Pride and Joy
Season 12
Episode 12
Editor’s Rating
2 stars
**
Chris wants an open relationship, but Audrey is experience enough to know when to close the door.
Photo: Bravo
Lisa Vanderpump knows exactly what she’s doing. She talks about how she had a nephew who she knew was gay when he was three or four, and she bought him a My Little Pony. That’s all any little gay boy wants. When I was four years old, my lesbian cousin and I came up with a Christmas plan: she would ask for My Little Pony, and I would ask for Transformers, and we would swap. (It totally worked.) Lisa says, since she can’t give every gay boy a plastic indicator of their future sexuality, she can at least throw a major Pride party. SUR is perfectly situated for it, sitting just off the strip of Santa Monica Boulevard that gets turned into a giant gay festival every June, and, while it’s the finale of this season, it was traditionally the big event at the start of the season of Pump Rules 1.0.
But there is one problem: too many straights. Venus is in charge of hosting Pride, and Natalie is coming up with the drinks menu. She mixes up a cocktail that is Barbiside blue and wants to call it “Aquamarine” which is exactly what a straight girl with more crystals than sense would want to call it. This isn’t Coachella; it’s Pride. Marcus says he’s 10 percent gay, which I don’t get. Does that mean you only suck a tenth of the D? If so, is it the bottom tenth, so you have to put the whole thing in your mouth? He says that should make him better at naming the drink so he calls it “Blue Balls.” That name is 10 percent better than Natalie’s but also terrible because who wants blue balls at Pride? Not me! If I wanted blue balls, I would put on one of the identical cousins’ OnlyFans videos where you don’t even see boners. Venus comes in and says the drink should be called the “Butt Slut.” Exactly. That is a winner. That is what Pride is all about: stupid drinks, hyper sexualization, getting laid, and finding glitter in your thong all the way until August.
The Pride party itself also has one problem: too many straights. Chris shows up and puts on a tiny pink Speedo that can barely fit his mic pack in the back. But he is also wearing a cowboy hat, cowboy boots, and a freshly shorn handlebar mustache. The theme is a pool party. Why is he dressed as the ghost of Hulk Hogan auditioning for City Slickers: The Musical? Why can’t straight people stick to a theme? Sunglasses, a whistle, some sunblock on his face, and he’s in full life guard drag. You’re welcome. Do I need to do everything around here? Venus gets up on the bar and talks about his whole life story and coming out, which is sweet and all, but, girl, this is taking away from our drinking and hooking up time. Natalie performs her song, “Pure as Platinum,” and no one cares. Maybe that’s because the crowd looked sparse, but also the only gay attendees seemed like the staff/cast and their close friends. Otherwise, it was just girls from the Midwest trying to get some free cocktails and a selfie with LVP.
Since this is the finale party, we had to clear up three major storylines, two of which featured my girl Audrey, far and away the breakout star of the series. (Which apparently has been renewed, so get ready for more next season, if you want it or not.) The only non-Audrey story is what is going on with Angelica and Shayne. When Shayne goes shopping for DJ gear with Marcus, he says, “I genuinely care about … whatshername … Angelica!” Yeah, that kinda says it all. He tells Marcus he’d be open to dating her more if she would take it slow. He says he’s not worried that she was seeing another dude because he says that was a sign that she was telling him to act fast. Exactly! She doesn’t want to take it slow. That is not Angelica at all. You two do not want the same things. Get out of there, Shayne. Runnnnnn!!!!!
At the Pride party, he takes her into the SUR alley, a future UNESCO World Heritage Site, and tells her that he would like to go out on some dates with her. She responds by crawling into his lap and then kissing him right on the mouth. She goes back in to do her job, and he says he can’t get up right then. Why? Does he have a boner? We know he can’t get those. Did he take a Viagra? Then, the rest of the party, he and Angelica are making out on the dance floor in front of everyone. Boy-on-girl? At Pride? In this economy? Couldn’t be me. Protect the dolls.
Audrey has a very different conversation with Chris at the party. A day prior he made her lunch at his strangely unfurnished apartment and says he likes where things were going with her, but when he’s traveling that he wants things to remain open. “What if I meet a random girl I end up liking?” he asks. “I don’t want there to be any animosity if something happens.” The point is for you to like this girl enough that you don’t let it happen. Does this man not know how relationships work? At the end of their date, Chris proposes a toast about how great they are together and how much he enjoys the path they’re on, and Audrey, comedic genius, says, “Unless we meet other people.” I laughed out loud.
