The Valley S3 Reunion Part 2

Kia ora, hello and welcome to Anyway! The blog where I unpack the chaos of reality TV.

Today we’re diving back into The Valley Reunion Part 2. Everyone is heading back out onto the stage after lunch and I don’t know what show Jesse thinks he’s on. But for some reason he’s wearing his tightest undies in case they ask him to show them off. Just because you’re not wearing your ugly, saggy grey underwear, that does not give you a free pass to drop trou, Jesse. To quote Aunt Sassy, ‘I don’t need to see that!’ Apparently neither does Zack, because he damn near chokes on his water at the mention of Jesse’s undies.

Andy asks Jesse what he needed a 300k SBA loan for. He blabbers on about the hikes that Michelle has been taking to talk about his loan to various people, completely deflecting from the question. Jesse calls Michelle a cheater and a liar, and Lala says, ‘you gotta stop calling her a liar, Jesse’. I know it wasn’t Lala’s intention, but by not saying both cheater and liar, she’s inadvertently made it seem like Michelle is, in fact, a cheater. Did Michelle cheat on Jesse? I know he always says she did, but I don’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth. He’s also calling Michelle a liar when he just lied by omission. What was the 300k loan for? Expensive bottles of wine? Jesse got a 300,000 loan and he still can’t even pay for his daughter’s health insurance, which is fucking embarrassing. Where is your pay check for this show going?

We’re discussing Jesse’s financial issues and Lacy would like to let everyone know that she would rather light herself on fire than bankroll a man. To be honest, I believe her. I don’t think she’s funding Jesse’s lifestyle, I can’t see her doing that. I think Jesse is lying about how much money he has to Michelle, so that she will pay for shit. He’s manipulating her, so now she probably has to pay for everything when it comes to their daughter. Lacy says that she hasn’t experienced Jesse having financial problems. Michelle and Lacy are going back and forth on the issue, and all of a sudden Kristen has turned into the demon from the movie Smile. The way she’s leaning forward and looking at Lacy is like ‘GET ’EM, BITCH’. I don’t love that for her.

I don’t know what’s going on with Kristen. I guess now that I’m thinking about it, maybe she’s always been this way, but I do feel she’s on the wrong side of history with a lot of stuff this season. I think she could have more empathy for the situation Michelle is in. Lacy is trying to point out the misogyny of people saying that she’s using Jesse to be on the show, but the thing is, we all know she’s tried to audition to be on The Real Housewives of OC soooo, that doesn’t exactly help your cause, Lacy. To be clear, I’m not saying I don’t think Lacy and Jesse are in a genuine relationship. They definitely appear to be. But there are a few tidbits here and there that make people wonder about the authenticity of it. As Lala rightly points out, Lacy, this season, hasn’t really been all that warm and loving to Jesse.

Andy forces Jesse to tell Lacy he loves her so he can see how she responds. She says she loves him too. It’s pretty clear, by the look on Michelle’s face, that she is super uncomfortable with their relationship. I think Michelle is jealous, and I don’t mean that in a nasty way. I mean it in a way like she herself has stated previously. Saying, it’s not that she wants him back, but she wanted him to be that way for her when they were together. Does that make sense? Yeah. Anyway, we move on to talk of Schwartz and Kiana. Andy asks if Schwartz wants kids. He says ‘sooo bad’. In spite of the fact that Schwartz is basically a forty something year old kid himself, I think he would make a good dad. Although if Kiana is only 27, he may be waiting a while.

Schwartz says they have a 16 year age gap and Andy tells us he also has a 16 year age gap with his boyfriend. Schwartz holds out his fist to Andy for a fist bump. Too bad for him, he’s sitting right on the end of a 4 meter couch. Did he expect Andy to run down and fist bump him? Schwartz tells Andy that Tom Tom is for sale, the intellectual property right along with it. I’m not sure who would want to buy that IP. What exactly is someone who is not Tom or Tom going to do with it? The whole point of it was to bring in people who were fans of VPR, right? I guess a Vanderpump Rules fan could buy it and host marathons or like trivia nights there? I don’t know why I’m now investing my time and energy into a bar that’s clearly going down the tubes.

Not only does Zack not have a fridge, apparently him and Benji still have no furniture in their apartment. What’s the deal with that? Brittany is like, you can go shopping in my garage for furniture if you want, which seems like a less than appealing offer. Zack talks about how much Brittany and Kristen have helped him since moving to LA and they discuss the tough times he’s been through. Andy asks if he knows whether he wants to have kids. Ultimately, Zack says that he doesn’t feel like he is in a position to raise a kid at the moment. I fully understand wanting to be stable generally and from a financial perspective before having children, but the old cliche of ‘you’re never ready to become a parent’ is true. I think Zack and Benji are really sweet together. They’re the only healthy couple on this show! I’d like to see them have a kid. That would be adorable and inspiring for a lot of people.

