In the City Recap: Room for Growth

In The City
Caught in the Crossfire
Season 1 Episode 8
Editor’s Rating ★★★
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It’s shocking that a decade into her tenure on Bravo, we have never seen Lindsay Hubbard go on a trip other than the five-hour schlep out to the Hamptons every goddamned weekend. However, it is not at all surprising to anyone paying attention that we have a full-blown Ramona Singer room-snatcher on our hands. It was textbook Singerian tactics: Get in there before anyone else, claim that you deserve the biggest room because you’re voluntarily sharing with your girlfriend, and when confronted, come up with a bullshit excuse as to why you deserve it and never back down under pain of death. The crazy thing is it works better than Vicki Gunvalson at a MetLife insurance conference. 

This all happens on a group trip to my home state of Connecticut. Well, kinda. They’re not in the gross part of Connecticut where I’m from, where the only exports are closed factories, Aaron Hernandez, and third-rate reality-television bloggers. They’re in Washington, a darling little town where the old-moneyed New York WASP elite have weekend homes where they tend hydrangeas and scour their goldendoodles for ticks. (Another of Connecticut’s great exports: Lyme disease.) 

Before they can get to their accommodations, an enormous house that looks like a witch was burned in it at some point, they have to make a stop to play paintball. As shocking as it is that we have never seen Lindsay hog the best rooms, it’s shocking that in all of our decades of Bravo, we don’t see more paintballing. How many times have we had to watch them all drink wine and make horrible paintings? How many beach outings where they all freeze in the breeze because they won’t let them go during peak season? How many Roaring ’20s nights? 

The reason I think we don’t see more paintballing is that it isn’t very compelling television. It’s all there, dividing the group into teams, subtle conflict becoming overt, forced merriment in a forceful friend group. But something about it just doesn’t click. As far as side quests go, I think this one should go outside, walk to the house where the cast is staying, and get burned in the same spot as the witch. 

Once they arrive at the house, it isn’t long before Georgina and Lindsay plant their flag in the primary and decide it is theirs. Kenny, who is nominally cohosting the trip with Lindsay, thinks they should offer the best room to Yvonne and Nick since they collectively ruined their wedding dinner the week before, and this is something like their honeymoon, even though they’ve been married longer than Jen Shah was in prison. Kenny’s biggest mistake is telling everyone this plan before telling Lindsay or putting it into action. Lindsay and Georgina’s excuse is that they’re mothers away from their kids for the first time. I’m sorry, but that should confer no benefits. Maybe it’s because I am a person without kids, but why should I have to suffer for their lifestyle choices? That’s like me saying I deserve my own room because, like Amanda, I need weed to fall asleep. Why are kids and a weed habit any different? 

I would almost be a little bit more sympathetic to the two of them having to share a bed and not being in a couple. Like Lindsay says, no one wants to spoon a friend. (Well, if I were friends with Kyle Cooke, I would be volunteering to take the smallest queen bed possible with him, but I am a perv.) That is until we find out that Gavin is in a queen bed and Kyle and Amanda are in the same room with two twin beds. Wait, so there is a room built for people not in a couple to share it. Sorry, Lindz. I don’t care how many babies are at home, I don’t care that you planned the trip, based on logistics, it’s the two of you in there or spooning in a queen. That is your choice. You can’t penalize people for not having children, but you can penalize them for not wanting to share a bed with a friend when there are twins available.

Whitney is just as annoyed with Lindsay and her tactics. She says that Lindsay is always playing the “mom card” to get what she wants. Are you ready for some mental gymnastics, because this is when I explain that Whitney is both right and wrong at the same time. She’s right to be annoyed with Lindsay for hogging the best room for seemingly no reason. If she’s annoyed about that, she should say it, challenge Lindsay, and come up with some other way to settle who sleeps where. (Bethenny Frankel, finally sick of Ramona’s shenanigans, devised the first-ever housing lottery on Bravo.) 

