The Valley Recap: Tea is for Toddler
I think of all the bounty we have been blessed with here in The Valley, this episode clinched that my absolute favorite new person in the cast is Janet. Okay, well, she’s a close second after that adorable and hunky husband of hers. Still, Janet has the one quality that is absolutely necessary for any burgeoning practitioner of the reality television arts and sciences: a healthy dose of delusion.
In the aftermath of the brouhaha at Jax’s hair loss event, Janet sits down with that hot piece of man who put a bun in her oven and tells him that Jasmin told her at the party that Jax knows the gossip that Kristen is supposed “protecting” Michelle from but is pissed that Jasmine didn’t tell her what it actually is. Janet has a whole theory about what happened. She thinks that Janet told Kristen or Brittany something about her marriage, and they told Jax what it was, and Jax told Jasmine, who refused to tell Janet. What Janet is really pissed about is that she is a bone collector and everyone is keeping the bone from her like she’s a puppy who just tinkled on an antique rug.
The delusion however is that Janet is saying, “I shouldn’t know this,” like we shouldn’t be talking about Michelle and Jesse’s marriage but Janet is also pissed that she doesn’t know exactly what it is that she shouldn’t know about it. Janet is a gossip with a capital G and as someone who got into journalism just so he could get paid to ask people invasive questions, it is an excellent quality to have, especially in this line of work.
Janet is also pissed that Jax is out there spreading rumors while there are rumors that Janet heard that Scheana heard that Katie read online that Jax is cheating. God bless Janet. She’s like one of those Bravo news aggregators on Instagram: she’s never got a scoop of her own, but she’s chasing clout on collecting other people’s. Janet and Jason decide to go over Jax and Brittany’s to talk about all of this but they are shushed and sheparded out to the back yard because Cruz has his speech therapist. “We need to keep it down so he can study,” Jax says, like his 2-year-old is sitting for the California State Bar Exam in three weeks.
When Janet brings up the cheating rumors, Brittany says that she doesn’t believe them and that there will always be rumors. Know why? Because Jax be cheatin’. I don’t know this for a fact, but I know it for a feeling. I know that Jax is cheating like I know that the sky is blue, that water is wet, and that Domino’s is far superior the next morning.
It was hilarious when Jax takes Brittany to a tantric “sexpert” (vom), and she says she can feel like there isn’t cheating or anything going on. Excuse me, Janelle, but have you ever heard of Jax Taylor? Have you ever been to West Hollywood? Have you seen the plaque that was erected (pun intended) in the Viper Room bathroom to all the girlfriends that Jax cheated on after a few bumps in a stall? She might not feel that there is any cheating going on in the vibrations of the universe, but I can tell it happened just based on the vibrations of a decade of reality television footage I have watched.
As bad as things are for Jax, though, they’re even worse for Kristen. After she barges out of the event, Jesse and Michelle tell the group that if Kristen is going to be at any group functions in the future they will not be attending. Janet says she and Jason won’t invite Kristen to their events either. Who are these newbies using advanced tactics to freeze someone out of the show? They should know that it never works.
Jax and Jason take Luke bowling, but it’s not a true brodown because there is an ulterior motive: they need to tell Luke that his girlfriend sucks. Jason makes an excellent point that Luke thinks they need to be Bonnie and Clyde and rob the bank together, but Clyde could just as easily tell Bonnie to maybe just terrorize her friend with lies instead.
Here’s the thing about Kristen: she’s not a liar. Yes, she will twist a story like she’s making fusilli from scratch, but she never makes something up out of nowhere. For instance, Luke told her that Jesse said he didn’t think his marriage would last six more months. She turns that into, “Jesse said he’s going to divorce you in two months.” That’s not what she heard, but it was the ammunition she needed at the moment. So she’s saying that Michelle has a secret boyfriend for a year she hasn’t told us about. What she really means is that Michelle told her that she has been seeing a new personal trainer for a year and didn’t tell Jesse about him because Jesse freaks out when she’s with hot dudes, but she loves the guy and calls him “my boyfriend.” It’s not a lie, necessarily; it’s just, sigh, a disregard for the truth.
However, Jax is at bowling calling Kristen a known liar, and yet this man wouldn’t know the truth if it plucked out his goatee whisker by whisker. (Can the truth please do this?) He’s using the same old speech about how he bought a house and started a business and he’s different now. Yeah, sure. The toilet paper in my bathroom is different now, but it’s still the exact same brand I buy every time, if you know what I’m saying.
When Luke gets home, he sits Kristen down for a chat on a couch that is so sad I hope that it is rented so they can one day return it. He tells Kristen that everyone is done with her because she makes shit up, and she acknowledges that she does this but refuses to engage with Luke in any meaningful way. She doesn’t say that she’s going to change or that she’s even sorry. Know why? Because she has no intention of doing either. If reality television has taught us anything, it’s that most of these jamokes are completely incapable of even the basest improvement. And why should Kristen change? She wouldn’t have a job if she improved as a person.
Luke does tell her the hard truth that she never really apologizes because it’s always, “I’m sorry, but…” That she won’t take on either. She tells Luke that they have nipped this in the bud, but, honey, that bud has not been nipped. It’s still sitting there like a pasty, with a nip fully inside of it with nowhere to go.
If there is one person who doesn’t care a lick about this, it is our sweet baby angel Nia. I have not been a woman (at least in this life), and I don’t have any kids, but I have so much sympathy for what she is going through. What a terrible trick of human biology that a woman can go through something as debilitating as childbirth, and then she not only has to care for an infant immediately but also is stuck with a depression that is like a pile of bricks.
When Nia and Danny go out to dinner with Jesse and Michelle, their drinks arrive, and Nia and Danny clink glasses and kiss. It’s their thing. They do it every time. I have a feeling that this is a Danny thing because he’s as nerdy as Chewbacca blowing Harry Potter in Catan. They all want to talk about Kristen and what a monster she is, but Nia says she can’t. She can’t focus. She can barely make it through the day. She is just tired, depleted, numb, and doesn’t know when it’s going to get better. It might not ever. Well, it will, but she doesn’t think it will; she is stuck, trapped with “three under two,” as Danny always says, and an emotional core that’s as solid as day-old ground beef. So, yeah, Nia doesn’t want to talk about Kristen being a liar because she can’t see through the brain fog. But she won’t have to. Janet will surely fill her in on everything in a day or two.