House of Stassi S1E6

Kia ora, hello and welcome to Anyway! The blog where I unpack the chaos of reality TV.
Today’s episode is bookended by people suggesting Stassi get therapy, which is fun her. Let’s get into House of Stassi Episode 6.

We open with Stassi telling us how great of a wife she is because she managed to apologise genuinely to her husband one time, which is like marriage goals, I guess. I, much like Stassi, have a hard time apologising. Nobody likes to admit defeat, right? I’m not sure I really buy into the whole “apologising shows that you’re vulnerable and therefore a better human” frame of mind. Being a millennial raised by boomers, I’m inclined to just sweep everything under the rug until the rug is lumpy as fuck and no one wants to walk on it anymore. Take from that what you will. Anywho, we’re back at the Friendsgiving dinner table, back to hearing about how Stassi has traumatised her entire family. They’re throwing some pretty big accusations around, but no one is really giving us the info to back it up. Like, how exactly did she traumatise her whole family? Nikolai, Stassi’s younger brother, says he doesn’t think Stassi has necessarily traumatised him, but he doesn’t know her from a bar of soap, to which she agrees. I guess he texted her a bunch of vitriol when her and her mother were arguing. He was Team Dayna all the way and Stassi was not into it. But to be honest, what can Stassi really expect? If he talks to his mum and doesn’t talk to her, of course he’s going to take Dayna’s side. All I can think of when I see Nikolai is that scene from old Vanderpump Rules where he and Jax are sitting on the bed playing a video game of some description and Nikolai is telling Jax that he needs to stop lying and acting like an idiot. If only Jax had someone giving him that sage advice these days. Stassi tells us that the age gap between her and her brother is 15 years, which is big. Her and her siblings have different dads and their mother is always pitting them against each other, so clearly it’s no wonder they don’t really get along. I feel like pitting your children against each other almost goes against human nature. If anything, you want them to get along so they don’t end up annoying the fuck out of you, right? I don’t know, I only have one child, so I’m not really sure how that works, but perpetuating arguments seems unnatural for a mother. Stassi tells us there’s no grounding energy in her family, which seems extremely evident. Anyway, they apparently build a bridge and get over it. Stassi says in spite of how much we all hate each other, we actually love each other. Nikolai is all, “see you bitches in two years for the next family reunion from hell.”

We see Stassi meeting up with her friend Morgan Stewart. Morgan looks familiar to me. I did watch some of Rich Kids of Beverly Hills, although I don’t recall anything particularly interesting about it. I guess watching rich people be rich has never really appealed to me. I’d way rather spend my time watching struggling actors and models having to wait on rich people. That’s where the real magic happens. Stassi tells us that they’re twinning because they were both the bitch on their respective shows, they got married and had kids at the same time, they both love a ballet flat and they both believe that it’s 5 o’clock somewhere, so it’s always time for a cocktail. Am I the only person who feels like I have teeny tiny Thumbelina feet when I put on ballet flats? A look which in turn makes my legs appear to be short and stumpy, when they don’t look that way in any other shoe. I have to say, I’m more of a platform girl myself. They discuss every mother’s tactic to get away from their children: disappearing to the bathroom for an hour and a half to doom scroll on their phone. The only problem with that is your partner will catch on and then they will start doing the same thing. It’s a bit of a swings and roundabouts situation, really. A waiter brings over meatballs. He goes to grate Manchego cheese over the top and Morgan is all, “HALT, who goes there?!” She doesn’t fuck with cheese. Stassi is regretting the twinning of it all now. I fucking love cheese. I just looked in my fridge and there’s at least five different cheeses in there. My daughter also loves cheese. If she had it her way, she would only eat dairy: cheese, yoghurt, kefir, milk. Does anyone else have those moments where they look at their kid like, “are we even related?” I look at her chowing down on cheese and all of those thoughts dissipate. She’s such a little Dairy Queen.

