Bros & Shows - The Gang Goes to Lake Tahoe (Vanderpump Rules Full Recap)

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

What's up Bros?! We are in Tahoe with the Vanderpump crew, adnd it is our first episode with Tom back in the fold. Early in the episode we hear Ariana stating that anyone that buddies back up with Tom, she won't be friends with. Meanwhile the rest of the group sans Katie is getting ready for a trip with Tom to Tahoe. James introduced Graham Cracker (aka Hippie) to Ally, and having Rachel's dog added to the equation is just adding to the chaos of this season. Schwartz is hopeful that this trip will reunite the group in some capacity, but will it help Schena and Brock communicate better? We get a couple scenes in which Brock yells at Scheana, one time in public, and clearly they are having some difficulties. It does seem that they lighten up on Tom in Tahoe, but Sandoval still has some need to "get his side heard". Instead of just apologizing and taking accountability. He and James have a sit down chat finally, and we may have actually gotten the first semi genuine Tom apology ever. In his whole life. Time Stamps: Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I shine just fine. Hi, I'm Karma. And yes, I am a bitch. Brov Bros. Good evening, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Brov Bros. Your favorite podcast from The Bros for everybody. For whoever wants to listen, I am your co-host, Steele Russell. joined as always by the one and only Scootin' Magoutes.

What's up, Scoots? We had a pizza party. We did have a pizza watch party. A Vanderpump pizza party, I might add. Oh, yeah, throw it in there. The boys, uh, let's just say we played with some dough. Yep, we sure did. Sure did.

And, uh, we made some pizza and we sat down and got to watch VPR together. It was just a lovely evening. We did have a lovely evening. I broke out the Oonie, you know, I got that propane John, that shit. If you don't, this is even a... Shout out of it. Yeah, we're not sponsored by them at all, but if you want a high-quality pizza oven at your house, the propane uni, I use it for like my private dinners and shit and people love the pizzas. So, uh, also shout out Fran Zones because Fran Zones gives me the dough. I know him. He works out at the gym that I work at. And, uh, if you don't know Fran Zones is in the area, it's a fantastic place. So go to Fran Zones. A couple of free plugs there. A couple of free plugs. Uh, I mean, other than that, I know I was complaining about it being cold and crappy out for the last couple of days.

of weeks. It's finally warm again, and I immediately regret my decision because my allergies are right back where they were six months ago. Oh, really? Oh, are you taking like Zyrtec or anything? I take it all. You take it all? Just give me everything. Just, yeah, it is. Honestly, it's a full-on cocktail. It's just everything. Well, as shooters said, we got to sit down together and watch some VPR, so we're going to get into that tonight. I have a lot of thoughts on this episode. I saw some brighter spots for this season, potentially. It was not an action package. episode, but there were some things if you look in between where it points in a

direction in which this might actually be a more enjoyable season than I'm currently thinking it's going to be. Yeah, you and Steele and his full-on, like, monotone just looks over before the episode and goes, well, we'll just find out how the season's going to go right now. I think so.

I definitely think that this episode was the pinnacle of, will this season be able to be entertaining? Or are we going to see more of the same shit from each single episodes that's all we've seen thus far you can't tell me it's been a good season so far no it definitely hasn't uh it's been rather boring mostly annoying frustrating and really nothing else matters except for the sandoval of at all yeah yeah it was i think this episode was a good turning

point overall for various reasons i mean we're going to be able to see how people are going to move forward from this luckily tom did get to a point where at least it seemed like he had a real conversation with someone so hope for the future that's a that's a all I'm saying. There is hope. We have a little bit of hope. But I am sorry about your allergies. I mean, like, cut you off about your allergies. Yeah, it just seemed like you didn't care. No, I do care. I just wanted to let our listeners know what we're talking about this afternoon, this evening. But my allergies are fine. So thank you for checking with me. I was outside today actually doing yard work, and that was lovely. I haven't been able to get out there in a long time. I have a problem, though, when I do yard work.

I do a lot. Whistle? No, whistle while you work? No, I don't. I don't. I don't. I listen to music but I tend to do a lot in a little bit of time because I see things I'm like oh I'm going to do that it's like I have oh yeah yeah yeah so I cut down three trees and raked all of the leaves out of the perimeter of my yard and now they're just two big piles of leaves in the middle of my yard three trees in the corner of my yard that are cut in pieces and I burned my Christmas tree because my recycling people refused to pick it up yeah that's a lot yeah that was my ADD yard work I was two hours of yard work yeah so that was I I understand. I do understand that. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, I do that with a lot of things.

Just like cleaning. It's like, oh, yeah, this needs to be cleaned. I'll stop cleaning my kitchen and go to the bathroom. It's just ADD. It's yard ADD cleaning ADD. But that's what I did today. And my allergies were not a problem. But it was lovely to get back outside. The seasons are turning. Thank God. Seasonal depressions going out the window. It feels great. I will get one more snowstorm. I'm okay with one more snowstorm. I'm not okay with like one deep freeze where, like, do you remember last year everything bloomed? And then we had a hard freeze, everything died. Oh, yeah, that killed me. I forgot about that one. Yeah, that was miserable.

I'm just hoping that we don't get one more snowstorm or one more miserable weather day on March 6th at our show. Plug it up. Oh, you want me to continue? Yeah, I just wanted to start it off. I was such a good intro. You can't just, like, carry it through. No, you were going to pick it up. Oh, no, no.

Picking up what I'm putting down. Because you caught me off guard as well. That's how good of a plug it was. Oh, hell yeah. Maybe this is the secret. This is the problem. I've been starting the plugs. Hey, no.

I have been doing the plugs, and I am admittedly not good at it. It's a tough job, but I mean, I'll try my best. Next Wednesday, March 6th, City Winery, there's a few tickets left. Not really many. And we know the week of everybody's going to run and go get their ticket. Why don't you get ahead of it? Why don't you do it right now while you're listening to this episode? You can multitask.

We just talked about multitasking when we're not supposed to be multitasking. You can multitask. Listen to the episode. Go get your tickets. get an entire table, bring your family, bring your friends, bring whoever wants to go. You see somebody out on the street, give them a ticket. Let everybody, oh, you know what, actually, I don't want those people in there. I only want true fans of the podcast in there.

You know, I don't want to be heckled on stage by someone who doesn't know what the hell's going on. Yeah, don't bring some randos. Bring the fans. Bring the fans, bring everybody in. And while you're at it, you could get tickets to our next show. That's Friday, May 3rd, down in D.C., union stage. That's a bigger area. So you can get down there.

You can do a little traveling, maybe see the sights. I heard D.C. is beautiful in May. They got a little cherry blossom going on down there. Oh, nice. Check it out. See some historical sites. Go see the bros on Friday night at Union Stage. And then what can you do after that?

You can go up to Boston in June. June 14th. I think I'm going to do the plugs from now on. I think this is great. I see nothing wrong with any of this. June 14th, that's another Friday up at Boston. Again, very small venue. 70 seats, that's going to sell out a lot quicker than all the other ones.

So maybe you wait until the last minute for some of them. You can't do that with Boston because everybody's excited to see us up in Boston. We've got a lot of people DM in us. Everybody's DM in us. Everybody's coming to Boston. So we're going to be up there in June. Make sure you get your ticket for that as well. But focus on next week because that's coming very soon.

Make sure you're off the next day because we have a lot of fun. And even if you're not drinking, you're going to be hung over from all the laughs. Yeah, I will tell you right now, as somebody that does not drink, the day after our live shows is the closest to hungover. that I feel in my sobriety. It's a bizarre feeling. I think it's the adrenaline come down. I don't know what it is, but I wake up.

