Whew, boy. The “no one wants to be here” vibes have reached an all-time high this week. The entire cast is flailing around like a bunch of Sims who have been trapped in a room with no doors. Even puppy Juan and unlimited mechanical bull rides can’t get a single light flickering in anyone’s eyes. Things are bleak for all involved, and as a viewer, it’s easy to feel complicit. Okay, okay, fine. I shall cut myself off here before I start citing Society of the Spectacle. Back to the regularly scheduled programming (Kenny’s villain edit)!
Kenny still doesn’t know how to walk a dog and spends a trip to the park looking at JaNa and Juan like they are his jailers. Again, do we think this was all re-edited to foreshadow Kenny and JaNa’s eventual breakup? Or do we think the breakup was already cooking at this point in filming, and they announced it IRL recently to better coincide with on-screen events? Or some other third thing? Anyway, Leah and Miguel show up with Petunia, a plastic baby just like the ones everyone had in the villa. It’s never made clear exactly why they commit to this bit, but they keep it up for the entire episode. When there is limited relational friction, throw a plastic baby on it, I guess? Kenny is planning a dinner for JaNa for their nine-month anniversary. Living situation tension aside, celebrating your anniversary every month is wild behavior if you’re over the age of 16. And even then … good relationship habits should be established early, I reckon.
Over at the padel tennis club, Aaron tells Connor about how great his trip to the U.K. was. How he helped his mom move into her new house, hiked the tallest mountain in Wales, had an overall wholesome time — and then Kendall arrives. Kaylor joins too because this is supposedly the padel tennis date Aaron asked her on two weeks prior, while they were flirting on the roof. Kaylor tells the boys that she’s having the worst day of her life because her grandma is dying. This girl is really having a rough go, and I see why Aaron, similarly close with his family and undistracted by the urgent lure of TikTok fame, wants to show up for her. Thus we begin what I predict to become a season-long saga on the ethics of “showing up” for someone. When is it the right time? What behavior and frequency is most supportive? Should you just sit down and be quiet if the person you’re trying to show up for has a brand new boyfriend named Torin? Aaron doesn’t know the answers to any of these questions. Instead, he shit talks West Hollywood phoniness (fair), then accuses Kaylor of flashing her “in love” smile. I’m sure this will all end well!
For Leah and Serena’s contractually obligated on-camera check-in, they drink glasses of midday champagne at Serena’s apartment. Leah bitches about the busted American healthcare system and reports that she has a nodule on her thyroid, but it’s fine. They commiserate about their mutual struggles with anxiety and then — I GOT A TEXT?! Leah’s ringtone is the same one from the show. It’s either Stockholm Syndrome or comedic genius. Perhaps both. The text is just JaNa sharing that they got their first application for Juan’s adoption and badgering Serena to attend Kendall’s party. Serena says hell no. She’s not fake, doesn’t like Kendall, and doesn’t care enough to beef with a 30-year-old man. If you ever wondered what would happen if reality stars grew up, here ya go. It’s all beyond refreshing, but it also means we will not see any more of Serena this episode.
Instead, we get more Aaron. He’s at his apartment, throwing a tennis ball against his bedroom wall like he’s a five-year-old cosplaying “stuck in jail” while in a time out for saying a swear word. He breaks a bunch of glass over his pillow, then FaceTimes his mom. He tells her that because he’s Spanish, he went in for a goodbye cheek kiss, and Kaylor tried to smooch him on the lips. In a confessional, a producer asks if any of this is on camera, and Aaron says, “Of course it’s not, she’s not that stupid.” Later, Connor will speculate that he’s 60/40 on Aaron telling the truth, and I hate to admit that I’m more or less on board with those odds. Aaron also tries to convince his mom that he wants to keep Kaylor at arm’s length, but he can’t switch off how much he wants to “be there for her” when he sees her all sad. The whole thing is very “we tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
Luckily, JaNa is still on this television program as a force of chaotic good. She pops over to Kaylor’s apartment, eating cookies and telling new man Torin, “Your eyes are so nice, what’s your credit score?” She says he’s really small, “gives underage,” and looks just like Aaron, but otherwise seems sweet. Kaylor admits that she took both Aaron and Torin to Saddle Ranch as early dates. Of course Kaylor uses “Chuck E. Cheese for 24-year-old Stagecoach Music Festival die-hards” as her go-to first date spot! Did anyone think she was going to invite romantic prospects to a literary event at the local indie bookstore? Be serious!
