Manifest and Chill
Season 12
Episode 2
Editor’s Rating
2 stars
**
Even though we’re still figuring out the interpersonal dynamics among the cast, it’s already clear that most of these people don’t know how to behave on the job.
Photo: Casey Durkin/Bravo
I love that this show has brought us right back into the workplace. And I’m not just talking about the opening sequence, which has returned with the new SUR-vers spilling cocktails and scattering rose petals as they’ve never mopped a sticky restaurant floor in their entire lives. With this reboot, it’s hard to really know all the players, understand their personality quirks, or figure out who might be correct in any given argument. However, there is one place where it’s very easy to judge people’s behavior, and that is on the job. Just like in every season of Below Deck, where you can judge if a yachtie is a good worker far more easily than you can judge if they’re a good person, the same is true here, and, well, I have already passed some extreme judgments.
First up is Marcus, who was placed on suspension at the end of the first episode after being caught drinking on the job. He has drinks with his (somehow even hotter) brother, Aaron, and says, “Everyone drinks on the job. I just got caught.” Girl, that is not true. Doctors don’t. Nor do air-traffic controllers, bus drivers, elementary-school teachers (but not high-school teachers), Sephora employees, or blackjack dealers. Honestly, most people don’t drink on the job. His friend Shayne doesn’t drink on the job, both because he’s sober and he doesn’t appear to have a job. Andy Cohen does drink on the job, but that’s just a shot at the end of a reunion, not the beginning. (Though that is not true of New Year’s Eve on CNN.) Venus, in a confessional, alludes to Marcus drinking more than he should, and, yes, drinking on the clock seems less like everyone does it and more like everyone who has a problem does it.
When Marcus goes in to meet with Lisa about what he did wrong, he brings her a clutch of supermarket roses. Flowers? To a work meeting? This isn’t a date. He’s not trying to woo her into doing something she’ll regret as she’s at CVS, ringing the buzzer to get some Plan B. He’s trying to get his job back. Show some respect. He tells Lisa that the reason he looks so worn out is that he lost his father at the beginning of the pandemic and he lost his mother a few months ago. He’s currently in mourning and that’s why he’s fucking up. Lisa Vanderpump, who has never met a damaged man she hasn’t gone out of her way to accommodate, tells him that he can have his job back, but she’s going to set up grief counseling for him.
The other person who has no idea how work functions is Natalie. Demy had to write her up after she got into a massive fight with her ex in the middle of the restaurant on her night off and she got kicked off the premises. Demy goes to look for this bartender behind the bar, where she should be, and her co-worker says she took off a while ago. Demy goes searching and finally finds Natalie. “You’ve been gone for like an hour,” Demy says. Natalie says she wasn’t gone for an hour and that Demy is being dramatic. Thanks to the editors, we know that she was away from her post for 27 minutes. That’s nearly the longest federally regulated break for an eight-hour shift. Unless she was on break and her supervisor, who I’m assuming is Demy, knew about it, she was not working for quite a bit of time. Yes, it wasn’t “an hour,” but even ten minutes away is too long. If you’re on the clock and not where you’re supposed to be, you are in the wrong.
Natalie decides to make it worse and keep arguing with her boss. Even if your boss is wrong, they’re still right. What doesn’t Natalie get about this? This is not a fight she can win because Demy, at any point, can say, “Well, you’re fired.” She needs to check that attitude right quick. Because Natalie thinks Demy is being “dramatic,” she won’t sign the paperwork she needs to, saying she’ll only sign it with Guillermo, Lisa’s co-owner, who looks just like George Clooney in a cheap hat. Well, Guillermo told Demy to get Natalie to sign it, so she doesn’t get to go over Demy’s head and say she’s only talking to the big boss. The big boss doesn’t want to be bothered with this petty bullshit, which is why he deputized Demy to deal with it. That is exactly what he tells her when she says that she’ll only sign the paperwork with him. I mean, does this woman not know what having a job entails?
We needed all this work drama because, so far, the personal drama isn’t hitting for me. We get to see Venus, who is apparently a “manifestation coach,” sit in his living room scribbling in notebooks and trying to out Los Angeles in the woo-woo Olympics. We get Chris talking to his dad on FaceTime and telling us that he wants to model for John Varvatos. Sorry, but you’re a 31-year-old reality star with an OnlyFans. Johnny V. is not calling. It’s time to find another dream.
