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The Kardashians Recap: Met Gala Behavior

Season 2 Episode 9 Editor’s Rating2 stars **

Photo: HULU After what feels like an entire season of episodes about the Met Gala, this week it’s finally the actual day of the event for the Kardashians. After pulling an all-nighter to dye her hair blonde, Kim, Khloé, and their hair and makeup team say a prayer while holding crystals. “Marilyn and her makeup artist, Whitey, I feel like they are watching down upon us,” Kim’s makeup artist says, giving a shoutout to his historic counterpart. Now, let’s say Marilyn is watching this play out from above: Would Marilyn Monroe have any context to understand who the Kardashians are? In this scenario, did the ghost of Marilyn Monroe watch Khloé and Kourtney Take the Hamptons from the pearly gates? Does the deceased star of Some Like It Hot know who Todd Kraines is?

If the answer is yes, then Marilyn is surely heartened to see that Kim has a full room dedicated to her at the hotel courtesy of Ripley’s, who sent over even more of her memorabilia, including her sweater, her makeup case, and her hair. Okay, actually, the hair thing might freak ghost Marilyn out. But, Kim takes this all very seriously, yelling at Kylie from the other room not to touch any of it, before making a stern announcement to the many people coming in and out of the room for her gala prep. “I will go so fucking crazy on everyone if they touch one thing in this room,” she says, “If you have to sneeze, go in the other room.” She’s so serious about it that the director at Ripley’s invites her to come work in artifacts “if this icon thing doesn’t work out.”

The vibe in Kourtney’s room is much different, where she feels light as air, simply breezing through life as usual. Whereas she’s just looking to have a good time with Travis tonight, Khloé, true to form, is panicked. The juxtaposition between this Khloé and the Khloé we knew years ago on Keeping Up continues to become starker with each passing week as her anxieties worsen. So all in all, the mission of this event is Operation Get Khloé Her Confidence Back, and her sisters spend the day hyping her up and trying to convince her not to wear her security blanket sunglasses on the red carpet.

Meanwhile, Kendall (and her bleached eyebrows) exclaims, “Oh my God! I’m having a baby!” A baby … horse. She gets word while she’s in glam that her horse-breeding efforts have resulted in an embryo after tracking down sperm from an Olympian horse. And, the fact that Kendall and her foal will both have Olympic blood is not lost on her. I can’t believe this is the first we’re hearing about this. You’re telling me we had to sit through a fake storyline about Kendall flipping houses when we could have been watching her go through equestrian IVF? There are 1 million shows on the air about people flipping houses and zero about Kendall Jenner learning about horse surrogacy.

But a horse pregnancy isn’t the only news item to cross the family’s desk during their glam, as Kim gets word about the Blac Chyna trial: “Verdict is in! We have 30 minutes.” This is the worst thing an already-nervous Khloé could hear, but luckily thanks to the magic of television those 30  minutes speed by, and soon enough she gets a FaceTime from Kris. “WE WON,” Kris and Corey scream from their car on the way to the gala, and Kim and Khloé start jumping with joy. Imagine their hair and makeup teams spending hours meticulously putting their looks together and then suddenly they start jumping? Hearts stopped beating in the room.

“Let’s sue her for our attorneys fees now, I’ll represent us,” Kim says, riding this high. But let’s see how desperate for season-three content we are before we pe into another lawsuit.

With her glam complete, Kim slips into the Marilyn dress, showing off how she ingeniously bedazzled her Skims so they’ll match when they show through the part of the dress that won’t zip. But, if you recall, Kim told us that the dress is too fragile to travel in, so she’ll be changing for the carpet on the carpet. Instead, this fitting is for another innovation of hers: the pre-red-carpet photoshoot. She explains that you can’t always rely on the hoards of paparazzi and photographers to get a good photo, so she set up a mini-studio with a backdrop and lighting in the hotel to take pictures before they leave.

