Last week: David was bad. This week: the aftermath.
We pick up right where we left off, almost: The three girls are downstairs at the kitchen table, having just told Jon, Aaron and Dom that they want David to leave the house. Aaron has ambled upstairs, presumably to ask David to join them, but David leans over the stairway railing and demands a private audience with Tami. All the girls just stare at the table and ignore him. David asks Beth if he can speak to her alone. Almost imperceptibly, Beth shakes her head. David grunts, throws his hands in the air, and stalks off. Aaron turns away in disgust as David, having thought of a smarmy comeback in the hallway, saunters back to ask the girls why they're treating him like "Freddy Krueger or something." Beth suggests he join them downstairs. He refuses. Beth snits that they won't talk to him unless he comes downstairs. David then asks Irene to talk to him, and she doesn't even look at him, just shakes her head and stares at the junk mail on the table. Hey, a sale on Kool-Aid! Excellent!
Tami, in an interview, explains that she didn't want to be alone with David because she was afraid that he would "influence her decision." Also, she was afraid that he might be packing heat; the Dippity-Do has mysteriously gone missing, and she thinks he's pinched it in case the Great Toiletry War of '93 reignites.
Back in the house, Aaron starts banging his head against the wall, and wonders for the twelfth time that day why he didn't stay in the Lamba Chi house where he belongs, dirty bathrooms and roofie sandwiches be damned! David informs the girls that he wanted to talk to them without the cameras (as if!), but because that wasn't possible, he'd like to talk to them alone, and now that he's been denied that, he "looks like the asshole." All the girls stare at the apparently hypnotic kitchen table, each of them thinking, "That's because you are the asshole, asshole." Irene shakes her head. "You are," she says, oh so wearily. David angrily asks whether she has to resort to name-calling. Irene places her hand over her eyes and repeats herself: "You are the asshole, David." Ever subtle, B/M Productions cue the opening notes of Metallica's "Unforgiven," as David turns on his heel and stalks up the stairs. See, because they're not forgiving him, get it? Get it? Do you get it?
The girls rise as a group from the table, and climb up the stairs to their room, all in one solemn, seemingly synchronized, sanctimonious line. Tami is wearing a pin-striped suit with her Newsies cap. Irene is wearing a vest. They make my eyes all hurty. Each girl stomps silently past David, who is sitting on the bottom step of the second landing. Irene gives Jon a dirty look for no apparent reason as she passes him.
This is the part where my tape gets a little funky, and I have this horrible moment when I think that maybe it futzed out entirely and the rest of it is just static, and how the hell am I going to recap that? So bear with me for a second here. It looks like Aaron and David are in the kitchen, and David says something about being treated like a criminal, and Aaron says "yeah," very noncommittally, and then David says, "I admit static static static but I'm not going to come down like that." I imagine David admitted that his little game got out of hand, but really, who knows? He may have admitted to killing JFK and confessed to being Deep Throat. We'll never know, though, because this is the part where everything goes black, and I scream and pray to the VCR gods, and I promise to give up Scott Speedman forever, if the rest of the tape is okay, and I guess that sacrifice -- the ultimate sacrifice, really -- was enough, because suddenly everything is okay, and Aaron and David and Jon are in the kitchen, and Aaron is scrubbing the counter to the sink over and over and over and over again, as David blathers about how irritated he is with the girls and how unfairly they're treating him. Aaron and Jon look sheepish and completely uncomfortable.
In an interview, David complains that Irene is condescending to him, and that he hates it.
Back in the kitchen, both Aaron and Jon talk to David without actually looking him in the eye. They try to convince him to talk to the girls en masse, because that's the only way any of them will deign to speak to him, and because, as Jon puts it, this is not a situation that's just going to go away if they ignore it. David reluctantly agrees.
The housemates gather in the living room. Beth has changed from the black turtleneck of gravitas into a horrid pajama combination that involves beige flowered leggings. Those leggings make me want to cry, they're actually that ugly. David apologizes half-heartedly to Tami, who feels it's necessary to provide yet another play-by-play of the night in question because, you know, none of them were there and it wasn't captured on tape. Oh, except it was the opposite of that. Shut up, Tami. Dom and Aaron both look as though they'd rather be onstage at Denim and Diamonds playing the washboard and harmonica, respectively, as Jon's backup band, than in this house meeting. David tells Tami, again, that he thought they were playing a silly, silly game! Irene furrows her brow. David wishes he could play the tape of the incident so that Tami could see herself yukking it up. He can't, but B/M can, and they do, in this very nostalgic sepia tone, which recalls those faux historical pictures you take at the county fair. We see the clip of Tami mock-screaming and telling David to cut it out, and yes, it's ambiguous, and yes, we. Get. It.