I feel like I'd hit by a truck. And you can feel like that, too. So go get those tickets. As Shooter said, the link is in our bio to purchase. We're super excited for next week. We're getting all gassed up, geared up, picking out outfits, all that stuff. Do you have your outfit yet? I do not.

I'm going to go to the mall this weekend. Yeah, I'm not sure what I'm doing yet. I have an idea of what kind of vibe I'm going for. Okay. I think you do too. No, fuck no. I know the vibe I'm going for. Yeah, I've worked through it.

I just need to find, you know, I've got to put it together. Got to put it together. Put it together. But without further ado, let's dive into why we're all here, what we're here to talk about. And that is Vanderpump rules. And like I said, this was a better episode than we've seen. I don't think it was, like, amazing, but it gave me a lot more hope of like, okay, we can look at this. We can look at that.

There was different angles other than Tom Sandival, Tom. Sandoval, Tom Sandoval. It's still very Sandoval-centric, but I think it's impossible not to be for the entire season just because of what happened. But we saw some leeway with some of the other castmates. We saw some people finally giving in a little bit. We also saw some drama amongst some of the other castmates, i.e. Sheena and Brock. So there are other things going on. I enjoyed them being in Tahoe. Tahoe is just a beautiful place, period. So I like watching people party there. But this gave me hope. Yeah, it definitely gave me hope. just watching this back, but

that's the thing. I know that a lot of people are pissed off and they don't want anybody to interact with Tom because of what he did, and that's rightfully so. That makes a lot of sense in a normal friend group, but on TV, we can't do this the entire season. We can't do this from here on out. If nobody wants to interact with him, if nobody wants

to talk to him, that's all they're going to do. That's all they're going to talk about is, oh yeah, I saw Tom at this place and I didn't talk to him. Did you talk to him? Like, no, it's going to get really boring. We need people to slowly let him back in because inevitably he's going to do something terrible and piss everybody else off again.

So we need that to happen because that's what should happen. That's what's going to make good TV. So that's what I think we're kind of setting ourselves up for right now is at least at the end of this episode, you see the conversation with him and James. Somebody has to be the first domino to fall. Yeah. And we, you know, you could argue that maybe it was Brock, maybe it was Sheena.

I would say, it was Schwartz, but I don't think he even counts. He's not a domino. No, he's playing checkers. He's playing a completely different game. Yeah, he's not even there. No, we need people to start letting him back in and, I guess, trust him a little bit for him to make himself, for him to make a complete ass out of himself once again so that everybody can realize, oh, yeah, he's a piece of shit. See, but I think that he's going to get to a place with at least some of the people in the group where he will do something dumb. I mean, we're watching him do dumb shit right now. And that's honestly, not to sidebar it, but watching this episode, especially the end of the episode,

made me even more so, and I said it last week, like had he just not done what he's done recently, like in the last couple of months, or the last month, he would be in a totally different space right now because you're seeing people able to move forward on the show we're getting tired of the same shit over and over again as viewers. There would have been a,

it may not be like the classic Bravo redemption arc where at the end of the season, you know, champion this person. Yeah. But tolerate. Like, that's all we're, really need out of Sandoval in this season is just to be able to tolerate it i don't think i'll ever be able to i didn't really tolerate him to begin with no no he annoys the shit out of me as it is say it more so like watching the cast tolerate so that we right okay all right without constantly being like

out and here we go we're fighting about scandal again and that's the funny thing about this episode going into it i had seen that there was a tom and tom watch party at schwartz and sandies which one amazing that place is still open and hasn't rebranded two tom and tom and tom watch with fans together and inviting people in to come watch the show with them, that told me immediately that this must be a quote-unquote good Tom episode. Yeah, you called that before we started watching. It has to be. There's no chance because we've heard rumblings about him being at, you know, the VPR premiere party

from a couple of our friends that were there. We've heard him in different public settings for different VPR things, and he shies away from all the attention. Why would he now be inviting people to come watch the show with him? He is a manipulator. He's a narcissist. This is something that he's going to do because clearly this episode makes him look good.

So now he's able to walk back into a public forum and be like, hey, we'll have to see. I'm going to keep an eye on that because obviously if it does well tonight and Schwartz and Sandies makes a lot of money, they're going to want to keep doing it. If Tom is there for certain episodes and not there for certain episodes, we'll be able to tell which are the

good ones and which are the bad ones before they are. That's really funny. I guarantee they keep doing. There's no way that people didn't go to that. Whether they were there to like see the Tom's or to, like, shame Tom Sandoval or just to, like, see the circus act in person? I don't know, but there's no way that that place wasn't jam-packed tonight for that.

It's incredible that he's even showing his face in public after what he did last week at the New York Times. But, yeah. Like, that's the other thing is just, like, he's so tone-deaf. Like, he, what, he put out a little apology on Instagram saying, hey, you know, that's not really what I meant. Again, not apologizing for saying any of the things that he said. Just saying, you know, it was misconstrued.

Like, that's not an apology. Now he's showing his face. he clearly doesn't realize that anything, going back to cheating on Ariana, anything that he does is completely wrong. He thinks that there's two sides to every story or two sides to either dime. If you listen to our episode yesterday, you know what that means. Those are the ways that he thinks about his setting in life moving forward anyway. So, yeah, well, I'll keep an eye on that one.

Boots on the ground. We'll report on that. Yeah, that's an interesting premise. Maybe I'll fly out to L.A. and go to Tom and Tom thing. Okay, let me know how that is. I'll be here. You don't want to come? Nope, not at all.

But let's start the episode. We get to James and Graham, and they're driving what I'm naming the Batmobile, and they're zipping around. He's getting ready to introduce Graham to Allie. Now, there's a lot of aspects to this that are very interesting because, one, you're bringing a dog into a house with a cat. They had previously discussed getting a dog,

but Allie's like, you know, we've just got to make sure that we're ready. Here's a rescue dog that used to be James and Raquel's dog. What's up, Allie? And that's who's walking back into the house. And I think that this is also, we've seen Allie throughout the season and throughout last season. Like, she is cool, calm and collected. She looks at everything fairly pragmatically, which I really appreciate. I really like Allie and what she's brought to the show.

And even in this instance, she's pretty calm. Like, I think there's a lot of scenarios in which a significant other brings home a dog, especially if it's an ex-dog. Yeah, and that's the other thing. I kind of want to ask you this. Just a little peek behind the scenes. Do you think that he gave her a heads up that he was coming? back with Graham. I did not. No. I don't think he did either. I really don't. Because I can see,

and that's the thing with James in this relationship in general, it's a little different than, it's a lot different than a lot of his relationships. I could see him still at his core wanting this to be a big surprise. And he's so excited about this that he imagines Allie will be as well, which she's not very excited about it. But she is very comical and collected and at least going to sit there and talk to him. And that's the conversation that they have talking about how Lisa rescued him. And there's always like the overlaying factor of if this doesn't work out, he's going to have to go back to Lisa and then find a home. Right. And they both said that.

So at least that's good. I mean, you didn't get the normal James sticking his head in the ground and saying, no, I'm keeping this dog no matter what. So I thought that was nice. No, it is progress. And I think you can see progress with James in this relationship to a certain extent. And I say that with a grain of salt because I feel like he is always one bad altercation away from like DJ James Kennedy blowing up and saying something. Dalman throwing a drink in somebody's face. So I don't want to give him too much credit.

