Paso Aggressive
Season 12
Episode 7
Editor’s Rating
3 stars
***
Marcus and Kim won’t stop breaking up and getting back together, and everyone is over hearing about it.
Photo: Bravo
I have so much more sympathy for Venus because I am fed up with Marcus and Kim breaking up and getting back together, breaking up and getting back together, breaking up and getting back together, like a GIF of a vase smashing on loop. We are, I assume, about halfway through this season, and this pattern is already making me more exhausted than the receptionist at the LGBTQ+ sexual-health center on the Monday after Pride weekend. What’s worse is that they can’t even do this on their own time, they’re always bringing the drama to the whole group, breaking up and then riding in the same car and sitting next to each other at lunch but then not sharing a room in the group house because, I don’t know, they need to prove to everyone that they’re broken up when all anyone in the group wants is silence.
This latest fight starts with a comment Natalie makes at work that is both obnoxious and innocuous. It’s SUR’s 20th-anniversary party. Well, not quite. SUR is 26 years old, and we know this because we see pictures of Guillermo at the opening and, um, suddenly I have stopped getting ads for erectile dysfunction drugs in my Instagram feed because even the algorithm knows that I am infinitely cured. It’s the 20th anniversary of Lisa getting involved in the restaurant, and Peter and his two-decade-old ill-advised ponytail show up to shake hands and down some goat-cheese balls and empanadas that look like they’re filled with sawdust. Jason is quizzing himself on the menu and doesn’t even know about the goat-cheese balls, which is not only the most popular dish on the menu but an important piece of Vanderpump Rules lore. As Venus, our new goddess and savior, says, “Jason needs to be educated about American history.”
Wait, where were we? Oh yes, Schmarcus and Shmim’s schumpid fight. So Demy is yelling at Marcus to set up a water station, and he can’t figure out how, so she storms away from him in exasperation. “I love you,” he shouts after her as she leaves in a huff. “Say it back!” he shouts after her as she puts up a hand to fend off his comments.
Natalie breezes by and says, “Kim let’s you say that to her?” which is a callback to the stink Kim made in the first couple of episodes that Marcus and Natalie were too close. Rather than just roll his eyes at Natalie just being Miley, Marcus goes to Kim and tells her what Natalie said. In this economy? In the middle of a shift? And you want everyone to leave this shift with all of their fingers and toes and dangly bits? Oh no, sir. This is a very bad idea.
Kim, of course, goes to Natalie’s bar, which looks like a broom closet with one wall removed, and says, “Enough is enough” and tells her to stop talking about her and Marcus’s relationship. Yes, everyone would love to do that, Kim, but when both of you keep having public blowups and meltdowns, it becomes something everyone gets to comment on. Kim tells Natalie she looks pathetic talking about it. Um, sister, are you sure? I’m pretty sure the one who looks pathetic is Kim, who keeps going back to Marcus, whom I wouldn’t exactly want to call trash, but I will at least call him recycling.
Case in point, after Natalie and Kim get yelled at by Lisa for fighting on the clock, Natalie sees Marcus and asks why he would tell his girlfriend about her comment. He says it wasn’t him, that other people heard it. Oh, so not only is he going to start shit, he’s then going to lie about it so that he doesn’t have to get yelled at by Natalie? This is about as fun to listen to as an Andrew Tate podcast marathon. Marcus goes to Kim and says that Natalie asked him why, and he told Natalie that other people heard it, and then laughs. Oh, so this is just a game? These women’s emotions are just fun to you? Kim then gets mad and tells him he needs to tell Natalie that he is the one who said it because she doesn’t want Natalie to think she has “access” to him. You mean, Kim doesn’t want Natalie to talk to one of her co-workers? Yeah, great idea. As Venus points out in his confessional, the problem here is Marcus, who keeps making both of them look like idiots.
But this isn’t even why they’re broken up. The cast is getting ready to go on a trip, but because we’re under the illusion that their real job isn’t working on a reality-television program, it’s a work trip where they’re all serving drinks at Lisa’s Women in Wine convention, which makes it sound like the ladies will just be bathing in tubs of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Off-camera, Kim told Marcus that he can’t talk to Natalie in case she pulls something like she pulled at the restaurant. Marcus apparently told Kim she looks crazy when she says things like this. Yes, this man totally created an issue between the two of them and then told her she was crazy for reacting to it. Kim says in a confessional, “I’m just a girl. I cry a lot, and I feel a lot, and I love Disney Channel, and he forgets that sometimes.” Hilary Duff, Raven-Symoné, Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez, Zendaya, Brenda Song, and two of the four Jonas Brothers do not approve of this message.
This isn’t even why they’re broken up. After Marcus told Kim she was crazy, Kim fought back, and Marcus told her, “You’re ruining my life,” and that is why they broke up. Jesus, take the wheel, the climate control, the Sirius/XM satellite radio, the cupholders, and those little shades that come up to cover the window so the sun doesn’t get in your eyes (do those have a name?). Now the two of them are in a car with Demy, Angelica, and Shayne (cue the “She Doesn’t Even Go Here” GIF), traveling to their work event while Venus, Natalie, Audrey, and the identical Cheech cousins are in the other car.
Everyone meets up at the Madonna Inn, which has nothing to do with the Material Girl but is a beloved institution no less. Each of the rooms is decorated in a campy theme, there is an over-the-top pink restaurant, and a famous waterfall urinal beloved by many Central Coast hiking groups, because the Madonna Inn is a pit stop before and after they hit the trails. At the inn, everyone is talking about how Audrey and Shayne co-starred in a friend’s music video, and Audrey says many famous people, like Channing Tatum, got their start in music videos. She said, “I could be the female Magic Mike.” Um, yeah, that’s just being a stripper.
Angelica gets all bent out of shape that Shayne didn’t tell her that he was going to be in a music video or that he would be making out with Audrey, with whom she currently has beef. This take is so dumb that it was held back in the second grade three times. It’s a video. He’s an actor. They kissed, clothed. And, as the other ladies would point out, Angelica still lives with her ex. She’s getting mad that he’s making out with some girl for work? Please. Earlier in the episode, they shared their own awkward kiss on the world’s most rickety beach chairs, and Angelica tried to convince Shayne that he should give monogamy a try. I’m sorry, but this combination is as doomed as eating cold pasta with warm milk.
After lunch, they all go to the big group house Lisa is “paying” for so they can work the Women in Wine event. Since Marcus and Kim are “broken” “up,” she’s sharing a room with Demy and Angelica, and they start talking about what Chris and Jason do to each other on their OnlyFans and whether or not Audrey should know about it. Based on the previews for the next episode, we’re going to get into a lot more of that then. Out back, Audrey tells Venus she wishes she could see more of Chris’s romantic side, where the boys play a game of strip cornhole. Well, it’s regular cornhole, but a girl can dream. Suddenly, a white van pulls up, its headlights cutting through the backyard like a scar. Katie Maloney Schwartz Maloney has the van filled with Witches of WeHo wine that she plans to sell at this event. She sees the kids going about their evening, tossing beanbags and dipping their legs in the pool. Through some sort of telepathic link, she can feel what she can’t see: the girls in their room cooking up a fight, figuring out how to best mine their friend’s psychic pain for maximum effect. She immediately throws the van in reverse and drives home, past the vineyards, past the Madonna Inn, past Santa Barbara and Oxnard and Calabasas and Thousand Oaks and Valley Village. She drives and drives, even past her own garage, because she figures, at some point, she’ll figure out just how to drive her van straight into the ocean.
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