During a break we see Luke asking for more make up? Like, more powder for his nose. Which is a record scratch for me. Doesn’t this man claim to hate everything to do with LA, including fame and celebrity? Come to think about it, why is he even on this show? I’m confused by everything this man says and does, and because I have watched the episodes of this show, unlike him, I now cannot stand the sight of him. Andy wants to know how co-parenting with Randall is going. Lala is basically like ‘UGH Jesus, gross’, but she says Ocean is thriving, which we love to hear.

Andy wants to switch gears to Kristen and Luke. He starts by asking about their sex life, which I definitely do not want to hear about. Kristen lies to us all by saying they’re having more sexy sex than they’ve ever had in their whole entire lives. Thou doth protest too much. Andy says, ‘you pressuring Kristen to have sex before she was ready postpartum, was coming off as selfish’ to Luke. Uhhhh Andy, it was coming off as more than just selfish. More like selfish, disrespectful, abusive, manipulative, controlling, all of the above. He can see how it came across selfish. He says that he wasn’t straight off the bat pressuring at the 6 week point and he thought he was putting a good buffer on things. But like, all you need to do is talk to your partner to find out what the buffer is. It’s not really something that you alone in your mind should just be guessing. It’s called communication.

Danny says ‘whoever come up with the 6 week rule should be fired’. Watching these two idiots laughing about the 6 week stand down period of the vagina, reeeeeally bums me out. Side note, I absolutely love the online speculation that someone took the springs out of Danny’s seat on the couch. He does look so much shorter than everyone else. Unfortunately for him, I think he actually is just that short. Maybe his torso is the shortest part of his body.

Anyway, Andy wants to know why Luke sleeping on the couch triggers Kristen. She kind of explains that it feels like rejection to her. Andy asks how many nights a week he does it now, and Kristen very quickly and defensively says, ‘well not anymore!’ These two are giving me a weird vibe. They talk about couples therapy and apparently, Kristen tells us, their therapist told them that they are too volatile for couples therapy. What in the what what? What does that mean? Isn’t that what therapy is for? To make the couple less volatile? I get that fighting in couples therapy is not conducive to resolving problems, but surely the therapist should have tactics to deal with that and get to a better place. I don’t know what is happening with the couples therapists on Bravo. Not that long ago we had Kyle and Amanda’s therapist telling them that they hated each other. Which again, came as news to literally no one. But still, as a therapist it’s kind of your job to steer them in a direction of, ohh, I don’t know, NOT hating each other and NOT being volatile. Basically I’m asking the therapists to become miracle workers.

Andy now asks Luke, if he had waited to propose, would he still have done it after meeting pregnant Kristen? He’s now a bumbling idiot. Instead of just saying ‘no’ and being honest, he’s struggling for words. He says, ‘well I wouldn’t break up with her’, as if it’s some kind of consolation for Kristen. Let’s give the man a round of applause for not breaking up with his pregnant girlfriend, everybody! Andy asks if Luke and Kristen are happy. Kristen stutters her way through a ‘yes’ and Luke gives a very half hearted head nod. Jasmine is all ‘yyyiiiiikkkkeeesss’. Literally no one believes them, myself included. I want Kristen to be happy, but I don’t see that with Luke.

Anywho, moving on to the feud that finds itself wedged between the Booko’s and the Caperna’s. I’ve definitely found myself more endeared to Janet this season, but I feel like I’ve just gone ten steps backwards on that, learning that Janet and Jason had the demon Jax over for Christmas at their house. What in the actual fuck is happening? I’mmmm gonna need more details. I’m sorry, like, why? And, how? And, what? Turns out Jax asked them if he could come over. Janet immediately said no, she then spoke to Brittany about it and Brittany said it may actually be helpful for her for him to be at theirs so he’s not annoying the fuck out of her.

Andy is so messy when he asks Danny how it felt to have Janet compare him to Charles Manson, when he knows that’s not what happened. I see you getting your hands dirty, Andy. What I will say is these people have enough issues without you stoking the fire! Okay. Danny thinks that because Seth Rogan said he hasn’t seen Darkside Danny on WWHL, that Darkside Danny doesn’t exist. A. Who cares whether Seth Rogan knows he exists or not? The audience can see it with their own fucking eyes. And B. Seth Rogan told Danny to keep his name out of his mouth, which is hilarious.

