Vanderpump Rules Recap Season 7 Episode 16 Betches

I used to be a dedicated member of LA Fitness in Atlanta. I would go nearly every day (to answer your question, yes, I looked amazing back then) and was cool with the people working there (shouts out Janelle and DeMario in the Ansley Mall LA Fitness if you’re reading this, I don’t know why you would be, but hi nonetheless). LA Fitness was great. I paid $30 a month and could use any club in the city. Things were awesome until I moved to New York and they wanted me to pay hundreds of dollars for a decidedly sh*ttier membership. So I cancelled. I’ve been in New York three years, and still, to this day, I will get emails from LA Fitness with the subject line, “Sara, we want you back!”

All that is to say, sometimes you need to cancel something in order to see if you’re wanted back.

Honestly, I didn’t think you guys enjoyed reading these recaps. The analytics seemed to point in that direction. But I was wrong. Thank you for commenting on my other article (that was not useless); thank you for texting your friends who are other Betches writers (you can leave Holly Gobetchy alone now). This recap is a few days late, but this is really just a special treat for you (and because I can’t watch this godforsaken show without stream-of-consciousness-ing my thoughts anymore, and my friends are sick of me texting them). So here we are: Vanderpump Rules recap season 7 episode 16.

The initial opening of TomTom is kind of a touching moment. The motorcycle has a great effect, although it remains to be seen why Sandoval couldn’t have just rented the damn thing, as opposed to dropping $18 grand on something he will likely only use once.

Inside the party, Scheana is predictably annoying by purposefully separating herself and Adam from the rest of the group, under the guise that they’re all couples and she and Adam are not a couple. The great thing about Scheana is that even when she’s doing the exact opposite of the thing everybody has told her is annoying, she still goes about it in the same exact way as when she was doing the insufferable thing. She will never learn. She will never do less, and that’s why she will never be back in this group.

Speaking of people who will never be back in this group, listening to Kristen attempt to compliment Lisa Vanderpump on TomTom, while she barely pretends to be listening, is sparking so much joy in me that I think I need to call Marie Kondo. Kristen might be half Lisa’s age, but dammit, she’ll assert dominance over her any chance she gets.

Brittany is me drinking on antibiotics, claiming everything will be fine if she blatantly disobeys her doctor’s orders because she’s avoiding citrus. Only in my case, it’s “because alcohol kills germs.” Jax does a good job playing the worried fiancé who is just looking out for Brittany’s health. I almost believe it. He should be put up for an Emmy.

In her best baby voice, Katie tries to shove her phone in Schwartz’s face and elicit some sort of reaction from him. He is about as bothered by his wife as Lisa is by Kristen’s attempts at getting back in her good graces. This sets the stage for Stassi revealing that Katie’s been feeling neglected in her marriage. It’s truly disappointing that all of Katie’s behavior can now be explained by the fact that she needs to get laid. I think I heard Gloria Steinem sigh somewhere in the distance.

Scheana asks Adam what he’ll do without her in Mexico, and he struggles to refrain from rattling off a laundry list of productive tasks he can now accomplish that he’s no longer chained in her basement. Scheana calls Adam her “person”, which shows that she is subconsciously incapable of not catching feelings for any guy who breathes in her direction, and that she does not understand the phrase “my person”. Honestly I think that phrase needs to be thrown into a fire forever, so I’m ok with this.

As she’s recounting her fight with Raquel and Billie at brunch, Lisa beckons her over to discuss precisely that. Let’s all pray for Lala because she has apparently suffered amnesia, and is unable to recall her yelling in Billie’s face and calling her a ho only yesterday.

Lala also claims she wasn’t aggressive despite almost poking Raquel’s eye out and calling her a Bambi-eyed bitch. She may pretend to forget, but we could never. THEN she lies about her altercation with James and claims she “behaved herself very nicely.”

Guys.

Lala’s off the deep end, watch as she dives in.

Lisa takes a page out of my camp counselor playbook and gets Scheana over to talk about what happened. Poor Scheana, she’s done for. She tells the truth, and says that Lala lost her mind and James handled himself without blowing up, and in so signs her own death certificate on her friendship with the rest of these girls. RIP.

Jax and Brittany are still fighting over the engagement party neither of them is paying for. Brittany’s redeeming moment this season comes when she says “This is not a democracy. It’s a Britt-ocracy” in regards to getting wildflowers. (I don’t have the bandwidth to make fun of Jax thinking wildflowers are weeds; the joke writes itself.) And suddenly, I can get behind this marriage. If this Brittany, this Britt-ocracy Brittany who won’t let Jax push her around on topics she clearly knows more about, holds her ground, then I think these two crazy kids will do just fine for their first marriage.

