Full disclosure: I do not follow the reality show people I write about on social media. (Well, there is one. I’m Twitter buds with Ariana from Vanderpump Rules, but that’s because 1) She followed me first and 2) I’m pretty sure she’s fucking normal.) But the rest of them? Nope. It’s nothing personal, but I figure my job is to write exclusively about the lives they so willingly portray on these shows and I see no need to cloud my recaps with outside stuff. And it is because of this intentional blissful ignorance of mine that I had no idea how correct my first impressions have been of Logan, Kortni’s terrifying boyfriend. Last week I mentioned the way the guy causes my insides to freeze. Then I searched online for a picture of him to accompany the post on my site and it turned out that Googling “Logan Floribama Shore” led me to all sorts of scary articles you can check out yourself if you’re interested in what I guess I’d call “tragic spoilers.”
I find no joy in being right about this man. And I also sort of pray he doesn’t get the reference I made about Patricia Bateman or realize I exist on this planet. A conundrum now exists. While I don’t much think it wise to continue to recount the horrifying behavior of a man whose behavior will indeed grow more horrifying, I have a job to do. Therefore, as we move forward, I will continue to write about whatever these people put out there for our consumption. That said, should any of you have a bodyguard in the family, perhaps send the largest one my way.
When last week’s episode ended, Codi had made sure to tongue anyone who didn’t vomit as a means of rejection in an effort to piss Candace off and show her what she’s missing. The aftermath of his actions are exactly as you would think they would be: Codi denies he did a single thing wrong because he is allergic to even the gluten-free form of self-awareness; Candace maintains he never showed the slightest interest in her when the cameras weren’t rolling; Gus is passed out on the couch with probably a touch of alcohol poisoning; Jeremiah eats an apple and contemplates who on the MTV casting team hated him enough to stick him in a house with Codi; and Aimee is still rocked by Candace telling her that Codi outright stated that the only reason he ever gave Aimee the teensiest bit of attention was to drive Candace wild with jealousy. Though we all probably wish we were Gus right now, I have to say the way Nilsa takes care of Aimee is rather sweet. She gets right on that crocodile phone and orders her a pizza and all of my friends can seriously suck it for not procuring me something covered in melted cheese each and every time I have found myself feeling blue. Aimee eventually wanders downstairs and Codi seizes the opportunity to lie directly to her face by claiming he never told Candace any such thing. Once again, we get a flashback clip of Codi telling Candace exactly what she accused him of saying, but Aimee wants to believe Codi is not a dick so they hug and they redeclare their friendship and that’s sweet and all, but Codi is sort of a dick and Aimee will surely find this out eventually and I think perhaps we should take up a Go Fund Me page now to stockpile the cash that can then be used to send pizza after pizza to the girl’s house when she discovers the truth.
The next morning arrives and Gus wakes from his hangover and hears about all the nonsense that went down the night before. The guys decide the way to deal with all the tension in the house is to go celebrate Testosterone Day, and I for one think this is an excellent event that should be an annual thing. I shall show my support by hanging up a pinata in my backyard in the shape of some testicles. (I will, of course, then beat the hell out of those testicles with a stick while imagining they are still attached to a man who completely deserves it, but you should feel free to celebrate as you see fit.) Back in the house, Candace is feeling alone. She’s sick of the cliques and the way everyone is taking Codi’s side when she’s the one telling the tales accurately, so Nilsa decides they should go get manicures and allow Kortni to sleep off what looks like a serious flu. Aimee agrees to go along, but she decides to confront Candace about what she said last night about Codi. As they have their feet scrubbed by people I seriously hope were tipped handsomely, Aimee asks about Codi’s comment -- you know, the one he actually said -- and Candace explains very calmly (again) what occurred, but Aimee doesn’t want to believe a single word. I really wish at these times that someone on the crew would just fling a camera down and scream, “You’re upset about Codi? The guy who, in the next scene, will run into the house clutching his ass so his poop doesn’t spill out? Sweetheart, c’mon!” but, alas, such a thing never transpires.