I'm more giving the credit to Allie here because clearly she's good for him in some way, shape, or form because we are seeing a bit of a different James Kennedy. Well, that's the other thing, too. She is also very big into astrology and healing crystals, and I had said

during the show, well, that's cool. If you date a girl like that, you can just tell her, yeah, you know, this was meant to be. It was written in the stars, of course. You have to accept it. He was meant to come back to me. this is this is astrology babe god i wish he did that

it's ace in the hole but we did get a scene with katy and ariana and they're talking about something about her and look the saga of something about her it's confusing we had or we were on with david yontiff the other day and he said that he was in l.A. and walked by it

and it is still in shambles there's no real direction to this place now i don't know what the deal is they're talking about it being a page issue, which as we know, they put the patio in originally, the patio didn't meet all these permits or they needed permits for it. And now they need a bunch of other permits. It seems to just be kind of going in circles. And they haven't made any progress to this day. I'm curious. Like, to me, I don't think it's so much a, like a huge issue. I just think that they

have other shit that they're focused on. What's your take on this? It's kind of a funny take on this, actually. There's a lot of parallels to Schwartz and Sandy. There is, which is, which is fucking hysterical. Like, you've got Katie just sitting behind working on the sandwich shop, and Ariana's out with Chicago. Oh. And she's doing Broadway, like, out there with her little band. Life imitates art.

And she was on Dancing with the Stars, just like Special Forces. Like, there are, it is kind of funny. Like, obviously, they're not direct parallels. One's the big leagues and the other one's the minor leagues. One's super sad and depressing. Yeah. The other one is exciting and happy. So, yeah.

You know, not the same parallels, but that is my thought right away. And look, I think this is something that they came up with together, obviously, before all of Scandival. They both made out really well as far as merch goes, as far as probably money for the show goes. So they don't have to figure it out. It's not like super pressing. But if you still want to do it, then tell people that you want to do it. Like, we don't hear anything from the two of them about when they're going to open or if they're making, they're making any plans or any headway on opening. It's just kind of there.

It's just like a, it's just a space that has nothing going on for it. in L.A., so you're just paying for that at this point. So I don't really understand any of it, but if they don't want to do it anymore, then they can probably just sell it. It's not that big of a deal. Well, I mean, they don't sell it. They just give up the lease.

Yeah. Well, they probably sell, like, the equipment and stuff. Oh, well, that, well, I don't know. I mean, it's very confusing. I'm not nearly as stuck on it as other people seem to be. I don't really give a shit. Like, if they open it, great. If they don't, they seem to have enough going on elsewhere that they don't need to.

So I guess we'll see. We'll see what plays out. I wonder if Katie wants to open it, though, because obviously she doesn't have as much going on as Ariana does. No, but clearly she has enough going on to where she's not, like, hurting for money. So it's not like, I have yet to see anybody on either side, whether it be Ariana or Katie, speak out and be like, I need to get this shit done. Like, they seem to just not really care about the timeline. So I'm curious as to what the timeline is.

Are they just like in a place where they're both like, yeah, we're going to get it done? We know we're going to get it done. We're not going to waste our time talking to people about it because we have our own timeline. Things are moving in a certain direction. maybe it's as simple as that. Maybe it's not this deep conspiracy theory that people keep trying to figure out like, what's going on with the sandwich shop?

It should be as simple as if they don't care that we don't care. I don't care. And there we go. Yeah. All right, cool. Figured it out. Moving on.

We get the Tom's and they're shopping for Tahoe. And this is going to get annoying. If every time somebody brings up something about Rachel or Raquel, Tom goes, yeah, I knew that. Yeah, I knew that too. Yeah, I knew she was changing her name to Rachel. I knew that before you guys knew that. It's not a big deal.

I think about this hat. Yeah, I was really addicted to this hat. Dude, the fucking, him flexing in the mirror and, like, posing, like, he's, like, a backup dancer for boys to men or something. Like, I don't know what the hell he was doing over there. He went back and put that hat on, then put it back down, then walked over, then picked up another knife, and then went back and put the hat back on. Like, dude, just buy the fucking hat at this point.

Buy the hat. Stop flexing in the mirror. Just save me. And my biggest thing, like, during this scene is, and I wonder if we're going to get this all season long, where he's still trying to paint this picture of he had every intention of getting back with Rachel when this was all said and done. And I don't know if that's damage control. I don't know if his PR team told him that. I don't know if that was just his game plan after he left New Zealand. Like, all I'm going to push this narrative because we saw the reunion. We saw the aftermath

of the reunion. We saw leading up to the reunion. Like all signs pointed to he was done. Like he even said something about it. Like they're not in love anymore while they're at the reunion. So this to me is why it's so hard to give him any kind of grace because he constantly shoots himself in the foot. And I can't believe anything that he says. So as he's saying all this stuff, I'm like, this doesn't track for me. This doesn't make sense because if you really gave a shit, then you would have shown that prior to being back on camera. And you really didn't. You're telling us that you messaged her and texted her and all these different things. Meanwhile, the proof that we do have is you on stage making fun of her.

in your songs. So, like, which side is it? Because I don't believe him for a second. I think that he found a way to try to push his own redemption arc via, oh, man, I was in love with her. and now she won't take me back after we burn the world down and we still can't be together. Like, that's, I mean, that's 100% what he's doing. Yeah, that's what I figure.

And you can tell because, no, I don't believe him when he says he knew that she was going by Rachel. How'd you figure that one out? Like, you're texting her. She's not responding. Right. You're texting her, you're a text returning green. So you're not getting through to her because she was.

She's in a treatment facility, not answering the phone. We haven't heard anything about the letters that were being sent back and forth, like all that shit that we heard over the summer. Postcards and shit. The postcards and stuff. Ariana confirmed that the postcards were at least somewhat recent because she said that he had just sent, or she had just sent something to the house not that long ago from filming. So at some point, like she cut off communication.

I would love to know when that was. Like, what was the date? Also, she was in for, this is where none of this adds up. So there's no way that he knew that she had changed her name back to Rachel because he hadn't heard from her while she was towards the tail end of her treatment facility. Now it was two months, right, 60 days? So this news headline came out. Who do you think it came from?

Rachel. Yeah. So you haven't talked to her in weeks. She didn't text you for your birthday, but the news headline came out. Nobody sits on this. I mean, one, Schwartz was right. This isn't really a headline. This isn't like headline newsworthy at all, but it still is a headline.

of course that came out that day so somebody heard about it like within a 24 48 hour window she wasn't talking to you so you don't know any of this you're just acting like you know it because you're trying to push the i was in love with her and now she doesn't want me he saw this as a way to get sympathy from the people that were watching from maybe people around him luckily the people around him aren't buying it nobody watching at home is buying it so he's going to probably push this for another couple of episodes until inevitably we see him flirting with some girl at the bar or whatever the hell he might be doing and then it'll be like oh yeah I guess you know I'm over Rachel now oh man that's interesting I didn't even think about

that like watching Tom try to date again oh yeah just try to like flirt again he's a girlfriend right now I know I know he's dating somebody somebody famous is ex yeah it's somebody like actually like really famous I don't know I'm amy Nicholson the film critic for the LA Times and I'm Paul Shear an actor writer and director you might know me from the league VEP or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters we Come together to host Unspooled, a podcast where we talk about good movies, critical hits. Fan favorites, musts season, and case you missed them. We're talking Parasite the Home Alone.

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Hot. But the one thing I want to point out before we move on, because he does this with everybody, and I think that this is where he gets himself into more trouble because he can't just bite his tongue and, like, take it. He says about Rachel, like, not responding to him because he did get one text through. and it was like, I'm thinking about you, whatever, and it was blue, so it got through, and then she

never responded. And he's like, yeah, she just doesn't want to face the world. It's like, why do you think, Tom? Why do you think she doesn't want to face the world? Like, he gets this, like, arrogance about him when people don't bend, when people aren't like, oh, yeah, dude, like, we get it. We're sorry, too. And then he immediately plays defense and starts being an asshole about it.

