Summer House Recap: Ex Marks the Spot

Filming one of these reality shows is definitely crazier than the Unabomber with Havana Syndrome. Even crazier is filming the show where two exes have to share the same space. Think about Ariana Madix trying to avoid Tom Sandoval for the better part of an entire season of Vanderpump Rules after he cheated on her and both ruined her life and set her career on fire. Or what about on Southern Charm when Madison LeCroy disinvited her ex, Austen Kroll, from the birthday party she planned for him after they broke up, but then he showed up anyway?

These are the situations that happen on reality shows but not in real life. When you break up with someone IRL, you just never see or hear from them again, and you can both go about your lives, occasionally using your finsta to check their vacation pics and see if there are any signs that their life is horrible. That doesn’t happen when you’re on a reality show together, and it’s even worse on Summer House, where they have to spend whole weekends living together. At least Austen could go home and cry in his own personal space; Carl has to go upstairs and cry in a room that is fitted with more cameras than an influencer brunch brought to you by Fashion Nova.

We have not just one of those situations this summer in the Hamptons (technically Sag Harbor), but two. It’s like Bravo should have paid a producer to just walk around the house saying “awwwwkwwwarrrrd” in the world’s most annoying voice every time two people have a conversation in a room. Of course, I’m talking about the bust-ups of two of our favorite couples, Larl and Wiara (or was it Cest?). Let’s look at Lindsay and Carl first, or at least at Carl, who arrives at the house sweatier than Drake five minutes before this year’s Super Bowl halftime show. He finds everyone in the pool and gives awkward hugs and introductions to everyone … except Lindsay. Kyle then quickly whisks him and the other boys off for some drinks to talk about Carl’s feelings in relative privacy, considering they are both in public and followed by a fleet of producers.

I was shocked that Carl didn’t give her a little “What’s up, Lindsay?” in the pool, if only so she couldn’t run to her room and say to Gabby, “Can you believe he didn’t even say hello to me?!” To her credit, she did refrain from that, though Gabby made fun of Carl’s enormous teeth. After the boys’ day, Carl is in the kitchen preparing dinner and Lindsay is cleaning up the dining room table. Kyle then gives him the signal that this is the time to talk to Lindsay. Carl isn’t even finished wiping his brow when he says “hello” to start a conversation so awkward that even Larry David was like, “I don’t know, it seems fake.” Carl says “congratulations on being pregnant”; she says, “thank you”; he apologizes multiple times for not saying anything earlier by the pool, but Lindsay stays calm and just keeps on cleaning as if nothing is happening. The whole scene is hard to watch until Lindsay leaves the room and walks by Kyle, who is still setting up his DJ rig, and says, “Kyle, you always gotta be eavesdropping when you’re pretending to do speaker stuff.” Busted!

This is pretty much the end of their interactions. At dinner, Lindsay leads the cheers to Carl for cooking steak for everyone, and then the next morning, she leads the cheers to Carl for picking up bagels for the house. Carl’s therapist is clearly a Jewish mother, because her advice seems to be, “Just keep everyone fed, and they will be fine.” For her part, Lindsay says she is totally over him and has moved on to a new guy and her new baby. Yeah, let’s see how she’s going to act later on in the summer when she’s forced to see her ex flirt with girls every weekend. I’m with Gabby; these two both need to have their heads (or, more likely, their career prospects) examined to see if they thought being in the house together this summer was a good idea. However, Lindsay acquitted herself well, much better than most viewers would have thought.

I do think this setup is good for Carl. As Lindsay says, he’s clearly still petrified of her, and he basically admits that, saying he must have been bright red and shaking the whole time he was talking to her. Carl is clearly not over the breakup and, if we’re going to dial it back a bit, clearly not over his brother’s death, his subsequent sobriety, his career changes, and just about everything that’s been happening in his life since the Wirkus Twins returned to whatever dark cave they crawled out of. Carl is a totally different person, but I think that having Lindsay here is good for him. Confronting her over the kitchen island every weekend morning for two months is going to help him get over this a lot faster than if he was just sweating alone in his Brooklyn apartment, wishing there was a sober bar he could go to. Carl is clearly avoidant, but there is no avoiding Lindsay, especially because she’s two rooms down, six months pregnant, and hasn’t had a good shit in weeks.

The other couple forced to reckon with the past is Cest, and, much like Larl, West is still petrified of Ciara. But this one is a little different. Carl is afraid of Lindsay, what she will say, and what she will do. (Having watched nine seasons of this show, I will respectfully say I am terrified of her too.) West isn’t afraid of Ciara; he’s afraid of hurting her more, incurring even more backlash, and being taunted by people online, just as he was after last season’s reunion. Carl is trying to fix his life, whereas West is trying to fix his reputation.

