Sleeping On It
Season 10
Episode 8
Editor’s Rating
3 stars
***
Photo: Bravo
It’s been a hard season to be a Kyle Cooke defender. And, well, there’s no way to defend what he did this episode. Sorry, Kyle. I love you, but this is some seriously fucked up shit. When everyone returns from the club, he’s DJing for everyone in the VIP room before Amanda heads outside and most of the housemates follow. They’re hanging out by the hot tub and giggling, and Kyle comes outside with his speaker, trying to get the party started again and all eyes back on him. It doesn’t go over well. He tells Amanda that she’s not being supportive. When she tries to push back, he takes his portable speaker, walks back into the house, and says, “Fuck you,” to Amanda.
Sorry, but that is no way to ever speak to your spouse. In the heat of an argument, my husband once said it to me. I made sure he knew that if he ever said it again, that I wouldn’t be around to hear it for a third time and that I would also leak all of his nudes on the internet and leave shitty comments on all of them like 2008 Perez Hilton just came back from the dead. This is not how Amanda reacts. She gets up, walks away, and goes into the bathroom to take off her makeup and get ready for bed. She’s so calm that it’s eerie, but also incredibly sad. She’s been through this so many times before, it doesn’t even make a dent, and that makes me want her to get out of there faster than Carl can type “tan lines and zebra print” into the PornHub search bar. In her confessional, she says, “What is the point of talking about this? It’s only going to make it worse; he’s not going to take accountability, he’s not going to apologize. I know it’s wrong, the way he speaks to me, I’m fully aware of it. I just know that having a conversation about it isn’t going to go anywhere.”
The only hero in this story is Dr. Elisabeth Wilson’s son, West, and she should be proud of her boy on this day. He goes in to check on Amanda and tells her that Kyle was unprovoked and rude. He comforts her as she cries in the bathroom. When Kyle comes into the room, West goes out and tells him how wrong he is and that he needs to apologize. Kyle tells him that Amanda told him, “Fuck you,” first. West tells him that he’s wrong. Kyle says that she said it with her eyes. With her eyes? Kyle, please be serious. He adds that she hates him and wants to spend more time with her friends than she does with him. Well, when he speaks to her like that, it’s no wonder she would rather hang out in her PJs by the hot tub. On the way out, West tells Amanda that he loves her and to text if she needs anything. Now that is a real man, right there, not only supporting his female friends but willing to stand up to another man and tell him when he’s acting like an asshole. Yeah, he can be a fuck up sometimes, but West is still the best.
Kyle does take West’s advice and apologizes to her, but, and it’s a really big but, adds a “but” to the end of the apology, trying to justify his behavior. There are obviously a lot of issues at play between the two of them, and the show does go out of its way to see Kyle’s side, or at least give him his say. We hear that his business is struggling, but, as Ciara and others point out, that’s no reason to talk to Amanda like that. Kyle says that he sees the jabs she’s been making at him when they replay the show, and we get a nice montage of all the instances when she cringed about Kyle behind his back. He says he’s seeing those things in real-time now, and we get another montage of the most recent snubs and snide comments that Amanda’s made. But, once again, that is still not a reason to say, “Fuck you,” to your partner ever.
Kyle says in confessional, “I can’t articulate anything and I give Amanda these perfect instances of where I mess up or I say, ‘Fuck you,’ or I stay out late, but there are so many fundamental thing that are wrong with the foundation of our relationship and I’m just unrelatable and no one understands what I’m going through and it’s very isolating.” This is true. Both of them are at fault for the relationship falling apart, but Kyle’s shortcomings are far more visible and egregious, which is what is adding to the isolation he, Amanda, and the house at large are feeling. Acting out because of that isolation is just going to exacerbate it. It’s like putting Sriracha on your sunburn.
What becomes clear by the end of the episode is that being on a reality show is not a natural way to have a relationship. Just look at the jabs Amanda makes. When my husband annoys me, I talk shit about him to my friends all the time. (Sorry, Christian!) I’m sure he does the same to me, but those comments stay where the Catholic Jesus intended: behind our backs. That Kyle has to see these things, and that Amanda has to see the things that Kyle did that she doesn’t know about, just brings stress to a much more stressful situation. To make it even worse, you then have the whole public weighing in on who they think is right, what they think is appropriate, and whether the couple should stay together. (Guilty, guilty, and guilty.) This is a part of what Ciara was talking about last episode when she mentioned how the public’s view of her relationship with West and its racial components really affected both her and the relationship.