Stassi tells Morgan about her strained relationship with her mother. I guess ultimately the underlying issue is that Stassi saw Dayna being a boss bitch growing up, going out and making money. But when Stassi started on Vanderpump Rules, her mother quit her job. Are we to assume that Stassi was making money for her family while on Vanderpump Rules? Obviously she had zero obligation to, but that seems to be what she’s insinuating. If that is the case, then it’s easy to see why they have a fucked up relationship. Stassi says that she doesn’t think it’s possible for her and her family to function normally. Morgan is feeling the totally off vibes of Stassi’s familial drama and she now wants to know if Stassi has a therapist. Stassi is like, “ohhhhh noooo” and throws a napkin over her head, which is a very reality TV thing to do. There’s a loooooot of napkin work that goes on. Housewives are always throwing napkins over their heads, across the room, in other people’s faces, or they’re folding it up a million times into a tiny little cry-angle. Speaking of, I miss Candiace being on Real Housewives of Potomac. Anyway, Stassi hates therapy. She finds it insufferable, couples therapy especially. I’m not sure therapy is supposed to be fun? I mean, I’m sure a lot of people feel good or like emotionally lighter after the fact, but actually going through it isn’t a good time for anyone, I don’t think. Morgan asks Stassi if she’s mean to Beau and for a split second I get the feeling that she is going to be like the fifth person on this show to tell Stassi that she just needs to give Beau a kiss every morning. I’m not saying she shouldn’t do that. Perhaps that bandaid would be nice for him, but that seems like an ambulance at the bottom of the hill situation to me. To be honest, there’s not much difference between going to a therapist and having them tell you to give your husband physical touch, then going to lunch with your friends and having them tell you to kiss and hug your husband every morning. Seems like the same outcome, with less cocktails. Once again Stassi would like to say, “who needs therapy when you’re on a reality show?!” They’re completely interchangeable. If you combine being on a reality TV show with therapy, your relationship would almost be TOO HEALTHY. No thankys.

Anyway, Rob and Beau meet up at a barbershop to fix their scraggly faces. Beau isn’t sure he wants to get his beard dyed because he’s been feeling emotional and doesn’t want to cry, which would result in the beard dye dripping down his neck. Which is one of the weirder things I’ve heard someone say. Just like, in general. We see a shot of Rob and Beau at dinner somewhere and Beau is saying that he thinks he looks old as fuck and needs to do something about his beard. He says that he looks like he has a “vagina on his face with his goatee.” I literally have no idea what he means by that. Is he saying his beard looks like pubes? How does his face look like a vagina?! Am I missing something here?? I’m going to need Beau to explain this because it sounded somewhat derogatory toward vaginas, which I’m very much not down with. Misogyny is already rampant, Beau! We don’t need any more of it!!!! The barber, seemingly ignoring Beau’s concerns about the beard dye, goes ahead and dyes it anyway. He looks in the mirror and is horrified. He thinks he looks like a Vegas magician. He does not. He looks like a magician who attends children’s birthday parties. He looks like Michael Scott when he decides to copy Ryan and get a goatee. He looks like Tony Wonder, the magician Ben Stiller plays in Arrested Development. Here’s hoping the barber shaves a “W” into that thing. A producer asks Beau which Vegas magician he thinks he looks like. He responds Sigmund Freud instead of Siegfried & Roy. Does Beau think the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud was a magician in Vegas? Hard to say. What’s easy to say is that he does not look like Siegfried nor Roy, nor Sigmund Freud. He looks like Criss Angel. That beard is a Mindfreak. Beau wants someone in that barbershop to pass him a paper bag so he can at least walk out of the place with some dignity. I’d say that’s a good idea.

Beau tells Rob that him and Stassi had a barney that morning because Stassi didn’t let Beau sleep in until 9am, when he had arranged for his sister Georgia to look after the kids. They ended up arguing because they both had scenes to do for this show. All I’m thinking now is, “Ohhh, so this is the therapeutic effect that Stassi is talking about this show having on their relationship.” Beau tells Rob that he has a meeting with his old boss to see if he can come back and work for him, a meeting which he has not told his wife about because he’s scared. I’d love to ask Beau which version of Stassi is scarier: the version where you practice effective communication and let your wife know what’s going on, or the version where you go behind her back, hide shit from her and then tell her your plans last minute because you have no choice? Not super smart, Beau.

Anyway, we catch up with Taylor and Teddy for a date night. Teddy is whiffing up them tequila fumes. She’s sniffing the hell out of Taylor’s margarita and says, “I think that’s what I want in the hospital.” Taylor responds with, “I feel like everybody wants a margarita in the hospital.” I’m gonna have to go ahead and disagree. I feel like we can say absolutely hands down that not everybody in the hospital wants a margarita. I guess she means every woman who’s just given birth wants a margarita. All I have to say to that is you’re going to be way too fucking exhausted to have a margarita. Perhaps after 72 hours of sleep. I can’t tell if these two are being slightly delusional about what it’s like to have a baby, or if they’re just determined to keep living their life in a particular type of way regardless. Oh well, delusion seems to get some people pretty far, so who cares. Teddy is heading back to New York to give birth, which I guess is where they normally live. The only reason they’re in LA is for House of Stassi and also the podcast Stassi and Taylor are starting. So Taylor has to stay in LA to podcast over being in NY for the birth of their child. Clearly her priorities are in order, in order to be a 20% parent, that is. Taylor has been waiting for four years to be a reality star on House of Stassi, so she will be staying in LA. CHILD BE DAMNED. Teddy wants to know if this is a situation where if Stassi says “jump”, Taylor says “How high?” And Taylor basically says “yes”. Stassi owns their asses now.

