Winter House Recap: The Myth of the Cool Girl

It’s time to figure out where these winter romances stand once and for all.

This episode starts off where the last episode left off with Sam and Malia in a fight over how she is behaving with Kory. Sam says that she feels like Malia wants a relationship with Kory. I don’t know about that. I think Malia wants to fuck Kory, but that might be the extent of that. Anyway, the conversation somehow shifts from Sam blaming Malia to Malia comforting Sam. Malia tells her “girl to girl” that she has no interest in Kory. Sam then says, “I know that we’re not in a defined relationship, so that’s up for interpretation. Whatever. It’s fine.” It is clearly not fine.

Malia tells Sam that this situationship is hard — just look at what a mess it’s made her. It seems like it is, then, that lightning strike of a moment that Sam has decided she is fed up with this and wants to define the relationship. Sam confesses that she loves Kory but won’t say it until they’re in a more settled place. Malia hugs her and then says exactly what a woman should say to another woman in this situation: “Kory needs to figure this out, but he really cares about you.” Where was this Malia when Hannah had a CBD pen aboard the boat? Where was this girls-first Malia then?

Sam goes to the bathroom to gather herself and fix her makeup when Amanda comes in with another gold-star assist. Mrs. Batula-Cooke should know a thing or two about killing the cool girl. She let Kyle get away with whatever he wanted their first year on Summer House; now he’s missing the last day of skiing to ship her nine (nine!!) FedEx boxes of clothes back to New York. Anyway, Amanda tells her that Kory cares for her and that he has been well-behaved the whole time they’ve been there when Sam wasn’t around. It’s one thing to get that report from your boyfriend (I love men, but we all know they lie), but if your sister is telling you that, you know it is gospel, and you better hold on to that man.

I tell you all of this because both Amanda and Casey warn Sam away from being the “Cool Girl.” Yes! The idea of a Cool Girl is a myth. Sam thinks that she is being amenable and attractive to men by just going with the flow, not pushing them to define the relationship, and not trying to put parameters on their behavior. The Cool Girl thinks if she just gives the guy enough room and is her charming self, he will come around eventually. Wrong! The Cool Girl is an idea perpetrated by the patriarchy so that women will let men get along with whatever the hell they want to do and give them no recourse for correcting their actions.

When Kory finally comes into the room to check on Sam, she says that this is the first time she realized how strong her feelings are. She asks if he wants to hook up with anyone else and he says no. Finally, she has to ask the most ninth-grade question imaginable: “Are we boyfriend and girlfriend?” Kory says yes, and they smooch, and everyone is happy. But in confessional, Kory says the key thing: that no guy is ever going to do this unless a girl makes him. Yes, that is why the Cool Girl does not exist. She is just another idea to torture women into doing what men want, like Pilates or being a housewife. That night, Kory puts his boxers over the camera in his room so that they can really get it on. Oh, how I wish my face were that camera.

There are Cool Girls being obliterated all over this hour. Casey tries to be that Cool Girl who welcomes the new girl into the house without telling her that she was literally talking trash about her like a week ago, or at least calling her trash. When Kory tells Sam all about this, Sam has to pull Casey aside to set that bitch straight. (I don’t know if you heard the snap after that last sentence, but it was implied.) Casey, to her credit, is very gracious about it and doesn’t let what was right get in the way of what was cool. She tells Sam that as soon as she met her she genuinely liked her, and she is very sorry for everything that she said and judging her before they met. Sam tells Casey that she’ll have to let her know which of their mutual friends was calling Sam trash. I don’t know; a Cool Girl would never tell.

Speaking of not being cool, Casey was literally in the way when Katie Flood was trying to hook up with Schwartz. Katie goes into her dark room and finds Schwartz passed out on his back and Casey is passed out also on her back but perpendicular to him with her head on his knees. She crawls into bed and is like “What is on the bed?” While she picks some things up to inspect them, she says, “Oh no. It’s Casey.” She then has to try to physically pry a drunk Casey out of bed so that she can make out with the second fittest Tom on Vanderpump Rules. (Yeah, Sandoval is trash, but have you seen his body lately?)