That's what's really frustrating to watch because, and I know I've said it, I'm going to say a million times during this season, had he just shut up, came into this season, apologizing, by the end of the season, Scandival would no longer be a major issue. I firmly believe that. I think there would be a lot of people out there that still want to hold on to it, but I think that the general masses, by the end of this season, had he done what a normal human being would have done, a lot of people would at the very least be able to tolerate it. And that's all you need.

We need to be able to tolerate Tom on screen for this show to continue moving. moving forward, and if there are going to be any more seasons, that is just inherent. That has to happen. And that's when what you said earlier, where it's like at some point, because of the world in which this show lives, no, this is not a normal friendship. This is not a normal friend group. In real life, you would never talk to this person again. These people are on the same cast.

We have to see some kind of reconnection. And I'm not rallying for Tommy. I'm saying that's how the shows work. If you don't have that, we've seen what happens. when shows get split down the middle. They don't do well. Jersey, Melissa versus Teresa, is so goddamn old, so tired. No one wants to see it anymore.

We're going to see more of it this season, even though they're not talking. I'm sure it's going to come back up. You look at Potomac, same shit happened. Anytime there's a firm split in the group, it is very hard to come back from. So for this show to continue successfully, we have to be okay with watching people get back close to Tom

or at least tolerate Tom so that we can tolerate Tom. Yeah, the scenes with, Schwartz and Sandy though I don't really put any merit into them No I don't either Because Tom Sandoval just manipulates the hell out of Schwartz And he says whatever he thinks

Is gonna get a good rise out of Schwartz Or some sort of respect from him So yeah I don't know I mean if you're a normal person in the situation And Raquel's not responding to you After everything that happened You're probably gonna keep it to yourself Maybe be like you know what

Yeah I reached out she didn't reach back I don't really know what's going on But maybe I can't keep doing this Like, no, he's playing it up for the cameras. He's playing it up for Schwartz because he knows that Schwartz will be his mouthpiece for the rest of the group. Hey, give Tom a chance, you know, he's going through a lot right now. Obviously, all that happens. But he's really in love with Raquel, and, you know, he's texting her and she's not responding.

So he's having a really hard time. Like, that's what he wanted from that situation. I don't think Schwartz really took the bait, but it may have gone over his head. Yeah, I don't know. But moving on, we get some new drama developing, and we saw it last week a little bit with Brock, how he was talking to Sheena in front of Sheena's mom and the babysitter and her sister and it seems

to be a recurring theme and these two are clearly not in the best place and look they've been through a lot you know everything that happened and then obviously sheena had and look they've been through a lot you know sheena has her postpartum

OCD they're trying to figure all of that out they had a kid during scandal fall they were trying to raise a baby while Sheena her entire world got rocked one of her best friends cheated with another one of her best friend so it's a lot to handle i get that why does brock have to talk to her that way though yeah i don't really give a shit how frustrated you are about not being able to go out because your wife can't settle on a babysitter

because she's afraid to leave her daughter with a stranger yeah i don't give a shit dude you don't fucking yell at your wife in public like an asshole you look like a fucking dickhead and you are a dickhead i mean straight up you can't go into any sort of store like that poor woman who was just trying to do her job and be a sales associate for some swimwear, which is usually like a fun thing, like, hey, we're going to go pick out a bikini and have a good time at Lake Tahoe. What's going on? Like, this is a great time.

Yeah, a little fashion show. That comes in and starts yelling at his wife. Yeah, in front of people. For some fucking shit that should not be spilling outdoors. Have that discussion behind closed doors. Again, still probably don't yell at your wife. I don't care how frustrated you are. This isn't a real issue.

You work through it. This isn't something to start yell about in public. That's crazy to me. And then, you know what you don't do? You don't go chasing her outside and continue the conversation. You let it go. Clearly, she's upset. Clearly, Sheena is correct.

You don't do this out in public. It was hard to watch. I'd fucking hate that, like, alpha male behavior bullshit. Like, I'm going to put my wife in her play. Like, fuck off, dude. Like, you're an asshole. It was tough to watch. And at the end of the day, Sheena was right.

That makes total sense. Sheena was right. And you know what? Brock, maybe you should have got a pair of trunks while you were there, too, because I don't want to see you in a speedo. I'm done. You in the speedo, and especially with you stuffing. a sock in there. There's fucking something in there, dude.

It would bother me crazy. You said it multiple times. There was something with fabric and it was black and it was like sticking out. I swear to God he put a sock in there. You sure wasn't maybe he didn't shave. Nah. Nah. Just straight up socks. Socking it. I would not be surprised at all if Brock did stuff his bikini. His mankini. Mancini. His speed keeney.

What are we calling that? His banana hammock. Yeah, let's call it that. Sock hammock. Yeah. His sock hammock. because, and I hope he hears this. That'd be really funny. But at the end of the day, again, Sheena makes total sense, especially on top of that, that she has postpartum OCD, you would think that it'd be more sympathetic.

And look, it's been a tough year. Okay, fine, Brock. I'll humor you for a sec. It's been a tough year. Fine. Why has it been a tough year? Because of what your wife is going through. Okay?

So instead of berating, instead of yelling, try understanding. Try using a softer tone of voice. Hey, babe. You know, I really understand where you're coming from. I just don't want your mother and lawyer. You're not good at the Australian accent. I can great at Australian accent. That was English. That started out English and then it transferred in.

You want me to do the Aussie, mate. I'll get right into the Ozzy. I'll talk like Brock as much as I want. I walk around and my fucking speed out. I'll yell at my wife or she's trying to buy a bathing suit and I'm yelling about a fucking mother and law. That was better. How's that? That was way better. You pissed me off. I can do a great Australian.

Well, you also did a really good job because he was so goddamn loud. Dude, it was crazy. There's no way he talks like that all the time. You projecting for the camera, bud? That's the other thing that, I mean, to go back to him hearing this, which is actually really funny to me, is he going to defend himself about stuffing his banana hammock? That would be really funny.

To a Bravo podcast, that's kind of funny. These guys are straight. I got to make sure I said it right. No, that's my dick. But look, I keep getting derailed by Brian. I haven't been out in weeks because I can't get a bit. babysitter. Yeah, it's been two years. No, you keep derailment. The point is, like, Poppy is seven years old. I wouldn't leave Poppy with, like, a babysitter if I was going away on a trip. It would be a family

member. Like, that's a very normal thing to say. Like, is he doesn't, he's arguing. And he's like, yeah, eventually we'll get there after a year. But at the same time, he wants it now. I know. Like, what are you talking about? You can't agree that, yes, we get a babysitter and it's an outside person. And then eventually we get warmed up. to them or we get there's some trust that's building there and we build the relationship after a year we can do this but we're going to do this right now because we're going to Lake Tahoe that doesn't make sense you can't contradict yourself like that in an argument with your wife in public yeah well the worst part honestly was this sentence out of Sheena

where she's like I don't want someone else hearing you while we fight so that just tells me that behind closed doors multiply yeah yeah it's probably even louder and that sucks if this is how every argument goes just because I need to project my voice like I don't know It just sounds like you hate your mother-in-law That's all it is He just hates his mother-in-law

Stop taking out your wife Yeah, don't take it out on her Just shut up, Brock But we get everybody headed to the airport And Graham Cracker Is flying first class with Or sorry, private He's going PJ with LVB

Which I did not even think about Until this scene The fact that Graham is going to know Sandoval. Like, it didn't resonate, did not register. I was like, oh, my God. We talked about that last year during Scandival saying, I really want to see him go to Rekyll's and see Graham run over and say hi to Tom because he's seen him before.