Where Whitney is wrong is by extrapolating this instance into saying that Lindsay does this all the time. Lindsay says that she’s too busy to attend events or have petty drama with her friends, and that is something that I will give her. Having a kid is obviously her priority, and she can’t be as present in her friendships as she once was. However, we haven’t seen any evidence that Lindsay is throwing her motherhood in everyone’s faces the way that Whitney says she has. Lexi reports this back to Lindsay, and it is the only thing she has done all season, but I have a feeling it will be one of the best things to happen in this nine-episode season. (How is next week already the finale?) Oh, that and she brought her hot-ass husband, who brushed his teeth wearing just briefs, and for a moment I thought I was watching Italian Heated Rivalry.

Instead of fighting with Whitney, Lindsay has a talk with Yvonne about how Lindsay ruined Yvonne’s wedding by making it all about her. Now that we’ve warmed up with my mental gymnastics, let’s limber up for Lindsay’s, where she somehow wants Yvonne to apologize for Lindsay ruining a dinner. Yvonne says all she wants for Lindsay to do is say that the dinner sucked and she’s sorry for getting into so many fights on a night that was important for her. Instead, Lindsay says it sucked but because everyone was piling on her. Then she doubles down and points out why it shouldn’t be that important to Yvonne, because she’s already had a wedding, an engagement party, and a bachelorette. I love Lindsay and all she contributes to the reality-television arts and sciences, but this is why Danielle isn’t friends with her anymore. If the experience isn’t centering Lindsay, then she doesn’t care about it. When someone disagrees with her, she can’t try to see their point or apologize; she needs to change their mind to show why she’s the biggest victim. Hmmm. Wait. Does Whitney have a point? Do I have to ungymnast my own gymnastics? 

As much as this episode is about Lindsay, the Rebecca Lobo of In the City (real Connecticutians know), the last fight belongs to none other than Kymanda, who are trying to get along in their twin beds and matching tiny bathrobes. At dinner, Gavin, whose left arm must be a ladle because he is always stirring that pot, congratulates DJ Kyle Cooke on his burgeoning tour where he’s slated to make $250,000 across a dozen dates. The problem is, Amanda does not yet know about this. “Not only is he committed to this tour and all these gigs, something we didn’t even talk about, but he’s excited about it,” she says in a confessional. “This man is planning his future without me in it.” I’m sorry, but I have absolutely no sympathy for Amanda. She moved out of the damn house! What is he supposed to do? She wanted space; now she’s getting space. Now she’s mad that she has so much space that he’s making decisions without her. I want to launch her into space like one of Jeff Bezos’s defective rockets. What about when she decided to get a one-year lease without clearing it with Kyle first? Did she ask him about that? Sure didn’t!

The fight once again becomes fodder for the table, just as it did on Summer House, which I don’t think is healthy for their relationship. It’s funny how the consensus falls along gender lines. Gavin and Kenny say that Amanda is not taking any accountability for her part in the relationship falling apart. As Kyle says, they had a hard reset, but he was the only one who had to change and sees that Amanda did nothing. The guys, who are probably hearing more of Kyle’s side, agree. It’s Lindsay and Danielle, agreeing on something for a change, who think that Kyle hasn’t proven that he’s willing to change because he’s still making the same mistakes.

Lindsay then tells the guys what they may not be hearing from Kyle, that he’s cheated on her a bunch of times. Okay, we know about the kissing times, and we’ve recently learned that he had sex with a woman before they were married. But are there more? What do we not know? What are they all keeping from us? And, even if Kyle cheated on Amanda, does that mean he’s always wrong in the relationship, and she gets away with everything? It’s hard to know, it’s hard to tell who is right and who is wrong. It’s hard to care about Amanda, chattering in her room, trying to calm her body from quaking. It’s hard to care about Kyle as he pitches into a fit at Andrea, who is offering him relationship advice. It’s hard to know what is real and what isn’t the curse of the witch whose ashes are still scattered in the front lawn of this house, kicking up in the wind, and bringing a curse to anyone who thinks they can get a full night’s sleep while her ancient grievances still ooze like an open wound.