The Valley Recap: The White Claws Are Out

The Valley
Red Flags and White Claws
Season 3 Episode 10
Editor’s Rating ★★
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How sweet is it when Brittany cries when she sees her flat stomach in that very handsome plastic surgeon’s office in Beverly Hills? How crazy is Zack for getting in a huge fight with his roommate and then crying about it for three days? How adorable is Nia’s baby, always bouncing around and doing what we all want to do, which is throw up all over Danny? I ask these questions because I cannot, for the life of me, talk about Danny and his drinking one more time. I’m with Jesse. Sorry. I just said that and then vomited all over my chair like Nia’s baby. But yes, I do agree with Jesse that it’s time that we all move past this; we need to start talking about something else, anything else. Let’s talk about French existentialism. Let’s talk about how Katy Perry has been cursed by the nuns she killed. Let’s talk about bond rates and how they’re a precursor to economic collapse. Let’s talk about sex, baby, let’s talk about you and me, let’s talk about all the good things and the bad things that may be, let’s talk about sex. Literally anything else. 

The problem is that he’s hiding the drinking, which becomes more obvious over the course of the episode. The first bit of evidence is the empty White Claw that Jasmine finds in Brittany’s gym bathroom. First of all, how big are these Valley Village houses? Brittany not only has a gym, but that gym also has a bathroom? My office is six milk crates with a board on top of them in the corner of my kitchen, and this lady has a whole squat rack on her second floor with its own shower? Anyway, Jasmine brought Brittany some chili while she was recuperating and discovered an empty White Claw on the sink. Jasmine was like, “WTF. You can’t be drinking. Are you Britney Spears or Brittany Cartwright?” Brittany deduces that the only people who have been in the gym recently were Zack, Danny, and Nia, who used the room during her pool party. Brittany’s home gym sounds like my non-home gym: rarely visited and mostly used for illicit purposes. 

It was definitely Danny, though, as the editors do us the favor of pulling up some footage of him going into the WC to chug a WC and then belching into his microphone. Brittany says that he told Nia he wasn’t drinking that day, but, guess what, he was. Brittany also likens Danny sneaking a drink to the things that Jax used to do to her. Let us be clear that even Danny is absolutely nothing like Jax Taylor. The implications from Brittany and Michelle that Danny is like their exes seems as big a reach as Danny trying to touch the rim of a basketball hoop. 

This whole scene and the whole setup does seem … I don’t know, I don’t want to say fake, and I don’t want to say set up, but I will say it seems a bit convenient. The pool party seemed like ages ago, and no one used that bathroom or cleaned up an empty White Claw in all that time? Did Brandon, Brittany’s terrible new boyfriend that she’s already broken up with, not go in there at all? Probably not, because he seems incompetent. He didn’t get her pain pills as she asked him to; he can’t be there to take care of her the days he said he could; he took off work to be there, so he asked her for money, and then bought her (tacky) flowers with the money she gave him. Someone, please play Brittany the Bravo-adjacent classic “No Scrubs” because she has never needed to hear it more.

I’m so mad that we have to talk more about Danny’s drinking, and some of it doesn’t even make sense to me. Zack, Jasmine, and Jesse meet for drinks, and they have a fight that might have been my college calculus class because I stared at it glassy-eyed, not understanding a thing, and prayed for the moment I would be released. For some reason, Jasmine wants Zack to talk to Danny about his drinking because he hasn’t stuck up for her enough or something. I don’t know. It has to do with the reunion and raising their hands. Girl, why are we goin’ back? I’m like a VCR with a broken rewind button because it’s forward only. (OMG, remember back in the day when they had those separate gadgets that were VHS tape rewinders in the shape of a car, and they were supposed to save the life of your VCR or something? I am a jillion years old. I am older than White Claw. I am older than “No Scrubs.” I am older than mommy makeovers.)

Zack’s chat with Danny goes down at his house party, which is the best event we’ve seen on Bravo this year. I do not want to laugh at Zack’s misfortune of having a terrible roommate who took the TV that Kristen and Luke gave him, all of his furnishings, and his wine bottle opener. I am, however, going to laugh that he took Zack’s prized possession: a Monster Energy–branded fridge that we have all clocked in previous seasons. Zack says he knows the roommate doesn’t have room for it in his new place, that he’s just taking it to sell for a profit. I hate to break it to you, Zack, but that man already made a profit. Benji paid him $1 million (they were Canadian dollars, so like $17.50) to take that fridge with him and throw it in the L.A. River. Benji looks all quiet and sweet, but deep inside, there is a monster (energy drink) that will do whatever it takes to have an aesthetic home. 

When everyone shows up for his housewarming party and Monster fridge memorial, it takes us back to the early days of Vanderpump Rules parties. Everyone is sitting on folding chairs, they’re eating cold Domino’s, they’re drinking out of red Solo cups, and no one wants to be there, but they know that they’re making great television. Tom brings his young girlfriend, whose name is inexplicably spelled with all vowels, and her friend, who is an AI avatar and not a real human, and even these two Gen-Zers scowl at this party like it’s about to try to give them a McDonald’s voucher and grab their asses.

There are a few cute moments at the party, like when Lala tries to steal Tom’s girlfriend, Vowel, but says she only likes to “eat cookie” when she’s wasted, so now that she’s sober, she’s not really bisexual anymore. It was also slightly amusing watching Lacy try to bond with Michelle by offering to throw her a divorce party, which Michelle wants no part of. The worst part is Zack trying to talk to Danny, but he has no clue what he is supposed to say that is different from everyone else telling him his drinking is a problem; he just knows that he has to talk to him so that he can tell Jasmine that he did it. 

The important part of the convo is that Danny tells him, multiple times, that he wasn’t drinking that night and that he was only drinking water. Wait, so then why did Benji and the cameras catch him pouring whiskey into his solo cup? Danny is, once again, drinking and trying to hide it. This is just what Janet accused him of last year, and everyone treated her like she said that Benjamin Franklin once played the lead in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Why is he hiding it? Why does he keep lying about it? He tells Schwartz and Jesse that the reason he sneaks liquor is that he doesn’t want the rest of the group talking about it. Okay, so then why was he hiding it with Janet last season before this became a topic of conversation? If he has nothing to hide, why is he, you know, hiding?

Zack gathers everyone in his echoing living room while the cheese on the Domino’s gets stiffer and stiffer, and he wants to give a little speech. He talks about Kristen and Brittany, how they’ve always been there for him, how they helped him pay the rent when he struggled, how they would buy him free margaritas when he couldn’t cover the bill, how they took him to Vegas to see Britney Spears and didn’t charge him one cent. (I made some of these details up, but they feel accurate.) Then he Venmoed Kristen for $2,000 that he owed her, which he finally paid off, and it was sweet and heartwarming, and the room swelled with the love of people who know that it’s best to part with a Monster Energy fridge, but also know that maybe Zack should have held onto some of that coin so he could maybe buy a couch.