The thing is, Stassi is their friend. And despite the fact that everyone makes her out to be a monster, which maybe she is?, I don’t really see her stopping Taylor from being at the birth of her first kid. Also, if you’re that valuable to Stassi, surely you can say you’re going to do it and Stassi and the podcast can wait, no? I’m finding Taylor kind of insufferable throughout this whole show. I don’t know if that’s too harsh, but I feel the way I feel. I don’t see many redeeming qualities. Taylor thinks that if she doesn’t make the birth of their kid, that Teddy will love her less. I would say that’s correct. Money is nice to have, but it doesn’t love you at the end of the day. Moving on. Over at Stassi’s house they’re putting up Christmas decorations. Stassi loves Christmas. She says she usually has a themed tree but this year she’s going to go hodge podge because; kids. I also love Christmas, but when it comes to trees, I’m the complete opposite. I’ve always wanted to do a themed tree but end up with a hodge podge tree. This year I want to try a flower tree. How I’m going to go about doing a flower tree, I have no idea. I’m also going to have multiple trees. Again, I don’t know how many multiple trees, but it will be done. Know that. My two little dump cats are going to have a faux pine needle fuelled Christmas.

Katie, Georgi and Georgia have come over to partake in the decorating. Beau tells us that he still has not told Stassi about his job interview, which is today, and I guess he feels like there’s safety in numbers because he decides to announce in front of everyone that he will need to leave in a few minutes. DUN DUN DUUUNNNNNNNNN. Stassi is all, “huh, what? What are you saying?? It’s Christmas, what are we doing now?” Christmas is way more important than Beau’s feelings. Stassi is trying to keep it calm, cool and collected in front of her kids, but inside she’s short circuiting. To me this shows there’s at least been a little bit of growth on Stassi’s part, because old Stassi would have flipped the fuck out. I have to say, it would’ve been entertaining to watch her throw the Christmas tree out of the window and be like, “WHELP. CHRISTMAS IS CANCELLED BECAUSE DAD WANTS MORE MONEY AND AUTONOMY.” Which is kind of a ridiculous reason to be mad at your husband. Let’s be so for real. In other news, Stassi has only just realised Beau looks like John Travolta walking around Cannes Film Festival, sans beret, with his newly dyed beard. He’s all, “uhhhh I’ve only been walking around with it for the last three days, jeez.” Stassi says she’s been sick and the last thing on her mind is whether her husband is going around making his beard darker than it should be to look like an aging actor with his pilot license. Beau feels invisible. I think he’s just proved he’s the exact opposite with that thing on his face.

Anyway, Dayna, Stassi’s mother, decided to give Stassi her old teeth that she’s been holding on to for Christmas. She shows them to Katie and Katie looks horrified. I have to say that I kept all of my teeth that fell out when I was little. I have no clue why. I don’t still have them though. I also have no idea what happened to them. God help the garbage man who came across that small container of human teeth. Is keeping your teeth or your child’s teeth normal? I don’t know. My daughter hasn’t lost any teeth yet. Will I emotionally scar her if I keep her teeth in a bag and gift them to her for Christmas when she’s an adult? Will that make my mothering akin to Dayna’s? I’m now questioning everything. I’ve kept some of my daughter’s hair from her first haircut. Is that as bad as teeth??? Good lord, I’m spiralling. Stassi asks Hartford if she wants a necklace with her mum’s baby teeth on it. She’s all, “uhhhhhhhhh no thanks, mum.” I think that answers all of my questions.

Beau leaves for his interview. He’s sent out the door with a very facetious sounding “good luck.” Two hours later, Beau returns, and he seems almost stunned to walk in and receive a line of questioning from his wife, who he hid his interview from. Stassi is all WTF. Why didn’t you tell me, when you’ve been talking about this for so long? Beau is like, “well clearly it’s a point of contention with us, soooooo.” Stassi asks how it went. I guess it went well. They get into a back and forth about what I would say is relatively normal marriage bullshit. Someone is mad at someone else for doing X, Y and Z, so they hold a grudge, which then makes the other resent them, and it just goes in circles like that. Pretty much. Not to discourage anyone from getting married. I should say that’s normal relationship bullshit. Beau is living in a house of sickness, and I have to say I feel that pretty hard. That’s exactly how I’ve felt this past winter. I’m pretty sure I’ve had the flu about four times. Every time my daughter brings home a new bug from school, my body is all, “OoOoo, we haven’t had this one before. Let’s try it!” Perhaps I should consider a multivitamin. I don’t know.

