While we're still figuring out the interpersonal dynamics among the cast, it's clear that most of these people don't know how to behave on the job.
Photo: Casey Durkin/Bravo
I love that this show brought us back to the workplace. And I'm not just talking about the opening sequence, which is back with new SUR-verses pouring cocktails and scattering rose petals because they've never cleaned a sticky restaurant floor in their entire lives. In this reboot, it's difficult to truly get to know all the players, understand their personality traits, or figure out who might be right in any given argument. However, one place where it is very easy to judge people's behavior is at work. Like every season Below Deckwhere it is much easier to judge whether a yachtsman is a good worker than to judge whether he is a good person, the same is true here, and, well, I have already made some extreme judgments.
First up is Marcus, who was suspended at the end of the first episode after being caught drunk at work. He's having a drink with his (somehow even hotter) brother Aaron and says, “Everyone drinks at work. I just got caught.” Girl, that's not true. Doctors don't do this. Neither are air traffic controllers, bus drivers, elementary school teachers (but not high school teachers), Sephora employees, or blackjack dealers. To be fair, most people don't drink on the job. His friend Shane doesn't drink on the job because he's sober and doesn't seem to have a job. Andy Cohen drinks on the job, but it's just an attempt end reunion, not a start. (Although this is not true New Year's Eve on CNN.) Venus in the confessional hints that Marcus drinks more than he should, and yes, he seems to drink less by the hour, as everyone does, and everyone likes him more. who has a problem does it.
When Marcus goes to talk to Lisa about what he did wrong, he brings her a bouquet of roses from the supermarket. Flowers? For a work meeting? This is not a date. He's not trying to talk her into doing something she'll regret as she's at CVS ringing the bell for Plan B. He's trying to get his job back. Show some respect. He tells Lisa that the reason he looks so exhausted is because he lost his father at the beginning of the pandemic and lost his mother a few months ago. He's in mourning now and that's why he screwed up. Lisa Vanderpump, who has never met a damaged man she didn't try to accommodate, tells him he can get his job back, but she's going to get him grief counseling.
Another person who has no idea how the job functions is Natalie. Demi had to pee on her after she got into a huge fight with her ex in the middle of a restaurant on her day off and was kicked out of the premises. Demi goes to look for this bartender behind the bar, where she should be, and her colleague says that she recently left. Demi goes searching and finally finds Natalie. “You were gone for about an hour,” Demi says. Natalie says she's been gone for an hour and that Demi is being dramatic. Thanks to the editors, we know that she was absent from her post for 27 minutes. That's about the longest federally regulated break for an eight-hour shift. Unless she was on a break and her manager, which I'm guessing is Demi, knew about it, she hasn't worked in quite some time. Yes, it wasn’t “an hour,” but even ten minutes was too long. If you are walking by the clock and not where you should be, you are in the wrong.
Natalie decides to make matters worse and continue arguing with her boss. Even if your boss is wrong, he is still right. What doesn't Natalie understand about this? This is not a fight that she can win because Demi could at any moment say, “Well, you're fired.” She urgently needs to check this attitude. Because Natalie thinks Demi is being “dramatic,” she won't sign the paperwork she needs, saying she'll only sign with Guillermo, Lisa's co-owner, who looks just like George Clooney in a cheap hat. Well, Guillermo told Demi to get Natalie to sign it so she wouldn't have to go over Demi's head and say she was only talking to the big boss. The big boss doesn't want to be bothered about this petty nonsense, so he assigned Demi to handle it. This is what he tells her when she says she will only sign the papers with him. I mean, doesn't this woman know what the job entails?
We needed all this work drama because personal drama doesn't affect me yet. We see Venus, who is apparently a “manifestation coach,” sitting in her living room, scribbling on notepads and trying to beat Los Angeles to the “woohoo” Olympics. We see Chris talking to his dad on FaceTime and telling us that he wants to model for John Varvatos. Sorry, but you are a 31-year-old OnlyFans reality TV star. Johnny W. doesn't call. It's time to find another dream.
