So it appears the most pressing issues are as follows:
Nilsa wants Gus, but he’s yet to fully give in to her advances. He’s also in the midst of a full-blown spiritual crisis that could cause his hair to finally go limp.
Candace is choosing to date a walking hyphenated felon. She also cannot forgive Gus for refusing to swear to a police officer (who has a gun) that Kirk did nothing wrong — even after everyone, including Kirk, admitted he did something wrong.
Kortni refuses to stay sober for longer than fifteen minutes straight and enjoys pissing in corners.
Aimee is mostly keeping it together, but a recent story on Page Six makes it clear her stability is temporary.
Jeremiah can’t believe he shares a bathroom with such imbeciles and he needs a stylist immediately.
Codi likes to kiss strangers after puking in urinals.
Kirk punched a guy at a bar and is currently in handcuffs in the back of a police car.
Now, I’d love to believe a weekend of intensive group therapy or the lighting of several hundred Jesus candles will resolve all of these issues, but let’s be realistic. Let’s also remember that we’re only in episode four and modern technology probably cannot even begin to chart just how far things will devolve from here.
The most pressing problem at the moment – the one with seriously legitimate stakes – is Kirk’s potential arrest, but half the roommates don’t even know about it. You can’t really blame them, you know? I mean, Kortni’s main priorities are Logan, dancing, alcohol, and executing actually impressive splits atop wooden bars. Can she really be expected to care about the wellbeing of others right now? And if you were in the midst of a crisis, would you want Kortni rushing to your side? The girl would kneel down and piss at your side, so perhaps staying at the bar right now is her wisest move of the season. Not being particularly wise is Candace. She walks out of the house, sees Jeremiah and Gus acting like bystanders while Kirk sits in the back of a police car, and not one piece of her can understand how they are behaving this way. So to lead by idiotic example, she rushes to the car Kirk sits handcuffed inside of and asks him through the window if he’s okay until an officer tells her more than once to step away or she will be arrested next. Don’t worry, you guys. Through it all she wears the cowboy hat.
Back at the bar, Codi is about to score. There’s a blonde chick there who has already kissed him, asked to go back home with him, and signed a release to have her face blasted to the world and Codi is not about to wait for her to sober up and rethink any of these choices, so he is in a mad rush to gather him remaining roommates and bring them back to a house that he doesn’t realize has become a bit of a crime scene. Kortni easily agrees to go home – she can do splits on the counter there – but Nilsa gets annoyed that Codi dribbles some of her drink on her shirt so she responds by throwing an entire drink in his face. This action leads to Codi being held back from attacking Nilsa because he’s furious with her and because nobody on the show – well, besides Kirk – has been restrained for about five minutes and all marathons need to end at some point.
There is some good news, however. The guy Kirk either slapped or punched at the bar has decided not to press charges, so Kirk is pulled out of the police car and the handcuffs are removed. He is polite to the officers and grateful for how things turned out, but he realizes his impulsiveness to defend himself and his roommates almost led to something very terrible. You’d think that now he would be able to go back into his house to sleep the rest of this shitty night away, but Candace is still furious the other guys didn’t scream at police officers on Kirk’s behalf so she is packed and ready to leave. You know what? I typically like Candace. I appreciate that she does things like piss only in toilets, but there seems to be no reasoning with her here. Though she’s absolutely right to question the actions of some police officers, the ones who dealt with the issue at her house appeared to play completely fair and Kirk was released without incident. She is the one now stoking whatever remains into an incident it doesn’t need to be and the whole thing is exhausting to watch.
We’ll return to that fully unnecessary sh*t show in just a moment, but first we need to head back to the bar to watch Codi – without the blonde girl who, hopefully, had at least one lucid friend talk her out of boning some guy on camera – get into a van with Kortni. He bursts into tears because of the thrown drink and swears he is the only person who ever cared about Nilsa and I cannot even begin to imagine the kind of waterworks that would be going down had Nilsa tossed a drink on him while he was wearing his white pants. Speaking of waterworks, Nilsa and Aimee crawl into another van and Nilsa decides she needs to pee at that very second so she crouches in the center console and pisses on the floor of the van. I don’t like to pass judgment or anything (that’s a lie; I get paid for passing judgment and it’s a great f*cking gig), but these people are disgusting and if their defense is that they only behave this way when they’re hammered beyond oblivion, maybe they should stop getting hammered beyond oblivion. And I shudder for the person who had to clean up after Nilsa. F*ck that.
And still the night is going on. As Nilsa is relieving herself on some upholstery, Codi and Kortni return home. They have no idea what has transpired, but Codi is still weeping and Kortni is saying calm things like “Someone’s gonna get beat!” and the ones who should really be threatening to pack and leave are Jeremiah and Gus because they’re the only sane people left at this point. Don’t believe me? Then allow me to recount how Candace is still talking in circles at Jeremiah and Gus while Nilsa arrives home and tearfully apologizes to Codi because she cannot remember why she threw a drink at him and he accepts her apology because he can’t really remember the incident either. Meanwhile, downstairs Kortni is using a butcher knife to stab Gus’ birthday balloons and I have given it some serious thought and I have decided I would rather be mopping Nilsa’s urine out of that taxi’s center console with a flimsy cotton ball than ever spend a single night in that house.
Also: Upon hearing the story of Kirk almost being arrested, Kortni wonders aloud if this experience will cause him to finally wise up. And this, dear friends, is your official lesson in irony for the day. It’s like watching Schoolhouse Rock with crazy people.