Anyway, Beau is now kicking himself for becoming the bad guy, and he’s right. He really should have dealt with the situation earlier and just gone back to work. The longer you leave shit, the more it festers. A few days later, while sorting through their kids’ toys, they decide to hash it out. Beau says it’s not about money. It’s about his creativity and wanting to do something for himself. Stassi is scared because Beau is the heart of their home and ultimately all she wants is stability for their family, which is totally understandable because neither of them had it growing up. Kudos to them for doing some great communication work. I now feel like I’m being bamboozled into believing that reality TV does do a relationship good, even though every fibre of my being tells me it does not.

Towards the end of the episode, we see the girls going on a girls’ night and guys going on a guys’ night. A guys’ night plus Teddy. Over at guys’ night, Teddy says the table they’re sitting at is so narrow that it feels like her and Beau are scissoring. They bleep out the word “scissoring”, which I’m very perplexed by. Scissoring isn’t a cuss word annnnnd this show features lesbians. Who are we offending by leaving in the word scissoring?? Also, earlier in the episode Stassi said something along the lines of “it puts me in a shit mood” and they left shit in. Is scissoring more offensive than the word shit? Or did they just miss that bleep? I don’t know what’s going on. Anyway, Beau is an honorary lesbian for tonight.

At girls’ night, Taylor is feeling like an asshole because she’s considering not being at her child’s birth. She feels like an asshole because she doesn’t want to upset Teddy. I feel like she should feel like an asshole because she should be there for her kid. It’s something Taylor may never get to experience if she misses it. Stassi and Taylor tell Katie and Kristina about how they saw Kris Jenner at the event that they were at last night. Stassi says she saw Kris go into the bathroom, and she was not going to be the person that follows a celebrity into the bathroom. What her and Taylor did instead was wait outside the bathroom until Kris was done with her business. To me that’s just as creepy. No, actually, I feel like it’s creepier. At least if you were in the bathroom, you could act like it was just a coincidence. If you’re lurking outside, it seems pretty obvious you saw her go in and are waiting to pounce.

Stassi is telling the girls about how Beau is considering going back to work, which I’m sure they’re sick of hearing about, considering he’s been talking about it for so long. And all of a sudden Stassi is freaking out about drop off and pick up and school lunches and dinner. The thing is, she offered to pay Beau NOT to go back to work. Which tells me, with Beau going back to work, thus bringing in more money, you surely could afford to pay someone to do the majority of those things. I know a lot of Stassi’s concern is about one of them actually being with the kids, but it’s not like they would be full time with other people. And if that is the primary concern, then surely Stassi could learn to pack a lunch. Make a sandwich, pop in a yoghurt, some fruit, a cheese stick, some crackers and Bob’s your uncle. Teddy tells Beau that he needs to get his sporkle back, just like Brittany did. Rob says at least they’ve made progress in the fact that Beau now knows why Stassi didn’t want him going back to work. It’s because she’s scared.

Over with the girls, Kristina Kelly says she can relate to Beau because she has to ask her partner Max if she can take a shower, which is a fucking record scratch for me. I’m going to need Kristina Kelly to blink twice if she needs help. Is she trapped in a relationship with that Targaryen looking mother fucker?? She says that time away for her is going grocery shopping. I know that Kristina Kelly was perceived as a bitch on VPR and she seemingly didn’t have that many friends, but I’m gonna need her to buddy up with some people and get herself on a girls’ trip or two because… woof. Stassi says she feels more empathy for the situation that Beau is in when Kristina tells her these things, but she would also like to point out that time away for Beau is him going to the movies alone, which I think we can all agree is a step up from the grocery store. Katie is thanking her lucky stars she never had kids with Tom Schwartz, which is like, yeah, I fucking bet she is.

They’re discussing how crazy it is to have relationships on TV. Kristina Kelly then gives us another ominous insight into her relationship by saying, “I didn’t go on VPR full time because Max didn’t want to do it.” Some people may say that Stassi is the villain on House of Stassi. I say “no”, those people are wrong. Max is the villain on House of Stassi. Stassi is then taking the girls through fucked up things that have happened to her with her exes, like her demon ex Frank who tried to sell their sex tape and seemingly stalked her. She says if anything Beau is lucky she’s not more controlling. Taylor says something about therapy and Stassi is like, “NO”, clearly it’s a trigger word for her. Stassi’s friends are concerned for the future of her relationship. I’m not worried, because they have this reality TV show. And according to her, that’s all they need to improve their lives.

Anyway, that’s it for today.

Thanks for reading.
See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya!