The Valley Reunion Recap: Damn It, Janet
During the final part of this reunion, Kristen Doute said one thing incredibly right and one thing incredibly wrong. The right thing is this: “My reputation is uncovering the truth and inserting myself in situations that don’t concern me — not being a liar, not exaggerating.” She is mostly correct. She’s been right about nearly everything (except what she and Stassi did to Faith), and even things she seemed wrong about at the time, like Miami Girl, were eventually proven to be correct. She also has been known to exaggerate, or at least take something that is true and put a little bit of spin on it so it seems, well, exaggerated. So, yes, she does exaggerate, but Kristen Doute, our goddess in the green dress, does insert herself into situations that don’t concern her and, more importantly, she does not lie.
Right after this, however, she is very, very wrong. “You’re not that important for fans to care that much about,” Kristen says about Janet. She was referencing the rumor that Kristen and Jasmine spread earlier this season about Jason not wearing his wedding ring, and she’s right that we don’t care about that rumor. As Jasmine says, it is “whack.” So what if he doesn’t? We all know that he’s Bravo’s premier wife guy. There is no way that he is cheating on Janet, so whether he wears his ring is immaterial.
What she is wrong about is that Janet is not that important and fans don’t care about her. Oh, the fans care deeply about Janet — in that there is a near-unanimous hatred of her. She’s so hated that the Real Housewives Institute’s twink outreach officer Tom Smyth had to write an entire defense of her. Sorry, Kristen, aside from the dissolution of two marriages, Janet is the animating factor of this show. Would we even be tuning in without her? She’s like And Just Like That … if it were a person, something that we all agree is terrible, yet we can’t stop watching for even a second and will miss dreadfully when it’s gone.
If the first episodes of the reunion were about Jax Taylor finally getting what he deserves, this final part is about Janet meeting the outrage of not only those on the couches, but also those at home shouting about how awful she is. There are two big topics of conversation when it comes to Janet: The first is her repeatedly bringing up Danny and his actions toward Melissa and Jasmine, which I have a hard time with. Ideologically, I agree with her: Men get away with all sorts of acts of sexual aggression toward women, and Janet says she’s going to keep bringing it up until his behavior changes. She says he’s still doing it, bringing up an incident with Brittany at her birthday party, which was in January, and something about the Super Bowl, which was in February. For the record, the reunion taped in May.
Still, that leaves three months between the alleged second incident and the taping, during which time Danny could have gotten his act even cleaner. Also, Brittany says Danny was following her and being flirty at her birthday but didn’t touch her. It’s not great, but it seems like he at least learned his lesson about keeping his hands to himself. So, yes, maybe Janet is right that we shouldn’t ignore it. But as far as these things go (and they should never happen, period), what happened with Danny and Jaslissa (Melmine?) was probably the best outcome. Certainly, there were some inappropriate comments and bad touching, but Danny apologized many times, tried to make it better, listened to the pair about how it affected them, and seems to have reformed. Is Janet right to keep bringing it up? Maybe. Is she right to call it “sexual assault”? Probably not. Nearly everyone says they think her use of the term was careless, though Zack mumblingly admits that it is technically correct.
Ultimately, I think Janet loses the battle about how she treated Danny. When Nia and Danny come after her for saying he has done things to women “multiple times,” Janet brings up how Danny “called Michelle a whore” on camera. When she explains it further, she says Danny repeated to Luke (when he thought cameras were down) that he heard Michelle was sleeping with a billionaire for money. But that’s not calling her a whore — it’s not even accusing her of doing that; it’s Danny repeating something Jesse said and saying it to Luke in a way that is like, “Isn’t it crazy that he said this thing that clearly isn’t true?” This is what Janet does that drives everyone crazy: She takes something, bends it to her own use, and then acts like she doesn’t understand why people are mad.
However, no one on the couches is clocking this tactic as the nefarious reality TV ruse that it is. What they’re all relying on is an argument that I think is weaker than Jax Taylor’s nostrils in front of even the smallest baggie of white powder. They — and by “they,” I mean mostly Kristen — say Janet is a fan, that she made friends with Scheana and the rest of them for an eventual reality TV payoff. They say she is a different person on TV than she is in real life. Jason, for the second time this reunion, asks for examples of how, and for the second time, no one can answer him, except to say, “So many examples!” Girl, if there are so many, why can’t you even name one?
Kristen tries, and her example is so sad that not even a Lexapro drip can perk it up. She says that in season one, Jax brought her ex-boyfriend around and Janet knew he was terrible to Kristen. Then, in her confessionals, Janet said Kristen told her that she is the one who made mistakes and had regrets about how she behaved in the relationship, and now she’s trying to change the narrative that he’s the villain. Okay. And? Maybe Janet was lying before and telling the truth to the camera. Yes, that might be acting differently, but if it’s real, is it bad?
That seems to be Kristen’s biggest beef with Janet. She says Janet has created an alter ego when she is on camera to make herself more relevant. That inauthenticity might be why audiences are turning against her, but that isn’t a Kristen problem; it’s a producer problem. What Kristen seems mad about is that Janet is playing a character who’s been more successful at getting screen time and attention this season. We’re all talking about her; every storyline revolves around her; she’s the key to every group in a way that Kristen certainly was back in her glory days. Andy tells her he finds it refreshing that she doesn’t have the same level of “chaos” surrounding her as she used to, but is Kristen — and I never say this about reality TV people — jealous?
Whatever Janet is doing is working in that it’s given fans plenty to talk and fight about, but her antics are like a sugar high: We’re all wound up for a bit, and then comes the inevitable crash when the rush wears off. In terms of long-term viability, it is not good for the show, and based on the level of outrage she’s received, I think Janet might have learned her lesson and may come back chastened next season. Already, she seems to be trying to mend things with Zack and Jasmine, so she’s on the apology tour. Unless (19 exclamation points), contrary to what everyone believes, this is Janet and she does it all again when cameras pick back up.
There wasn’t much else to focus on this episode, though I did love it when Andy Cohen scolded Jesse for his girlfriend not wanting to be on the show. Apparently, at the finale party, she showed up after they “wrapped” and got into a screaming fight with Michelle. We’ve never seen Michelle raise her voice above a panting whisper, so whatever this Baywatch superfan did to get Michelle screaming, it had to be good. Jesse tries to say she isn’t there to defend herself, but Andy quickly points out that she showed up to an all-cast event and didn’t expect to get filmed. That’s like showing up at SeaWorld and expecting not to get wet or saddened by seeing majestic animals in cages. When Andy spells it out, he ends by saying, “You understand?” Jesse offers a terse, “Yeah,” once again renewing his contract for the Faustian bargain that is reality fame.
Speaking of which, it is right to end this season, this reunion, this recap with Jax Taylor, the not once and for never No. 1 guy in the group. Andy gives him a cold-hearted reminder about how he said it was “his show” to Lisa Vanderpump and that was the beginning of the end for him, which saw him go from a celeb to a guy selling swag on eBay and commenting about himself from a burner account named after a Naked Gun character. (Go see the remake. It’s amazing.) After the final toast from Brittany, the real linchpin of this friend group, Jax says, “Congrats on your first reunion. You’ve broken your cherry,” as if he is the only person there who has ever filmed one before. He then says he has to get the fuck out of there because he has shit to do.
What shit, exactly, does Jax Taylor have to do? Demean his wife? Fat-shame his co-workers? Get fired from a bar he owns? Just make shit up for no reason? Jax has nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to talk to. He’s once again fired from something he takes sole credit for creating when he has been the most exasperating part of it from the beginning. So Jax left the reunion and walked out into the studio parking lot, the sun setting over the short ranch houses of Los Angeles casting overly long shadows. He walked to his car thinking about his triumph, about how everyone in America cares about him, about how he is so influential in pop-culture spheres that this reunion would make him forever. When he heard a loud popping sound, he just assumed it was an assassin, someone finally come to settle a score, or maybe a crazed fan who wouldn’t let him live if they couldn’t have him. He put his hand to his stomach, waiting for blood, but as he looked down, his hand was clean, there was no pain, there was no entry wound. He looked up and saw that the street lights were coming on around him, each one popping in succession, the response of technology to nature that, now and forever, will have nothing to do with him.