I clearly had blocked that out of my head because when that was brought up, I was like, oh my God, that would be wild. Yeah. And there was one moment where Graham started to jump and Allie was kind of in the way, but Ali moved left. and I was like, ooh, was he jumping to Sandoval? Like, that's, that's the level I'm at now. That's what I'm looking at, because that's normal.

That's a sane thing to do when you're watching a fucking TV show. No, I think that's fair. Honestly, that's a funny one. Like, that's at least, you would get a lot of comic relief out of that one. Yeah. You pointed out, you're like, oh, that's actually really great. It's the other ones that are sad that you start looking for. You're like, all, this is too deep.

It's a little face time from Lisa once they all get to Tahoe, and we got like a weird edit. Like everyone was on acid or something. I don't know what that. I didn't like that. It felt like like early 2000s real world. Oh, where they're all like getting into the house.

Like skipping. Yeah, like they're all coming home at different times. Or Jersey Shore, they're all coming home at different times. Oh, that was a good one. Yeah, it's that early 2000s MTV edit. Yeah, like actually,

now that you framed it that way, I love this edit because it really brought me memories back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we get a Sandoval FaceTime with Lisa while they're driving to the house in Tahoe. and he's shocked because everyone was cordial with him. You know, everyone didn't try to drag him immediately, and I think that they were just trying to not cause an issue because it's the beginning of the trip,

but it brings him to tears. And did you believe those tears? No. Not at all. I didn't believe those tears. I didn't believe the confessional tears. Like, no, not at all. No.

But once we get to Tahoe, we get a little check-in with Schwartz, and he's feeling pretty good. He's feeling like he might have actually done. done something here. Like I think I might have brought the group back together, which to me just sounds like really bad foreshadowing that something's going to happen. But I keep coming back to the same thing. And that's that we have seen multiple castmates taking pictures, hanging out and being around Tom. So we will get this reconnection at some point during the season. And I'm wondering,

and it's interesting to watch as you pointed out early, as the dominoes start to fall, like when people start to give a little bit. And you can tell as they start to do it. and that's really interesting, and it brings me to something that happened earlier in the episode when we were talking about something about her, Ariana flat out says, like, if they go on this trip and become besties with Tom again, like, that shows me where their loyalty lies, I will not be friends with people that cannot be loyal. And that is a different conversation that I want to have, and I forgot about it. Do you think that's right?

Like, look, I know everything that happened. I think that Ariana has every right, every right to feel a certain way and to never want to talk and see Tom again and to hold some of her friends to a certain standard, maybe Katie because they're super duper close. Like if Katie started hanging out with Sandoval, like that's a different story. Sheena has had a 14-year relationship, friendship with Tom. Schwartz has had an extended friendship with him, not that she wants to be friends of Schwartz anyway. But is it fair for her to say if any of you are friends with him again, I will not be your friend? No, definitely not. But I don't know if she necessarily means that. I think that it's still, we still have to remember

that it's only a couple of months after. Well, now it might be four. Yeah, okay, yeah. Whatever, it doesn't matter. It's still very fresh, and I think that a lot of her emotions are still pretty raw, and you have to remember that they don't talk, and Tom hasn't really been around, he's been touring, he's been at Special Forces, now he's back, now you're filming again, so it kind of brings everything back up.

So I don't really, I'm not holding her accountable for the things that she's saying right now. I know a lot of people are, and I know that production seems to be spinning it that way, where it's like, okay, you know, is Ariana going too far by saying that they can't be friends with Tom, No, I don't think she is. I think that she's very emotional about this right now. I was actually thinking, I mean, look, I'm happy that her and Katie didn't go to Tahoe because we get to have this and you and I spoke about this. This is the only way for the season to avoid that pitfall of, okay, everybody's just going to bitch about Tom the entire time and nobody's ever going to do anything about it. Now at least we can get him back in and he's in scenes and he's at least conversing with some people.

if Ariana and Katie had gone, everybody's afraid. Everybody's scared to even look in his direction because you can get cut off immediately. This gives you a little bit of, now obviously it's filmed, but it gives you a little bit of freedom to explore a friendship with Tom. Explore forgiving him or seeing how everything goes.

So it's important for the show, but I mean, yeah, obviously, I mean, they hit the nail on the head when they were sitting in the car talking about it. This is what's going to happen. You guys aren't there to cast that shadow over them. They're going to move around free. and Tom is going to manipulate every situation that he's in.

He's going to apologize. He's going to say something to Lala about being sober and how much better he feels. He's going to do things that are going to get people to feel bad for him to at least converse with him. And that's what's going to happen because you're not there. So, yeah, I mean, it's going to happen. I'm not going to hold Ariana accountable for any of that, though. I don't really care. I think that she's fine.

I wasn't doing that. I wasn't. No, no, you were asking the question. You're guilty conscious over there, were you? I feel like you were coming at me. I'm not saying, like, I get it. No, I'm actually, I'm not even coming at you. There's a lot of people online to do it, and I know for a fact.

There's a lot of people that are, like, fed up with Ariana. And again, it's like, she can feel this way. She has every right to feel the way that she feels. And then some. A bunch of Tom Apologists out there. There are, there are weirdly a lot of Tom Apollars. Yeah, let's side with the guy who just cheated on his girlfriend and with her friend. Yeah, yeah, idiots.

No, I'm not going to hold her accountable for anything, but mostly it's us being able to watch these shows from a logic standpoint, from an analytical standpoint. we know what production is doing. Oh, yeah. The only scenes that we get with Ariana at this point, it's not her having fun, it's not her talking about all the things that she's been doing, it's her complaining about Tom

and threatening her friends. That's a tough look, and they are painting it that way. They're doing a tough edit. I don't like it. I don't care for it. I don't either, because Tom's getting a redemption edit.

Like, you can watch it all playing out. You can watch what they're trying to do. I will say this. Maybe this is my guilty conscience. I do want to see Tom dry to weasel is way back in with the friends. Because those scenes are entertaining. They are very entertaining.

To watch how people are reacting to them, to watch. Is there hope for this one? Will these two? I have yet to see anybody outside of Ariana and Katie where I'm like, oh, no chance they're going to be friends again. Everybody else, I'm like, I think they're going to be friends again. I mean, I can see Allie, like being to the point where she's... Allie was the first one to be sympathetic.

She was the first one to sit down with him when they, when Graham comes back into the crew. Yeah, but she's still through a dig in there. She did, but she also said, you know, I'm sorry, that must be really hard. That's the first person to say anything to empathize with him. It doesn't matter. It does not matter because Tom doesn't need serious. He just needs to hear it.

He just needs people to talk to him. Yeah, honestly, he just needs friends to talk to, somebody to talk to. But let's get back to Tahoe. We see Sheena and Brock continue to argue. They're at a point now, and we've all been in relationships like this, or you might have had a little argument like this where it's the aftermath and things are not squashed

and now everything's a problem. Everything's a problem and you try to frame it in the beginning as a joke to try your best to keep it light and that's what Sheena did. She's like, oh, I'm not going to do this all the time because of your pink undies because he did the laundry wrong, you turned a pig and Brock's like, ha ha ha, I sure did

because I threw him in there and you just feel the tension. Start to get worse. Like, yeah, because you don't do the laundry but I told you I would do the laundry. I know you did, but you never did the law, and then it just slowly ramps up. And it's just nothing. They're fighting about absolutely fucking nothing. But this is where they are in their relationship.