Chris flirts with Audrey and we know sparks are flying because they talked about ice cream for like 30 minutes. Wow, what a brilliant conversation! Let's take Gore Vidal and turn this into an episode of The Dick Cavett Show. Audrey also tells him that she has a horse named Oreo, but then, in a confessional, she says that it is her friend's horse and she is just taking care of it. Hmm, that doesn't mean you have a horse. This means that your friend sometimes lets you borrow a horse because you work for him. Just because Lisa feeds her for free at SUR doesn't mean she owns the property.
The rest of the episode is taken up with Audrey's 22nd birthday party, which she throws on the roof of a hotel, even though Angelenos think it's cold and they crowd around the heaters like teenagers in front of Supreme when the new issue is about to come out. Even though it's Audrey's birthday, Demi quickly became my favorite. First, she scolded Natalie for being a terrible employee. Then, when she found out how old Audrey was turning, she said: “Who turns 22? It's so unfair.” Amen, sister. But the best line of the night comes when Natalie tries to talk to Kim, who ignores her, so Natalie says she's going to leave. “Where are you going?” – asks Demi. “We're on the roof!” Ironically, this is the last thing Kathy Maloney Schwartz Maloney said right before she fell through the skylight. Yes, it was #TooSoon. Sorry, Katie.
The reason Natalie and Kim are fighting is because Kim doesn't like Marcus and Natalie becoming friends. Natalie thinks it's unfair that Kim is angry with her. She says that Kim and Marcus fight and break up all the time, and that's what pisses Kim off. She says she doesn't want to deal with the consequences of their constant arguing. No. That's not what she's dealing with. She faces the consequences of kidnapping her boyfriend and Kim can't trust her with her man.
I thought it was all Natalie's fault because she stole Demi's boyfriend and Kim couldn't trust her. How stupid of me. Of course, it's not the woman's fault; it's the man's fault. The more we learn about this fight, the clearer it becomes that Marcus is almost entirely to blame. Apparently, he told Kim that Natalie had been texting him pictures of herself in high heels, but she actually texted that she only bought them because he said she needed to wear them more. No pictures at all. He told Kim that Natalie was the one who said they were like brother and sister, but he was the one who said it, and as someone cleverly translated, “we're like brother and sister” – which, as straight guys say, means: “I want to fuck her, but she won't let me.” It seems Marcus made Kim believe that it was all Natalie's doing, when in fact it was the other way around.
When she tries to talk to him about it at Audrey's party, he storms off and doesn't even talk. His girlfriend has legitimate complaints, but he simply ignores them. She says that whenever she criticizes him or tries to talk about their relationship, he gets upset and breaks up with her. Earlier in the episode, Marcus' brother asks if he helps Kim feel secure in their relationship. He says yes. “We still have sex and stuff,” he says. Wait, so this guy thinks that by just fucking her he's making her secure in the relationship when he dumps her the minute she tries to clean up her act and he won't stop talking to the girl who is a known boyfriend snatcher that his girlfriend wants him to stop talking to? It's no surprise that Kim is a complete mess in this dynamic, because that's exactly what he does.
Audrey's party starts with Kim ignoring Natalie and ends with Kim running to Natalie to cry on her shoulder and complain about Marcus. She has the drunken girl's sobs about the terrible guy she's trying to keep and who she clearly should dump. It's like any party you've ever attended when you were 22. Except it's Audrey's birthday and she has former professional strippers Chris and Jason there. Chris sits on her lap and starts grinding, eventually turning around, placing his legs on either side of her head and jerking himself right in front of the birthday girl's face. Kim sobbed, and a strand of Natalie's hair stuck to her tears. Jason turns around, rips his shirt off, revealing his incredible abs, and grinds on her lap. Audrey screams. It's on. Kim screams too, but about Marcus. It's not on, it's off. This is what we get: back and forth, foreground and background, flesh and tears, dancing and sobbing, sex and regret.
Just then, Katie Maloney Schwartz Maloney arrives and starts turning on the propane taps on all the heaters. The fire inside the plastic tubes goes out just as it did in Kim and Marcus's relationship. She goes to each heater, opens the little door at the base, messes with its innards, and turns it cold and lifeless. Revelers run from one to the other, the groups getting closer as the flocks get larger. But Katie won't stop. She keeps turning it, keeps closing it. She knows one thing these kids will never get: the party is over.
