There have been moments throughout the years when events so questionable transpired on reality television that they caused me to question whether or not there could possibly be a God. Does that sound harsh? Well, you watch someone named Snooki get punched directly in the face on camera and then go ahead and take a gander at the allegedly sane people on Ex and the Beach who cavort like hedonists celebrating successful lobotomy operations and tell me such displays did not prompt you to wonder if 1) You were staring at the literal dismantling of society’s mores or 2) God had grown tired of locusts and instead created a brand new plague that anyone blessed with basic cable was able to watch in high-definition. I’ll admit that there have been a few incidents shown on Floribama Shore that caused the God question to creep menacingly into my head. Those incidents involved Kortni squatting in corners, extreme close-ups of chunky vomit, or Candace referring to her boyfriend as “GatorJay231SouthsideGawd” with a straight face. Still, for all the Gator-pissing-puke moments that propelled me to wonder if crawling into an underground bunker so I could eat canned goods and pray for absolution was maybe a wise idea, there have also been some truly heartwarming moments. Floribama Shore doesn’t cause me to fear the End of Days like many reality shows do on a regular basis. There is an inherent goodness inside the cast members of this show. True, that ingrained goodness tends to dribble out when they are hammered – and they are usually hammered – but as sober people, they often illustrate kindness and empathy and they exhibited both last week when Jeremiah found out his grandfather died.
The overcast weather of the day just heightens Jeremiah’s sadness. His roommates are quiet and understanding as he cries and Candace leads them all in a prayer. These praying sessions happen often on this show, and though I am not a burst-into-prayer kind of girl, I think all of it is rather sweet. These prayers bring the group together. They offer comfort and strength. There’s actually something very lovely about these brief pious moments. Gus realizes that sitting around and repeatedly asking Jeremiah if he’s feeling okay all day will surely drive the kid mad, so he asks him if there’s anything he’d actually like to do and Jeremiah decides he wants to go out with his roommates and drink a beer in honor of his grandfather. They immediately agree to join him and they head off to get themselves ready. This preparation includes Kortni inexplicably spritzing her crotch with perfume, though perhaps she does have a reason to do so because she sits on the couch beside Jeremiah, rubs his arm, and then says – in front of everyone – “I’ll always be your sister even though I’m attracted to you.” Um, would anyone like to start another prayer group real fast where the motivation of the particular prayer will be that I stop rolling my eyes so quickly out of derision that I spontaneously end up in a coma? Seriously. I’m concerned for my health.
They arrive at a bar and make a toast to Jeremiah’s grandfather. It only takes a minute for Jeremiah’s eyes to fill with tears, but his friends are there to comfort him. The night seems to be very calm – or it was calm before Nilsa ran into a guy who used to work with her ex-husband and just a reminder of that ex causes Nilsa to down some shots and proclaim that there’s no way she’s heading home tonight without some guy who will validate her, at least until the sex ends. I get that an encounter with someone who reminds you of a past relationship can send you psychologically spinning, but Aimee has a point when she says that Nilsa is being kind of selfish right now. It’s supposed to be a quiet night out for Jeremiah’s wellbeing, not an evening when Nilsa – dressed in her Librarian-chic finery – chants “Shot, shot, shot!” in a half-empty dive bar. Then she turns from a sad desperate woman into a total assh*le like she’s a superhero who will never land a franchise. There’s some random (but very friendly and very polite) guy in the bar and he’s making conversation with some of the roommates. Nilsa takes one slurry look at him and just sneers, “Bye!” into his face. “She’s hammered,” explains Codi quietly, and he seems truly embarrassed by her cruel behavior. “Why are you being like that?” Kirk asks when the man walks away. “He’s a super nice guy.” “Please,” Nilsa answers while sucking on her fingers because she’s really f*cking classy and that guy is just a peon in her drunken eyes. Her actions are flagrantly unkind, and after the bonding that occurred during the last episode, watching it feels sh*tty.