And I wish that we had seen Brock not get so amped up, because this would be an interesting topic to discuss, like the aftermath of Sandoval, how it affected a relationship. Sheena going through postpart of how it affected how these two are working through it, the steps that they've taken to come back together. Instead, we're getting a dude yelling at his wife who's terrified to leave her child. which is a horrible, horrible look, especially when you're doing it in a robe and a banana hammock. Stuffed with a sock, allegedly. Stuff with a sock. But Brock is the first one to broach the topic with Tom.

Everyone else has skated around it because nobody wants to be that person, which I understand. Brock didn't even hesitate. He says the whole house doesn't feel hurt. He's trying to get Sandval to understand. And I weirdly appreciate this. Yeah, it was really annoying. I hated the way that this went side by,

side where we just watched him belittle his wife's feelings and continue the argument through another dumb argument where you're going to come downstairs and now talk to Tom and it made a lot of sense everything he was saying was correct and he was actually getting through to Tom and I hated that Brock was the one who did that after what we just watched. I agree. I agree 100% but what he was saying was very logical. He's like you put everybody in a bad spot and Tom was like well I had no malintent but things that were done to us felt malicious why this is what's so hard for me to understand when he's talking and trying to navigate his way through this why are people talking like that like you have yet to one time take accountability say it was my fault i'm sorry period

and then shut the fuck up for a little while every time it comes up you say it was a terrible thing, but your actions have equal and opposite reactions. That's science, baby. You started this shit storm. You have to weather it and get out the other side. And again, you would have people on your team. If you just simply say, I'm sorry, and Brock points that out to him, just say sorry. He even goes far enough to say, your feelings are valid, Tom. Your feelings are valid. He's the first person to give him that little inch you do have a right to your feelings but there's a lot of hurt friends in this house it was so succinct i was like brock go upstairs and talk to your wife like this yeah you would get much much further if you were able to articulate your thoughts and feelings that way

instead of tom but that's not going to happen but but it goes quickly to a confessional with sandal and he's it's just it hurts my brain dude it genuinely hurts my brain and i don't want to do this all season. I don't think our listeners want to hear us do this all season. But in this confessional, he once again, he's like, this isn't just about me apologizing. This is a really difficult conversation that all of us need to have. We need to all sit down and find our way through this together. No one's going to do that with you until you take accountability. Yeah. And that's the other thing. If he had done that and obviously, you know, it's a little much to ask for him to do something like that at the reunion when everything's still fresh. He could

of, but I'm not surprised that he didn't. Everything that he did after the fact, everything that he did over the summer, everything that he did in the off season, you didn't take accountability. If you had said you were sorry or at least put out some sort of like public apology, you'd have some sort of leg to stand on because you could say, look, this is something that I did. I know that other people were mixed up in it. And I'm sorry for my part in this. Obviously, I'm the main cog in this wheel. But I do feel really bad about what I did. And I didn't really want to hurt anybody else. But I did. that sucks and I'm sorry all he had to do was do that and then if you get la la going on her podcast and sheena going on a podcast ripping you apart you can say what the

fuck I apologize yeah I not that we not that I thought that we squashed it just I took accountability and I apologize for what I did I felt really bad for getting you guys involved in this it's one thing for you to say yeah it really sucked and he heard us it's another thing for you to completely rip me apart rip rachel apart and then it completely eviscerate us on every podcast thing that you did and then sell merch on top of that and laugh your way to the bank like that fucking sucks after i said that i was really sorry for hurting you yeah he didn't do any of that it's a really good so you can't say oh yeah like they did all this to me you started it and you never finished it correct that's the thing really

good way to yeah you started it and you never finished it you never did anything to amend anything but we get a quick scene with ariana and lucinda and that is somebody that they've worked with she helped them design the house and we find out that ariana is open to the idea of tom buying her out of this house we just saw something in the media today that now tom is saying that you know she was asking for too much or something i don't know it was very confusing what i saw today but the point is ariana's open to this idea at the very least which is good at least you can get out she just wants the furniture which makes sense because that furniture is like west elm like it's all other custom shit i'm sure it's expensive as hell but

So, yeah, if you want him to pay for that shit, too, I guess that's why this doesn't add up for me, where there's got to be more to this story. If she's open to it and Tom wants to buy it out, and you want the house as is, pay her for the furniture, pay her for the house, move on. So that tells me there's more to this story. It's not that cut and dry.

Can Tom afford this house? That's my biggest question. Apparently not. He had to shuffle around $500 here and $500 there to cover the fucking lights. Make sure that the garden was kept while he was over in New Zealand. I forgot about that part, but we get back to Tahoe and we're headed to Lisa's new restaurant, Wolf, which the renderings look sick. The fact that they have an actual wolf as, like, the mascot to the restaurant is sick.

Yeah, very into that. Everything about it's in Lake Tahoe, I want to go to Wolf so bad. Yeah, we've got to find out if slash when it's open. And we got to go. And we got to go. We have to go, right? Boy's trip to Tahoe go to Wolf. A couple of sock hammocks out there?

Hell yeah. Should we wear some sock hammocks? Do you think we can go into a wolf? Would never catch me dead, that. Really? never not there's no scenario in which you wear banana hammock nope really now interesting are you insecure no but i love the subtle dig that she takes at the tom's when she's walking them through the space because it's in shambles they're still doing demo and she's like it will be done

on time and it will be done right and it's like ha ha because they can't do it right but they have this like cathartic scene in which everyone's doing demo and i loved the premise of this actually i thought this was a great idea and this is the first scene and this whole episode where I was like, oh, ooh, I feel something again. Like, this is nice because they're venting about stuff that we need them to vent about. I'm sick of people not talking about it. If we're going to do this, let's fucking do it. So people start hitting the wall what they're mad about.

And we get James, like, swinging the axe or swinging the sledgehammer at the wall. And he's saying, I wish that Graham would have been taken better care of. And you get Schwartz saying, I don't want to be single in 40, which was kind of sad. And you get Sheena, she's hitting the wall because of. but then you get Tom hit the wall and he starts listing off up first scumbag and cheaters and hits the wall and then he hits it again he goes worm with a mustache hits the wall it's like oh you're going to use this moment to call out everybody else for their bullshit actually not a terrible plan because it it goes kind of well after the first couple but then la la points out to the group

we're all watching and thinking it's like you've yet to say your part in this like god i ruined my whole life boom hit that wall this is the whole point problem with everything is the lack of accountability. We don't have to keep being a dead horse. I know we've talked about it, but that's the whole issue. Hit the wall this time after your second joke, because people did laugh. I'll give you that. After your second joke, be like, no, but seriously, like, it's my bad guys. Hit the wall. Like, anything in that moment would have been better than what you were doing. And I think that that would have been such a funny group apology. That's what I'm saying. Like, there's so much.

No, but really, I'm really sorry, guys. Sorry. Well, I'm so totally sorry. Wham. And then everyone's like, oh, did he just kind of apologize? at least it's a step forward, but... Yeah, I don't know. I thought that was kind of lame, the whole thing. Oh, you did? Yeah. Oh, bovers, yeah.

It's kind of the same thing as, like, Beverly Hills, with them, like, throwing the stuff and, like, what are you going to let go of? It's like, I'm going to throw up the water. I don't know. The cathartic stuff is stupid, the baby. I think that you need to have some cathartic stuff in your life,

and then maybe you would understand. Laughing? Laughing and, like, I'm fine, does not tell me that you're fine. What do you mean? Laughing is great. Laughing is great, but when you laugh to try to deflect, as you just did, to avoid catharsism?

