Vanderpump Villa Recap: Day-Off Disaster
Everyone loves a good reality-TV mean girl, but Hannah and Telly are too banal for their bad behavior to make good television.
It’s so easy and fun to hate Hannah and Telly because they are so generically awful you don’t even have to hinder your faculties to figure out why it is that you hate them. That is what ultimately makes them the worst characters on the show. Yes, they’re noisy and create a lot of “drama,” but everything they’re saying and doing has been said and done better by greater practitioners of Reality Television Arts and Sciences. They are more banal than hating Taylor Swift, more banal than pumpkin spice lattes, and more banal, honestly, than every other mean blonde girl with lip implants that has been on television since The Real World invented reality TV.
Ironically, the episode starts with Hannah getting the best comment card reviews of the season thanks to her sucking up to Chizi, his horny friend Dan, and the rest of the guests. While she was being nice to the guests, she and her little friend were being mean to their co-workers. They are upset with Gabriella because she made out with Dan after Hannah and Telly both said they weren’t interested. Telly says that she’s always the first choice, but didn’t she just say that Hannah said “no” to Dan before she did? How are you going to lay out this evidence and then refute it less than three seconds later?
They’re also upset at Gabriella because she is trying to get closer to Andre even though Grace expressed that she had a crush on him. Yes, Gabriella did tell Andre that she and Dan kissed, but Andre initially doesn’t seem too pressed. The next day, however, they have a little chat about it and see that their feelings are a little further along than they initially anticipated. That night they have a hot and heavy make-out sesh while Stephen and the world’s largest earring are passed out in the twin bed right next to them. As he says, thank God for Ambien.
The following day, Priscila has a chat with Lisa, who notices that she’s withdrawing from the group and has a nice little self-cry hanging out by the pool. Priscila tells her that she’s a bit homesick and struggling to find someone in the group who she really gels with. She does not bring up anything that happened with the other staff, but in a confessional, she says that Hannah coming for her in the first days of working together and Telly being mean to her has really made her feel disconnected from the group. However, she never mentions their names to Lisa and instead focuses on herself and her own emotions.
Lisa also has a chat with Marciano, and he gets to stay in the Villa and no longer work in the dish pit, which is like listening to your noisy neighbors’ sex yelps — we all knew it was coming.
After Lisa tells the crew they’re going out for dinner in a town called Carcassone (which I heard as “cock is on” because I am utter filth), Priscila is sitting around the staff quarters with a “stank face.” Telly and Hannah are convinced that Priscila is mad at them and ratted them both out to Lisa and called them “bullies.” If anything has ever reeked of a guilty conscience, it is this. Priscila did nothing of the sort, but they know they have treated her so badly that she could have complaints. Why are these two telling on themselves?
Both Telly and Hannah are always saying that other people are “fake” if they won’t confront them and talk about their problems with them to their face. This is a reality-television falsehood that I wish would go the way of O.J. Simpson, dead and barely missed. Having to work with shitty people and just gritting your teeth and struggling through it is not called being fake; it is called life. There is a terrible asshole in every single office in America, and most people just get through their days ignoring them. It doesn’t make them fake; it makes them practical. And if there isn’t that asshole in your office, I regret to inform you the asshole is coming from inside the house.
Telly says, “How are you going to resolve a situation if you’re not going to talk to me.” Maybe she doesn’t want to resolve it? Maybe she just wants to silently hate you until she goes home. That is a perfectly viable and acceptable option. Also, based on everything we’ve seen from Hannah and Telly, the only thing that talking to them will get her is them yelling back at her and telling her that it is all her fault. That’s not a resolution. What they want is for Priscila to give them a reason to start shouting at her and feel justified about it.
But they’re not even angriest at Priscila; they really go in on Gabriela. They’re sitting by the pool, and Hannah says Gabriella has a mustache and a giant nose. Telly calls her Toucan Sam and says, “I have never met such an ugly, self-absorbed person.” Really? She’s definitely attractive and literally every single person ever cast on a reality show is self-absorbed, so it’s not like there isn’t enough of that to go around.
Why are they so mad at Gabriella? Because she made out with Dan and because she wants to get with Andre after Grace said she had a crush on him. I can’t tell how Gabriela did anything wrong. They’re pressed that she is the third person for Dan to hit on. Okay. So? Both of them didn’t want him, so why should she say no to him? If she doesn’t care about being sloppy thirds, why do these two care? Also, Grace shot her shot. She tried it with Andre and he told her that he was not interested. Why is that Gabriella’s problem? If Andre is interested in her and she’s interested in him, let them get it on. She even slow-pedaled a bit to let Grace get over it. She has done nothing wrong here, but these two have just decided that they hate her and are looking for reasons to back up a decision they already made.
The only problem with all of this is that Emily, the usually mild-mannered housekeeper who I don’t think I’ve mentioned even once in these recaps over six episodes, hears their whole conversation about how gross Gabriella is. At their lovely dinner that night at a castle, Hannah asks the group, apropos of nothing, “Does anyone feel bullied or upset in this group or have an issue?” She’s addressing Priscila, but Gabriella brings up the stuff with Andre, and even Grace is like, “Yeah, I don’t care.”
Emily, however, tells Gabriella that Telly and Hannah were calling her “Toucan Sam,” which Hannah is either too young or too dense to recognize. Emily then gives a toast saying that she doesn’t mess with women making fun of other women’s appearances. In a confessional, Hannah says if Emily has a problem with her, then she should say it to her face and makes fun of her passive-aggressive toast. Wait. Is this the same woman who has a problem with Priscila but won’t say it to her face and also asks everyone a passive-aggressive question? What is Hannah even doing? Does she know what her definition of real even is? I have a feeling that target keeps moving and changes depending on what she needs it to mean to justify her own terrible behavior.
Hannah then turns on Caroline, the sweet sous chef, and accuses her of calling her “insecure” when she didn’t even utter a sound. In a confessional, Hannah says that it’s herself and Telly who are against the whole house because everyone else is insecure. I don’t know. I think a secure person wouldn’t worry about the other beefs they were causing in the house. I also think if everyone else in the house is against them, maybe they should think about what they’re doing wrong rather than assuming that ten people are wrong and only the two of them are right.
Back at the house, the screaming only intensifies as Hannah, in particular, is looking for a fight and the rest of the women just want to wash off their makeup and go to bed. Hannah shouts at Grace and tells her she looks like an idiot because she “curated all this drama with Gabriella.” What? She doesn’t care about Gabriella. Hannah and her accomplice are the only two who curated anything. Hannah is literally shouting, “Come confront me.” Wouldn’t the “real” thing to do be to confront them? No, she wants them to start it so that she can say some stupid reality-TV platitudes like, “Don’t poke the bear. You shouldn’t have poked the bear.”