Once they’re back at the house and Jeremiah heads upstairs to go to bed, Kirk tells Nilsa once again that she was rude for no good reason to the man at the bar. “Which one?” she has to ask, because see, Nilsa is actually WAY too good for MANY men and it’s hard to remember who she disparaged for sport thirty short minutes ago. After asking again what Kirk is even talking about, she then denies she would ever say such a thing to anyone even though everyone on the couch beside her tells her she did in fact behave that way. “You know I don’t like it when you hurt peoples’ feelings like that,” Aimee tells her friend, but Nilsa is still on her I’d-never-hurt-anyone kick. She’s also on her how-could-you-possssssibbbbly-say-I’m-drunk kick and that means it’s time for her to throw down the half-eaten wings she’s been gnawing on and declare the others jerks for having the audacity to claim she would be nasty to someone – which she was – or that she might just be intoxicated at the moment – which she is. She then proves how very rational she is by stalking upstairs so she can call her friend to come pick her up because she’s sick of being in a house with such terrible people. But remember: these are the actions of a sober woman.
These are also the actions of someone behaving like a total and complete assh*le.
“I’m leaving!” Nilsa screams at Kortni and Candace. They’re trying to calm her down. They’re also baffled by her batsh*t crazy reactions. Every single person who has spoken to Nilsa – even Kortni! – has been completely calm while she continues acting off-the-rails psychotic and this particular psychosis concludes with her leaving and slamming the door because who cares that Jeremiah is deep in mourning upstairs? It’s all about Nilsa in Nilsa’s sad little mind right now.
Also: Kortni telling Nilsa “F*ck what everybody thinks” is sort of terrible advice.
Also: Not a bit of me is shocked that this is Kortni’s advice.
Nilsa doesn’t end up leaving. She’s like a child who runs away from home by sitting on the front lawn with her arms folded defiantly across her chest in a lame effort at making a nonsensical point. Kortni absolves her of her guilt and leads her inside where she heads straight to bed and probably sleeps far more soundly than anyone born with a conscience.
Jeremiah is leaving for the funeral early the next morning and Gus wants to send him off right. He gets out of bed, wakes up Codi, and prepares a nice healthy breakfast so at least his grieving friend can know his friends care about him enough to make sure he gets the proper amount of daily protein in his system. Kirk sets the table, Kortni writes Jeremiah an I’m-always-here-for-you-and-maybe-one-day-we’ll-bang note, and Codi takes Jeremiah outside to chat. These two haven’t always gotten along, but Codi wants to help him through the coming stages of grief and Jeremiah appreciates the gesture. But in the non-Jeremiah related areas of the house, Aimee is still appalled by Nilsa’s behavior the night before. “They were hurting my feelings!” Nilsa says about how people were nasty enough to tell her the truth about the cavalier way she had just hurt someone else’s feelings. “Instead of learning from it, she plays the victim,” Aimee gripes, and the mermaid-goddess-princess is absolutely correct. She cannot abide by the idea of so callously wounding some nice person’s ego without experiencing remorse and Gus agrees with everything Aimee is saying. I mean, it’s hard not to agree that Nilsa has behaved like a f*cking sh*thead all episode long. She targeted a sweet man in a bar, denied she behaved in such a manner, and then projected her own guilt on everyone around her. So if Nilsa thinks Aimee is just going to pretend none of this ever happened, she is kidding herself.
Also: Jeremiah stops on his ride home to eat and finds the letter Kortni so symbolically stuck near his lunch meat. He’s touched at how heartfelt her words are. He’s also beginning to wonder if he can mentally downgrade Kortni from a fake sister to a fake distant cousin so he can feel better about wanting to sleep with her.
Also: He hasn’t been around for an episode or so because he’s been very busy purchasing night-vision goggles, but we all know Logan will reappear at some point. His presence will turn the Jeremiah-Kortni thing into something even creepier than it already is.
