Jake meets Kim to show her the pictures he took while tailing Scott in Atlanta. First, though, she makes him get in her car and drive to some presumably less-conspicuous location, like their transaction is going to involve space plans on microfilm. Even Jake, the professional private investigator, seems to think this level of subterfuge is a bit much. The envelope with the pictures in it is a regular tan mailing envelope that says SPECIAL INVESTIGATION FILE on the front. Is there a private-detective office-supply catalogue I can order stuff like this from? I have a lot of questions for Jake.
Kim seems nervous to finally see the pictures, like it's only just occurred to her that the SPECIAL INVESTIGATION FILE could contain some un-unseeable imagery. "Are they bad?" she asks Jake.
"They're subjective," Jake says.
We never get to see what's happening in the pictures, but Kim looks at them and says, "Oh my god."
Full disclosure: I still haven't watched last week's episode, which aired while I was on vacation, so I have no idea what it was about. Smart money's on "ridiculous rich people doing rich-people things," which is also what we're presented with as this week's episode opens. Kim and Kourtney climb aboard personal watercraft for some of the least-needed R&R in history, except someone's tied some complicated-ass knots in the ropes securing the personal watercraft to the boat they're moored to. Scott remarks on this repeatedly. Like, seriously, who tied up these personal watercraft with these goofy knots? You crazy for this one, knot-tiers! It's not the greatest cold open. Eventually the knots are undone, and off Kim and Kourtney go, across the water and out of sight, and for a moment we all get to imagine what it would be like if they never came back, but they do. They always do.
Kim comes home from vacationing in Italy with Kanye and tells Kourtney all about it. There's a makeup artist working on Kourtney's face. Said face displays a total lack of interest in what Kim is saying. Kim almost got kicked out of the Sistine Chapel because you're not allowed to take pictures in there. And then afterward in Saint Peter's Square, she and Kanye "did, like, a full photo shoot — we had our roses, and my new little bag, and we were, like, posing," and it was all perfectly delightful and dreamy until "people started taking, like, phone pics." The nerve of some people. Celebrities should be free to stage impromptu photo shoots in crowded public places full of camera-toting regular people without those regular people getting all up in the business they're minding. I'm pretty sure the new Pope would agree with me on that one. Kim says a fan came up to her crying and saying something about how her sister was going through an awful divorce: "I was like, 'Aren't we all?'"
Kim goes to get something called a "blood facial" from, I don't know, the vampire doctor, I guess? "I like anything that makes you look and feel youthful," she says, and while she doesn't add "especially if it also seems like something a witch would do," it's sort of implied. Shit gets real Cronenbergian real fast. The doctor draws Kim's blood, centrifuges out the platelets, and then re-injects them into her face with a device that we're told has nine tiny electric needles in it. BLOOD FACIAL, America. Celebrities: They're just like us! Kim's face is a mask of tiny blood drops and also agony. She vows never to get a face-lift if it hurts like this. I would like that in writing. Nothing about this sequence is surprising except the fact that Kim's using her own blood and not poor people's.
Kim's in her Bentley coupe, on the phone with somebody named Karen, who asks her if she's living in Miami and then says, "I ran into someone who knows Reggie" — presumably that's Reggie as in Reggie Bush, Kim's ex-boyfriend, and not Reggie as in Watts or Noble or Mantle or Miller — "and oh my god, have you heard that his girlfriend's pregnant?" Kim immediately, OCD-ishly starts smoothing the hair on the side of her head with her left hand. But it's fine: "I'm like so, so, so in a different place," Kim says, "like, truly." She says she's genuinely happy, genuinely calm, really together, because that's what people say when they're genuinely happy and calm and together — they make sure to say it's genuine. Karen — who, again, wasn't sure until a minute ago that Kim was living in Miami, and has only this conversation to go on — says Kim seems like she's in a really good place. We should all have a friend like Karen.
Oh, hey — it's another Jonathan Cheban–centric episode, this time with zero Khloe, because this show's trying to kill me. Kim tells Jonathan that she's decided to put up a profile for him on an online-dating website. This isn't what the episode is about; it's just here to establish what a meddling little Cher Horowitz Kim can be when it comes to Jonathan, and that Kim and Jonathan's relationship is fun, which is a lie.
Khloe, behind the wheel, driving Kim and Kourtney: "You ever want to take Viagra, just to see what happens? Do you become a horny little toad?"
They realize they're on the part of the MacArthur causeway "where the guy with the bath salts like ate that guy's face off?" Khloe wonders why you'd take bath salts if you knew something like that could happen.
