Vanderpump Rules Recap: 3 Dollar Bills

Guys, I feel really bad for James’s friend Logan, the lead character in an all-gay remake of the movie Cars. I do think that he’s really in love with James and I think that James egged him on the whole time and didn’t care about his emotions at all. Do I think that James is actually gay? No. Do I think that, as Tom Schwartz said, that there is a “77 percent chance that part of James’s penis has been in Logan’s mouth”? Maybe. Do I think that James is such a sad black hole of need that he would egg on the amorous advances of a young homosexual because he needs the attention and validation that come along with them? Absolutely.

That’s the saddest part about this whole story: James has been stringing along an unsuspecting kid who was probably really in love with him and made him admit to being a liar on national television. Oh, poor Logan. I want to go over his house with a full bottle of Svedka, a Morgan McMichaels T-shirt, and a pint of Big Gay Ice Cream’s Blueberry Gobbler and just let him cry his eyes out while we listen to his favorite Ariana Grande playlist on Spotify. That’s how bad I feel for him.

But we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves. So, everyone is at the birthday party for SUR manager Peter, a man who once stole a gypsy’s lunch from the communal break room and she cursed him with a lifetime of bad haircuts. Kristen surprises Brittany by not only flying her mom, Sherri, out to L.A., but also her sister Tiffany, who shows up at the party. The least shocking thing in the entire world is that Brittany has a sister named Tiffany. The only thing surprising at all is that Tiffany’s name does not end in an i.

Apparently, at the end of the night, Logan and Tiffany end up in the same Uber on the way to another club and Logan tells her that he and James are sleeping together. How is all of this gossip coming from Tiffany? It’s like the seventh-tier players on this show got together and decided to stage some coup to actually make all the drama. Who do we have to thank for everything that is happening this season? People like Logan, Tiffany, Faith, Jen, and Lala’s boyfriend who we’ve never even seen. Tiffany has been with us for one episode and has somehow managed to do more than Stassi has done this entire year.

The funny thing about this group is that every one of them — including James’s ex, Kristen — believes that James has totally hooked up with Logan. Second of all, none of them actually care that he might be parking his car at Salami Junction. (That is a stupid euphemism for being gay that I just invented and I am already ashamed.) They only care that he might be cheating on his girlfriend Raquel, a sentient LuMee iPhone case. When he finally tells her about the big rumor, she says in her inimitable low-pitched, affectless whine, “The whole world is claiming to have had sex with James Kennedy.” To which he answers, “The whole world wants to have sex with James Kennedy.” All of the eyes in America rolled so hard that they fell out of the sockets and rolled down the street and are now clogging all the storm drains and causing urban flooding.

Eventually, James goes over to see Brittany and Tiffany, the best Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling tag team act that never was, and they tell him what Logan said. James calls Logan and asks him about the incident, but doesn’t tell him the girls are there, like some eighth-grade phone trick where you have someone else on the line waiting to ambush them with the truth of whether or not you passed Justin a note during Industrial Arts.

Logan tells James that he said it, but it was a lie because he was so jealous of James’s relationship with Raquel, the last surviving Jordache purse. That is so awful. That is so awful that I wept tears of real sadness, like someone just told me that I can never again watch this video of a girl’s new favorite toy flying into the fire on Christmas day. It seems like this is the end of James’s relationship with Logan, his dalliance on the other side of Eggplant Lane (sorry again), and possibly his story line for the rest of the season.

Finally, Brittany’s sister and mother leave her alone with Jax and, ugh, this is just the worst thing I have ever witnessed on a reality-television program. I find all of this Brittany and Jax stuff really hard to tolerate because we know that they’re still together, so all of this posturing from her family and Brittany about how they’re broken up is just disgusting. I mean, what about that dinner Jax has with Sherri and Tiffany? He basically tells them that the reason he sleeps with other girls is because Brittany is fat and unmotivated. As Sherri says, “What exactly are you doing with your time?” He’s a 40-year-old practitioner of the reality-television arts who can’t take steroids anymore because his testicles are completely gone. What sort of future does he have for himself?

He’s just so easily diagnosed and projecting all of his negative emotions about himself onto everyone around him that, like, three sessions with a psychology app would fix him forever, but he refuses to do that. Instead, he talks about how he hates himself and how he’s a bad person and how that is enough to convince the women of the world not to kick him to the curb. Sure, he hates himself, but he’s never hated himself so much that he’s willing to change.

A couple of other things come out of Peter’s party as well. First of all, everyone gets really freaking wasted really freaking fast. How did that even happen? What are they drinking? Or maybe just a life of subsisting on animosity and Flat Tummy Tea leaves one very susceptible to getting drunk very quickly. Lala, the world’s angriest feminist, decides this is the moment where she’s going to get “all the pussies to stand together in pussy solidarity” or something and quell the animosity between Scheana and Katie. Man, that is like trying to create peace in the Middle East or at least trying to arrange a family reunion for the Gallagher brothers.

I am loving this new Lala, don’t doubt, but, like she pointed out, she’s the one who started this whole cascade of events by talking about how Schwartz was making out with another woman while married to Katie as retaliation for Katie saying that Lala’s boyfriend pays her rent. (Which he does.) So it seems like she’s not really practicing what she preaches. Lala, don’t preach. You’re in trouble, deep.

Anyway, Katie and Scheana end up in a screaming match where Scheana calls Katie fake and Schwartz, for the only time ever, defends his wife by saying that Scheana is the fakest person around. Just look at her nails, he says! She just wants to take selfies, he says! She’s a “bootleg Kardashian,” he says, which is a burn so sick that all of the gloopy green aloe gel in all of Seaside Heights, New Jersey, won’t soothe it for even a second. If there is one thing you could say to completely eviscerate Scheana and lay her limp-haired persona complete bare, it’s that.

After the party, everyone was so wasted that they shuffled down the precariously steep stairs where the party was being held. Tom Schwartz, Tom Sandoval, and Peter were walking to their cars when they saw someone wearing a flesh-sack shirt curled up on the ground between the cars. “Logan, man,” Sandoval said. “What’s going on? Why are you crying?”

“James left with his girlfriend,” he said, wiping the tears away with the back of his hand and raising himself up to his knees.

“Well, it is his girlfriend,” Schwartz said.

“I know,” Logan said, taking a breath to sniffle up his snot. “But I love him so much. I don’t know. I don’t know what to do without him.”

“I have an idea,” Peter said. “Something that will cheer you up.” He looked down and pushed his shoulders back a bit so he could get a good view of his midsection. He started to fiddle with his belt a little bit, and then undid it. He unlatched the top button of his jeans with a barely audible pop and the other buttons followed in a quick ripple. He started to palm the growing mound in his black boxer briefs while biting his lip and looking at Logan. “It might be my birthday, but I think it’s gonna be your lucky day.”

Sandoval took his cue and had his belt open and his pants down faster than he could do double dutch at a boxing gym. Schwarz tried to join in the fun, but struggled with the simple mechanics of getting his drawers open. Logan looked up, his eyes quickly drying, and took three steps on his knees towards Schwartz. “Please,” he said. “Let me.” And as he braced one palm against Schwartz’s stomach and pulled the loose end of his belt strap with the other, a smile spread over Schwartz’s face like a pat of butter slowly oozing over the top of warm pancakes.

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