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Summer House: Martha’s Vineyard Season-Finale Recap: Luxe on the Bluff

Season 1 Episode 8 Editor’s Rating5 stars *****

Photo-Illustration: Bravo All right, Jasmine, I have a sincere message for you: Please make your ancestors truly proud and pick up All About Love, by bell hooks. Here’s a quote from the collection of essays: “All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm’s way.” Girl, we need you to want better for yourself.

Jasmine and Silas’s relationship stands in stark contrast to the energy of the rest of the house — it’s as if they’re filming an episode of Married at First Sight while everyone else signed up for a Bravo show. The cracks in their relationship are on full display, and it reeks of the type of pandemic relationship that feels idyllic until you realize you have to put up with this person outside the love bubble created between just the two of you during the end of times. It’s most apparent in Jasmine’s reactions to Silas’s demands; at one point in the episode, she expresses confusion at the thought of their gender roles continuing on vacation, a sign to me that she has been cosplaying as a traditional housewife while Silas thought it was the real thing.

But Jasmine isn’t without agency in this. We can only imagine what their conversations behind closed doors are like, but I’m sure that his outbursts in the house aren’t the first time she has seen that side of Silas, yet she acts as though she doesn’t know this is the man she married. Jasmine signed up for a life with a “traditional” (misogynistic) man, so then she had to lay in the bed she made while playing house for a year before getting married. But now that she is seeing him through the rest of the world’s lens, that bed she made doesn’t look as comfortable.

Their incongruous relationship philosophies come head-to-head when Jasmine, who is running around trying to prepare for the end-of-summer party, doesn’t have time to make Silas’s food, so instead she has Amir finish and plate the meal. This is absolutely unacceptable for Silas, because how dare a man serve another man food? And then Jasmine has the gall not to return promptly enough for Silas’s clothes to be ironed and laid out as soon as he’s ready to put them on. Tired of being treated like Silas’s personal maid during vacation, Jasmine tries to sweep it under the rug to focus on the party.

The Luxe on the Bluff party, hosted by Alex with Nick assisting in bringing the vision to life, is an end-of-vacation bash featuring live music with friends and family of the house members’. Alex even graces us with a song that’s cool and all, but I saw right through Summer’s tears, which were the equivalent of guffawing at your crush’s C-minus-at-best joke. I’ve used that same tactic, sis! Jokes aside, the two finally connect and agree to link up in New York soon, both optimistic about a potential spark between them. They do make a cute couple!

Although Nick helped Alex prepare the party, Alex surprises him by organizing for Nick’s girlfriend, Tasia, to attend. Fresh from her trip to Africa, Tasia arrives at the house, proving that, yes, she is indeed real and, yes, Nick is out of line for those DMs. Bria pulls Tasia to the side to inform her about her boyfriend’s shenanigans while she was on another continent and how the house didn’t know that she existed until the second week, meanwhile Nick hovers around the corner, looking guilty as ever. It’s messy, but I agree with Bria; I too would want to know if my man were calling women his “wife” before going on an overnight vacation with them. Tasia doesn’t care, though, so kudos to her. Maybe they’re in an open relationship and Tasia just left her African “husband,” or she knew Nick wanted a romantic entanglement to be a story line, because she was extremely calm and said she knows about his communication with the other women and has “not an ounce of doubt” about their relationship.

Tasia stands by her man for the rest of the episode as the night descends into more fun, more alcohol, and more drama. Jasmine addresses the marital dispute from earlier in the day, framing it as a “foolish” argument (which it was), but Silas says he wants “acknowledgment” of his feelings, which sounds like a code word for submission. He wants her to admit responsibility or express guilt and to give him “more,” thus validating that she did something wrong and submitting to Silas as the one who dictates how she “should” act. It’s the same as him using the word routine to describe antiquated gender roles. He all but admits this when he shares his solution for a lot of their issues: They both need to treat their “routine” like a “necessity” and not an “option,” which is received with an eye roll from Jasmine.

Next, it’s Bria and the white Rick Ross who argue about their respective roles in their relationship. When Bria asks Simon why he isn’t watching Milo, Simon’s response triggers Bria, who believes Simon has been acting uncharacteristically on this trip and has “disrespected” certain boundaries. On the other hand, Simon feels that Bria’s tone and demands are disrespectful. Summer tries to mediate between the two, which upsets Bria even more, as she snidely remarks that Summer and Simon have a “special” bond. Well, Summer probably did bond more with Simon than Bria, who spent most of the trip in her bed. And to be fair, Summer still defended Bria when trying to talk to Simon.

I’m Team Simon on this one: I don’t think it’s appropriate to talk to your partner — or, really, anyone — in the way that Bria speaks to Simon. She reminds me a bit of Candiace from Potomac, in that she speaks to people with the utmost disrespect, invading personal space and screaming obscenities, but acts surprised when someone gets physical with her. Maybe it’s how I was raised, but “fighting words” are a very real thing to me, and it makes sense how Bria’s confrontations with Mariah and Summer resulted in the same outcome. Bria’s mom even knows how provocative Bria can be; over the phone, her mom defends Simon without knowing his side, telling her daughter not to embarrass him.

When Summer goes to Bria’s room to explain her side, it escalates quickly, and Summer pushes Bria back when Bria starts pointing her fingers in Summer’s face. Bria enters victim mode, forgetting how hard she acted when telling everyone to shut the fuck up, and cries while wondering aloud why “everyone” thinks it’s okay to put their hands on her. Simon has enough sense to sleep elsewhere for the night and makes up with Bria in the morning, showing that while they are definitely a chaotic couple, they’re way more entertaining than Silas and Jasmine. Silas continues to micromanage Jasmine at the end of the night, telling her how to handle the situation with Summer and Bria. Jasmine, at the end of her rope, tells Silas she’d “rather not hear a damn thing” from him, and Simon has his outburst that was teased last week with his threats of “revoking” the protection of marriage.

The following day, everyone packs up their suitcases and says their final good-byes to their housemates. Bria and Summer make up, chalking up the fight to Summer overstepping in Bria’s relationship. Jasmine vents to Jason about her issues with Silas and vows to go to therapy as soon as they get home (thank goodness).

Vineyard Tales

• I’m proposing a tricky question to all the fans of the Black Bravo Universe. Fuck, marry, kill: RHOA’s Ralph Pittman, SHMV’s Silas Cooper, or Married to Medicine’s Scott Metcalfe? I need to ponder my own answer, but right now, I’m killing Silas, fucking Ralph, and (can’t believe I’m typing this) marrying Scott.

Here are my final thoughts for the season:

• My biggest note is that we need more Preston! He was a great voice of reason, had many insightful thoughts, and possibly had the healthiest example of Black love in the house, even though we, unfortunately, didn’t get to see his boyfriend in the flesh. Next season, I would love to meet him. I’m very excited to see Preston on WWHL after this episode airs.

• Jasmine needs to be on probation. I want to see her without Silas or not at all. There’s truly nothing left for me to say about Silas.

• I’d love more honest conversations/perspectives about the fallacy of “Black excellence” and what that means in our community — this is another area Preston could’ve provided more knowledge on instead of Jasmine’s obsession with respectability.

• We need more episodes!!! Thanks for following along with me, and hopefully I’ll catch y’all next season (maybe I’ll have watched the OG Summer House by then; I’m intrigued).

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