Chris is getting his flirt on with Audrey, and we know that sparks are flying because they talked about ice cream for, like, 30 minutes. Oh, the scintillating conversation! Let’s get Gore Vidal and turn this into an episode of the Dick Cavett show already. Audrey also tells him that she has a horse named Oreo, but then, in a confessional, she says it’s her friend’s horse and she just takes care of it. Um, that does not mean you have a horse. That means your friend occasionally lets you borrow the horse because you work for it. Just because Lisa gives her a free meal at SUR does not mean she owns the property.
The rest of the episode is taken up by Audrey’s 22nd-birthday party, which she throws on the roof of a hotel even though the Angelenos think it is freezing and they’re huddled by the heaters like teenagers in front of Supreme when there is about to be a new drop. While it is Audrey’s birthday, it is Demy who has quickly become my favorite. First, she told off Natalie for being a terrible employee. Then when she found out how old Audrey is turning, she said, “Who turns 22? That’s so unfair.” Amen, sister. But the best line of the night comes when Natalie tries to talk to Kim, who is ignoring her, so Natalie says she’s going to walk away. “Where are you going?” Demy asks. “We’re on a roof!” Ironically, that is the last thing Katie Maloney Schwartz Maloney said right before she fell through a skylight. Yeah, that was #TooSoon. Sorry, Katie.
The reason that Natalie and Kim are beefing is because Kim doesn’t like that Marcus and Natalie are becoming friends. Natalie thinks it’s unfair that Kim is mad at her. She says that Kim and Marcus fight and break up all the time, and that is what Kim is mad about. She says she doesn’t want to have to deal with the consequences of them fighting all the time. No. That’s not what she’s dealing with. She’s dealing with the consequences of being a boyfriend stealer, and Kim not being able to trust her around her man.
I thought this was all Natalie’s fault because she stole Demy’s boyfriend and Kim couldn’t trust her. How stupid of me. Of course, this isn’t a woman’s fault; it is a man’s fault. The more we find out about this fight, the more it is clear that Marcus is almost entirely to blame. Apparently, he told Kim that Natalie was texting him pictures of herself wearing high heels, but what she really texted was that she just bought some because he said she needed to wear more of them. No pictures at all. He told Kim that Natalie was the one who said they were like brother and sister, but he is the one who said that and, as someone handily translates, “we’re like brother and sister” is straight-guy-speak for, “I want to fuck her and she won’t let me.” It seems Marcus was leading Kim to believe this was all Natalie’s doing, when the opposite is true.
When she tries to confront him about it at Audrey’s party, he storms off and won’t even talk. His girlfriend has legit gripes and he’s just ignoring them. She says that whenever she criticizes him or tries to talk about their relationship, he gets upset and breaks up with her. Earlier in the episode, Marcus’s brother asks if he’s making Kim feel secure in their relationship. He says he does. “We’re still having sex and all that,” he says. Wait, so this guy thinks that just by boning her he’s keeping her secure in the relationship when he dumps her the minute she tries to correct his behavior and he won’t stop talking to the girl who is a known boyfriend stealer that his girlfriend wants him to stop talking to? No wonder Kim is an absolute mess in this dynamic, because he’s making it that way.
While Audrey’s party started with Kim ignoring Natalie, it ends with Kim running to Natalie to cry on her shoulder and complain about Marcus. She has the drunk-girl sobs about a terrible boyfriend that she’s trying to hold on to that she should obviously dump. It’s like every party you ever attended when you’re 22. Except this is Audrey’s birthday and she has former professional strippers Chris and Jason there. Chris gets on her lap and starts grinding, eventually turning around, putting his feet on either side of her head and twerking right in the birthday girl’s face. Kim lets out a sob and a hank of Natalie’s hair clings to her tears. Jason takes a turn, ripping his shirt off to expose his impossible abdominals while grinding in her lap. Audrey is screaming. She’s turned on. Kim is also screaming, but about Marcus. She is not turned on, she is turned out. That’s what we get, back and forth, foreground and background, flesh and tears, dancing and sobbing, sex and regret.
Just at that moment, Katie Maloney Schwartz Maloney shows up and starts turning the taps on the propane of all the heaters. The fires die down inside the plastic tubes just as they have died down in Kim and Marcus’s relationship. She goes to each heater, popping open the little door in the base, futzing with its innards, and rendering it cold and lifeless. The revelers run from one to the next, the huddles getting closer as the packs get larger. But Katie won’t stop. She keeps twisting, keeps shutting it down. She knows one thing these kids will never get: The party is already over.
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