This episode is also the first time we’re getting a significant appearance from Pete Davidson, which is fitting since they first met at last season’s Met Gala ahead of her SNL-hosting stint. The pair reminisce about that initial meet cute, with Pete recalling that he was rejected in the kindest way possible when Kim said she couldn’t give him her phone number because she had gloves on. This is actually a great tip for anybody who doesn’t want to give someone their phone number: Just wear a head-to-toe Balenciaga spandex bodysuit that includes built-in gloves.

This is technically their second public outing as a couple, the first being the off-camera White House Correspondents Dinner, because Kim wanted to be brunette for their first red carpet. “I wanted us to be getting slimed at the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards, but you know, to each his own,” Pete says.

Kim has told us before that being on the show isn’t really Pete’s thing, but I wonder if the amount that we’re seeing him is influenced by the fact that they broke up. Before, this episode it felt like they were deliberately cutting around him after the fact, but seeing him included now does make me think they just never filmed with him in the first place. Clearly that was a mistake, he shines in the reality-TV medium.

Finally, after a long day of glam, the family loads into sprinter vans to make the journey from their hotel to the Met. We have Khloé feeling a little better after the verdict, Kourtney and Travis disgustingly licking tongues to kiss so they don’t smudge lipstick, and Kendall, whose bleached eyebrows make her “look like an alien but its cool,” overcoming a panic attack as she hauls her massive gown into her van. How does one pee in that gown, you might wonder? Well, in Kendall’s case she takes a page from the Bethenny Getting Married episode in which Bethenny Frankel peed in an ice bucket under her wedding dress. Kendall is less tactful, peeing on her feet and leaving the bucket of urine for someone else to take care of. “Can we sell it?” asks an unseen voice: a star/entrepreneur in the making.

We get some much-needed drama in the episode when Kim’s sprinter van accidentally overshoots her drop-off location. Meaning they either have to spend an hour taking another lap around, or get out and walk to their entry point, exposing to the world that she isn’t in a dress yet. They end up walking up the street to the changing tent, using coats and umbrellas to shield Kim in her robe. I understand wanting to save a reveal for the carpet, but is the lack of reveal really a spoiler? Unless Kim is worried people will think the robe is her Met Gala outfit, and to be fair, she has made crazier choices.

All of the sisters arrive on the carpet while Kris, piggy-backing off of Kim’s look with a Jackie O. inspired getup, waits at the top of the stairs to watch them all arrive.

We obviously don’t see any of the actual Met Gala because it’s the Met Gala, so we reconnect with the family afterward, back at their hotel where they have pizza and doughnuts waiting for them from their favorite spots (Joe’s Pizza and Doughnuttery, respectively). But Kim doesn’t just have her favorite donuts “waiting in the room” for her like she says, she has constructed a full donut bakery in the middle of her hotel room where a baker is frying fresh donuts right there.

Toasting with their donuts and pizza, Kim, Khloé, and Kris reflect on having two amazing wins on the same day. “What are the chances,” Kris asks, that they’d get the news about the trial while en route to “the most epic red carpet of all time?”

The timing really is incredible, especially if you’re a reality television producer, which makes it even more confusing as to why the episode wasn’t better. Practically the entire episode was spent with the women sitting in glam, and even when the glam is for the Met Gala, it’s not the most compelling thing to watch. The excitement of the verdict failed to pack a punch because we as viewers weren’t taken along for that ride. We’d hear tidbits here and there, but most of the season Kris was just saying that they couldn’t talk about it.

The show lacks the interpersonal conflicts of Keeping Up, and the look at fame that we get instead barely scratches the surface in any insightful way, leaving us with episodes that just feel like Instagram posts come to life.

Take for example how the episode ends, after an exhausting day, Kim leaps up to throw on a second Marilyn dress that we knew nothing about, just for the ’gram. It’s her Golden Globes dress, which she slips into easily with none of the dramatics of the other gown, and poses with Marilyn’s actual Golden Globe, lent to her by its owner Jeff Leathan. It feels like at least 80 percent of this show is just taking photos.

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