Summer Knights
Season 10
Episode 5
Editor’s Rating
3 stars
***
Photo: Bravo
It looks like we have a real, actual, honest-to-goodness classic love triangle on our hands. There’s West, who wants to rekindle his relationship with his ex, Ciara, who still seems to harbor some feelings toward her old beau. Then there’s Jesse, West’s best friend, who thinks that his flirtationship with Ciara could blossom into something, and Ciara seems disappointed that he went about exploring that in the wrong way. And let us not forget that attraction between Jesse and West themselves, straight guys forced to kiss by the fujoshis that attended that Summer House party. (Let us also not forget the evil sorceress Lindsay Hubbard, whose dark arts are making the whole storyline happen.) This love triangle is firing on all cylinders, and I am much more interested in this and how each of the three parties is fucking it up than I am in the dissolution of Kymanda, which luckily takes a back seat this episode.
The episode kicks off with a Renaissance Faire–themed party in the backyard, which seems to be filled with far more wenches than it does knights, bards, or other male-identified archetypes from the Middle Ages. Is this because the guys are doing all the inviting? Is this because Bravo fans are all ladies (and gentlemen who love gentlemen), so they can’t get enough eligible bachelors to show up? Doesn’t someone have Joe the Balloon Guy on speed dial?
This might be why Bailey is having a hard time meeting a man. She also admits that she’s a terrible flirt. She tries out her smooth-talking skills on West when they’re huddled by the popcorn machine, and any attempt at getting him to think she’s hitting on him fails worse than Melania Trump in a not-scowling challenge. I like Bailey’s honesty about not being able to hit on guys, how that stems from her own insecurities, how those were affected by her most recent ex (the guy who dumped her at Sweetgreen), and all the other honesty that she’s piling on. I also like that she and Levi (her second episode without a confessional or even a single line on the show) dressed up as plants so that they could scare the hell out of everyone showing up at the house. Between them and Kyle’s cutouts that are still littering the house, we’ve got some seriously good comedy this season so far.
Bailey sort of reminds me of the female Carl. They’re both attractive, earnest, and a little bit guarded due to past relationship traumas. They’re also both terrible at letting members of the opposite sex know they’re interested in a non-cringe fashion. Maybe Carl will be better off now that Soft Bar is coming along nicely. It was good to check in on the project this episode and to give us a flashback to when we all (led by Lindsay) collectively made fun of it when he first had the idea on the show.
They’re not the only terrible flirters. KJ also thinks he’s bad. When West’s ex, Dara, first shows up at the party, he is really bad. He completely forgets meeting her at the singles’ mixer earlier in the week and is confused when she starts talking to him. It gets so bad that she has to be like, “Um, dude. Do you not remember meeting me?” And he’s like “Ah doy. I’m a boy.” And then he does a little dance with one of his fingers pointing at the top of his head and the other poking around in a circle. It is a TikTok trend called the Stupid Boy Dance and KJ is doing it for real.
Eventually, he gives Dara a tour of the house and the party. He introduces her around, gets her drinks, and comes up with the adorable idea to trade earrings. Ben is also looking to talk to Dara and Dara, being a human being with eyes, wants to talk to Ben as well. There’s some sitting on a haystack, there’s some lounging in his bed, but that’s it.
In the week after the party, KJ goes for drinks with Dara at a bar near Dimes Square, and he confesses that he thought for sure that once Ben expressed interest in Dara, he had about as much chance of landing her as a 747 has of landing on Mercury. Then Dara tells him that’s not the case. Oh, the bug eye emoji that I did at home when hearing that news was the same one that KJ did in real time! Dara says that she didn’t feel any chemistry with Ben, but she did with KJ. He tells her that he has been wearing her earring all week and that it makes him think about her every morning. After the date, KJ tells the boys that they hung out again and that she “came over for dinner,” which I believe means something went down but KJ is too much of a gentleman to say it on camera. I just love that KJ showed that being nice, respectful, and attentive, as well as hot as shit, pays more dividends than just being hot as shit, period.
I think we may have to confront a problem with Ben, our resident Australian Greco-Roman god statue in human form. I think Ben is boring, and Dara saying she didn’t have “chemistry” with him just seals the deal. Maybe he’s so hot and has people of both sexes flinging themselves at him that he didn’t need to develop a personality. There are those of us, myself included, who have always been more charming than attractive, and we needed to develop our conversational skills, work on our senses of humor, find other ways than the cudgel of attractiveness into convincing people to sleep with us. Maybe Ben never had to do this, so while he’s hot, he might be a bit of a dud.
