Vanderpump Rules Recap: Take the Kids to the Pool

James seems to be getting a questionable redemption arc that doesn’t really sit well.

There is nothing I find funnier than how much the editors hate DJ James Kennedy. The episode starts as every episode of Bravo starts, with a bunch of random snippets of the cast’s lives before it settles into the main story. In this episode, we see Sandoval and Ariana brushing their teeth, Scheana putting on makeup in a bathroom that is shockingly covered with images of herself, and then, right before shifting to James’s house, we get a Southwest airplane flying overhead. Thank you, editors, for reminding us. Actually, every time we cut to James and Ally’s Bangin’ Bungalow, we see a plane right before it. They will literally never let this kid forget that the $2 million home he owns is littered with noise pollution.

There was another dastardly transition during James’s Wednesday afternoon pool party, which was attended only by the cast, Scheana’s sister, Courtney Shay, and the four guys who dropped off the BevMo order that James asked to stay to pad out the numbers. Lala is inside talking to Ally about James’s sobriety. Ally says it’s been three months, and Lala says, “Those first 30 days are the hardest.” Cut to James outside shouting, “These are weed!” while holding up three cans (I’d guess they’re PBR High Seltzer, and Kyle Cooke should enter this market immediately) to show Schwartz that he can still party. As the conversation about James being sober continues, we see him chug an entire weed beverage while the meat he has on the grill sets on fire. He may not be drunk, but he is still playing with fire.

Yes, James not drinking is good and just what he needs, but I love how the show won’t let him breathe about his house and continues to be skeptical about his California sobriety. Lala decides that she’s going to ask James about not drinking to his face, and they discuss his sobriety while leaving the California part out of it. He tells Lala that he and Ally got into a huge fight while he was drinking about how he was responding to Scandoval, and it got so bad that Ally moved out for a few days, took the cats, and stayed at a friend’s house. He says that was the moment he decided he needed to stop drinking.

When he talks about it, he says the last time he got sober for almost three years, it was for a relationship, this one being Raquel. He says this time, he’s doing it for himself. Yes, that might be true, but the reason he said he wanted to get sober was to get Ally back. Is that really for yourself, or is that for your relationship, but you’re really just saying that it’s for yourself? If it keeps James sober, then great, but I think that the negativity he feels toward Raquel is keeping him from saying he wants to get sober so he can have love in his life. That is as good a reason as any, but any self-delusion is not going to allow James to be alcohol-free for long, and that includes why he’s alcohol-free in the first place.

James gets his redemptive moment at the end of the episode. Lisa calls him up and says that she needs 10 minutes of his time to talk to him about something. He thinks it’s going to be about Sandoval since Lisa is trying to get all of her prize ponies back into the stable she built for them (more on that below), but instead, when he arrives, Graham Cracker, Raquel’s dog that James used to live with, walks down the stairs and James starts bawling.

Yes, this was a sweet moment to reunite a man with his ex’s dog (as strange as that is to say), but it gave me Tyra Banks’ emotional manipulation vibes. Here is this dude showing up for what he thinks is a simple chat, and now he’s saddled with a living creature for the next 15-20 years of his life just so that Lisa Vanderpump could get him to have a good cry on camera. I mean, if I was James’s girlfriend and he showed up with a dog he didn’t ask me if he could have, then he would need all three of those cans of weed drink to calm down after all the shouting I did at him.

While the editors seem to hate him, I feel like the show is really doing a lot of image repair for James, who, we need to be reminded, is not a good person. He’s treated all sorts of people on this show quite shabbily, and I don’t know how I feel about investing all of this “No. 1 Guy in the Group” energy in him like he’s some hero. Meanwhile, Katie Maloney Schwartz Maloney is not getting anywhere near this consideration. They showed her wearing a denim bustier … at a pool party. That is the meanest thing we’ve ever seen.

Also, the edit that Ariana is getting is funny, making her look callous, checked out, and above it all. The worst was when she is in a confessional talking about Schwartz, “This guy that I haven’t spoken to in, you know, however many months, all of the sudden is some authority on who I am and how I live my life and how I think and feel. That’s interesting. Just like a man.” Yes, she’s not wrong generally, but it was the tone. She says all this while looking into a hand-mirror and reapplying her makeup. She can’t even say Schwartz’s name. It was very Stassi season two, and it knocked me totally off-kilter.

