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Southern Charm Recap: Double Dates

Season 9 Episode 14 Editor’s Rating3 stars ***

Photo: Bravo Okay. Let me get this straight. Taylor and Austen did not sleep with each other? Are we sure? Because it sure feels like they did, and everyone is acting like they did, and so if everyone thinks that they slept together, didn’t they, you know, kind of bone even though everyone thinks they didn’t?

We’re led to think there might be some confession at the end of the last episode when Taylor stands up and tells the group she wants to put this to rest for good. They’re still in Jamaica and I pray that this is their last night because the island nation might sink under the weight of the stupidity that is around this one table. But when Madison, point blank, asks what happened, both Taylor and Austen say they only kissed. Yawn. Wake me up when they were engaged in wife-swapping and tomfoolery and there is video evidence to prove it.

Taylor is incensed at this point. She says that she has apologized four times and that Olivia still hasn’t accepted it. “Take it or leave it,” Taylor shouts repeatedly. Shep is telling Olivia to get over herself and accept the apology, but Olivia wants to feel her feelings and express that Taylor lied to her multiple times and hasn’t done much to inspire trust since then. Someone brings up that both Austen and Taylor talked to their families about their relationships. Taylor says that she talked to her brother, “who I love and adore just like you love and adore your brother.”

Record scratch. Crickets. The sounds of the nuclear bomb going off in Oppenheimer which is really just silence. That’s what followed that comment because Taylor was comparing her brother to Olivia’s brother, who died like (checks watch) like a month ago. Seriously, did Taylor think this was a good idea? Did she think any of it was a good idea? That’s when Olivia really goes in on her, but Olivia is really just pointing out the things that she has done. Taylor classifies that as being “verbally assaulted” because someone pointing out your crimes to your face somehow constitutes a crime of its own? I don’t know where she learned this. White Woman Victim University, maybe? Venita says it perfectly, “You slept with someone’s man and you think you’re being verbally abused?”

After this, Taylor storms off, and then Olivia storms off in a different direction. We see a couple of interesting conversations back at the table. Craig very astutely says that Olivia wants to hear, “I’m so sorry I messed up,” but she’s hearing instead: “I messed up once; it’s not that big a deal.” What Olivia is reacting to is not just the lying and betrayal but also Taylor belitting her feelings in exactly this way. Rod says that Taylor was trying to shut down chat about her and Austen among the group but, by doing so, couldn’t make it work with Olivia, who still feels slighted by Taylor.

After that, there is an entirely stupid conversation with Mini-A-Lago himself. JT is sitting at the end of the table with a face so scrunched up you would think that his upper lip was made of raw sewage. He’s upset that Taylor and Olivia got into it and Austen didn’t say anything. I think that JT needs to watch some Housewives because he would know that men should not get engaged in women’s business. Also, what could Austen have said? This is not a fight about him. This is a fight about Taylor betraying Olivia, and the man’s identity is mostly inconsequential.

What does JT expect Austen to do? Stand up and tell them not to fight anymore? Come out with the truth? He has given us his version of it so far and pushed back when people said he and Taylor slept together. Otherwise, this is a fight between Olivia and Taylor, and any involvement Austen has will just make it worse. JT is right ideologically in that Austen is a weasel who treats women like shit and then scurries away when the consequences are a-coming, but that is not what happens here.

What happens next is completely insane. Taylor somehow got caught on a hot mic by someone who wasn’t listening to the mic or even on the screen with her. Taylor goes back to her room to call her very alive brother (way to rub it in!) and talks to him outside on the balcony even though it connects to Olivia’s. Now Olivia hears Taylor’s whole conversation about how Olivia and Austen weren’t really dating (told ya!), about how Olivia is hanging out with Austen, but she’s still in the doghouse. Olivia hears this and freaks out. We think for a moment that she’s going to go next door and punch Taylor in her thick skull, but instead she calms down and sobs into Venita’s arms for a bit.

While everyone else leaves the table, Madison and Craig talk about the Love Rhombus, and Madison has a case of the hiccups like every drunk little Southern girl should. Madison tells Craig to scare her to get rid of them, but instead he tells her to say that she’s not a fish because hiccups are from when we were fish and we forgot how to breathe on land. I don’t know what is going on with Craig, but this makes absolutely no sense and is about as healing as putting a packet of Emergency in your ear hole.

The rest of the episode we’re back in Charleston and dealing with a little bit of Love Rhombus action. Austen tells his sister Katie, who is visiting, that he feels like Olivia is playing hot and cold with him, and he’s not entirely wrong. Whitney and Shep go liquor shopping and Whitney tells Shep that he’s leading Taylor on a bit, and we all know it’s true, but I think there’s something in Shep’s small ballsack that loves that Taylor is still pining after him even though he has treated her worse than a cab driver treats an empty Snapple bottle. (It’s cause they pee in them.)

The rest of the episode is really about Craig and Paige, my favorite character on this show even though it is not even her show. They once again have a conversation about whether or not Paige is going to move to Charleston. Really? Again? We have had the same dead-end discussion for the better part of a year on not just one show but two. Can we just put this whole topic to rest already?

I do love what Craig says about being able to lose Paige at this point and be alright. Craig says that being with Paige made him such a stable person (and also shockingly insightful about other humans), and because of that, if they did break up, he would survive it. It’s sort of a weird sentiment to express, but what he’s basically saying is that she fixed him, so now he doesn’t need to be with her, but he still wants to be with her. Yes, it’s kind of fucked up but doesn’t that somehow make it even sweeter.

There is another great scene when they’re getting ready to go to dinner at Madison’s house for a double date with her husband Brett, the most handsome low talker in all of the land. Craig is putting his outfit together, and Paige, quite accurately, says he looks like a “stressed-out accountant.” He changes out of a white, spread collar shirt with brightly colored buttons and into a grey crew neck sweater and jeans. When they arrive at Madison’s house, Brett is wearing the same exact white, spread-collar shirt but with buttons in a different color. I swear, do all of these guys shop at the same store, and is it called Fraternity Formal?

Then they go over to Madison’s, have a lovely dinner she got catered but is passing off as her own, and laugh and laugh and ask each other nice sweet questions; it was like an HGTV show if they were ever allowed to have emotions other than surprised or woefully agitated at the permitting process. It’s sort of wonderful and sweet and a peek into what life would look like when everyone on the show grows up and gets boring and stops having fights in Jamaica. I don’t know. Seems like it could be a cool existence. I still wouldn’t leave New York for it, though.

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