Summer House Recap: Last Night a DJ Ruined My Life

Summer House
The Turntables Have Turned
Season 10 Episode 14
Editor’s Rating ★★★★★
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The biggest question from this very eventful episode is why Ciara is dressed as The Lorax when she ambushes everyone with squirt guns as they arrive at the titular house for the last weekend of the titular summer? Did she pack that for the group’s trip to Camp Sunrise, a day camp for children with cancer, but all the counselors told her it would give the children nightmares, and she didn’t want this particular Amazon order to go to waste? Is she secretly some kind of Dr. Seuss obsessive? Did she want us to know that she does, in fact, speak for the trees? 

Her prank of lying in wait for each of her housemates, bombarding them with a Super Soaker, and then enlisting them in her eco-army of Seussian extremists was just pure wonderful delight. First, she recruits Mia and Lindsay, who remind us of her ROTC past, and it’s shocking that after 10 years we can still forget these factoids about Lindz. Next to join are lovebirds Dara and KJ, and KJ really gets into this game. He’s pissed that the girls are shooting him, and when they attack the next tranche of visitors — Kyle, Jesse, Bailey, and Levi — he rushes out into the front yard when Bailey refuses to enter and endure her fate. Bailey is the real friend; however, when Amanda arrives with Kyle and Ben, she alerts them that Amanda is wearing suede and they shouldn’t ruin her outfit. (Suede in summer? Who is she? Sabrina?) Then the whole house descends on Kyle and Ben, soaking their shirts through (hubba, hubba), and it’s all just mirth, hilarity, hijinks, and joy. 

When a post-Sandoval Tom Schwartz told the crew to protect the chosen family that they have, this is what he was talking about — and, boy, did they fail that assignment. Of all the things that haven’t aged well in the light of, you know, everything, this episode has aged the worst. It’s like the opposite of Paul Rudd. He would take one look at this episode, and immediately his face would look ancient and craggy like the side of a mountain. It starts at National Beach Day. No, it starts on the way to National Beach Day, when everyone is in the car talking about West and Ciara’s recent reconciliation. West doesn’t like all this chatter and says he just wants to have fun with her until the fall and see what really happens. Oh, we know what happens, and it ain’t good.

Amanda’s worst scene of the season happens at National Beach Day. She’s talking to Mia about the Soft Bar soft launch and how she was upset she wasn’t invited to hang out with West, Ciara, Ben, and (ugh) Sabrina after the party. She doesn’t think it was a good idea to essentially take them out on a date; it’s too soon. Amanda says she’d love to see them reconcile. “But he needs to be fucking ready. It’s him,” she says. “I’m skeptical. I’m weary of him.” Um, so weary she was photographed all over New York wearing his clothes? Then Amanda says that any man with Ciara needs to treat her like the best woman in the world. “Until a man is capable of doing that, I don’t trust anyone with her heart. I would die for that girl. The way I would cut West off in a second if she just gave me one look, I would be like, ‘Attack!’” Did someone hand Amanda a little sand shovel and tell her to make a sandcastle? Because she is here on this beach, digging herself deeper and deeper and deeper. 

Also at the beach, Kyle has a conversation with Ciara about what is going on with his relationship with Amanda. She proposes to him something she had posited to Amanda: that maybe they should take a month off. Everyone thinks this is a bad idea. In the car ride there, Lindsay says that this seems like a couple’s last-ditch effort. Kyle seems to feel something similar and wonders if Ciara has brought this up to Amanda previously. She said she had, and Amanda was into the idea but didn’t think that Kyle would go for it. Kyle’s upset this has come up in the group, and that Amanda didn’t mention it in therapy, where they’re supposed to be laying everything on the line. 

Back at the house, Lindsay has Chef Frank come to cater the Second Annual Freedom Dinner, which is the anniversary of her and Carl’s breakup, and this one is shockingly less contentious than last year’s. Lindsay decides they should play a table game that is not “Who Around This Table Do You Trust the Least,” which is always a terrible idea, but it goes better than I thought. She says this dinner is all about lost and found, and they should all say something they lost and something they found. As an example, she cites, “Carl lost me, but he found a bunch of thirsty girls in his DMs.”

Bailey starts and says she lost the baggage of an old relationship, but she found the ability to have joy, flirt, and make out. Then everyone forces her and Carl to make out to a chorus of hooting and hollering, and I’m happy for both of them. Before dinner started, Carl talked to Bailey about her outfit and how he liked it, but how he also liked the translucent white dress she wore to the Soft Bar soft opening because he could see her ass and her thong through it. Oh, Carl, he’s like a boy at an eighth-grade dance trying to talk to a girl. (Also, did that make it a Hard Bar hard opening? Sorry. I’ll stop.) 