While the girls get their toenails painted and Codi works out the muscles of his sphincter, Kortni heads to the doctor because she’s legitimately sick. Gus realizes all of Kortni’s germs will ravage the rest of them, so he heads out to get cleaning supplies to wipe the house down. (Side note: my mother doesn’t watch any of these shows -- and since I want to protect her psyche, I never tell her that she should -- but I just know that if she did turn this program on and saw that Gus’ response to everything was to clean, she’d find that guy’s number somehow and offer him a huge fucking dowry just so he could be her son-in-law. The woman’s got standards and those standards smell like bleach.) At this point, it’s only Codi, Jeremiah, and Gus who aren’t feeling like their colons are about to come blasting out of their bodies, so those guys don hazmat suits and surgical masks and they go to work. It’s on the night table next to Kortni’s bed where Jeremiah finds a cup full of Kortni’s loogies and it’s so disgusting a find that I almost puked just watching -- and I have a tough gag reflex! When Kortni eventually comes home, she’s wearing a face mask so as not to take the rest of them down even further and she settles in to call her very-awesome-and-not-at-all-scary boyfriend. Logan doesn’t answer, so Kortni dials her best friend who also happens to be Logan’s roommate and it’s then that Raina informs her that Logan is leaving the house soon because she cannot have a liar living in her home. This is all news to Kortni. See, she thought her beloved still worked that job he likes to announce he has to her family members, but it turns out the guy actually is not working and he hasn’t felt the need to enlighten Kortni with anything resembling the truth. Her friend utters something prophetic when she tells Kortni that everyone is quite scared for her, enough so that she asks Kortni to meet up with her and her mom so they can give her the lowdown on the psychopath she’s dating.
This shit cannot possibly turn out well.
Kortni gets off the phone and tells Gus and Candace that Logan has lied to her best friend and to her mother -- but not to her. Um, I’d love to say something about her ginormous leaps and lapses in logic, but I don’t really have to because Candace does it for me. She explains to Kortni that lying to someone’s mother is all kinds of wrong and, even more than that, he’s illustrating what his character is made up of and it seems Logan’s character is a mixture of smegma and garbage that’s held together by whatever leftover clumps of loogies were not in Kortni’s bedside cup. Now, listen: nobody wants to believe the person she loves is a liar. I get Kortni’s reticence to accept what she’s being told, but it sounds like Candace knows what she’s talking about when she tells Kortni that she may not know the true Logan -- that he could be scary, that he could potentially hurt people -- and what’s sad is that everything she’s saying appears to be horribly accurate.
To offer Kortni support, Candace goes with her for the meeting with her mother and Raina. After they order large cups of ice cream, Sharon, Kortni mother, removes a piece of paper from her bag. This woman is not fucking around, and though she raised a child who still enjoys pissing in corners, I like her. Here is the compiled list of what we can call Logan’s Flaming Fucking Flying Red Flags:
- Logan “cussed” at Kortni because she wasn’t laser-focused on him and him alone when they spoke on the phone.
- He lied about being fired.
- He called Sharon and asked to take her to lunch. When the bill came, he announced he only had one dollar and she had to pay.
- He seems to be attempting to make Sharon doubt Raina’s character, a classic case of Attempting To Isolate 101.
- He got thrown off the stage at a club.
- He drove Kortni car -- the one her mother pays insurance on -- so fast that the car turned sideways.
- He texts Kortni mother far too frequently for it to be anywhere even near the line of normal because he wants to know where Kortni is at all times.
To several of these pronouncements, Kortni attempts to take the blame. She clearly wants to believe her boyfriend doesn’t suck as a human being and it’s sad to watch, but nothing about any of this is sadder than watching a mother stare at her child who is grasping onto cognitive dissonance so hard that it looks like her hands will start bleeding.
Also: As Kortni experiences an intervention, the guys head down to the beach. Since Codi cannot be directly in the path of sunlight or he will burn like firewood, the rest of them dig him a hole so he can avoid blisters breaking out all over his body. Blisters don’t go with white pants, people.