Catharsism. Catharsis. Catharsis? Catarsis. It's just catharsis. Catharsism sounds bad. It does not sound good. I don't think I want to do catharsism.

Catharsis is the act of catharticism. Good. I was an English major. I did not graduate. I got drafted. But I was an English major. All right? You want to be a word to get in a dictionary?

Catharsism? Catharicism. Cartharsis. It sounds awful. It sounds like you're like inflicting your... It sounds religious for some reason. I don't know. Yeah.

I don't know. I don't like it. But bottom line, he doesn't do anything to apologize. And we get to this dinner at Tahoe. And it's interesting because if we watch the previews for this episode and like the scenes from next week, they painted this episode a lot differently than it went down. It did. Yeah.

It seemed to be a much smoother transition into back hanging out with Sandoval. That's not what happened. We saw very clunky, awkward scenes in which he... He's trying to do the most, trying to pull people's heartstrings. And you're exactly right. He's playing everybody exactly how he thinks they should be played. He brings up the sobriety thing, that his Lala at home. He brought a meditation specialist to come into the house.

Like, he's doing a lot of things to try to set himself up in a good light. The new BMO, V.I. Porter, MasterCard, is your ticket to more. More perks, more points, more flights, more of all the things you want in a try. travel rewards card, and then some. Get your ticket to more with the new BMO ViPorter MasterCard and get up to $2,400 in value in your first 13 months. Terms and conditions apply. Visit bemo.com slash ViPorter to learn more.

Hi, I'm here to tell you about Good Morning Night Vale. Welcome to Night Vale's official recap show and unofficial best friend food podcast. Join me, Meg Bashwinner, and fellow try hosts, Hal Lublin and Symphony Sanders as we dissect all of the cool, squishy, and slimy bits of every episode of Welcome to Nightvale. Come for the insightful and hilarious commentary and stay for all of the weird and wild behind-the-scenes stories. Good morning, Nightvale, with new episodes every other Thursday. Get it wherever you get your podcasts. Yes, even there. Hey, Michael. Hey, Tom. Big news to share it, right? Yes, huge, monumental, earth-shaking. Heartbeat, sound effect, big.

Mates is back. That's right. After a brief snack nap. We're coming back. We're picking snacks? We're eating snacks. We're raiding snacks. Like the snackologist we were born to be.

Mates is back. Mike and Tom, eat snacks. Wherever you get your podcast. Unless you get them from a snack machine, in which case, call us. But when we get to the actual dinner, we start talking about Schwartz and Joe and And I don't know if this is going to become a thing this season. I think it will eventually. It kind of started last year, but we didn't see her, and now she's here.

We already saw her briefly in an episode, like one or two episodes ago. I don't know. I'm not really interested in it. I don't care. Yeah, I don't think it matters that much. Unless something happens, which we know that something happens with someone else, with Katie as well. And it's not Joe.

So I don't really get a babysitter, right? Tori or whatever. No, Courtney, Tori, Tori, is. Sheena's sister. Oh, yeah, Courtney, I'm sorry, Courtney. That would be from this year. No, my God, yeah, don't even put it out in the universe. Oh, God.

No, yeah, I mean, I don't really care. I think this is, it just stems from basically short saying one of the saddest things ever. I don't want to be single and single. Yeah, I mean, and he believes it. But, yeah, they stem from that going into the Joe conversation. I just don't care. I don't either, but you know what I did not need. And I know what she's trying to do.

Man, it's too much and it's too obvious. It's so annoying. LVP's like, now let's name something you like about Sandoval. It's like, why? Single out James, too. Like, you know what... They have real shit to work through.

James feels genuinely hurt by this. To try to shoehorn it into a dinner is, one, disrespectful. And two, blatant producing. We know what you're doing right here, trying to make a TV show. It's very obvious. We don't like when people do this on the shows. It's very annoying.

And this championing of Tom, I get that you are afraid and nervous. because of statements that he has made fine i respect that i get it i get where you're coming from fine but you set it up you've set this dinner up everyone's in tahoe you've done your job all right now you can sit back and watch yeah make sure it doesn't get too dark maybe but you don't need to force the issue this isn't going to accomplish anything no one's going to go around the table and be like i do like his nails that lightning bolt necklace is pretty sick like there's no one's going to say nice things and if you try to force it you're going to remind people why they don't

like them. Yeah, no, I fully agree. I think that you've already done your job. If you're looking at it from a production of the show standpoint, you got everybody together and Tom is there in Tahoe. Like, they can't go anywhere. I know that Brock made a joke about getting a hotel somewhere, but they're going to stick it out and they're going to be around him for at least a couple of days. You can just let it play out. Like, that's, that's good for the show. We'll see what happens. Let them go. And maybe it comes down to Lisa just not trusting them and thinking like, all right, this could completely boil over and let's just try to make this nice instead of... Why wouldn't she trust this group?

Yeah, exactly. But no, it's too much, and that's what makes me think she is full-on just championing for Tom. Like, she wants Tom to be in everybody's good graces again, and she feels like he's getting a bad shake. Like, she wants people to forgive him right away. And she knows that he's not apologizing. She even told him as much. You need to go in there and grovel.

You need to go in and say that you're sorry. And it's very clearly, I will not grovel. Exactly. And he, I know that he ended the conversation with Lisa in the first. second episode saying yeah you know what maybe i should do that i'll start to you know apologize and apologize and he didn't and he hasn't yet so no it's not working i think that she understands what's going on she's just trying to force the issue and i i hate it it's so annoying because you know what i actually do enjoy i enjoy the awkward scenes i enjoy when everyone's standing

they're like trying to figure out what to say or not say and they're like uh james makes something as to go fix his hair because he doesn't know what to say to tom he's like i just need to get the fuck out of here that's real i want to see that i don't need to see a forest conversation in which they're trying to make up. But we do get, in this last scene, a conversation between James and Sandoval. One that I am leaning towards was as genuine as Sandoval can be. I said that that way for a reason. I do think that this is pointed.

I think that he has a plan. I think that he's saying certain things intentionally. However, this was a real scene in which, you know, James got to finally say a lot of the things that he wanted to say to Tom and this is stuff that is built up and it's a glimpse into what their relationship really was to James what Tom really meant to James and he says the big brother thing but when he goes through it and walks through it with him it makes a lot more sense he's like I looked up to you you were that guy you were the guy that I could trust you were my number one confidant because I looked up to you you and Ariana and this is why we were also rocked by

scandavals because they were the rock of the group we never even thought that this was a thing we never even fathomed that this could happen so imagine being as close to him as james was and then on one hand you have tom discrediting their entire friendship saying they were never that close that sucks that had to sting and two we don't even talk about the fact that rachel was james's ex like that's a major factor here as well like there's a lot of things playing into this and james feels betrayed and for the first time we actually hear tom say the words i'm sorry without a follow-up. He says, I'm sorry. It took a while to get there. He did defend himself a little bit along the way. But James was good with his questioning because, and I love the fact that James stood up. He was about to get amped up. He sat back down and kept a calm enough head to ask him some questions. He's like, you couldn't have seen this going a different way where if you, it took one conversation, Tom. If this isn't what you wanted with Ariana, you walk in, tell her to her face and walk out. He's like, well, I just couldn't do that because I didn't want to, like,

No. Man up and go do it. If this is what you wanted, you had to have known, regardless of the fact that you guys didn't mean to be malicious. You didn't mean to hurt anybody. You had to know. You had to know this is going to hurt somebody. Had you been a man about it and walked in and said, Ariana, I'm done. I can't do this anymore. Walked out. Got him with Rachel then. It would have been a fucking uproar. Absolutely. But it would have been one you could walk away from and move forward from rather than this debacle that we're still sitting in a year later. And I think that it was, it had to be, word of the day, cathartic for James to be able to finally say this stuff. And I love the fact that he ends it with, was it worth it? That's something that we've all wanted to ask Tom. Was it worth it? Tom's response, I don't know. I don't know. What do you mean?