KJ says that he lost his brother when he was young, and he has always had a hard time opening up to other men. This summer, having the boys around him and being part of their dynamic was something he found and really made him grow. I’m not crying, you’re crying! And all of this over male friendships? Is this what we need to cure the male loneliness epidemic and eradicate Joe Rogan from the planet forever? Just a bunch of bros in a summer house shooting squirt guns at each other. Meanwhile, Mia, Ciara, and especially Dara are like, “What? You didn’t find us?” 

West says that in the past few summers, he lost his voice, but he found a new friendship with Ciara that is like the world to him. Well, I hope he’s ready to lose it again, this time forever. Ciara says she lost the weight off her shoulders of hating this person, meaning West, and is glad it’s over. Throughout the dinner and the whole episode, they’re kissing, cuddling, and flirting with each other, and it’s like watching the band tuning up for the first time on The Titanic.

Finally, it gets to Kyle. Lindsay jokes that Kyle lost his wedding ring, but found a DJ career, which lights the long fuse that ignites the whole evening. Kyle — sick of everyone disparaging his DJ dreams as Lindsay did earlier when she told Chef Frank he was smart to go to culinary school rather than try to be a DJ — tells them he’s about to sign with a DJ manager who will get him better gigs, more money, and a higher profile in the space. No one around the table likes this idea, especially Lindsay. She asks if he’s talked to Amanda about this and what her opinion is. Kyle says that Amanda knew it was going on. “This is your conversation, then?” she says to Kyle. 

Lindsay takes up for Amanda, saying that in a true partnership, these conversations and decisions should be made together, and it’s clear that Amanda is not into this decision. We can tell because Amanda takes a familiar tack, staying quiet with a smirk on her face while she lets everyone around her make her points, because Kyle won’t listen to her anymore. This is an amazing place for Lindsay to be, for a number of reasons. As she says in confessional, she thinks that Amanda deserves better, but she also loves Kyle and has known him the longest and wants them to reconcile. Lindsay, historically, was against the women in the house, hating her roommate (checks notes) Cristina in season one, being so mean to Amanda in season two that it prompted an 18-page email, taking up against Paige and Hannah on their arrival. But now here she is, the biggest girls’ girl with Amanda’s back. It also has a little something to do with Lindsay and her own relationships, I think, fighting with Kyle about how she hasn’t been consulted, how she was often not a true partner, how she wants equality but can’t find a man who will give it to her. Regardless, this is why Lindsay is an omega-level practitioner of the reality television arts and sciences and always needs to be on television. 

The fight grows and grows. Ciara doesn’t think that taking on another business venture is good for their relationship. Ben makes the valid point that getting him a manager will be good because with better gigs, he will make more money without having to work as much. Lindsay won’t give up, though, saying that as a family unit, they need to align. Kyle says the DJs that he admires are married with kids and their wives support them. Then it gets into whether or not Kyle and Amanda want kids, who is ready and who is not, what this means for them, and Amanda finally pipes up and says to take the kids out of it, and that this has grown beyond something that is a “table discussion.” 

We can see Kyle getting more and more upset, and he feels like he’s always being attacked. Although he doesn’t say it, I think he’s also sick of everyone else feeling like they can chime in on his relationship. That’s when he looks Amadna dead in her face and says, “Fuck you.” No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. A million times no. An ocean of nos. A no for every atom in the universe. This is no way to talk to anyone, particularly your wife, particularly when she hasn’t had much to say in this entire discussion. He’s venting his rage at the one place he thinks he can, at the one person who he thinks won’t say anything. And she doesn’t! But everyone around the table does. West, especially, tells Kyle that he can’t talk to her like that and he moves his chair down the table next to hers, putting his hand on the back of her chair in support, and, I don’t know if this is true, but it seems like that is the moment she fell in love with him, despite everything she said about him at the beach earlier. 

This only makes Kyle angrier. He starts banging on the table and says that he doesn’t have a partnership because in a partnership, the other person pulls their weight. This is when it well and truly ends. Carl, his adrenaline still pumping from kissing a real live girl, is on his feet, telling Kyle that he needs to calm down. Then Kyle is upset at Carl, yelling at him, and the rest is a blur. Kyle rushes for the exit (thank the Catholic Jesus that the door is fixed) and is in the front yard. Carl is rushing after him. The other guys are on their feet, trying to break it up, someone is calling someone else a loser, there are swings and kicks and insults, men grabbing at other men, trying to restrain them, and busting the restraints. It’s flesh on flesh, bone on bone, words on eardrums, the dark of the night on all of them like a soaked T-shirt that they can’t seem to wriggle their way out of.