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Southern Charm Recap: Dog Day Afternoon

Season 8 Episode 7 Editor’s Rating1 stars *

Photo: Bravo

Here we are, right smack dab in the middle of dog wedding season. Actually, that is not true. The dog wedding is next week (when I will be on vacation, thank the Catholic Jesus), so we’re in the run-up to dog-wedding season, a holiday as made up as Pi Day, May the Fourth, or Rex Manning Day. Dog wedding season is sort of the last ditch attempt for something to happen, to get someone to care about something, to stay relevant. It’s like when a website finally resorts to bikini slide shows. Yes, they started with great voices and probing journalism, but at some point, everything must devolve into pictures of celebrities at the beach. We are now officially at this point.

Patricia calls Shep over to explain that when he was visiting the week before with his dog “Little Craig,” he sullied her dog Peaches’ honor, and now it must be made right. They must get married. This is sort of an ur-text to the show itself. Shep is the rascally dog who rips open a stuffed champagne bottle toy faster than gays can start a rumor about what Shawn Mendes likes in the bedroom. Everyone is trying to force Shep, I mean Little Craig, to do the right thing and settle down and get married, but he rebels. Yes, he rebels all over the place. He is a bukkake of rebellion.

This ceremony, with a cake, 25 guests, Champagne in coupes rather than flutes, and all the other assorted bones and whistles (see what I did there?) that will be planned in a week, is just like the man trying to keep Shep down. As ludicrous as it is to have two animals marry each other, it is equally ridiculous for Shep to keep Taylor around with no hope of ever marrying her.

Anyway, we’re stuck with a dog wedding, which somehow feels like a right-wing attack. It’s as if Ron DeSantis wants to say, “See, we told you if gays could get married that dogs would want to get married to.” Today they are coming for my union, and tomorrow they are coming for the sacrosanct union between Giggy (RIP) and Grandma Wrinkles (RIP), who are united in death as they once were in life. This whole recap is an excuse to remind you of this fact. Maybe next week’s recap will be an excuse to remind you that Joanna Krupa once sued Brandi Glanville for saying she had a smelly vagina. Oh wait, it won’t be. I’ll be on vacation. Can you tell where my head is?

As if I weren’t already as checked out as a copy of The First Wives Club at a Blockbuster Video, this episode is just as checked out. What is up with this season? It’s so weird and diffuse; it’s like nothing matters, not even the drama we’re supposed to care about. We get a long interlude in this episode with Leva at home, but it is just a bunch of clips of her son pushing or pulling things. Also, why is he always tugging or shoving? It’s Leva’s arm, the sofa, a table, the cameraman trying to film this, the milkman, the railing on the front of the house, his neighbor’s Alexa, a streetcar in the middle of Charleston. Anyway, it ends up as a whole segment of a reality television program. If I wanted to watch a kid being a little bit bratty, I wouldn’t turn on the TV; I’d just go to the supermarket and hang out near the coin-operated spaceship out front.

There is also a long interlude with Venita and her mother, Vi, who has an infectious smile and an unwavering dedication to turbans. She asks her mom why her dad just left one night while she was in high school and no one talked about it. That’s pretty wild! Then Vi tells her it is because her father cheated, which makes sense.

What baffles me is how Venita tries to fold this into her ongoing fight with Olivia. She says she doesn’t know how to fight because her mother would never fuss over things, I guess. She wishes her parents had fought more so she would know how to handle conflict. Is that it? I don’t know. I was lost and couldn’t really be bothered to figure it out because the fight with her and Olivia, a Kappa Kappa Gamma pop socket on the back of a broken iPhone 8S, ended with such little fanfare.

Olivia and Venita finally meet for coffee to talk about why they’re fighting, and Olivia says she walked away from Venita because she was trying to cool the situation down, not because she was dismissing her. Venita says she shouldn’t have come at her yelling. Then it’s over. They give each other a clean slate and gag down a shot of espresso. In the end, I have no idea what just happened or why I may or may not care about these people I have only just met.

What other ongoing feuds do we have? Austen is mad at Olivia, a girl who he isn’t even dating, for inviting his ex to his party. Whatever, who cares? What I did learn is that Olivia is right; Austen wants a girl who is going to cause him mad drama. Why else would he be besties with Lindsay Hubbard from Summer House, a groaning maw of insecurity and need masquerading as a public relations professional? Olivia seems over him very quickly, as if the producers concocted this whole thing.

Kathryn is mad at Naomie for talking shit about her to Chleb, but it looks like Chleb was also talking shit about Kathryn without her bidding, so why are we even bothering with this? Also, Kathryn wants Chleb not to speak with Naomie because they’re fighting. That is exactly why Chleb left in the first place, because she’s too much drama. Meanwhile, six months after this was filmed, Chleb is still at his mom’s house while she’s looking for the one loose can of Coke in the back of her fridge so that he can use it as a mixer that he doesn’t even want. His relationship with Kathryn is over, but his mom is still looking for that damn can.

Finally, there is Naomie and Craig, a man who has his kitchen in his living room, his office on his back porch, his bedroom in the basement, and his toilet on the stairs. Naomie wants to meet with Craig to talk about what happened with Kathryn and Chleb at the party. Craig does not want to hang out with her alone because Paige said that he should not just be straight-up chilling with his ex-girlfriend. When they finally meet, Naomie delivers a bunch of gossip, and Craig is like, “This meeting could have been an email,” and then goes home to his girlfriend.

He also tells Naomie they shouldn’t be hanging out alone, and she says, “Are you kidding me?” Come on. She knows this. You know if Craig were hanging out with a recent ex when he first started dating Naomie, she would have flipped inside out like one of the new two-sided pillows from Sewing Down South (available anywhere almost fine pillows are sold). I give Craig credit for trying to do the right thing for a change and make Paige comfortable because he knows she will be seeing this on TV and there is no hiding from Paige DeSorbo’s watchful and judgemental eye DeSorbo, America’s number one messy bed denizen.

This will certainly all play out next week at the dog wedding, where everyone will be in the same location together, but they’ll still feel as separate as the two bars of a Twix. Maybe the dogs will bring them together. Maybe Little Craig and Peaches will teach them a lesson: to love each other, get along, and make great reality television. Or perhaps they’ll just shit all over the place while people in fine clothes get drunk around them. Either way, marriage loses.

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