The fuck do you mean? That's the worst answer you get. It's either yes or no. Either of those would have been better. If you said yes, it was worth it, you're a psycho, but at least you stand by it. If you say no, you recognize the fault. The I don't know to me says that's how he feels at this current moment. That's a good point.

I think that if you had asked him right after the reunion, he probably would have said yes because he's in love with Raquel. He wants to see where this goes. But now he's not hearing back from Raquel, and there's words about her doing different things in the press, and he's not getting a response back. So he feels a little betrayed by Raquel. So he's like, I don't know if it was worth it anymore.

I don't know. It was before that, but it's... No, my whole thing. theory on this the way that this went because it started off with sandoval saying i am going to go over there and i know i know how james operates he's got these childish antics right now yes he takes a dig before he takes a dig but i know that he's hurt underneath so i want to go and hear him out he didn't say i'm going to go over there and apologize you're right he said i'm going to go over and i hear him out and the way the conversation went and that's credit to james for actually

staying on target the entire time and not getting up and not freaking out and not walking away because i thought he's going to walk away about three different times he stuck through it we got a lot out of Tom, and it ended up with what I thought was an actual authentic apology. I think that Tom got to the point where he actually, I don't know if he felt bad, but he felt like he needed to apologize, which is more than we've gotten in the first four episodes here. So we actually got some sort of an apology out of that. My issue is, I think he's going to get addicted to apologizing.

I was going to bring this up. I was going to say the funny thing is at the end of this episode, Shooter, pointed out, he's going to get addicted to apologies. I actually agree. I think he's like, ooh, that felt great. Oh, yeah. And they're going to give me another chance. And he gave me a hug?

Yeah, no, they didn't hug. They did hug. No, they didn't hug at the end. Absolutely did. Yeah, I wrote down pro hug. Yeah, I guess pro. I can't dispute that. Yeah, no, I do think that he's going to get some sort of apology high from this.

I do too. And he's going to be like, oh, wow, that's all it took was sitting down, hearing the mountain and apologizing at the end. And yes, that is all it takes, apparently. How crazy is that? that he doesn't know that already, that he has to go through this moment right now to realize, like, oh, fuck.

What is this black magic? Now we're going to see, and this is going to be really funny, he's going to try to do this with everybody else in the house. It's going to work. It'll work to an extent, but I do think that,

I think that Lala might be able to see through the bullshit. Lala's already, no, Lala gave him a lot of credit for the sobriety thing. That's me... But that'll only go so far. I don't know.

I feel like with this setup, if you give an inch, that's it. I feel like because of the show, because of the way that these friendships work, I feel like if you open the door, he's going to kick that fucker down. Somebody's going to lash out. He's going to do something wrong

in these apology scenarios, if you will. We do see a scene from next week where Lala calls him a psycho. Yeah. So eventually at some point he's going to maybe in the middle of his conversation with Lala or in the middle of his conversation with Shina, or somebody's going to figure out

what he's doing and do what we're doing right now and be able to put the pieces together. and they're going to call him out and he's not going to know how to respond to that because this is new for him. Yep. Apologizing. New territory. Feeling bad.

I don't think, again, I don't know if he's actually feeling bad. It's going to go too far. He just is apologizing and I guess that's a step. That's something. I don't know. It's something. It's better than what we got in the first couple episodes. Yep.

I'll just say that. It sure is something. But that takes us to the question part of the show and up first from Scuba Chris. Whoa. That's a great name. Scuba Chris is a sick name. Scuba Chris is a sick name.

awesome name is a wolf restaurant a good idea scuba chris it's a fucking great idea that sounds sick it's an outstanding idea it's gonna be sexy yeah and manly yeah and whatever else lisa said yeah we're going i'm in yeah we're wearing banana hammocks you can come scuba chris i bet you have a banana hammock if you're a scuba guy well i guess no that's wet suits whatever you can come with us from nana's bananas bananas lots of great names tonight easy to read thanks guys Will there be more podcasts with Ryan and Bailey? Yeah, definitely. We love Ryan.

He's awesome. Yeah, we'll bounce back and forth between his show and our show. Yeah, we're going to try to make it more of a regular-ish thing. So, yes, will there be a lot more Bailey content? Because we love Ryan. From Lauren 3D. Is there a VPR without Sandoval? He enrages me every time he opens his mouth or just exists.

Interesting question. No. Yeah, no. There is. There just isn't. There is. Definitely not right now. And overall, it's tough to see.

I mean, again, this show was floundering before Scandalvall. Like him or not, you have to thank him for Brickens V.R. back, I guess. I mean, in one way or another, but no, I, there isn't. It's either he's on it or the whole show goes away. And that's not saying that he is the show. It's just there, I don't know what else you would do. This one's actually interesting from Tom Wittreich. Does the atmosphere of the group seem lighter without our.

Ariana and Katie in Tahoe. Again, it does, but only here. Again, like last year before all of this, it was fine. I mean, aside from the Katie and Schwartz aspect, which always bothered me with the two of them are on screen. Without them there in Tahoe, yes, there's no dark cloud, if you will, hanging above them so they're afraid to move

and do things anywhere near Sandoval. Without them there, later is a tough word for this. Yeah. It just allows them to... The rest of these people are... We're going to call Tom out actively and not tell everyone else to not talk to him. Let's just be happy as the viewers that Ariana and Katie aren't there because we can get more from this trip. Agreed.

I think that's a good way to put it. Last one, because I didn't know this, from Lisa NHB, George Michael is James' grandfather. That's amazing. Yeah, he said that on the episode tonight. He mentioned it before last year, I think, when he met his dad, they were talking about it. that's really cool. It is really cool. George Michaels is Godfather?

Yeah. That's a wild. Careless whisper. It is your godfather. How about that? How about that? What a dream. How about, uh, man, I'm tired.

This is going to be a long season, huh? Pooped. Yeah, same. But look, glimmers of hope for an entertaining follow-up episode. We got some scenes from next week that look interesting. So I'm not fully back on board, but I have glimmers. of hope and that's nice i'll take that for now yeah we need that as reunion season starts up yes yeah it's a good point to a point where vpr is the main thing every week so yeah yep so hey here's

the hoping but uh make sure you get your tickets next week wednesday night march 6th city winery go to the link in our bio get those tickets come hang out with us there's not a lot left which is amazing we are so thrilled that we have a a full room but make sure you get the last few tickets so you can come hang out with us and then we got that other show March, sorry, May, 3rd in D.C., Union Stage. That's a bigger venue, so bring all of your friends. We've got to fill that bitch up, so start telling everybody about it. Even if your friends don't know Bravo, just buy them a ticket.

Say, come to this fun thing with me. We'll make sure they have fun. We promise you, if you bring a rando to our show, we'll make sure they have fun. The last one is in Boston, June 14th. That is also at the city winery. That's a much smaller venue. Only 70 seats, so get your tickets ASAP so you don't miss out. Anything else?

Good job. Thanks, dude. Rob Briser out of here. Whoa. Are you looking for a movie review show where the critic is at the top of his or her game, meticulously breaking down and explaining exactly why a film does or does not work? Well, good luck with the search. Because we're having fun here on Adam does movies.

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