The Valley Recap: Damn It, Janet

The Valley
The Hive Mentality
Season 3 Episode 5
Editor’s Rating ★★
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Janet Caperna has well and truly painted herself into a corner. It’s gotten so bad that when she and husband Jason show up to a pool party, Danny says that he’s deathly allergic to Capernas and is trying to avoid them at all costs. The whole episode, really, is about whether or not Janet and Jason can find their way back into “the group” before their big trip to San Diego, and the answer seems to be a resounding no. 

Nia has no interest at all in talking to them or even a strategy for avoiding them. When she goes to visit Michelle at the gymnastics gymnasium, she says that avoiding Janet and Jason just comes naturally to her. The real takeaway from the gym scene, however, is Michelle’s complicated history with her mentally ill father. She says that he got her interested in gymnastics when she was five and told her that she was going to the Olympics before she even knew what it was. She loved the rigor of being obsessed with gymnastics her whole life — the schedule, the diet, the training — but that was all taken away at 15 during her parents’ divorce. The way she explains it, her father has never been diagnosed with mental illness, but he thought that people were after him, so if he moved away from his wife and daughter, these mysterious forces would have no reason to come after them. He left them so that he could protect them. 

Turns out Janet’s father is alive somewhere in the L.A. area, but she never sees him because he’s still distant and afraid. This is fascinating, of course, because I’ve never heard anything like it, but it is also terrible. If only he could get the help he needs, maybe medication and lots of therapy, and he can be there for Michelle again, right back there in the gym, this time watching Isabella do flips and tumbles in a collection of brightly-colored leotards. Maybe this could heal them, maybe they could repair the strained bonds, build back the missed time. I want that for them, but it seems Michelle is resigned to the reality of her father keeping himself at a distance, and that makes my heart break for her for more than her divorce. She could use her dad way more than she could ever use Jessy Lally. 

While they’re at the gym, Kristen, Brittany, and Zack are getting Brazilians and spray tans. The girls are off getting all bare down there, and Zack is getting his spray tan. He goes to find the ladies and walks past the treatment room where the door is open, and Kristen is hugging her knees so that the technician can get all up in those lady parts. He shields himself from it and says, “I think I saw your uterus.” In confessional, he’s like “Full flaps! Flap jacks! All up in my face!” Okay, this scene is funny because who wants to be confronted with their friend’s genitals? But there has always been this strain of gay guy body horror about vaginas that I really don’t like. Sure, we’re not used to seeing them, but bodies are beautiful, parts are just parts. There’s the surprise of seeing your friend like that, but also, who really cares? I’ve been nude in hot tubs with all my besties, and I think I could stand seeing a vulva or two without freaking out. 

Anyway, while Zack is having his flap attack, Lala, Michelle, and Janet are doing Pilates, and Janet is trying to figure out just who in the group is talking to her. She decides that she’s going to have a game night and she’s going to invite everyone. She says that she and Jasmine repaired things a few weeks ago and that she thought she was in a good place with Zack; he was just mad at her for what happened with Danny and Nia. She’s even going to invite Danny and Nia, knowing they’re not going to come, but to prove to them that she’s open to burying the hatchet. 

Game night rolls around, and Janet arrives at a brewery with a full Plinko board we don’t even get to see anyone use. Is this a copyright issue, because the only thing that could have redeemed this doomed game night is a round of The Price Is Right’s best game? Anyway, the RSVP list for Janet’s game night includes Jason (of course), her best gay Jared (of course, but to the tune of a Madonna song), Lala, Schwartz, Michelle, Brittany, and then several random gays that we don’t really know. (One is Ariana’s best gay Logan, who we met on VPR but goes uncredited). This is what is needed for Janet’s gay-me night: seat fillers.

After the games, the ladies are all talking about the situation, and Janet says that she wishes that everyone would tell her what she did so she can apologize for it. Here’s the thing about Janet: I want to feel bad for her. It can’t feel good when everyone in the friend group and neverly everyone in the Bravo fandom is against her, saying she sucks, and telling her that she’s ugly and she should kill herself. That must suck. But also, haven’t they made it quite obvious what they’re mad about? Even if it is “petty shit” like she says Zack is mad about, there was a whole season of them saying what the problem was, a whole reunion of them addressing it, and several months since for her to check up on it. I’m sure she could ask Brittany. I think Brittany knows. 