Schwartz wasn’t the only dude threes company-ing with Casey in a bed. She finally lets all her Cool Girl energy slide and starts making out with Brian Benni. Brian is lying in bed with his head resting on Alex, and Casey just goes over and starts laying it on him. What is up with Casey always being in bed with two other people? Is she only into three-ways? Does she need to get on Thrinder? I love that she finally gave in to her feelings for Brian. Neither of them thinks it’s too serious, but Casey says that it’s the end of the trip; now, if it goes wrong, she is leaving in two days anyway.

Jordan expressed something similar to Alex when they were out at the bar the last night. She tells him that she has always been attracted to him; she was just looking for what else about him was more substantive. She tells him that he finally found it, but basically says it’s too late because instead of waiting for her, he went for the girl that was the most available.

So, yes, we’re ending this recap on the story line that dragged us through most of this season: Alex and Danielle’s ill-fated love affair. Even after he friendzoned her, she still says she wants things the way they were before. She crawls into his bed in the morning and coaxes him into a bathroom make-out. It was fully consensual on both ends, but I just wanted to yell at Danielle to give it up already and get some self-respect. This guy does not want her, and she is too fragile from a recent breakup to have Cool Girl no-strings-attached sex with this man.

Later, on their last night, Danielle is wearing nothing but a pair of cowboy boots and the most adorable aliens-and-bunnies-themed hoodie. (Seriously, drop a link!) She sees Alex and Jordan flirting in the kitchen and decides to embarrass herself one more time in the worst way possible. She goes up to Jordan — yes, Jordan, not the man who has been driving her insane this whole trip — and says, “If you were a cool girl, you would not always be flirty and on top of someone who you know is fucking me.” Again, the Cool Girl does not exist. The Spice Girls invented this kind of Cool Girl on the planet Chromatica, where men do not exist and women can treat each other well because the universe’s collective villainy and the Y chromosome are both banned.

Jordan says the exact right thing to her: “Why don’t you have this conversation with him?” Exactly. This is all Alex’s fault because he can’t be man enough to tell Danielle that it is well and truly over. Instead, he’s hanky-panky-ing with her and saying, “Bathroom sessions are my favorite.” He’s stringing her along while trying to score with the girl he wants the most and driving both women insane. Meanwhile, he sneaks off to bed while Danielle and Jordan are still at it. (Kyle McGill Cooke, for one, is jealous that Alex gets to behave like that and the women in the house aren’t shouting down his face like they would if Kyle tried something like this in the Hamptons.)

But no, instead, Danielle is in the kitchen shouting at Jordan, “You should have fucking known that I was already having sex with this man. And you still continue to shake your ass in front of him.” That is not a Jordan problem. That is an Alex problem, and I can’t believe she’s even going there. In the morning, Danielle says she feels awful but only wants to repair her conversation with Jordan. However, when she sits Jordan down, she says, “I hate what happened last night. The way you looked at Alex and the way you were dancing with him. Like why?” Um, again, this is not a Jordan problem! Is she slut shaming Jordan for being her lovely carefree self when the real person Danielle has a problem with is Alex?

They eventually end on a good note. Danielle tells Jordan that she cares about her and doesn’t want their relationship to deteriorate like that, and the pair hug it out just in time to pack up the cars and go home. Guess we’ll have a lot to talk about at the reunion, hey? We get no resolution on Danielle and Alex. Katie and Tom are planning to hang out, and he’s going to take her to Universal Studios and Jumbo’s Clown Room for their first date. Much like Katie, you probably have no idea what Jumbo’s is, but trust me when I tell you that this is a perfect first date. But Alex and Danielle just get into vans for an awkward trip to the airport and probably another awkward flight home. Unless Danielle crawls into Alex’s (hopefully) business-class seat and tries to make something happen again. She might try to lure him into the bathroom and join the mile-high club. He might even start it. Who knows? But back in Steamboat, the snow holds traces of what was. The woods remember everything that happened. If you listen closely, you can hear the pines as they whisper, “Don’t do it. Don’t do it.”