We can also look at the show itself, the power dynamics at play, and how that impacts Kymanda. When the show started, Kyle was cast and Amanda was just some girl he was hooking up with. He brought her onto the show with his friends, and she had to fight for attention both with him (imagine how isolated she felt then?) and the other housemates. Remember the 17-page email he had to send to the house to get them to be nice to Amanda? It was always Kyle’s show, and Amanda was there as his backup. That dynamic has flipped, certainly in recent years, as Kyle is older, Amanda got closer to the newer castmates who are closer to her age, and Kyle is on the outs. Now he’s the one being left out and isolated (in part because of his own bad behavior against Amanda), and he probably feels like something is being taken away from him.
None of this, of course, is to excuse what Kyle said to Amanda, but an attempt to explain his psychology and illustrate how relationships on these shows are more doomed than Katy Perry’s pop career. The same thing happens with KJ and his budding relationship with Dara. Lindsay, always working for her paycheck, asks KJ about their connection in the kitchen. She then brings up that Bailey said that Dara was in Ben’s room for an hour the last time she was in the house. Bailey reportedly said that Dara went into the room wearing one outfit and left in another outfit. KJ hears this and starts to spin out, his natural anxiety getting the best of him.
He gets help from two places. The first is from Carl, giving him some insight from a veteran. He tells KJ that when dating someone in the house, everyone thinks it’s fodder for them to talk about and that complicates the relationship because they’re just trying to get to know each other and everyone is putting their little two cents in and, well, that doesn’t even add up to a dollar (and certainly not a $15,000 investment in Soft Bar). KJ then goes to talk to his sisters from other misters, Ciara and Mia, and they do a little mediation with him and give him some confidence. I love the growing bond between these three, which I assume may be similar to the one he has with his sisters. I almost shed a tear when Ciara said that she would kill for him.
Of course, when KJ finally talks to Dara she says that it didn’t happen. That she was in Ben’s room because that’s where she put her suitcase, and so that’s why she went into the room in one outfit and left in another. A completely believable story, but because there are so many prying eyes around the house, one that Bailey totally misconstrued. I can’t wait for Dara and Bailey to fight the next time they’re together. (Also, Bailey is not even there and is causing drama. The mark of a true future Summer House star.)
While that is resolved, Carl’s point about the house getting too invested in everyone’s relationships starts to play out again with Kyle and Amanda. This is a bit different because their fights and interactions keep happening in front of everyone’s salads and then have an effect on the whole house. Ben, Jesse, West, and Ciara sit on the sun loungers talking about everything and Ciara just says what we know she’s been thinking all along, that the two of them should just separate. Hard to hear, but all the evidence bears out that it is a logical conclusion at this point.
This all happens as Kyle is getting his makeup done for his big birthday party. This year the theme is, fittingly, old people. It’s A-pluses all around for the costume work on this episode. Kyle looks great with hair coming out of his ears and his nose and the kind of aging makeup that would make Johnny Knoxville proud. West kills it dressed as Mrs. Doubtfire in a little grey wig, a dowdy cardigan, and the world’s ugliest skirt. Lindsay is a bingo-playing retirement home vixen in a sequined top — if that is not a glimpse into Lindsay’s real future, then I don’t know what is. Mia is really acting out her character and has butt pads so lumpy that Michelle Visage got up off her couch to come over to the Hamptons to yell at her. Naturally it is Ciara “Costume Queen” Miller trying for her second “Best Dressed … In a Costume” award at the Bravos with the return of Karma Brown, but this time far into the future. She has a grey afro wig, an oxygen mask complete with tube (thank you to her nurse friends who stole that for her), a walker, and tits so saggy that they were nearly swatting the empty cans of Loverboy scattered on the lawn. It is both accurate, hilarious, on-theme, and inspired. Sorry, but no one can beat Ciara at this game.
As everyone in their old people wigs and silly getups is around the counter, Amanda offers a toast, “To Summer House season 53!” Excellent work, totally perfect. It’s amazing that Amanda can be so focused, that she can be so calm. Earlier Lindsay complimented her ability to compartmentalize, and we can see it on her face. She’s out in the yard ordering everyone around, telling them what they need to do for Kyle’s party as they all try to ignore it and him because of the scene he made the night before. Here’s Amanda, setting up palm trees straight from the Amazon box. She’s unfurling their fronds, the stiff wires that will keep them in place, organizing each bough just so, making it perfect, perfecting the visuals, trying to make everyone look at something other than her face, other than her eyes. They’re not saying, “Fuck you,” they’re not even saying, “Get me out of here,” they’re just far away, dreaming of breezes under palm trees blowing off the ocean swaying her in her imaginary hammock, dreaming of a fruity cocktail with water pooling all around the base, dreaming her ultimate dream, her forbidden luxury: being totally and utterly alone.
Sign up for the Housewives Institute Bulletin
Dame Brian Moylan breaks down all the gossip and drama, on- and off-screen, for dedicated students of the Reality Television Arts and Sciences.
Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice