Summer House Recap: Bursting Balloons

There is something I have not given Ciara enough credit for this summer, and that is that her room has been much cleaner. Well, maybe that’s not exactly true. This was the first episode that I noticed what a mess it is, and we are well past the halfway mark of the season. She did have an overly complicated costume to prepare for, so I will let this one slide. Also, she was in said room snuggling with West, and I think a snuggly West can erase most ills from the world.

The other crazy Ciara thing I noticed has to do with her manager, Derek. He’s hanging out with her and West during the second half of the alien party, and they’re all talking about kissing, and then West plants a little peck on Derek’s mouth, and I have never been more jealous of anything except maybe the tiny cowboy hat Kyle used to hide his dong during his 40th birthday party last summer. Then West allows Derek to give his wiener a little tap and, oh, man, now I’m even more jealous.

But there was something familiar about this Derek character. Not in his face, but in his voice, in his mannerisms. Could it? Is it? No, it can’t be. I did a quick Google search for “Derek A List: New York,” and I was right. It’s him! Derek, the manager, was on a cursed reality program that ran for two seasons on Logo, a cable channel that used to be devoted to gays and now, I think, just runs old episodes of TJ Hooker. It was like the gay answer to The Housewives, and they were the screechiest, flounciest, vodka-soda-best group of homosexuals ever assembled on television. Naturally, I covered them feverishly back in 2009 when I was writing for Gawker dot com (RIP). None of you care about this, but I do and I am in charge here so now you have to care about it too. (Also, why can’t we have a gay reality show that works other than Drag Race? Where is Summer House: Fire Island Pines?)

When the party moves indoors after hours, it fizzles a bit, but that mostly has to do with Danielle. She sits down with Gabby and asks her if she’s flirting with anyone. Gabby says that everyone acts as if she’s incapable of it. Well, based on the evidence we’ve seen on this here television program, it doesn’t seem like she is. Remember when she wrote off that hottie on the beach because he was a Cancer and then she was kinda mean about it? But, unlike Danielle, I don’t think her lack of game is a problem. Danielle wants her to go out there, get up in guys’ faces, and take what she wants out of them. While that is a strategy that obviously works quite well for Danielle, it is not for everyone. Gabby is a slower burn, and even if she just wants to hook up with a guy, she needs to know him and like him. That’s totally cool too.

I get where both of these women are coming from. Danielle wants Gabby to employ the strategy that works for her, and Gabby just wants everyone to get off her damn jock, already. Gabby wants to be pursued, and that’s fine, but then she needs to not complain so much about how she doesn’t have a dude. If she’s going to go her usual route and maintain her high standards — which she should — it’s going to take a bit longer. I do agree with Danielle, however, that she didn’t seem so flirty with Joe the Balloon Guy, and she often comes across as closed off. Danielle is right to tell her these things, but that is the next morning over a bacon, egg, and cheese conversation, not right in the middle of the party when the beer tears are going to flow the conversation.

The next morning the two talk about how they go after boys and what Danielle meant by the conversation and they’re on the same page. They both want what is best for Gabby, and Danielle finally understands that her way is not always the right way. However, at the party, it doesn’t go nearly as smoothly.

After their conversation, Gabby gets those beer tears right out and sobs in the shower stall while calling her sister on the phone. If you have yet to witness this exact behavior at least once, you obviously never had a friend who was in a sorority, and it shows. There is nothing that can be done to help Gabby at this moment. Her feelings are valid, but her reaction seems a little outsized. Just let her sobs echo against the tile until they stop.

But that’s not the real concern of the fight, which is actually about Paige being mad at Danielle for saying that she gives Craig nothing. Paige tells Danielle that she made Gabby cry, and Danielle says, “That’s stupid.” Paige tells Danielle that she’s the moral compass, and if people don’t agree, then she gets mad about it. She’s using Gabby as an example, but that’s only because she wants to keep her one-legged silver jumper and reputation clean.

Then Danielle says the most annoying thing about being a founder and CEO is that she has to figure out how to talk to everyone because they receive criticism differently. Oh, Jesus. The thing about Founders and CEOs is that a successful one would never call herself that. It’s like someone who calls themselves an entrepreneur because they sold an old Uniqlo top on DePop or someone who is a curator because they organized a friend’s closet. God, people, shut up.

After this comment, Amanda comes back from the shower where she was comforting Gabby and Paige subs in to go look after her. A frazzled Danielle only talks to Amanda for a second before leaving the room. Both Amanda and Paige read this to mean that Danielle doesn’t take Amanda seriously as a person. This may be true, but to me it seemed like Danielle was already done with this conversation and wanted to get back to inflating Joe’s balloon even before Paige left, and then she saw that as her excuse to leave.