That is what Ciara is picking up on, and that is why she lets him have it with both barrels at the dining room table. (This place is cursed for Ciara. Was she in the exact same seat when she got into her fight with Danielle?) The conversation starts with everyone joking about how mature they are and saying that they can sit at dinner together. Kyle even goes so far as to get Ciara to make fun of West’s haircut right to his face. West and Ciara, who are across from each other, can’t even make eye contact. Ciara starts by saying she thought it was a “beta-ass move” for West to have an article published in the New York Times where he says, yet again, that he doesn’t like Ciara anymore.

After that, West says that they can have a conversation, meaning in private, but Ciara would rather do it publicly, get it out of the way, and cut off all the questions that everyone is going to have. Ciara continues to criticize his media strategy while calling him a loser and a bitch. West, who deals with conflict like a possum, does just what he did at the reunion and keels over deader than any gay when they hear Gaga’s “Chromatica II” to “911” transition. He thinks that if he plays dead, if he just lets the hate wash over him, then it will end, he won’t piss everyone off, people will still love him, and he’ll look like he was respecting a woman’s feelings.

That’s not the way it works. Immediately after dinner, the guys crowd around him and tell him that he has to say something. That being silent won’t make it go away. This is a good lesson for West and one of the good things about being on a reality-TV experiment like this. West has always been a guy who did well with the ladies, and he maybe, sometimes, occasionally took their feelings for granted. But because he could ghost them or escape them forever, he never had to reconcile their hurt feelings with his internalized identity as a “good guy.” Here is someone telling him the hardest thing to hear: that she’s hurt, that it’s his fault, and that maybe he isn’t as nice as he thinks he is.

The next day, he goes to Ciara’s room to chat and he’s wearing only his swimming trunks. I’m not sure I heard a thing that came out of his mouth because, wow, West is my ideal man. Don’t a single one of you tell Kyle! I am extremely attracted to West, and if a man who looks like he could both bench-press me and wants to eat Domino’s afterward showed up in his swim trunks for a chat, I would agree with everything he said as scenarios too outrageous for OnlyFans ran through my head.

But this is not about me and my lust! No, it is about Wiara. West apologizes. He says he was having a hard time dealing with all the backlash alone, and when someone gave him the chance to defend himself, he took it. He says if he knew she would be happier if he didn’t, then he would never have done that article. I truly believe that West wants to make things better with Ciara, both for his image, his fun time in the house, and because I think he still cares about her maybe just a little. He apologizes again and tells her he’s not trying to do anything wrong. She doesn’t smile, doesn’t concede any territory, but tells him that she’s over it, that she’s not cursing the day he was born (anymore), and hopes to have a good summer together.

However, something is belying Ciara’s frigidity during this conversation. That morning, she tells Paige that she had this big row with West at dinner and, afterward, she just wanted to make out with him. Oooooooohhhhhh. I get it. Ciara is still into him. Oh damn. This is going to be a lot longer of a summer than we thought.

And there lies the danger of getting into one of these relationships, especially for Ciara. She was very clear that she doesn’t date and/or hook up with anyone; she likes to take it slow and develop feelings. The problem is the slower those feelings develop, the deeper they get. The deeper they get, the harder they are to get rid of. The harder they are to get rid of, the more likely she is to be leaving a costume party to stuff herself in the bathroom with West as they’re tearing ridiculous outfits off each other.

With all of this going on in the house, why, oh why would Jesse Solomon (always both names) hurl himself at Lexi with the velocity of a gold medal javelin throw? He’s joking with the guys about how he’s in love with her, but he is totally super in love with her after only two days. He DM’d her to get her number, she sends it while they’re away at guys’ day, and he FaceTimes her in the car on the ride home. All of the other dudes are aghast at Jesse’s lack of game until Lexi tells him to go straight to her room when he gets home and he gives her a huge koala hug. Are you sure you wanna hug like a koala? Like don’t 90 percent of koalas have chlamydia?

He gives her that hug when he gets home, and the two end up having a pretty deep chat. We learn more about Lexi, including that her dad is, well, he’s totally hot. Also, her parents got married when they were 21, and she’s 26 now. So if we do a little bit of girl math, carry the 1, subtract 7, divide by 2, it seems like … Lexi’s dad and I are probably the exact same age, and I am now dead from Reality-Television-Induced Sadness. (If you or someone you love is suffering from symptoms of RTIS, please visit ICantBelieveBravoDidThisToMe.org.) Jesse tells her about his cancer, she tells him about her best friend’s death a year ago, and then, with all of that talk of cancer and death setting the mood, they have an adorable little make-out where she somehow manages not to get any makeup on either Jesse or the comforter. Oh, cute! A new couple to root for. Well, until next season when they’re on here calling each other losers over surf and turf. Then they’ll really know what it’s like to share everything with the public, just like Larl.