As Sandoval waxes poetic about his hat boxes, the prospect of an entire life with this man flashes before Ariana’s eyes.

Yes, girl. It is bleak.

At the airport, Lala of course has to bring up how she “can’t remember” the last time she flew commercial. Again, Lala should get her memory checked out. She can’t remember events from two years ago, and even the day before! Is there a doctor in the house? Or do they only fly private?

Scheana and Schwartz get randomly upgraded (*cough* by producers) to first class. Katie takes this as a personal affront because she and Schwartz couldn’t share their headphones together. I am currently writing her a ballad on the world’s smallest violin.

James is noticeably absent in Mexico, and he skipped the TomTom party. He hangs out with Max and Lisa Vanderpump, who acknowledges that he did a good job by not completely freaking out at Lala. She asks James how many beers he’s had—not just today, but since he started drinking. After trying to dodge the question at first, he says he’s had one beer. His dad apparently took him for a congratulatory beer, really pulling a Scheana season 4. Or 5, I can’t remember. You guys know what I’m talking about.

James’s excuse is that he and his dad went out for tacos, and tacos and beer go together like tea and crumpets.

Maybe if you were having a margarita, that would fly. But beers and tacos go together like grilled cheese and tomato. Like sure, you can have it, and it’s good and adds value, but it’s not necessary by any means.

Lisa has to explicitly tell James that you don’t reward someone with a drinking problem with an alcoholic beverage, and the fact that James doesn’t get that is probably why Lisa tells him, dramatically, “maybe your future isn’t at SUR.” I mean, yes. I don’t think anybody’s idea of a music career is DJing sh*tty brunches until the end of time, but I understand the note Lisa was trying to hit with that statement.

In Mexico, Lala has just gotten off the plane and is already pretending to rap and referring to herself in the third person. You could make a tortilla out of this girl, because she is CORNY.

Katie was apparently rage-texting Schwartz the whole flight. Simply because he did not sit with her. Even though if he had switched with Katie as she requested, they would have still been separated! Highlights from these texts included “Wowwwowwwoww”. Actually, that’s the only highlight. Any text that starts or ends in “Wowwowow” is not going to a good place.

Jax claims there are multiple places in his hotel suite where you can “feed the hog.” before I even ask it, a producer does it for me. I could have figured out from context clues, but it means banging. It’s truly the grossest euphemism for sex I’ve ever seen. Whose genitalia is the hog in this scenario? Do I even want to know? How can I return to a point in my life where I was blissfully unaware of this expression?

While everyone else enjoys beautiful Mexico, Schwartz and Katie are far from paradise. Katie does what my sister pulls on family vacations when she’s not getting her way, and acts like a complete emotional terrorist and refuses to let anyone be in a good mood because she herself is in a bad mood. She tells Schwartz she’s mad because she hasn’t seen him. Now, I don’t know where exactly in Mexico this group is, but I looked it up on Google, and flights from LAX to various airports in Mexico are AT MOST four and a half hours.

But it appears my in-depth journalism wasn’t necessary, because Schwartz clarifies that the flight was two and a half hours.

I really can’t recap the freakout, manipulation, and (dare I say?) gaslighting that is playing out between Katie and Schwartz. It seems like somebody has always got to be using their partner as an emotional punching bag on this show, and this season, Jax has passed that rusty torch to Katie. The only light in this otherwise dark, bleak display of a man being emotionally beaten down is Schwartz using the word “cacophony”, and using it correctly.

Katie has the nerve to call Tom “a little pathetic brain”, after he just used the word “cacophony” correctly, and in the heat of an argument, no less! Schwartz follows up by saying that Katie has the EQ of a 14-year-old. I have directed a search party in order to find the lie in Schwartz’s statement, but there is none to be found.

It’s at this point that I’m faced with a new feminist theory. I think I may end all my recaps this way from now on. I don’t know what it is about this show, but I couldn’t help but notice that this season, unlike in seasons past, the women are appropriating terms from the #MeToo movement, using them incorrectly to advance their own selfish agendas. Meanwhile, much of what we have seen is the women (Katie, Lala) acting abusive towards other women, but mainly the men bearing the brunt of that abuse (Schwartz, James). It is an interesting contrast (or at least it is to me). And it’s making me wonder: Are the Bravo producers Men’s Rights Activists looking to undermine women and undercut the #MeToo movement? Are they feminists seeking to bring a mirror to these women’s hypocrisy and misuse of the movement? Are they trolling us all, or are they simply letting the cameras roll, letting sh*tty people be sh*tty to each other, and I’m reading way too far into it?

You’re right, it’s definitely the last one.

Images: Giphy (2); Bravo