I’m not trying to excuse Danielle’s behavior during the interaction, which was suckier than me finding a crate of Ring Pops, but I think it had less to do with Amanda than we think. How long would you leave Joe the Balloon Guy alone? Of course Danielle sealed that particular deal. We even got to see his pretty little heinie when he got up to use the bathroom in the morning. Every night when I say my rosary, one Hail Mary is always for the night vision technology on Summer House.

The rest of the episode is really only about Amanda and Larl, but not together. Back in the city, Amanda goes to Old Navy with Paige and Ciara, and this must be a paid excursion because there is no way these girls hit up the 34th Street Old Navy on the reg. That place is nastier than a Sbarro bathroom. Their whole conversation there, which starts with Amanda saying Danielle thinks she’s stupid, is them trying to hype Amanda up, tell her that she is a great designer, a great partner, and a great friend. It’s actually super sweet.

And while we’re giving Amanda her flowers, I will agree that she’s great on the show for someone who got on it only because she was dating Kyle not because she really wanted to be here. In her eight seasons she’s rage texted her partner in the middle of the night, she consoled every crying woman in the house including her archnemesis Lindsay, and is the only bridge between the many disparate factions. The show could go on without Amanda, but it wouldn’t be as good or nearly as peaceful. (I am only doing this to give her enough confidence to leave her husband so that I can have him.) The girls are right; Amanda needs to try something on her own without Kyle. She decides she wants to design swimsuits. Hmm. I hear Beverly Beach is looking for new ownership.

Now onto Larl and, saints alive, it’s a lot. After the alien party, Kyle and Carl clean up, and Carl talks about his conversation with Lindsay the night before. He gets where she’s coming from, wanting him to be a bit more employed, but he’s saying just what many in the comments section said last week, it’s not like Lindsay has much more of a job. I liked that Carl put some numbers to show how much they’re making being “influencers.” Lindsay pulled down $150,000 the year before in paid post, and Carl netted $70,000 mostly because he’s a dude and has fewer followers (but not by a ton). I would guess they’re also both making around $200,000-$300,000 a season on the show. That’s not nothing! In fact, it is far more than the average American makes (though the average American is not paying New York City rent or has Carl’s tight pants budget).

Carl’s big takeaway from his conversation with Lindz, however, is that she wants to be a stay-at-home mom, and that’s why she wants Carl to bring in more money. While I see how Lindsay wants that, I can’t ever imagine that’s what she’ll do. Lindsay is one of those women who quits her job to raise the kids then can’t find a brand of organic apple sauce she likes so she invents her own, markets it, and then sells it to Nestle for $30 million in four years. She’s just like that. She’s a hustler; she likes to work, and she has lots of energy. That’s who she is. Carl is not that. He’s always struggled professionally since we met him in his More Life days.

But these aren’t the only struggles Larl is facing. When Carl goes to visit his mother and step-father, Lou, in Ocean Grove, New Jersey (hey, Kyle, get a house around the corner!), they sit on the front porch and have a very intense and intimate conversation about Carl and Lindsay’s relationship. They start by talking about how Carl feels about Lindsay’s drinking, which he obviously doesn’t love because, hello, have you met drunk Lindsay? To Carl’s credit, he seems to be owning his own bad behavior in their fights, so it’s not like he’s painting a rosy picture for his mom’s sake.

But Larl is the opposite of a rosy picture. (What is that? A thorny picture, I guess?) Carl says that their fights get so intense that he wonders if he is the right person for Lindsay. Lou says, “That is not indicative of a healthy relationship.” He’s right! I think in the aftermath of the breakup, it became clear that neither of them was right for the other and that, other than bad behavior from one side, is why they eventually broke up.

Lou is unrelenting with the hard truths, and I think he is the unsung hero of this whole saga. He tells Carl that as a minister, he counseled many couples, and if he counseled them, he would say that they shouldn’t get married, at least not yet. This guy has only been in Carl’s family for a few years but is single-handedly saving his life with tough love. “If you continue, you’re setting yourself up for a world of pain, and I know there is a part of you that knows this,” Lou tells him.

Carl sits back in his rocking chair, the July sun bleaching the grass, the house, the sidewalks, the sand, the shore. Carl tilts his head back, blinking his eyes as it covers his vision in a halo of fire and it tunes it all out until the only thing he can hear are the waves coming in and out of the shore, the dark rumbling of the undercurrent, the steely cold of the abyss, and in that moment of oblivion he finds the one thing he’s been seeking all summer: relief.