Southern Charm Recap: Phone a Friend

I’m just gonna say it: the show did JT dirty with what he may or may not have said about Venita at his local tonsorial parlor. Well, if not the show, then at least all the people in it, all the people surrounding it, the fine, upstanding barbers of Charleston, and just the whole culture of reality television. Did JT probably help a little bit? Sure. But at least, like a Bonnie Raitt song, it gave us something to talk about it.

The rest of this episode might have been called Madonna’s face because it is full of the worst kind of filler on this earth. Not even Salley’s plastic surgeon, who is removing both of her breast implants as well as her extraneous E, could fix this mess. Speaking of him, wasn’t it weird how into her breasts he seemed to be in that consultation? I don’t know; if I was a lady and wanted to get my boobs done, I’d go to a lady surgeon. Sure, a male surgeon will pimp you out for the dudes, but a lady surgeon is going make you look amazing for all the right people: all the other women who are going to die of jealousy over your new body.

We followed Salley to the doctor’s office, but we didn’t do much else. We watched Rodrigo find out he had a $500 poker chip in his bag and now he’s going to have to mail it to Sienna and hope she Venmos him. We saw Molly and Taylor take their dogs out for a walk, and the only thing I could think about during the whole scene is that whoever invented the concept of a “Pup Cup” at a coffee place or ice cream parlor is a marketing genius and they’re probably not even seeing a dime from their innovation. Shep talked about getting his heart broken while unpacking a backpack that looks like he stole it from the poorest hippie at the worst hostel in Prague. There wasn’t that much happening.

We got some movement on the Craig and Austen front, mostly them talking about how Craig is now identifying as an addict. I’m happy that Craig is on a recovery journey, but it seems like he went from not talking about it at all to having a story about his “bottom” (I have stories about my bottom, and they all feature Rodrigo) and an app where he tracks his days of sobriety. It was a little strange to me that both Craig and Paige thought that Austen should have picked up on Craig not drinking sooner than he did and connected the dots with his addiction issues. I think that’s a little bit unfair. Craig was giving every other reason why he didn’t want to hang out with Austen and (if I remember correctly) explicitly said it wasn’t about the drinking. I think that Austen just couldn’t coordinate the mixed signals he was getting. It’s how he behaves now that he knows about it that matters, and he seems to be sensitive.

Austen goes to hang in Craig’s backyard with him and Paige, who is down to film the finale next weekend and gossips with Madison in the bathroom for about an hour. Oh! Speaking of Madison, it turns out Brett doesn’t have cancer and is mostly in good health. Thank the Catholic Jesus, because we can’t have a man that fooooooiiiiinnnneeee (I believe that is the scientific term) getting sick. So, Paige and Craig are chilling in the backyard, and Paige says all that she does is hang out and eat. Craig tells her she loves it, and she rolls her eyes so hard that she blows the front gate of the community where Craig lives as the single working father to a whole hive of bees. We saw a couple of little instances where they were getting annoyed with each other, and Austen, in confessional, says he thinks their relationship isn’t as stable as Craig would let on. I wonder how far along those were added in the breakup process. Are these just road markers to show us that the breakup wasn’t out of the blue, or are they trying to fill in the blanks? Unclear, but I’m sure we’ll get Craig’s side of the story in next week’s finale while we watch Paige’s side of the story play out on Summer House.

The biggest event of the episode is what happened between Venita, JT, Ryan, and Leva, our only reality television personality allowed to WFH full time. Ryan calls Venita and says that he uses the same barber as JT, and the barber tells him that JT said “some Black girl” is flirting with him, and it’s going to piss off his girlfriend. Venita is naturally very upset about this, so she calls Leva and tells her the story. Leva says she needs to get JT’s side of the story, so she goes to meet him for a coffee. You know it’s an emergency when even Leva is like, “No, this meeting can’t be an email.”

When they meet, Leva tells him the story, but she says JT said, “Some Black girl is trying to get me to break up with my girlfriend,” which is again different from what Ryan said and what Venita said. Yes, this is a classic game of telephone. JT is naturally upset about this and the implication that he would call Venita “some Black girl.” Leva tells him to get the barber on the phone, which is super fucking cringe, but JT does it. When he asks the barber if he said anything like that, the barber, who clearly couldn’t have been coached about any of this, says no. The barber says that he asked JT what was up with the show, and he told him that he had some interest from a “cute Black girl named Venita.”

The thing about JT is that he is a dork, a doofus, a dweeb, a noodge, a nerd. He’s all of those things and more. What he is not, however, is a bad person or a liar. Everyone knows he wouldn’t call Miss Pat a “bitch,” and everyone knows that he wouldn’t call Venita “some Black girl.” So why does he always end up defending himself? Two things are at play here, and the first and lesser of them is because of JT himself. He is a man who is careless with his words, and I believe he doesn’t understand the extent to which people are listening to him, especially now that he’s on a reality TV show. For example, when he calls Venita back at the end of the episode to apologize, he says, “Because I love you.” So, this guy with a girlfriend who also admits that he and Venita have feelings for each other is so careless to say “I love you” to her on the phone? Come on dude! That is the kind of behavior that opens him up to these situations.

JT clearly should not have been talking to the show with strangers or even people like his barber who aren’t associated with it. I know exactly what happened, and it’s just a game of telephone. JT said what he said about Venita; one of the other barbers overheard it; he puts a little sauce on the story and says, “Oh, JT was just in here talking about how some Black girl is trying to break up his relationship.” Ryan takes that and runs to Venita. Then, it becomes a story on the show because Ryan brought it up on camera, and it didn’t happen.

In the epic finale of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, Heather Gay tells the women that they have to stop letting these outside forces onto the show, and she’s exactly right here. Everyone involved in this should have questioned whether or not JT would have said it, whether or not the source is credible, and whether or not what he said could have been misinterpreted. Now we have a whole story about JT that, even on its face, isn’t believable, and they’re going with it. Why? Well, there is a show to make. Also, JT is so annoying they want to believe this thing is true when it clearly is not. Yes, I want things a little bit more interesting than Salley’s trip to the doctor, but JT is right to want off this show that seems hellbent on destroying his reputation for drama that isn’t even that good and can be squashed quicker than Craig’s sad little beehive.