During this same conversation, Brittanny says that she’s tired of being in the middle. I get that, but I think Brittany is part of the problem. She either needs to tell Janet what everyone is mad about and get her to make some kind of amends for it, or she needs to tell everyone else that it’s stressing her out the way they treat Janet and just find some way to get over it, be civil with her, or keep her out of it. Brittany needs to take a stand one way or another because riding this fence is probably really chafing her freshly waxed coochie. I did like it when Brandon, her new BF, stood up to Kristen at the pool party and told her to be nice to Janet because it stresses Brittany out when she isn’t. Finally, someone is putting Kristen in check and telling her how to behave. Sure, he’s new to the group, but keep looking out for your gal. 

As the conversation at game night continues, Janet says that she has to keep apologizing while Danny liked a comment on Instagram about how Jason likes to watch Janet have sex with other men. “Why is that okay, but I can’t talk about what he’s done?” she asks. Zack says that Janet just always wants to make herself into the victim, and here she is, doing it again. Also, she said that Zack was just upset about petty shit, but she’s mad that Danny liked a shitty comment on Instagram? There’s no way for her to move forward if she’s going to get hung up on each one of these infractions. 

On the way to Brittany’s pool party, there are a few other scenes. Jesse and Lacy have lunch, and I still have a hard time caring about either one of them. Zack talks to Luke about getting couples counseling, and it’s the smartest and most empathetic that Zack has ever sounded. Schwartz says that he has no game, and he’s really into a girl, but we have yet to see her. I wonder if he met her at summer camp, and we wouldn’t know her because she lives in Canada. Kristen is worried that her baby will forget about her now that she’s spending all of this time with the nanny. Once again, my heart surprisingly aches for Kristen. 

But the focus is still on Janet. Jasmine says that she doesn’t want to hang out with her, but at least she texted her to say why she wouldn’t make game night. Lala doesn’t get why people won’t just get over it already. Kristen is sick of talking about her, even though she’s not even there. Yeah, same. How is this fight, which happened last year, still looming so large in the group? 

When Janet arrives, it doesn’t cause any conflagration around Brittany’s pool. She and Zack go to have a chat, and Zack tells her that he doesn’t want to have this conversation again, because it seems like every season they need to go through it. She gives him the whole “What did I do?” question, and everyone is listening from afar and joking about how Zack has a detailed list of everything that Janet has done to him, going back to pre-COVID times. Gays are like elephants; we never forget, and we also hear with our feet. (That’s why we walk so fast.) 

Rather than dealing with their issues, Zack, who has been drinking, asks Janet how she feels about Danny and Nia right now. This is really the crux of the issue. If Janet still has a problem with them, then everyone still has a problem with her. Janet says she doesn’t want to talk about it, but she needs to. Actually, what Janet needs to do, at least if she wants back in the group and back on the show, is to eat all the shit. She needs to gobble it up like I would attack a funnel cake at the state fair. She doesn’t need to apologize for certain things; she just needs to apologize for everything. She needs to say she’s wrong. She needs to swallow her pride along with that shit, and just take it, take it, take it, take it. That’s the only way back, but she seems incapable. 

As she and Zack continue to talk, it begins to go better, mostly because she appeals to Zack’s vanity and says that the way he handled Jasmine and Danny’s situation last season was perfect, that he acknowledged the problem, supported his friends, but didn’t insert himself in the drama. Janet wants credit for “moving differently, behaving differently,” but how can she get credit for that when it’s barely happened so far, and people are keeping such a distance that they can’t see evidence of it? Janet has a long road ahead of her to get back with the inner circle, but it seems like she’d much prefer the shortcut. On her ride home from the pool party, she stares out the window while Jason drives her, the Juicy Scoop podcast playing lightly in the background. She did all she thought she was supposed to do, she smiled, she talked to Zack, she tried to seem unbothered, she didn’t bring up Danny and Nia. The mask was starting to hurt, pulling on the sides of her forehead like too much Botox. She watched the lights turn on in the houses as they sailed past, each one a family, each with its own drama, each with its own story. But none like hers, she told herself. None as hard as hers, she thought as she pushed down the urge to scream like she was drowning a kitten in a pool.