Speaking of Lisa Vanderpump, Emotional Manipulator, she calls Lala and Scheana over to Villa Rosa for a chat. I was going to say it was like getting called to the principal’s office, but it was really like getting a call from the head of HR. She is their boss, and she is telling them that they have to get along with Sandoval because there’s not a show. I think it’s very cynical to think that everything Sandoval does is manipulation, but bringing up his suicidal feelings to Lisa, who lost her brother to suicide, seems to have had just the sort of reaction he was hoping for. Now, Lisa is trying to make his reentry to the “group” easier because she’s afraid of his mental health. Also, her show. But also his mental health. But also her show. But also his mental health.

But is she? I have to think yes. Lisa has many good qualities, but she is a terrible actress. You see a whole different emotion in her scene with Scheana (her scene-a?) and Lala than we do with the smarm when she unleashes Graham on James. She does seem worried, but I don’t think we really need to be sectioning anyone at this point.

Honesty is often hard to come by on this show, which is why I loved the chat that Schwartz and Lala had at James’s underwhelming pool party. She tells him she’s so hard on him because he reminds her of her father, who was such a people pleaser that he let other people ruin his life. He says the reason he was so mean and insulting to her last year is because they weren’t talking, and it made it easy to dehumanize her, but now that they’ve reconnected, he doesn’t want to talk to her like that. It seems like they really managed to mend some holes in their friendship. Whether or not anything will come of it (OMG, should they date?!?!?!), but it was sweet to see.

With all of this talk of who is getting a good edit and who is getting a bad one, the one person who is not allowing himself a good edit is Tom Sandoval. First, he takes Billie Lee, a booger that won’t come off its Kleenex, to a place called Into Me Sea, which is pronounced “Intimacy.” I’m like, “Okay, is this a sex toy shop? Is this a lingerie shop? Are we going to therapy? What is going to be so intimate?” It’s a place for plunge pools. Called Into Me Sea. This is why I sometimes wish that the big one would hit L.A. and the whole thing would fall Into Me Sea.

Tom says that he’s doing this for his mental health, and the look on Billie’s face says, “I am not getting in that fucking freezing cold fucking bath fucking tub.” Based on the way her hair and makeup look when they’re done plunging, it certainly seems like she never bothered to get in.

What was even worse was when Schwartz went to Sandoval’s house to talk about the Tahoe trip. Schwartz is there getting a hair trip from Jo, his former fuck buddy who is now just a buddy who he still probably fucks a bit. I don’t know about Jo. Last year, Katie said she was Kristen Doute’s “crazy friend.” If you are Kristen’s “crazy friend,” then I don’t think I would even want to eat in the same restaurant as you.

Anyway, Schwartz is being a great friend here, telling Sandoval he should come to Tahoe, have some one-on-ones with people, leave his ego behind, and say, “Sorry I hurt you.” Sandoval is not ready. He wants to talk to Lala about how much merch she sold, thanks to him. “For them to not understand what they did was so fucked up,” he says. “Lala and Scheana showed the entire nation how to treat us.” He’s not wrong there. I think part of the reason we were so mean to Sandoval was because we saw his friends doing it, and we thought it was fine. Just like Lisa advises, I don’t know if we need to forgive Sandoval, but it is time to ease up, if only because it’s the humane thing to do.

But Sandoval is also entirely missing the point. He wants someone to apologize to him for how badly he’s been treated in this whole ordeal, and I think, by and large, his friends, the fans, and the media haven’t been very nice to him. But what he continues to miss is that this whole thing wouldn’t have happened if he didn’t cheat on his girlfriend with her best friend and lie about it to the entire group. Yes, they might have been terrible, but if he gave them nothing to be terrible about, he’d still be performing in that stupid band and allowed into Schwartz & Sandy’s. Once he has atoned for the original sin, we can talk about the fallout, but he is so preoccupied with his own suffering that he can’t see anyone else’s.

Meanwhile, back in his room with the duvet pulled over the pillows and a pile of stinky laundry in the corner, his assistant Ann rifles through his closet, wondering what he should wear for the Tahoe trip. Some swimsuits. Some T-shirts. A stupid hat or two. Definitely at least three pairs of novelty sunglasses that everyone will hate. Some extra white nail polish. Those are easy, but what about the rest? Ann thinks about what one should wear to apologize to your friends and make amends. She’s never done it before so she wouldn’t know, but she thinks maybe he shouldn’t pack. Maybe he shouldn’t bring any of this with him, the accouterments he uses to cover up who he really is, the soft, sad, wannabe actor who moved to Los Angeles 20 years ago with nothing but some modeling headshots, a Playstation, and a dream. Yes, that’s what to bring. Nothing. If you want real forgiveness, it has to be begged for completely naked.