Back at the saddest ice cream social ever, Candace point blank tells Kortni that she has to listen to the truth that’s being told to her -- and it seems that Kortni simply does not want to hear that truth. Kortni nods and yet desperately continues to grab onto flimsy shreds of hope that none of these are actual lies Logan has told. Maybe the bullshit he has spewed are just examples of exaggerations. Maybe she deserved it when he cursed her out. Maybe making her mother pay the bill for lunch was his effort to bring equality to the sexes. Or maybe -- just maybe -- everything she’s hearing is one hundred percent correct and it will all lead to something more than mildly unpleasant.
When she gets home, Kortni calls Logan and asks him if he hasn’t been working and he immediately responds that he is working -- every single day in fact! -- and he loves his job. She decides this must mean that he’s procured himself a brand new job and that validates the lying she’s now doing to herself. I think a lot of us have been in a position where we have lied to ourselves and I can say this from personal experience: the dawning understanding that you have willfully deceived yourself is even harsher than the understanding that someone else has lied to you. It’s a vicious cycle, and we’re watching it go down for our entertainment and it’s starting to make me feel sick. Not hock-loogies-in-a-glass sick, but sick nonetheless.
That evening, the group decided to go out to a bar and they take two cars. The guys leave first and it’s on their drive that we learn Codi once sneezed so powerfully that he shit himself. Anyhoo, as they eat oysters and drink some beer, Jeremiah asks Codi how he feels about Candace’s Boo-Thang coming around soon. Codi first maintains that he doesn’t really care, but a few seconds later he makes sure the rest of them -- like, the ones with the muscles -- will have his back should Gator choose to take a swing at the guy who recently asked his girlfriend out on a date. They agree to protect him, so I suppose we can look forward to that one being the next physical brawl on this show. It’s so hard to keep track of them, isn’t it? The girls finally arrive and Codi stares hard at Candace as he downs beer after beer because that’s what someone does when he’s truly over a girl. He sweats and he cuddles up to sweaty women and he makes out with one and then he drinks more -- and then some more. Meanwhile, some girl has decided Jeremiah is a 10 out of 10 and not even cameras recording her every move are enough to dissuade her from going home with a guy who calls her “a to-go box.” Once they’re all in the van, they realize that nobody has pissed in an inappropriate location this week and that’s the sort of shit that could get a show canceled. Nilsa and Aimee decide to rectify the situation by dribbling water all over a passed-out Codi and convincing him he just peed all over himself. And since he once shit himself, he totally believes what they tell him.
It’s the next morning, so Codi crawls out from the table he slept underneath and it’s just the roommates in the house because Jeremiah’s to-go box left in the dead of night to go sleep in her own bed. And on this new day, a new fight is about to break out when GatorJay231SouthsideGod calls to announce he’s heading to see Candace tomorrow. She’s thrilled, Codi looks like he’s ready to shit himself once again, and the rest of them are...confused. See, Gus finds it patently ridiculous that he should be asked to call a grown man such a ridiculous fucking name -- and Gus is correct. That is an insane name and nobody should be expected to so much as memorize it even as a joke, let alone actually use it in a sentence. But Nilsa? She finds what Gus is saying to be very disrespectful so she does what she tends to do best: she runs upstairs and announces what Gus just said directly to Candace because it’s been almost fifteen minutes since anybody has instigated anything. Candace is horrified by this information, and while I fully agree that her guest deserves to be treated with respect, I can’t say I agree with her suggestion that if the guys don’t want to call him “GatorJay,” they should perhaps go ahead and call him “Daddy.” And just as Codi pops his head in the room where the girls are gathered to announce that this is one fight he had zero to do with sparking, Candace bounds downstairs to teach those boys a lesson. They will call her Boo-Thang a God when he arrives at the door like he’s Elijah showing up for Passover! As for me, I once lived by the belief that a show like this would teach me exactly nothing and would not succeed in changing me in the least, but know this, my friends: should anyone in that house actually address this guy as a God next week, I will become an atheist, so help me, GatorJay.
Nell Kalter teaches Film and Media at a school in New York. She is the author of the books THAT YEAR and STUDENT, both available on amazon.com in paperback and for your Kindle. Her Twitter is @nell_kalter