David brings up the time Beth and Tami giggled at "Dominique" (hee hee) when he was in bed and in his jammies. He argues that that situation and this one are exactly the same! We get to see the Dom/Beth incident sepia tone as well and, yes, Dom said almost exactly the same thing to Beth that Tami said to David: "I swear to God, go away." The only difference is that Dom gave it up after about two second and let Beth check out his goodies, and Tami...well, didn't. Watching Beth caress Dom's hairy chest makes me feel funny. Not in a good way. In an intensely nauseated way, actually. David apologizes yet again, and offers to move out, if they want prefer, but quantifies his apology by spitting that he is not a "perverted psycho-maniac rapist." David talks and talks and talks some more about the fact that he is not a rapist. We know, David. Shut up. Tami doesn't care, and tells David that he has crossed the line, and she feels unsafe, and she wants him to leave the house, and if he doesn't, she will. She gestures wildly with her keys. I guess she's ready to leave at any moment. David apologizes for the seven kabillionth time, but not very apologetically. Tami tells him that she accepts his apology, but she still wants him out. He punches a pillow and nods his head and stalks into the kitchen.
Just as he gets to the stairs, though, this little light bulb goes on over David's head and he says that if he has to leave the house for what he did to Tami, than Beth ought to leave for what she did to "Dominique." Let's all just take a moment, and think about how wonderful that would have been. No Beth + no David= recapper's paradise 4ever. Beth just looks confused by David's train of thought. She's probably wondering who this Dominique girl is, and what she ever did to her.
I love how long the commercial breaks are on MTV. I can proofread my master's thesis, Parsing Jessica: The Virgin/Whore Dichotomy in Francine Pascal's Sweet Valley High, and make and consume several sandwiches before the show even comes back on.
David, in an interview, recaps what Beth did to Dom (looked at his underwear), and what he did to Tami (same, basically), in case we all developed amnesia during the commercial break, and instead of running to the hospital for a CAT scan, decided to watch this pretty box with the people inside it instead. He says, again, that if he leaves, Beth ought also to leave. Okay, gotcha. Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander. Whatever. Move. On.
But nooooo. In an interview, Beth Psych 101s David by saying that he was looking to put the blame on anyone else, and thought "hey, Beth! She's the easiest one!" I'll let you make your own Beth Is Easy joke.
Back in the beach house, much screaming commences. David tells Beth that by her definition of rape, she is also a rapist and they both ought to leave the house. She has no snappy comeback to that, so she just turns and stamps up the stairs. Everyone calls her back downstairs, David hollering that she's walking away because she knows she's wrong, but nobody can stop Beth from the swift completion of her appointed rounds. These being: trip to freezer for Ben & Jerry's, trip to bathroom for zit-popping fest, trip to bed to wallow self-righteously and get Cherry Garcia on the pillow case.
Beth voice-overs that she was "not allowing David to harass [her]," as Aaron charges up the stairs after her, taking them two at a time, Irene hot on his trail, and David bringing up the rear. Aaron tells Beth -- interrupting her zit popping -- that David has a right to be heard, and that she can't just walk away from their discussion. Beth doesn't want to talk to David. Period. David pops his head into the bathroom and says he's not going to "get violent," but that he's going to follow her around until she talks to him. Beth insists that she will not talk to him. He insists she will. Aaron rolls his eyes and wonders if he can crash with his bros for, like, the rest of the season.
In an interview, Dom slurs that Beth had no right to refuse to speak to David. Y'all, I think Dom might be drinking.
Back in the house, Dom asks Irene to speak to Beth. Irene does. Then Jon does. Irene informs Jon that none of the girls is going to change her mind about David leaving the house. Jon sighs.
So, Irene and Beth are dramatically sequestered in the bathroom, as David tells the boys downstairs that they all better watch their steps around the girls. Because they are vindictive bitches, doncha know? Jon voice-overs that Aaron thought they were being overly harsh to David, Dom was worried about David's career, and he, Jon, thought that while something had to be done, he didn't know if tossing David onto the street was the best solution to the problem.
Dramatically, David opines that if this incident had happened "in the old days," he would have been lynched. Dom, Aaron and Jon just stare at the floor some more.
Jon tells Irene that he and Aaron and Dom are in a difficult position with David and they don't know what to do. Irene snips that they don't have to do anything. Dom softly ventures that he doesn't think David would do anything else. Irene snips that that's what he thinks and that's fine, but "[Dom]'s not in [David]'s head."
In an interview, Jon explains that Irene feels liable, as The Law, in David's presence, and that if she's present at a crime and she doesn't stop it, er, that's, like, bad and stuff.
Irene gets specific in her one-on-one, telling us that "in the Penal Code it's 830.1 status, which means that if you carry a gun, you are a police officer twenty-four hours a day." Irene; you're a freaking bailiff. Get over yourself.
Back in the house, The Law explains that if she lets anything possibly criminal go down in the house, she can get in deep shit. As an example, she brings up the Great Styrofoam War of '93, in which David jumped Jon for not picking up his packing materials, and again, we are treated to the Sepia-Toned Flashback of Dramatic Convenience.
In an interview, David admits that choking Jon was "crossing the line." Thanks for the newflash, Punchy McViolence.
Dom, in his interview, reminds us that David was also mean to Beth, in the Great Hairy-Ass Pimple Incident of '93...Sepia-Toned Flashback of Dramatic Convenience, Part the Forth.
