by AMY FEINSTEIN || All good and even strange things must come to an end, and that includes the fifth season of Bravo TV’s Southern Charm – a saga which had so many about-faces it’s crazy we don’t all have whiplash. Well, tonight we wrapped things up with ninety minutes that left many of us wanting to jump through the television and throttle someone.
Care to offer a guess?
Last week we saw the one-hour beginning of the Southern Charm reunion minus Thomas Ravenel, who agreed to sit this one out for legal reasons. But because the thirst is real, Ravenel’s season five girlfriend (a.k.a. Plan B, Ashley Jacobs) showed up to defend the indefensible.
Fifteen minutes is still fifteen minutes, right?
As was my suggestion last week, a fun idea is to watch the faces of the cast members as questions are being asked, or when Ravenel’s Plan B makes one of her bobble-headed grand pronouncements. Even super-composed Kathryn Dennis’ face betrays her from time to time.
But not always …
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(Via: Bravo)
As the first installment of the reunion drew to a close, Cameran Eubanks had just said that Thomas’ season five girlfriend was a “horrible person.”
But Plan B somehow still believes she is the victim in our tragicomedy, and says she’s heading into the lion’s den. Perhaps it’s not smart then to head into the lion’s den with tuna in your pockets and a liver headdress, but we will have to see how that works out for her.
Before dinner is served, though, we get back to chatting with the cast.
Host Andy Cohen wants to chat about Kathryn’s history of depression and anxiety. Yes, America, even pretty girls get the blues. Kathryn admits to self-medicating in undergrad, and answers the questions about herself honestly with no filter. Love her or hate her, Kathryn is a consummate straight shooter, and while you might not like what she says, she speaks the truth.
Tonight the cast who once took turns pointing fingers now empathizes with Kathryn’s struggle, and she’s a-okay with them. They are not enthralled, however, with her ex-boyfriend Ravenel, who on advice of counsel stayed in Charleston with the kids and nanny (no, not that one).
Shep Rose proudly explains the difference between “browning out” and blacking out drunk. It seems that “browning out” means you still have some recollection of wtf happened the prior night, whereas blacking out means you have no idea how you got to the place where you woke up.
Shep explains this gleefully, but I can’t help but think what people would say if Kathryn told the same story with a sheepish smile on her face. Forty is right around the corner Shep, and unless you want to be wearing Depends at the same time your kid is wearing Pampers, get a move on!
Shep has a beard for the reunion (since shaved) and it’s hard not to notice he has a bit of ginger in there. Kathryn, recessive gene alert! It’s up to you to carry on the Charleston ginger gene (just kidding, sort of).
Shep does a bit of an infomercial, telling the world that so far, he is STD free. Mama must be so proud. No glove, no love, Rose! It’s crab season in South Carolina!
While it tends to be hard to shock Kathryn, Shep putting her at the top of the “shtupping scale” made her mouth fly open.
“She was really good! That’s an endorsement, I’m sorry!”
Interspersed we get glimpses of Plan B in her dressing room stirring her cauldron and talking to her lady sitter.
We forget that Chelsea Meissner maybe has the best scoop as a hairdresser, and even Cameran admits Chelsea is a great source for gossip.
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Chelsea says she has some clients who live on Daniel Island who have dirt on Thomas and his plus one, saying that the two were publicly fighting outside of a restaurant when he threw his leftover food at her while yelling “you’re going to send me back to prison!”
Such a nice couple.
Next we move on to the topic of crossing swords, and Shep seems very much against this, and wants to go on the record. If you are invited to a Shep Rose a trois, assume there will be another female there.
Now, the moment we have all not been waiting for …
As Plan B (just to be clear, the Los Angeles lawyer was obviously Ravenel’s Plan A) approaches the stage, she looks much different than she did at Shep’s birthday party in the first episode of the season. She’s gaunt, and cloaked in gauzy white (the color of innocence, perhaps to dispel those pesky rumors of her days in Vegas).
