Full House
Season 10
Episode 15
Editor’s Rating
3 stars
***
We finally see the fight between Kyle and Carl that we’ve been waiting for all season.
Photo: Bravo
We were tricked! The past three seasons of Summer House have been 15 episodes, and here I thought this was going to be the season finale. Wrong! It was like thinking that the door to the titular Summer House had been fixed for weeks and now, once again, it’s jammed beyond repair. Just when you think you’re safe. I don’t know if it’s because I went in thinking that we were going to get a lot more closure, but I was a bit disappointed by this episode. Not only was it the saddest of the season, but it was also a bit of an anticlimax.
Speaking of let-downs, what about that fight? Based on the trailer and what happened last week, I thought it was going to be, I don’t know, punchier. West talked before the season aired about how he had blood all over him. Where was the blood? Where were the actual fisticuffs? It was still pretty bad, but it’s sort of like being invited to an all-you-can-eat buffet, and when you arrive, it’s two slices of American cheese in a Styrofoam container like the sad lunch at the Fyre Festival.
Where it left off last episode, Kyle was in the front yard yelling at Carl, and Carl shoots back immediately, “Thanks for your lack of support of me, you fucking loser. Go focus on yourself for once.” I mean, he’s not wrong. Carl is shouting for Kyle to hit him, and Kyle’s being held back by West’s pinky because he knows that if he tried to hit that “Six-five motherfucker” Carl would just palm Kyle’s head like a basketball and keep him away from him while he flails wildly in the driveway. Carl is wooed back into the house by Lindsay, of all people. Lindsay is telling him to calm down, take a deep breath, and chill out. Nature really is healing.
Outside, Kyle is still raging at Carl. Amanda tries to physically cover his mouth so that he doesn’t say any more things about Carl that he’s going to regret. This is the most intimate they have been all summer. Kyle, of course, won’t listen, and Amanda threatens to punch him in the face herself. Then Carl escapes Lindsay, goes back in the front yard, and shouts, “Kyle, I will beat the fuck out of you.”
Kyle responds: “Carl, stop being such a Vagasil.” Not Vagasil. As Tina Turner sang, what does Vagasil have to do, have to do with it? Is Kyle just invoking the name of vaginal itching relief cream so that he doesn’t call him a part of the female genitalia? You know that Lindsay sidled up to him after that comment and whispered in his ear, “You can monetize that. I can get us a partnership.” Carl returns inside, and Kyle still rages at Carl, saying he’s sick of being everyone’s target and that Carl has been talking shit about him all summer. West says it’s not true; he hasn’t. West tells Kyle that he’s mad at Lindsay for stirring things up with him and Amanda, and that is just bringing out his anger with Carl and Amanda.
Cut to Lindsay inside saying, “I feel bad because I feel like I instigated it, and I didn’t mean to. But I’m going to make it better. I have Tiffany from Vagasil on the line, and she’s going to pay us $20,000 when this fight airs if we all do a sponsored post.” Amanda then says what we intuited last week, that she didn’t defend Kyle or say anything because she agreed with everything Lindsay had to say. Meanwhile, Bailey is out back trying to talk to Carl and has never been more turned on than when he threatened another man’s safety. Same, Bailey. We’re all fucked up, masculinity is toxic, we should all just become lesbians. See you at the Morgan Wade concert.
Once everyone is inside and calms down, Kyle goes up to Carl’s room, they hug it out, tell each other sorry, Kyle dampens Carl’s lower sleeve with his tears, and it’s over. It’s all over. They’re joking about how they both didn’t want their fight to scratch Kyle’s latest BMW. This is why there are no reality shows just about boys. It would be a stupid fight, an insult about Summer’s Eve, and then bro hugs all around from now until eternity. Meanwhile, Amanda said something bitchy about one of Lindsay’s outfits in season one, and neither of them is over it.