Nia says that her and Danny have implemented more support in their life. She says that they’ve hired an au pair. I can only imagine what that au pair has seen. Is it just me or has Danny had some kind of facelift? His face looks different to me. What’s going on there? Is he less wrinkly? Did he lose weight? I don’t know. Nia is trying to tell us that Danny is super supportive towards her. Lala points out that if that is the case, it’s definitely not coming across, because Nia seems like she’s in it alone.

Andy is like yeah, let’s talk about the fact that we saw you trying to eat a sandwich, on two separate occasions, in the same episode, and you couldn’t because Danny was incapable of looking after his own child. Both of them are basically like ‘ohh he was just tired and cranky, you know how it is’. Yeah, I bet you do get tired and cranky looking after four kids. I do with just one. But like, rein it in when you’re on TV and your wife needs a bit of help to eat a damn sandwich. Danny admits that he was a nightmare, but he’s also bringing up every excuse under the sun to justify his behaviour. He was tired because of the kids, he was sleep deprived, he was stressed and anxious because of Janet and the conflict of it all. How about just say you were an asshole. Period. End of story.

Andy says there could be an argument made that perhaps that’s the way things are in your household when no one else is around. To which, Lala gives us the line of the night. She says, ‘we saw into the window, you forgot to close the blinds’. Because Danny seemed comfortable speaking to Nia that way and Nia knew how to deal with it, I would say Lala hit the nail on the head with that one. Meanwhile, as all of this chatter is happening, Jasmine is getting more and more annoyed about Danny bringing up how tired and stressful it is to have children. She voices this frustration and basically everybody jumps down her throat. While I understand where Jasmine is coming from, I’m not really sure this is the right audience for that kind of complaint. You’re surrounded by parents, Jasmine.

Having kids is tiring and stressful a lot of the time. I don’t think that stress and tiredness should be an excuse for shitty behaviour, but also, it can get the better of you. Jasmine says, ‘you guys make me not want to have children, because of how miserable you are’. Clearly Jasmine isn’t alone in that sentiment, because, as I’ve pointed out before, a lot of people watching are calling this show birth control. Sooo yeekkkss.

Andy brings up the fact that Kristen and Luke were supposed to appear on WWHL together a few weeks ago, but Luke bailed and Kristen ended up doing it by herself. Andy says that Luke told the people at WWHL he wanted nothing to do with the situation if Kristen was involved. Apparently their nanny was out of town, so they were going to take Kaia, and Luke was a fucking baby about taking the baby essentially. These two are clearly super happy together.

Anyway, Andy wants to know if all the hate that Danny has been getting has helped him empathise with what Janet went through with hate and death threats online, and does he regret participating in that hate? He says absolutely. He also received death threats. While I’m not a fan of Danny, obviously, I in no way shape or form condone that shit. I don’t know who is out there sending death threats to people on TV, but those people need to get a little fucking perspective in their lives. Whoever is taking reality TV that seriously has issues, which is obvious, given the behaviour. Both Danny and Janet apologise to each other for what they’ve been through with online trolling, respectfully. Janet says it’s super dark and she wouldn’t wish it upon anybody.

Towards the end of the episode, we’re discussing Danny’s shitty behaviour on the night of the drag pageant. Andy wants to know if Danny would have acted differently if it were one of the guys that came and spoke to him instead of Lala. He says yes, because he doesn’t know Lala well. Everyone was apparently horrified watching it back. I’m still confused how no one but Lala heard it at the time. Michelle is talking about how people are afraid to go up against Danny and Nia because of what happened to Janet last season, and a lot of confusion started when Michelle was trying to mediate what people were saying, because she was stuck in the middle.

Lala says she understands Danny’s confusion, with half of the people saying you shouldn’t drink and then the other half being like drink however much you like. And I do agree that it could be confusing. As I’ve discussed many a time over this season, the discussion shouldn’t necessarily be about the drinking of it all. Perhaps Danny shouldn’t drink, but that’s up to him at the end of the day. It’s about his behaviour WHILE drinking. He needs to reassess his behaviour. Andy speculates what Danny would have acted like had he not been drinking in all the instances that he acted like an ass throughout the season. Danny says he wonders too and for that reason, apparently, according to him, he has stopped drinking since filming wrapped. The only problem with that is, we know Danny is a compulsive liar when it comes to his own drinking. So you’ll have to excuse me when I do not believe what he is saying.

Everyone starts making ambiguous comments about Jasmine’s wedding and I guess someone causing a kerfuffle. Seems like we needed Andy and a camera at that wedding! Anyway, that’s it for this week.

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