Grey Area Gardens
Season 12
Episode 1
Editor’s Rating
3 stars
***
Photo: Jessica Yurinko/Bravo
Well, we know that the season ends with Whitney asking all the guys who has a secret love child. Is it [dun, dun, DUNNNN], Austen, the lovable cad who has been dating all over Charleston; [dun, dun, DUNNNN] Craig, the unrepentant narcissist with a giant hole in his living room ceiling; [dun, dun, DUNNNN] Shep, the newly-bearded wastrel who just got back with his ex-girlfriend; or [dun, dun, DUNNNN] Whitner, the recently buff playboy and possible performative male? Tune in this season to Southern Charm, where all the answers are revealed, including just how cute the baby is. (The baby is reportedly very cute.) If I’m putting money on it now, I would say that it’s Whitner because there is no way that the other boys would have gotten someone knocked up and we wouldn’t have known. I love you, Whitner, but are you our main suspect or a red herring?
It’s going to take us three months to answer these questions. We’re not in Maui on a cast trip; we are in Charleston where everyone is goofing off with their pets and Miss Patricia is cleaning out her cabinet of dog clothes. Talk about relatable! JK. I do not have a dog, and that imaginary dog certainly does not have clothes. We also check in with everyone. Craig went to Switzerland, where he wanted to isolate himself so that he could learn how to be alone. He did this with a luxury ski vacation. Now that he’s back in Charleston, it seems like nothing has changed, including that his assistant, Jack, is still in love with him. Madison’s baby, Teddi, is not sleeping through the night, so Madison isn’t getting much rest and still manages to look absolutely amazing. What is wrong with the rest of us?
Venita and Salley are friends once again, and they’re FaceTiming in the morning while Salley sticks her face and her extra E in a bucket of ice water that her dogs, Kevin and Boots, have already been drinking out of. Molly broke up with her dude and is just hanging out lots with Whitner (as friends), who is sending out shirtless pics with the frequency and urgency of a gay man who just downloaded Sniffies. (Straight people, do not ask Claude or Gemini or Jeeves what that is.) Venita says she’s into Whitner and Molly is like, “Are you? Are you sure? Do you want to be? How about being into someone who is not on the show? I think that is much better for you.”
All of the budding relationships come together at Venita’s Garden of Eden But Don’t Spend Too Much on the Flowers party that she holds to kick off the season. Whitner shows up with all of his shirt buttons undone to show off all the work he has been doing at the gym. Much like Venita, I have fallen for it. Salley can have my old imaginary husband, Kyle Cooke, because I have a new imaginary husband, and his name is Whitner Moylan. Yes, he is taking my last name because I can neither spell nor say his. (Also, Moylan in Gaelic means “bald,” and it’s ironic because he’s so wonderfully hairy.) Anyway, Whitner has fallen for Allie, the new girl who is a 26-year-old model that Venita knew when she was 14, when she was a modeling coach, a job that she had to go through a six-year accreditation process to practice. Yes, because she is a 26-year-old model in an amazing dress and after my husband — I already hate her. He asks her out on a date, and she accepts. Can’t wait to vomit all over that.
There’s only one problem. She was going out with Austen for a bit. Shep and his new beard (no, not a fake girlfriend to hide that he’s gay, an actual beard) pull Allie aside and ask about the relationship. He says Austen told him that they went on two or three dates and she wanted to be exclusive before being “intimate,” and so Austen said, “Maybe this isn’t for me,” and called it off. She rolls her neck and is like, “No, girl. That is not what happened.” She says that they went on a few dates; he was calling her all the time, but she is the one who stopped calling him because the whole time Salley and her extra E were blowing up his phone, and everyone was telling her that they were dating. At the very end of the episode, Allie sits down to talk to Austen, and I’m sure next week will open with her blowing him into oblivion for putting his own spin on this tale.
Yes, that means we need to talk about Salley and Austen. Do you want the short version? Let’s start with the short version. Salley is in love with Austen, and he treats her like crap. When Austen is talking to Madison at the party about his relationship with Salley, Madison tells him to stop kissing this woman who “wants to be his lady.” Austen says he didn’t know that. What? How did he not know that? That’s like going through the Wendy’s drive-thru, eating a whole square hamburger, and then being like, “How did this grease get all over my fingers?” Salley has literally told him this, but Austen is pretending like he didn’t know so that he can keep the status quo, which wildly favors him. He wants to keep going out with Salley, get all the companionship and fun of having a girlfriend, the occasional makeout when they’re drunk, but still get to date and sleep with whomever he wants. Why would he want to change it?
Meanwhile, Salley is unhappy and uncomfortable. Oh, no. Not because of Austen. Because she is wearing the dumbest dress I have ever seen in my life. It’s like she took a white pillowcase, cut out a hole for her head, trimmed off the bottom so that her underboob and midriff would show, and then put it over her head so that she can’t move her arms higher than her waist without exposing everything between her navel and neck. Who designed this dress? A blind couturier with a humiliation kink?
She’s also upset because of Austen, whom she tells everyone who will listen that she wants to be his girlfriend, even while she knows he treats her like yesterday’s doo-doo. She’s angry that, at the reunion, he called her a “bar rat” and said that not only was her hair high body count, but that her whole existence was. This is literally the problem, but no one will tell Salley. Venita tells her that he doesn’t respect her because she doesn’t respect herself. She says that she makes herself too available to Austen and acts like his girlfriend when she’s not. This is all true, but that’s not the problem at all. Austen literally tells Madison that he would have dated her, but she’s been with too many other guys that he knows. The problem is, frankly, that Salley is a slut.
I say that word with pride. I am a slut, and I am a firm advocate for sluts’ rights. That Austen thinks this way is totally stupid and antiquated, and I hate it. I especially hate that he won’t just tell Salley that, put her out of her misery, and allow her to move on to falling in love with another man who is going to treat her horribly. (I mean, PK is available.) Instead, she gets upset that Austen was wining and dining Allie but didn’t do the same to her. It makes her wonder what Allie has that she doesn’t. Sally wants to know what is wrong with her. The answer is nothing. However, what Austen sees as wrong is that she has been too promiscuous, and that makes her tainted in his eyes. Yes, it’s ridiculous, but someone please tell Salley. Let her move on. Let Austen be the villain that he always will be.
She sits him down at the party to tell him that they need to have more boundaries in their friendship. Across the party, Craig, Madison, Molly, and Rod are trying to read their lips and see what they’re saying. Honestly, the conversation about their conversation is more interesting than the conversation itself because Austen won’t be truthful with Salley, and she can’t be respectful of herself. Salley says that her hard line is that they can’t be kissing or touching anymore. Wait, that’s it. I mean, that is the baseline. She needs to tell him: no kissing, no touching, no calling her and asking her to hang out, and her dropping everything to do so. No hanging out with him and his friends and then letting him hit on other girls in front of her. No more treating her like one of the guys. No more double standard about how he can sleep with every co-ed in town, but she’s too slutty to be his wife. No more texting her about his problems late at night. No more making her think that on one hot night when they’re both oppressed by the heat of summer that he’ll eventually wake up and figure out that she has been the one all along and he will run to her house, sweat dripping in dense rivulets down his back, and shout up at her window, “Salley! It was you! It was always you!” as she throws open the shutters and jumps down from the second floor in her white nightgown to land in his arms like a dandelion seed. None of that. No more. Forever.
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