At the party, she tells him that it’s finally over, that she wants someone who can commit. Chris says that he just can’t commit “100 percent” and that he’s just being honest with her. Exactly dude! That’s the problem. You don’t get points for being honest if it’s not something she wants. She’s not upset that you deceived her; she’s upset that you’re offering her a deal that she doesn’t want to take. He says he’s not ready for a commitment, and she says, “Fine, then I’m moving on to someone who is.” Exactly! Bye, Chris! She says she doesn’t want to waste their time, but I feel like Chris is wasting ours. I feel like he saw this as another one of his dating shows, and Audrey saw this as real life, and that’s why I think she has a much longer career in the reality television arts and sciences ahead of her than Chris does.
After she cries in the SUR alley for a bit, Angelica pulls her outside and needs to clear up our third and final storyline of the night, which is how Audrey was mean to Angelica in her stand-up comedy show. Ugh, this whole conversation was so frustrating. Why? Because Angelica sucks. She suuuuuuuccccccckkkkkkssssssss. She starts off their talk by saying, “Congrats on your performance.” Girl, you don’t mean that. Why are you starting fake? Why can’t you just be for real and tell her that she hurt you. Audrey, however, is not responding at all; she says that she has used her entire store of emotions for the day. Angelica keeps trying to have a problem with Audrey and Audrey is just not having it. She says it was comedy. She says that she shouldn’t have warned Angelica because she didn’t warn anyone. She says she didn’t reach out to Angelica because she didn’t reach out to anyone else. She is firm in her rightness, won’t engage with Angelica, and it is driving Angelica to spit rhinestones.
Angelica was the only one who had a problem being roasted. Why? Because Angelica has no sense of humor whatsoever. I know she has feelings, but it seems less like she was actually hurt and more like she wants something to be mad about. She’s looking for ammunition, just like she did with her fight with Jason earlier this season. Eventually, Angelica says that Audrey wasn’t funny, which Audrey counters by saying that people were laughing, which is pretty good evidence that Angelica is wrong. Then Angelica says that Audrey was telling lies. “I have a great credit score. I don’t live with my ex anymore,” she says. Then why are you mad? Why do you care? Do you know how jokes work? No, she does not, because she hasn’t laughed since Kim smiled, and that hasn’t happened since she ran over her neighbor’s cat in the aughts.
Angelica says Audrey is a pick me who seeks male validation. I believe a great philosopher once said, “I’m rubber and you’re glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you,” because that is what is happening here. Literally, no one else thinks that. Just because Angelica says it doesn’t make it true. Then she says, “You’re ugly. That’s comedy. You look like Sid the Sloth.” The problem is, while Audrey’s jokes weren’t that funny, at least they were jokes. Just calling her ugly is an insult with no humor around it. If she looked like Sid the Sloth, it has the potential to be funny, but she doesn’t, so it’s not. Audrey never attacked Angelica’s looks either; she only attacked how she acted, which is potentially more harmful, but a bit more above board than whatever Angelica is trying to do here.
Finally, the producers send out the rest of the gang to get into this fight. Then Angelica says, “I can’t believe you traded a friendship for a boy.” About three of the assembled cast members, and all of the audience at home, ask simultaneously, “Which boy?” And were they even friends? This is the problem with Angelica. She says these things that she thinks will hurt Audrey, but have no basis in reality. Angelica says the boy is Chris, and that they won’t even be together by the end of the summer. Yeah, that’s not the insult she thinks it is because Audrey literally just dumped him and you don’t even know. Even if she did pick Chris over her Angelica, how is this an instance of that? It doesn’t make sense. Angelica is just looking to be aggrieved; she’s looking to cry her weepy little tears on the chests of men so that they’ll comfort her and tell her that she’s pretty and make out with her on the dance floor while she plans their wedding in her pretty little head.
Lisa Vanderpump then comes out and tells everyone it’s time to get back to work, which is literally Lisa’s only job on this show. Everyone in their little shorts and their glittered faces goes inside to do shots of Butt Sluts and dance the night away. Lisa hovers in the back, holding the door open for her staff. She’s about to head in, and she sees a familiar figure walking by with a huge jar of mayonnaise in her arms. It’s Katie Maloney Schwartz Maloney. She feels that she’s watched and looks over to see her old boss. She stops in her tracks, and the two stare at each other, the past and the future, going back and forth in a loop, completing a circuit, bringing the whole thing to life with an electricity that can’t be named. And, like a circuit, it doesn’t flow in one direction; it’s from one and to the other, in equal measure, each powering and draining their counterpart in a way that can’t be matched. Finally, the spell is broken, and Lisa turns to go inside and Katie keeps walking toward Something About Her. And as they each turn, they have the same thought, the same words, the same half-utterance under her breath that they release simultaneously: “Bitch.”
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