"I think it's like a cheaper meth," Kim says.
"Spend a little more money, so you don't eat someone's face," Khloe says. This recap has already titled itself at least four times. At some point in this scene Khloe says, "Oh my Godula," which is apparently another word she is trying to make happen. Or maybe her God is a giant Dracula.
Like, 3.8 seconds of cold open go by, and then Khloé is saying to Scott and Kourtney, "You guys don't bone often," because Khloé is the best. Scott explains that Kourtney never initiates the sex and approaches the whole process with a We gotta get this over with demeanor; Scott also uses the phrase "the old sackaroonie," which goes a long way toward explaining why Kourtney's not initiating. Everybody's a different weird shade of orange.
Kim, Kourtney, and Jonathan Cheban go paddle-boarding. Kim is wearing half a wetsuit, like the banana on the cover of The Velvet Underground & Nico. She never tries to stand up on her own board, she just laughs at everyone else who tries and falls. Metaphors!
From a Snap & Go in the back of an SUV, baby Penelope says her first word or whatever and then Kim asks, "What do you think of this dragon-boat thing?" There's this race coming up where you paddle these giant boats, she needs a bunch of people, she wants all the Kardashians to fly in from L.A. — she explains all this, like it's an idea that spontaneously occurred to her, like there's nothing she's wanted more in her life. Kourtney leans over in a weird way to breast-feed the baby while the car is in motion and some mouse-assembles-people-food-items-into-a-comically-large-sandwich music plays to tell us that this is funny. Weird squarish hair on Kim in the talking-head segment here, very Bene Gesserit.
No new Kourtney & Kim this week, because of, I don't know, a football game, I guess? So I'm going to answer every question anybody asked me on Twitter, in the comments sections below last week's recap, and over Gchat, because all I know how to do is give and give and give.
"Parenting-wise, are you gaining any hot tips from this Kardashian program?"
— Jessica Hopper (@jesshopp)
Yes — monetize, monetize, monetize. Parenting makes you a better person, but the start-up costs are ridiculous; it only makes financial sense to offset them by getting your kid on a reality show as soon as your state's child-labor laws allow, so that in your declining years they'll have the endorsement money to provide for you as you've provided for them. I learned all that from Kris Jenner, except for the part about parenting making you a better person. Also, my daughter appeared multiple times in my football column, and while I haven't read the fine print of my ESPN contract, I think that means she's already technically a Disney character, like Eeyore or Wolverine.
Here's how I overprepared for what turned out to be a forgettable Kourtney & Kim Take Miami this week:
On Sunday we drove to Gelson's, the champagne room of L.A. grocery stores, because only they have the good cat litter and the good laundry detergent and the only brand of natural peanut butter I've ever had that doesn't taste like dirt-spackle. Because it's Gelson's, these three items cost us only $758. I also bought every magazine that had a Kardashian on the cover, because I take my responsibilities as a Kardashian Korrespondent seriously.
As discussed last week, with regard to the Kardashian wombs, there are two narratives: There's the story about Kim Kardashian finally getting pregnant with Kanye West's baby after between three and six long torturous months of trying, and there's the story about how, given her sister Khloe's years-long and so-far-unsuccessful struggle to have a child, Kim's insistence on portraying her pregnancy as "kind of a miracle" in the press is a little obnoxious.
Part 1 of the two-night Kourtney and Kim Take Miami premiere extravaganza is here.
Khloe says "My boobs hurt" to Mason, who is for the moment still a child, and a game of boobie-tag ensues on the Eden Roc balcony. Then it starts to rain, and Mason and Khloe frolic in the puddles, and so the Kardashian franchise's unparalleled ability to pivot from squicky to delightful in the space of an eyeblink is confirmed.
Kim hangs out with Larsa Pippen — second wife of Scottie, former Real Housewife of Miami, co-star of the WE Network's forthcoming named-by-indisputable-geniuses reality series Big Pippen — and Larsa's daughter Sophia. "I'm her, like, honorary godmother," Kim says of Sophia, which is weird because godmother is an inherently honorary title — I'm thinking there's an actual godmother in the picture. I bet it's real political. Anyway: Larsa compliments Kim on how great she is with Sophia and says, "I can't wait for you to be a mom." This is an example of a literary technique called foreshadowing and also a social behavior called ass-kissing.
Entropy reigns at the Eden Roc in Miami, as a silver SUV disgorges all three Sisters K and a howling Penelope Disick. A stroller is fumbled with; Kourtney's got Mason and Penelope in tow and no visible nanny-assistance. "Two babies, running around, spitting up, screaming — it's a lot. Scott should be out here," Kim says. Less than a minute, and already there's a mystery. Where is Lord Disick? Some Eden Roc hotel rooms are enticingly panned across, in a game-show-vacation-package kind of way.
