About Last Night
Season 11
Episode 14
Editor’s Rating
2 stars
**
Photo: Bravo
This was always bound to happen. If Salley had been patient, Craig would have one of his inevitable blowups, and Charley would have gotten the ick faster than Rodrigo logs onto Ticketmaster when Madonna announces a new tour. The episode starts just as the last episode ends, with a drunken Craig raging against the machine, except the machine doesn’t exist, or the machine is Salley, whom he keeps calling a loser for no reason. He then sits and mopes for the rest of the ride back to the resort as Salley sheds a few errant tears (but sadly not her extra E) and Austen tells her not to waste her tears on Craig, that he doesn’t deserve them.
When they dislodge from the vans and skitter into the night like cockroaches looking to get away from a predator (do cockroaches have predators?), Charley says that she saw Craig raging “for no reason,” and is shaking her head. This is something she repeats later, saying that when she’s seen him blow up in the past, like at Austen during Whitner’s literary-themed dinner, that something set him off. Here, she was scared that it appeared out of the night air, that it was just unbridled anger firing in every direction like someone activated a Pikachu.
The question is then, what is Charley, whose romantic connection with Craig was blossoming until now, going to do? Molly points out what someone should have told both Salley and Venita earlier this season: that people are always going to offer advice, and there are going to be those people who say, “Let me find out for myself.” Charley, it seems, has found out and, inverting the common idiom, this happened even before they fucked around. Phew. When Charley joins Molly and Venita for some resort yoga, the easiest variety of yoga, Molly asks Charley what is up with their romance. Charley says that it’s not a thing. Oh, thank the Catholic Jesus. I always say this show is about men behaving terribly and the women who excuse them, and I’m glad that Charley isn’t making any excuses for Craig. She got one good look at what lay underneath the hood, shook her head, and quickly departed.
Wait, does that mean Salley is going to want to get back in there? Just kidding. Definitely not. They’re all exasperated by Craig. Well, everyone except for Shep. He still knocks on Craig’s door to see if he wants to go fishing and Craig doesn’t answer. Then Shep leaps into bed with Austen, practically spooning him and draping his legs over the big muppet. What’s up with guys always wanting to leap into bed with Austen? Is he like every straight guy’s Bravo crush? Is he the Ryan Reynolds of basic cable (and the next day on Peacock)?
Shep, as usual, is on the wrong side of history with this one. He says that he feels bad for Craig and knows what Craig feels like. Yes, I have a feeling that Shephard Rose fully understands what it’s like to get blackout drunk, say terrible things, and then wake up feeling like a dog shit smoothie and not knowing why everyone is mad at him. Because of that, Shep doesn’t want to pile onto Craig. Austen says that maybe the person he should feel bad for is Salley, since Craig screamed at her for an entire car ride.
Shep’s whole premise is that he knows Craig already feels terrible and doesn’t want to make it worse. He relates a story about when he got kicked out of boarding school his senior year, his mother arrived to help him pack his things, and said she wasn’t going to say anything because nothing she said would make him feel as bad as he already made himself feel. The problem is, Craig doesn’t feel bad! Austen says, “Craig doesn’t have a conscience, so I don’t see him feeling bad.”
When Craig finally wakes up at 3:19 p.m. (tell us that is not true and a trick the editors played on us) and meets Whitney for a poolside lunch, Whitney tells him that he should apologize. Craig asks, “For what?” See. Craig doesn’t care. He says that he’s “perfectly imperfect,” which I think is a sentiment to embrace about certain things — not being able to focus, not drinking as much water as you should, always being 10 minutes late to appointments — but not an entire anger management issue. Craig says, “Cool, I messed up once in two years. My bad.” But this is a pattern of behavior that impacts everyone around and comes with no consequences for Craig. As Whitner points out to Shep, he doesn’t face any consequences for these blowups, so he has no incentive to stop. Someone has to tell him that it’s unacceptable. This isn’t a slip-up; it’s more like a relapse, and if an alcoholic had such a relapse, they would be back at their meetings, doing the work, starting over again at building something. Craig, instead, is choosing to ignore it.
That’s sort of what everyone does as they go for a day of mystical healing thanks to Shep, who wants to recreate his ayahuasca journey, but it seems like Bravo won’t let him. Why not? Can’t we dose all of these clowns with ayahuasca and get them barfing, hallucinating, and changing their lives on television? If Chelsea Handler can do it, why can’t Austen Kroll? Instead, they arrive and get cleansed by smoke, even Whitney would says he hates hippies and that incense, reiki, and crystals have no effect in the real world. I would agree with Whitney, I think they’re bullshit, but they also can work … just like astrology, praying, and peptides work because people think they do, so they will it to work, they use it to justify changes and then imbue it with meaning when really the only thing that worked was the belief, the extra motivation, the shove towards improvement.
At the end of the episode, everyone gathers in a circle and drinks something that looks like hot chocolate but doesn’t seem to be mind-altering. Shep is pissed. He wanted everyone to get fucked up, talk to their great, great-grandfathers in the shape of a reptile spirit paddling by the swim-up bar, and leave full of love. Instead, they got something not even as potent as two sips of Four Loko. The ceremony ends with everyone seated in a circle as lightning crashes, and an old mother cries, to quote the worst song from the ‘90s. They all worry that they have angered the gods, and they have. They set it right when they go inside to escape the rain, and they all wander around in the room with their eyes closed, finding partners at random and connecting with them. How ironic when Venita and Craig open their eyes and find each other, only to dismiss the other just as quickly. It ends with Craig holding hands with Austen as their energy passes back and forth in a loop that’s like forgiveness. Then Craig gets a long embrace from Shep, their hearts beating together, their breath syncing, as if these two haven’t been on the same page since this reality experiment started all those years ago.
The thing that had the biggest impact, however, was the sweat lodge, exactly like the one that almost killed Noella Bergener. Ruben, their spiritual guide, offered everyone a choice between the lodge and getting a massage, and Molly and Whitney were like, “Rub us down, please. We hate torture.” But everyone else stripped down to their bathing suits, huddling in the heated confines of a womb-like space. (How did they even film in there?) Hot stones are added, one by one, as the air inside gets heavier, the heat searing the nose and the throat, the sweat starting in rivulets that turn into streams as the smell gets more intense, the heartbeat swells, the mind races. They look for an excuse, an exit, a shut-off valve for the discomfort. But no one can leave. No. They’re allowed, but no one should leave.
As everyone gasps and rolls, straining their bodies and minds, Ruben says, “There are many times in your life when you can’t go out. So now you are battling with yourself.” He’s right. We can’t escape life, we can’t escape ourselves. Our thoughts are ours no matter how much we hate them, try to shut them off, ignore them. Our pasts are already written, changing the pathways of brains and people’s perceptions of us. Those are fixed, inescapable. And the way to make amends, to get better, to rid ourselves of those burdens of indiscretion is to suffer a little, to cleanse a lot, to reflect more than anything especially under the literal heat of adverse conditions. They all know this, they fight through the sweat and the stink. Except Craig. He leaves early. As the cool air hits his sweaty flesh, he is swaddled in a cool that feels like redemption, but it’s really just avoidance.
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