This brings us bright back to West, Ciara, and Jesse. (Wiaresse? Cessest? Jiast?) At the party, Lindsay Hubbard is dressed as Evil Lynn from Master of the Universe (complimentary) and not only makes Carl bow down to her, but she single-handedly makes this whole storyline happen. She asks West if he’s talked to Ciara about it, and he says that it’s not his place. “Is it my place?” Lindsay asks. In the real world, no, it is not. Do not insert yourself unnecessarily into the drama. On television, though, it is absolutely Lindsay’s place. Please and thank you. This is why she left her infant daughter in her father’s care so that she could come out to the Hamptons and ruin the collective dreams of three young yearners.
Lindsay decides to pull Ciara aside and tell her about what Jesse asked West. She decides to do this while Ciara is dressed as a rat. I love Ciara’s costumes because, as a woman of uncommon and infinite beauty, she could just fall back on wearing a bikini with some chainmail over it like Amanda does (and looks amazing doing it). But she does not. She makes herself ugly and goes for the funniest possible angle. However, that rat costume looked hotter than Kyle Cooke in a speaker supply warehouse. Also, when shit goes down, it goes down while she is dressed like literal vermin. Anyway, Lindsay tells her that Jesse asked West if he could make out with Ciara. Lindsay says that West was like “Whatever, I don’t care.” Lindsay says that Jesse was serious about asking, but that the make-out would be a joking make-out.
Ciara’s immediate reaction is totally correct. “Both of these boys are making me sick,” she says in a confessional. “I’m annoyed at Jesse’s lack of intention, and everything’s always a fucking joke to him. If it’s serious enough to ask permission from West, then why aren’t you asking permission to go out on a date? And West, oh, you don’t care? Mmmmm. That annoys the fuck out of me because, yes, I should make out with someone in front of you and see how you really feel.” She is completely right and her reaction is justified, but I think that, as vital as Lindsay is in getting this story made, there is some nuance to it that she isn’t covering. Something is being lost in the game of telephone, and I think that is everyone’s real intentions. Also, Ciara wants to make West jealous? Oh, they’re so getting back together.
Jesse, as much as he was hiding behind a joke, was serious about dating Ciara and wants the kind of long-term commitment she’s craving, not just to hook up or a joking makeout. However, he can’t say that to West, his bestie, who still has feelings for her. He has to hide it by being a silly, drunken thing. West, for his part, does care. We can see that he cares deeply. That’s why he was so rattled by the question and was still talking to Lindsay about it. But he has to come off as nonchalant. He can’t admit his true feelings for Ciara, but based on the way Ciara has treated him since their breakup, he also doesn’t want to upset Ciara further by having an opinion about it. What Lindsay’s missing is that Jesse and West love each other, they each love Ciara, and Ciara has some sort of feelings for both of them. Instead of this being explored, this is the turn at the second act of the rom-com, where there is a miscommunication that threatens to derail the whole thing.
Ciara is upset about hearing this and ices out Jesse and West for the rest of the party and into the next weekend when they all arrive in the pouring rain to then be pranked by Levi and Bailey as soon as they enter the sweet embrace of the house’s ample air conditioning. Ciara and Jesse go for a chat, and Jesse apologizes for asking West the question. He says he was checking the order of operations and wanted to clear things with West and their friendship before approaching her. She says that she is the only one who can consent to a makeout, and he should have asked if he could take her out. Instead, she feels like an object, like it’s his chance to take a turn, and it just validates that no one wants anything serious with her.
This conversation, the conversations between all of them, feel like some sort of fucked-up Jane Austen novel that has been updated, but instead of just inserting zombies, it’s inserted dating-app culture and youthful insecurity into the whole thing. They’re all constricted, not by corsets and convention, but by their own inability to express themselves. Jesse says he doesn’t know what he really wants, but we do; he wants to date Ciara, he wants to marry her and have all the babies. West wants to be friends with Jesse and also to have this woman back, but he also doesn’t want to commit and can’t get over that insecurity to chase after the one woman that could make him happy. Ciara just wants to be loved. She doesn’t want more little boys hitting on her, she doesn’t want to be thought of as hot, she wants someone who will always be there for her, who will hold her when she cries and laugh when she makes a joke. She wants someone who is going to pass every test, come back every time she pushes them away, put up with all of her conditions to prove to her that she is worth it, that it is a love that isn’t going anywhere, that it is as eternal as the stars in the sky, the waves on the beach, the Amazon packages huddled by the front door. But none of them can say this, none of them can let their feelings be known, and, instead of a triangle, what ends up happening is three sad lines fallen in on each other, lying in a pile, waiting for someone to come along and prop them back up into a shape.
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