The biggest thing that struck me about this fight is that everyone in the house, almost to a person, told Kyle that he can’t talk to Amanda the way he does. West says it, Jesse says it, Lindsay says it, and even Carl says it as he’s forgiving Kyle. However, it doesn’t seem to be a point he acknowledges; it’s not something that is making its way through. The whole episode, Kyle is a pendulum swinging between anger and sadness, between lashing out and injuring Amanda, and looking to be the victim. When he’s talking to Lindsay, he says, “Well, no sex for seven years and no attention and no friendship and no partnership will probably wear someone down.” Seven years? Seven. No wonder he’s so pent up. He tells Carl that he doesn’t think Amanda wants anything to do with him, that she’s never excited to see him. He thinks she loves it when he DJs because he’s gone. There’s no excuse for a lot of Kyle’s behavior, but he’s palpably hurt.
Even when he’s alone and monologuing, we see this emotional whiplash in effect in one sentence. “I don’t think she wants a single thing to do with me, and she’s too scared to get out of it because she can’t do a single thing herself,” he says, looking for pity, being hurt, and then coming for Amanda’s character in fewer words than it would take you to explain the premise of Euphoria.
As Kyle takes the active role, Amanda, as always, takes a much more passive one. Well, with one exception. After the fight, she finds West, gives him a big hug, and says, “You pulling up your chair next to me…” The embrace lingers longer than a Cranberries lyric, and then she adds, “I love you.” Oh, Amanda. Already telling on yourself. She takes comfort in bed with Ciara and Mia and says she feels bad crying about Kyle all summer. Ciara says it’s fine. “That’s friendship.” The edit will not get off Amanda’s neck even for a second. Kyle comes up and tells her he wants to hug things out with her, that he lost his shit, his whole spiel. She tells him she needs time, but when he’s gone, she asks the important question, “Where is the apology?”
Then Kyle does the craziest thing of all: he goes out! He puts on a new outfit, gets in an Uber, and goes to a Hamptons club to party while his wife lies in bed crying about what a mess her life is. He’s crying about what a mess his life is, too. They both know their lives are terrible, and neither of them can stop it. Which is why they are now broken up, and everyone is shouting that Amanda is the worst friend since Brutus, and everyone is asking Kyle about his skincare regimen. This man made out with walking red flat Meghan King Edmonds PI on a street corner, and we have collective amnesia about it. Kyle got off so lucky.
In the morning, Kyle apologizes for going out; he apologizes for all kinds of things, and Amanda tells him that he’s not saying sorry for the right things. But there aren’t enough sorrys for either of them. There aren’t enough sorrys in the Sea of Regret to smother the fire of their hatred for each other. It is over, like over over. Like over, over, over, over, over, over. Like over, over, over…you get it.
The next day, we are met with twin indignities, setting up for an apres ski party and the arrival of Sabrina in what might be her dumbest outfit yet. It’s all black and lacy and all the way down the ground like Morticia Addams getting ready for a garden party. There are knee-high Uggs because ugg indeed, and, yes, there is a choker. Meanwhile, Dara looks fly as hell in a bikini, a blue fuzzy jacket, and ski goggles on her head. I swear that Sabrina is Dara’s tether, and I wish we could find a way to get rid of her.
We don’t get much in the way of partying, but Kyle and Carl are trying to build an igloo, which feels like cultural appropriation, and the rest of the backyard seems both more hurried and more ornate than we’ve seen all season. Meanwhile, Lindsay is inside talking to Jesse and West about what is going on with Wiara (Cest?) because she’s finished negotiating the Vagasil deal and she’s still clocked into her job. West tells her that they both pretended to hate each other or ignore each other for two years, and he’s glad that it’s back to where it was. He seems wary of what is going on, so does everyone, but they’re enamored with the thrill of it; they’re intoxicated by the lull of happiness that has settled upon the house since the full-blown altercation the evening before. “You have a way about you,” Lindsay tells West. “You’re hard to hate.” As the words come out of her mouth, as they get sucked up in the blizzard of decorations in merrymaking, as the flitter about on the summer breeze like a butterfly that landed on a can of Loverboy, they sound something like a laugh. No, wait, they sound like a jest.
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