Blah, blah, blah, David is mean and violent; this is the last straw. Sepia-Toned...oh, you get it. Replay of the Great Bowling Alley Tantrum of '93.
Aaron says that he can understand the girls' feelings, now that he thinks about David's actions over the course of the last few weeks, rather than this one isolated incident.
Dom says that he thinks David and girls could have worked this out without banishment, but that the situation was really none of his beeswax.
David apologizes to the freaking camera one more time, and pleads for the girls to talk to him one on one. It's over, dude. Give it up.
David makes one last attempt to talk to Beth, but Dom has to step in before Beth agrees. She tells David for the millionth time not to harass her, and he gets all defensive again. Dom, yet again, has to step in and tell David to calm down. As David and Beth start talking at once, Dom, the Diplomat, gives up and turns his back on them, and takes a big gulp from his drink. Man, I would be driven to drink, living with these chuckleheads and yahoos, too. They're driving me to drink RIGHT NOW.
David demands that Beth "take back" the accusation of rape. She does, but says the situation was akin to "sexual battery." It's like she's knocking the charge from first-degree murder to man one. David and Beth go back and forth about whether or not Beth did the same thing to Dom that David did to Tami for like TWENTY MINUTES.
In an interview, Beth explains that what she did to Dom was not the same thing as what David did to Tami, because she's on the cheerleading squad, and she's the most popular girl in school, and she has a different date every night of the week, and how do you like the Fiat Spider she shares with her identical twin sister, Elizabeth?
In the midst of Beth's and David's talking at one another, Irene pipes up that if David doesn't leave Beth alone, she's going to call the police. I thought Irene WAS the law, twenty-four hours a day. Why doesn't she fucking arrest him, or butt out? God, I hate Irene. She's so sanctimonious. Irene goes all Dennis Franz and gets right up in David's face and screams at him to leave. She voice-overs that David did this entire thing to himself and he has to learn from his mistakes, and she's only responsible for herself and not for him and she doesn't feel bad for tossing him out of the house, not at all!
David can't seem to grasp the idea that leaving means vacating the house, because he's lying on the sofa, talking to Jon, who tells him that this project is harder than he ever thought it would be. David chuckles.
In the confessional, David apologizes to Tami AGAIN. He tells Irene that she's jumping on the wrong person's side. He sighs that he's glad he got to know Dom and Aaron. He says he doesn't hate any of them. You know, David, I think you might get along better with people if you said these things to them directly, instead of locked in a little room by yourself. I'm just sayin'.
David calls some girl, who doesn't recognize him at first, and tells her that he's going to stay with her that night. And for every other night thereafter. I'm sure she's thrilled.
Irene calls Tim and cries.
Jon broods on the sofa.
David packs, hugs Dom, Aaron and Jon, and tosses his keys on the table. He walks out the door for the last time.
In the kitchen, Aaron wonders how this entire situation is going to affect David's career. He asks Jon how he would feel if he went back to Kentucky and everyone thought of him as "Jon Brennen, the rapist." Jon calmly comments that "that's why [he doesn't] take people's clothes off." Aaron gives him that point, but wonders what would happen if he were falsely accused of rape, for some other strange and inexplicable reason. Jon agrees that there is no way this situation was anything like rape, and that he doesn't think that word ought to be used in this instance at all. Aaron agrees that he doesn't think David's actions were appropriate, and that he has "no means of validating or quantifying [Beth's] feelings, but --" and Jon snorts and tells Aaron that the phrase "quantifying and validating" struck him as funny, and I get what he means, but I can't really explain why.
In an interview, Tami explains that she personally doesn't think of the incident as rape.
Back in the kitchen, Aaron tells Jon that he has a hard time watching someone's career get flushed down the toilet. You know, dude?
In an interview, Dom said they had to take the girls at their word when they said they felt unsafe. I like Dom. He's a drunkard, but he's generally sensible.
Jon points out to Aaron that girls sometimes feel threatened by boys who have a habit of pulling their pants down for no good reason.
In the confessional, Tami just cries and calls David's actions "really messed up." And she doesn't care what happens with David's career, because he's such a jerk overall. So there!
Back in the kitchen, Aaron stresses to Jon that he totally supports the girls' decision. He just thinks they could have given it some more thought, and not acted so rashly.
David voice-overs that he is not a violent person. B/M accompanies his plea with footage of David playing with a puppy. Wow, subtle. He says that he learned he needs to think before he acts.
Jon reveals in his one-on-one that both he and Dom and Aaron had a hard time with tossing David out, but that in the end, it was really for the best.
David voice-overs that he's taken his comedy act on the road. Cue the montage of David performing, mostly, it seems, to highly inebriated women who inexplicably find his tired "Ladies of the Nineties don't need Brothers No More" schtick high-lariously funny.
Irene explains that the incident with David has brought the girls in "the house" closer together. Tami says she's much cozier with Beth now. Lucky Tami. Not. Beth squeals that she can't wait to meet their new roommate! Famous last words.