At Saddle Ranch, the gang begins to arrive. Connor shows up in head-to-toe white like he’s on break from his billion-year service with Sea Org. Sophia and Alexia Umansky appear as “Liv and Kendall’s friends,” but do not utter a single word. Leah and Miguel show up with plastic baby Petunia. Kenny and JaNa show up with their odd vibe. Torin shows up with yet another heinous outfit. Aaron reports to Liv that Kaylor isn’t happy and just needs a hug from someone familiar. Then he sulks around, leaning on a barrel, trying to be chill.
It does not work. (Quick aside that somewhere in there, the producers make Connor squash his beef with JaNa, who barely pretends to care.) Aaron is not chill. In the parking lot, he and Kaylor get into it. The core of the disagreement is the way Kaylor acted at padel tennis compared to how she’s acting now. Aaron is frustrated she is giving him mixed signals. Kaylor insists this isn’t the case. Aaron smokes a cigarette just out of frame. Kaylor appears visibly intoxicated. They promised us The Hills in last week’s teaser, and we get it. Kaylor ends up trying to end the interaction the same way she always does, by saying “she’ll always care about him.” When the camera pulls back to show a wider shot, we see Torin is leaning on a car no more than ten feet away. Reader, I screamed. This show is a mess, but sometimes art can be found in even the most unexpected of places.
The next day, Connor takes shirtless headshots with a kettlebell because he just “signed” with a “company” to “build” a coaching portal for health and fitness, because “this is an area where he can make the most impact.” I’d argue he’d make more impact as a trash collector. But then again, I live on the East side of L.A., where the worst influencer culture seems to mostly involve taking fit pics while in line for a niche food pop-up, so what do I know? Alas, Aaron wears socks to the beach and goes on about how he feels bad for Kaylor losing a family member and how he wants to be there for her. I’m still unclear what “being there” means to anyone on this show. Aaron insists that all of this “standing on business culture” is not “the real Kaylor” and that he wishes she could just be the person he knew in the villa because that person is enough. It’s borderline painful to see the exact person Kaylor would not want to hear these things from be the only person who’s willing to say them (on camera, at least). If only JaNa’s Friendship Mediation, LLC also provided cognitive behavioral therapy and labor organizing services.
Speaking of our girl, JaNa and Kenny go on their anniversary date. After performing their lines (“the sashimi nachos sound crazy!” “the steak garlic noodles sound really good!”), they debrief on the last nine months. JaNa talks about how Kenny is teaching her patience and how good their shared sense of humor is. Where is this shared sense of humor? I have yet to see it. JaNa is effortlessly funny while Kenny mostly sits there, looking like a student dentist is about to perform their first-ever root canal on him. Was Kenny funny in the villa? Likable, even? Or did he just float by on JaNa’s seemingly endless charm? It’s times like these that I wish my brain didn’t delete all details from a season of Love Island the second the winners were announced.
Hindsight or not, though, Kenny looks like trash. JaNa keeps trying to convince herself that them living together is actually a good thing, even as Kenny has zero enthusiasm about anything beyond his diet and Katy Perry. He goes on to admit that he wants separation from her. JaNa says she thinks a guy knows what he wants the second he sees a girl. It’s a heartbreaking hypothesis, again, with the hindsight of knowing where this ends up. She asks him what he’s thinking, insisting he has something else to communicate, and he says nothing. This is the pain of being a person who frequently asks their partner if they’re mad at them. Unfortunately, sometimes they are! The experience is like being one of those little rats with the lever that releases cocaine 10 percent of the time, except instead of cocaine it’s a slowly unfurling batch of resentments.
Producers speak to them both individually in the parking lot (the cameras barely get anything, so who knows how this was cobbled together in the edit bay). JaNa says she has no idea what’s going on with Kenny, that whenever he gets upset, he gets very quiet first. Kenny says things like “it is what it is” and “bro, I’m ready to dip.” Whether he means from this Hollywood sushi restaurant or his relationship remains to be seen at this juncture.
Next week, Nicole comes to town, the girlies visit Ariana at the sandwich shop, and JaNa finally puts words to Kenny’s “serial killer vibes” so I don’t have to!
We witness the beginning of the end of JaNa and Kenny, on their nine-month anniversary, no less.