The next morning, Gus is feeling morose because his birthday didn’t end up feeling special. While the girls sit inside and laugh at his emotions, the guys band together to make Gus feel better. They decide a day at the gym will be the endorphin-filled medicine Gus needs and even Codi is willing to flex a bit to make a brother happy. Later that day – once he’s able to walk again after doing pull-ups at the gym – Codi begins reading from one of the erotic books Gus is the cover model for and it’s all very lighthearted and fun and nobody is being beaten up, but I am mildly curious about why Gus keeps a pillow over his lap during the entire scene.
Since they so royally f*cked up their first shot as Gus’ birthday, the roommates have committed to Gus’ Birthday, Part Deux. (Jeremiah commits so hard that he even wears his Clark Kent glasses!) I’m not all that optimistic that things will go smoothly since they start the dinner by doing shots of sake, but the night stays calm for a change. When they arrive home, the guys head outside. They light up cigars and Gus shares that he felt alone when he was kicked out of his house at seventeen and yesterday, when nobody seemed to care about his birthday, those feelings came rushing back. He’s glad a better day followed and he’s grateful for his friends and I am grateful for scenes that do not involve bodily fluids so it’s f*cking gratitude all around.
One thing I’m learning quickly is that gratitude doesn’t last long in these parts. As the guys joke around by throwing cheesecake at each other, Kortni is upstairs on the crocodile phone with Logan and he is none too pleased that the guys in the background are being loud. Poor Logan does not feel respected. Poor Logan also comes across here as a lunatic who runs on toxic rage and has both control freak tendencies and questionable taste in women. He ends this adorable sequence by demanding these strangers respect him before hanging up on his girlfriend in a glorious display of respect.
Also: I call being the flower girl if these two get married! And I’ll throw condoms instead of rose petals, as it seems best that they do not breed.
As Logan sleeps off his fury, the roommates sit together and decide they need jobs for the summer and they instantly become apprentices at a hot dog stand. That job will start tomorrow, but tonight is the bikini contest Nilsa feels compelled to enter. She’s confident, but Candace is terrified. She doesn’t want to parade in front of a group of drunken strangers in almost no clothing! As Nilsa models her choices of bikinis for the guys, Aimee tells Candace that she is beautiful and she should definitely enter the contest. Now, when Nilsa modeled her swimsuit choices for the guys, she twirled in circles and made her pecs dance. Candace slinks down the stairs in a low-cut one piece that she looks very pretty in and stands with her hands locked in front of her like she’s a new kid on the first day of school being introduced to her Homeroom whilst dying inside. She then goes upstairs and changes into the kind of stars and stripes bikini that would make Ted Nugent cheer and she walks downstairs to hoots and hollers from the group. The loudest cheers are from Codi. The guy’s got himself quite the crush on the girl dating a man named Gator-J-231-Southside-Gawd, but I’m not feeling all that hopeful about Codi’s chances in wooing this girl. I mean, he doesn’t even have one hyphen in his name! How is he possibly supposed to compete in this amateur Love Olympics with that sort of deficit?
Once they’re at the bar, Nilsa is in her element. She’s competed in pageants her entire life! She has good chi-chi’s! Friends are with her backstage to rub lotion on those chi-chi’s! Then there’s Candace. She looks like she’s about to crawl into a fetal position and begin whispering safe words to herself like “last minute silicone” and “Gloria Steinem probably doesn’t watch MTV.” When the announcer calls her name and it’s her to turn to prance across the stage, she initially appears as though she will not do it, but eventually she walks onstage and her confidence swells. She humps her cowboy hat, the crowd cheers for her, and Codi falls even more in lust than he was before. Not only that, but Candace ends up being the second runner up. That should leave the top spot open for Nilsa, right? Wrong. Some woman from Indiana wins the prize and Nilsa and her chi-chi’s are fully beside themselves. The girl is raging. She will never return to that bar! She has never lost a pageant! That sh*t was rigged! And all I can say is I really hope Gus is paying very close attention to how Nilsa behaves when something doesn’t go her way because this, my friends, is what we call “a premonition” and it is rather scary to watch.
Once they return home, Candace rushes to the phone to call Mr. Gator to tell him her exciting news, but he lets her call go straight to voicemail and that’s when Codi sweeps in. He tells Candace his bed is open and waiting for her because that whole friend-zone thing other guys get stuck with is something that will never happen to a Lothario like Codi – or so he swears. After Candace wraps herself in blankets as a shield and crawls in bed with him, Logan and Kortni decide to go f*ck in the shower. Then Nilsa appears in the bathroom to cheer them on – I guess since they cheered her on as she lost a bikini contest, she is just trying to return the favor – but when they invite her to join them, she runs away. See, threesomes filmed in showers are okay with Logan, but we learn that digitally attending to his ass is not. Something tells me Kortni will soon find out all the other things this guy is not so okay with because he seems to be a guy who wants to make a lot of rules and he wants those rules to be followed and something about him scares me enough that I can look at Candace being spooned by Codi and think Now there is a lucky girl.
Nell Kalter teaches Film and Media at a school in New York. She is the author of the books THAT YEAR and STUDENT, both available on amazon.com in paperback and for your Kindle. Also be sure to check out her website at nellkalter.com. Her twitter is @nell_kalter.