It's about six months ago, so Kim's not yet pregnant with Heir Yeezy and Rob Kardashian's "colorful, cacophonous" dress-sock line has not yet turned the world of men's hosiery inside out. Technically it's only supposed to be Kourtney and Kim taking Miami this season, but Khloe will be here part-time, her own "fertility stuff" and "a bunch of other work commitments" permitting.
Kirstie Alley's Juicy Memoir Is All About Men: She dated Tim 'Otter' Matheson in the early '80s "until one fateful night when his secret fiancée's unexpected visit forced Kirstie to escape out the window." It was then that she learned, "don't trust actors, no matter how many éclairs they offer you." She and Patrick Swayze had an emotional affair during '85 miniseries North and South while they were both married to other people. "Patrick told Kirstie that he was falling in love with her and she, in turn, begged him, unsuccessfully, to have sex." As in she begged him unsuccessfully or the sex was unsuccessful in some way? "This man and I never had sex or did sexual things, but I consider what we did more dangerous and a betrayal to our spouses." Does they mean they played, like, really steamy games of Connect Four?
Alley fantasized about Ted Danson and his "big dick" during her time on Cheers, although she never got to sample the merchandise. The cast once conspired to photograph Danson in the shower, but "things didn't go according to plan." Kirstie says, "George Wendt kicked the door open. I snapped the photo of the naked Ted. I swear to God he was well endowed. I would show you the picture, but my hands were shaky." She calls handsome Dancing With the Stars Maksim Chmerkovskiy pro "mysterious" as well as "capricious, rude, thoughtless, and bossy. He is also gentle, childlike, fragile, and sensitive." Be sure to take Alley's revelations with a lot of salt. She also claims she and John Travolta fell in love during Look Who's Talking, although they never hooked up. It's possible some of these passionate love affairs may have taken place mainly in her imagination. I wanna see the receipts.
Taylor Swift's Fatal Attraction: Her relationship with rising high school junior Conor Kennedy continues at warp speed. "Swift is certainly taking her one-and-a-half-month romance rather, well, swiftly. Since meeting the 18-year-old Kennedy in July, the six-time Grammy winner, 22, has rearranged her schedule to spend as much time with him as possible." Although the rumor that she bought a house across the street from the Kennedy compound has been debunked, she is still giving off some serious Stage 5 Clinger vibes. "Swift loves that her new guy (son of Robert Kennedy Jr. and the late Mary) gives her entrée to the storied political family. She says it's a fantasy come true. She's very smitten." Isn't she always, though? "Pals are concerned she's repeating a troubling relationship pattern," citing the insanely fast pace of her monthlong fling with Jake Gyllenhaal, which ended when he dumped her unceremoniously. "She's always rushing into love. We all wonder why she can't take it slow." Because she thinks fairy-tale, love-at-first-sight romances are real, and always decides that whomever she is dating at the moment is The One (regardless of what the dude might think). "For years, Swift has harbored a not-so-secret infatuation with Conor's iconic family. One insider says Conor's cousin Ted Kennedy Jr. even calls the crooner a Kennedy groupie!" Well maybe Conor Kennedy is a Taylor Swift groupie! And they're not groupies, they're Band-Aids! She started collecting Kennedy memorabilia last year, after reading The Kennedy Women. She met Rory Kennedy at a screening of a doc about Ethel Kennedy, and was invited to spend her Fourth of July at the compound in Hyannis Port. She and Conor Kennedy have been inseparable ever since, although that may change in the fall when he goes back to, uh, high school.
Kristen Stewart Cheats on Robert Pattinson: The story absolutely nobody saw coming to knock Tom and Katie off the tabloid covers. "From the start, Robert Pattinson longed for more in his relationship with Kristen Stewart. Anything that would prove the guarded actress loved him as ardently as he loved her." I love how this story is written like Wuthering Heights. It's so perfect. Pattinson was planning to propose. "He wants to spend the rest of his life with her." Or at least, he thought he did until "photographers captured Stewart in a series of steamy rendezvous with her Snow White and the Huntsman director, Rupert Sanders, 41. Like a pair of hormone-addled teenagers, the actress and the dad of two — married to British Vogue model Liberty Ross, 33 — spent the afternoon driving around L.A. in search of secluded places to make out."
Except when you're the star of a film franchise, there's no such thing as seclusion from the wily paparazzi.