You know, we all live and we learn, and if continuing to repeat the same mistakes is a form of insanity, then get the straightjacket ready. Why would someone put themselves through this? It’s not for vindication, because all she does is double down on the whack-a-doo. For a few shekels and a trip to New York?
There has got to be a better way.
The hair is pulled back to curtail the hair flipping, but there is no controlling the bobble head move or the default response of rounding her shoulders forward. It’s obviously no shock that Thomas’ girlfriend has no friends on the stage (and this includes Andy, who defaults to polite with excellent diction), but what she does have is a strange cocktail of pity and resentment, both of her own doing.
She is not a victim, she is a big girl who makes dumb choices with a mean streak. She is also perhaps a bum magnet, but that’s for another day.
We hear Kathryn say she wishes she had a water gun. OMG, so do we! For every nastygram that girl delivered, pew-pew. I’ll bet KD has some good aim too!
When Andy gets the Barnum & Bailey portion of the show underway, we get a look at the faces of the other cast members. Most are trying not to break out in nervous giggles, but Kathryn has her eye on the target, and don’t you forget that redheads can always bring that knife to the gut. Now we know why Miss Kathryn Calhoun Dennis is dressed to kill.
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(Via: Instagram)
In her opening monologue, Plan B says that this season on Southern Charm, people didn’t get her sense of humor because she likes to “poke and tease” people. I’ve never been to Santa Barbara, but I’m doubting that her “sense of humor” passes as funny out there, either. Maybe only dolphins can understand it? I don’t know.
Flashback to why Plan B said “Chelt-sea” over and over again. The word of the night is Andy. Someone has been coached by the Sun-Tzu loving Ravenel.
Still unclear if it’s an act or if she is truly a cult member. Talking about Thomas in the sing-songy manner “he likes long walks on the beach and sunsets” kind of way, you can’t help but shake your head.
She’s really impressed that Thomas asked her right off the bat what she did for a living. She thinks that shows he cares. No, it shows that the lawyer turned him down, and as long as he can tell everyone back in Charleston that his new girlfriend is a nurse or whatever, he thinks he’s going to one-up Kathryn. The best-laid plans, huh?
Fitzgerald fans, are Thomas and Plan B not Dick and Nicole Diver from Tender Is The Night or what!
Plan B then describes their at-home party games, which include hide and seek, tag, and hide the bug under the pillow (no this is not a euphemism).
Cameran now has her hand over her face, repeating the words “I can’t.” Craig Conover desperately wants to roll on the carpet laughing.
Plan B claims that the rape allegations against Ravenel have had a good effect on him, as now she can get him to stay home and hide out away from public scrutiny. By the way, has anyone seen Thomas lately? Are we sure this isn’t some Stephen King, Kathy Bates Misery situation where T-Rav is chained to the bed with broken legs, covered with plastic bugs for “fun?”
Kathryn looks like she smells something funky when Plan B talks about the kinder, gentler Thomas Ravenel.
She says the rape allegations are hearsay. No, hearsay is gossip and innuendo. A first-person account of being strangled with your own shirt while someone violates you is not hearsay. Perhaps one of those “Word of the Day” calendars would help on your way to getting the Pretty Woman thing down pat.
In the flashback as Kathryn is telling Craig that she hooked up with Thomas after the season four reunion (I guess there was nothing good on tv), make note of the bruises up and down her arms. We will come back to this later …
Plan B says that Thomas told her the month after he hooked up with Kathryn that he had done so because “he doesn’t lie.” Umm, everyone who watches him on the show caught him in quite a few this season. Denial is more than a river in Egypt, girl.
Plan B says when she met Kathryn she was afraid for her physical safety. C’mon, this isn’t WWE … though I bet there are plenty of people who would pay some good money to see that cage match.
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[/timed-content-server]As the flashbacks roll, we see Plan B at Shep’s party. Gosh, Charleston has not been good to her!
How many times do you want to yell “Run like the wind, Bullseye!” But as she told Thomas, “I’m not leaving. I’m never leaving.” Is that a threat or a promise? Potato, potahto.
The scene of Kathryn and Plan B meeting is interesting in retrospect. Kathryn is all business, Plan B has demeanor of a pound puppy, and Thomas cannot wipe the shit-eating, “I gotcha” grin off of his face.
Plan B denies sex in the bathroom, because “Thomas doesn’t do it anywhere but the bed.” Funny, I had him pegged as more adventurous than that. Obviously Kathryn knows better.
Thomas: Now make sure when you address someone at the reunion, you use their name.
Plan B says ‘NAOMIE!’ causing Naomie Olindo to crack up.
Andy Cohen has a stack of comments from fans, including one that says that while Plan B wants to be engaged to Thomas or marry Thomas, nobody is sure she actually likes Thomas (not that this seems to matter).
Has anyone noticed that Plan B now has hives all over her chest when she says she’s not ready to marry Thomas? Interesting. Shep isn’t buying it. She also can’t make eye contact all of the sudden.
Tinsley Mortimer of Real Housewives of New York puts some points on the board with the comment:
“Ashley really wants to be T-Rav’s widow!”
I’m sure she’s not the first … nor do I suspect she will be the last.
In an effort to deflect from the gold digger accusations, Plan B says that Ravenel money isn’t money to her. Thomas has Monopoly money in comparison to the guys back in Santa Barbara. You mean the same Thomas Ravenel who said he could buy Andy Cohen with his credit card? Good luck honey when this airs. You might get hit with more than meatloaf this time.
Andy Cohen asks about Thomas’ constant flirting with Kathryn, and if that bothers Plan B, who says no, because she’s the most secure girl ever in a relationship. Her face in those scenes said something else.
Andy asks Plan B if she has any regrets of spending $10,000 of Thomas’ money on her shopping spree. She says “absolutely” while shaking her head no. This is body language 101. Ravenel’s girlfriend says her biggest regret is going on the shopping trip to Gwynn’s with Patricia Altschul when she should have gone with Kathryn.
Is that the Kathryn who you tried to get fired from Gwynn’s? Or the egg-donor Kathryn?
It’s so hard to keep up …
Craig and Andy try to give her the chance to recover, and say her biggest regret was being a hot drunk mess at Daufuskie and then the Winter Ball, but nooooooo. She’s still sticking with the shopping trip.
Even with a possible lawsuit hanging out there (Plan B and Thomas have received their letters from lawyer L. Lin Wood related to alleged harassment of Plan A) she still can’t keep herself from mentioning, albeit not naming Plan A.
I can’t even unpack all the crap about the toddler’s birthday party …
But on the ferry back to Hilton Head, the other cast members and viewers of Southern Charm watched as Ravenel’s “mask falls” as he screams at Chelsea with the face of a rabid dog.
Kathryn finally calls Plan B “a complete asshole” and everyone cracks up, but Plan B doesn’t. She goes into complete bobble head mode, and commands Andy Cohen to continue.
“Next Andy!”
The questions continue, and Plan B doesn’t even see that she sounds like an abused girlfriend in a really bad after school special.
“It’s my fault. I made him angry. He just does it to get a reaction.”
In unison, the cast yells “that’s not normal!”
She wants to know if this is an intervention – a concept with which she seems to be intimately familiar.
Kathryn explains that she feels bad for Plan B, and let’s face it … she hates her.
We find out the origin of the escort story (Naomie’s roommate) but Plan B still insists it’s Thomas’ ex, despite all evidence to the contrary.
When Craig asks if Plan B signed the NDA, was it because he was scared she would testify against him at some point?
She is very offended and says “I’m better than that, I have a conscience!”
She has that look of incredulousness on his face again. Nah, you’re not better than that, and I could really see it happening.
Then she does a Sybil switch and says that she wants to be friends with Kathryn. Rots of ruck!
At least she didn’t say “I’ll pray for you!”
Wow, just wow.
Well, it’s been fun this season! See you next year!
xoxo
Amy Feinstein is a native of Baltimore, Maryland, and has been writing professionally for 25 years. She has a degree in English literature and a degree in British history. Amy enjoys writing about entertainment, sports, lifestyle, television and movies. When not at the computer, Amy can be found in the garden or at yoga class.