Photo: Trae Patton/Bravo
Be sure to bury the sinners in their ice skates because hell has frozen over. We find ourselves at a Bravo reunion where not only is Andy Cohen referring to Kristen Doute as the “voice of reason” but she kicks things off with an unsolicited apology to a castmate? The ground beneath me is shaking. Am I dreaming? Alas, no, this is the world we now live in, where Kristen kicks off The Valley reunion by apologizing to Janet for calling her a whore and threatening to “knock her out.” “I would never ever,” Kristen assures us, even though we’ve seen her do exactly that in the past. But that was the old Kristen Doute! Janet offers up kindness in return, saying she knows Kristen will be a great mom. This may be the quickest peace ever brokered in the history of Bravo reunions … but don’t worry, we’ve got plenty of drama elsewhere.
A wholesome little catch-up with Danny and Nia about their baby on the way fulfilling their “four under 4” prophecy, somehow turns to a conversation about Jax having unprotected sex. “I would not touch that dirty dick with a ten-inch pole,” Brittany says, though I do think she meant ten-foot pole. Jax fires back to say that’s not what she said “when they were at the aquarium.” Here’s the thing … nobody should ever be held accountable for what they might or might not have said at an aquarium. An aquarium brings out our worst impulses. Everything is blue shimmering mood lighting, you’re allowed to pet stingrays, it’s madness! But then, just when I was picturing this aquarium, Jax says this was actually said at a Hooters? Is there a Hooters at the aquarium? In any case, this leads to their sparring over who is or isn’t sleeping with porn stars. But I’m more concerned for the porn stars.
Luckily, Jax and Brittany can alternate their fighting with the other divorcing couple on the show, Jesse and Michelle. So while Jax and Brittany take a breather, we delve into the status of Jesse and Michelle’s divorce, which is where we learn Jesse plans to be his own lawyer. “I’ve watched Suits three times,” he says. Well, I’ve watched The Valley three times and that doesn’t make me a philanderer. But later in the conversation, he slips up and says he spoke to his attorney about something. “So you spoke to yourself?” Andy asks, before Jesse clarifies that he actually has a team of consultants.
The crux of their issue, at least right now, is how to handle their daughter, Isabella, regarding the new people each of them is dating. While they originally planned not to introduce Isabella to anyone new, Michelle says Jesse went back on this promise while still not wanting Isabella to meet Michelle’s boyfriend. He says it’s a gender thing, but everyone can agree that that’s a crock of shit and he simply got caught being a hypocrite. With these two a little ahead of Jax and Brittany in their split, Andy poses a great question, asking Jax how he thinks he’ll handle it when Brittany wants to introduce a man to Cruz. To his credit, Jax knows he won’t handle that well, and, if anything, Andy bringing this up seemed to be his trying to brace Jax to prevent a blowup of catastrophic proportions.
When the conversation turns to the infamous “Boys Chat,” we find out it originated at the wedding of Bubba and Bubba (a.k.a. Tom Schwartz and Katie Maloney). To think we were watching that event unfold on Vanderpump Rules and had no idea we would one day become all too familiar with a group chat being formed off-screen. After a poll of everyone on the reunion stage, we find out the only remaining participants are Jax and Jesse — Zach naturally exited the second a photo of a vagina was sent, and Danny was exiled for being a rat.
That said, Danny maintains he didn’t intend to spread that gossip (that Jesse said Michelle was sleeping with a billionaire for money) on-camera. He says he thought they’d already wrapped, but Janet wisely points out that he’s an actor and should know how mics work. For Jesse’s part, he says he regretted it the second he sent it. But what of the rumors about Jesse that Michelle was spreading, you may be wondering (if you’re Jesse)? Well, after Jesse denies what she said about his being broke, she asks who has been paying his rent … which makes him get really quiet all of a sudden. So I guess there’s our answer.
The conversation then turns from dark to darker, and it’s time to address Jax’s arc this season. Early on, many referred to this moment in Jax’s life as his “rock bottom,” but Jax’s whole life — for as long as I have born witness to it — has been rock bottom, and season after season he keeps grabbing the shovel to dig deeper. Let’s remind ourselves of the timeline here: Days before filming started, Jax and Brittany were separated but discussing reconciliation; that all changed when Jax discovered Brittany had been hooking up with their friend (and Lala’s ex) Julian, and Jax exploded, threw the coffee table at her, screamed, and (according to Brittany) threw her into the rosebushes.
Not that Brittany needs to provide any explanation for whom she was seeing while she and Jax were broken up, but she explains that Jax’s emotional abuse made her “lose her sparkle” and that after being body-shamed and discarded for years, she sought positive attention to help restore her confidence. To reiterate: Brittany doesn’t need to make excuses; she had every right to date or hook up with anyone she liked.
While that abusive outburst from Jax was what finalized the pair’s split, he says the inciting incident to all this mess was actually his firing from Vanderpump Rules. He blames that for his addiction issues getting out of control, and when it resulted in Brittany becoming the primary breadwinner, he began to resent her. Pause — we have to really dig into this.
We’re watching Jax manipulate in real time here, but he’s manipulating neither Brittany nor the audience. He’s trying to manipulate Bravo, or at least put the network in a corner. Clear throughout this reunion is that Jax knows he’s at risk of being fired from The Valley; he even says as much toward the beginning of the episode, admitting he was delaying his divorce proceedings until he knew his fate on the show and thus knew whether he would need alimony from Brittany. So we’re seemingly watching him make a last-ditch attempt to save his job by trying to guilt-trip Bravo. Since he says all of these anger, relationship, and addiction problems were the result of its firing him the first time, it sure shouldn’t do that to him again now that he’s finally trying to recover, right?
This comes up multiple times, and when asked why he decided to get help toward the beginning of the season, he reiterates that it was because his job and his son were on the line and that he can’t let either be taken away from him. They’re the two most important things in his life, he says. This is basically extortion that he’s artfully trying to pull off here by creating a narrative that Bravo would be to blame for whatever might happen if he were to get fired again. It’s crazy. And while he’s a master of manipulating a reunion stage, we as the audience are masters of watching him do just that and recognizing it in real time. Like Brittany, we aren’t falling for his tricks anymore.
For example: his continued assertion that alcohol and drugs weren’t his real problem but just a side effect of his anger issues. He seems to realize that claim isn’t playing well in the room, so he quickly abandons it, saying he has been sober for 156 days — from everything other than weed, which everybody is fine with. In fact, I think we should be encouraging Jax Taylor to smoke weed. Anything to make this man chill the fuck out.
As for all the other drugs, Brittany is staying on top of that with both random drug tests of her own and via a third party Jax visits every week. But she can’t help but wonder why, if he is sober, he’s still acting crazy. Specifically, she wants to know if he’s taking steroids because, at this point, that’s the only explanation. He denies it, but maybe she can go ahead and add a test for those to the list. Another thing to keep in mind is that maybe, just maybe, he’s acting crazy not because of a substance but because he’s crazy. In any case, the episode ends with his breaking down about going through all this in the public eye, and I’m sure it is. But maybe that’s exactly why it’s for the best that he’s leaving the show.
