems to go pretty well. She says she would like a great new job to rub in Lindsay’s face. I don’t think Lindsay probably cares about anything regarding Christina’s life so I don’t know if this will work—rooting for you though, girl!
Now we’re driving back out to the Hamptons and it’s the last weekend of Summer House!! Time is moving so fast. In the kitchen, Kyle starts yelling at Jaclyn because he’s just announced that Amanda is coming to stay for the weekend, Amanda is going to be his girlfriend, Jaclyn can no longer sleep platonically in his bed, and her concern over where she is going to sleep now is ruining the big moment of him telling everyone about his “personal milestone.” When Jaclyn points out that everyone pays the same amount of money for the Summer House, and she has a right to ask for a bed, he shoots back that she is not a mathematician, she is a model. Kyle!!!!!! Why do you do this to us after we defended you this whole time?
Then Christina interrupts Kyle’s announcement by telling everyone she got a new job. Then Lindsay interrupts her announcement by telling everyone she signed a taco place to her PR firm. Christina is like, I went to that taco place and I said you’d be good. Even after you lied about my career on television 8 weeks ago, I had a chance to ruin your life and I didn’t. She juts her chin out and has a very pinched expression, like an illustration of a British child. Lindsay is like, okay?? As Christina has pointed out many times, Kyle is her last remaining ally in the Summer House. I would say that she is at high risk of losing her other remaining ally, the Famous People newsletter, but she doesn’t seem to be paying attention to that.
After Amanda arrives, Kyle double-fists some wine and a hard seltzer while telling her he made out with Jaclyn and some other people all summer. I guess he does have to tell her about Jaclyn because they’ll be interacting socially, but I’m not sure why the rest of it is necessary? They were broken up? And no offense it’s sort of prudish to me that they’re acting this dramatic about some kissing? Anyway, she’s really mad.
To be continued by Lizzie.
KEY FACTS & FIGURES
Is Carl still employed?
Yes! It said “dental sales manager” underneath his name at least a couple of times this week.
Does Kyle wear a wig?
Sadly, no.
Drink of choice?
Cold wine and hot spit.
Summer Fun levels:
2/100 : ( same as the actual number of people who are natural blondes.