Programming note: We didn’t forget about Gossip Girl! Our recap of the show’s triumphant return to the airwaves will appear tomorrow, and every week on Wednesdays until Kell On Earth has its finale.
Let’s get one thing out of the way right now: Kelly Cutrone’s baby daddy is HAWT. I’m not a big fan of trendy spelling, but the normative spelling of the word doesn’t just quite have the feel that I’m going after, and this is a sentiment that needs to be communicated correctly.
Beyond hot foreigners, however, this episode of Kell on Earth had a lot to offer us: a Flintstones fashion show, a trip to an “adult” toy store to buy supplies for her employees (and for her doctor’s receptionist, for some reason), the most awkward gay blind date in the history of humanity, a nearly apocalyptic tequila shortage, and Kelly Cutrone wearing makeup. The last one is obviously the most shocking, and that’s why this show is great.
Dumb Stephanie got fired and half of the team went to London Fashion Week the day after I had my tonsils out, and then Bravo sadly gave us a week without the People’s Rev crew last week, so it’s been a while since we last spoke. Fret not, however – Dumb Stephanie is still fired and the team is still in London. The more things change, they more they stay the same.
Before they can come back Stateside, Kell had to produce Jeremy Scott’s oddly brilliant Flintstones-on-crack runway show, but of course, the real money shots were watching her beat the lighting dude into submission and watching Emily and Robyn snatch gift bags out of the hands of would-be bagsnatchers. I could watch an hour of that every week – it does not get old.
Speaking of money shots (how often do I get to say that? Let’s wallow in it for a moment), when Kelly and the crew got back to New York City, we got to take a brief detour to a sex shop. Kelly’s doctor’s receptionist asked her to go buy her a vibrator because she was too embarrassed to do it herself and Kelly “looked like the sort of person that would have a vibrator.” Which, I guess, is true. Come to think of it.
Because Kelly is awesome, she went and picked one up for her post-haste (it was a nice one, too), and also asked her office minions if they needed anything from the the toy store before she went. Indeed, Tandrew (brilliant. nickname.) needed – rather, hoped that he would need – some lube because he was going to go on a blind date, and cross your fingers for him, was really hoping to get laid.
We don’t know if he did or not, but I’m going to say that it’s doubtful at best. Not only did he propose a game of dirty word association (not on the first date, Tandrew. All the boys are going to think you’re a slut), but before they could even get properly drunk to have sex with strangers, Kelly and Glam Goth Gay Andrew showed up to party crash. Tandrew seemed upset, but it appeared as though fresh faces were the only thing that was going to save that trainwreck. Those two were not meant to be.
Tandrew wasn’t the only gay People’s Rev employee named Andrew to have romantic problems, however. In a brilliant little cut-in, Kelly and non-tan Andrew hit on a random dude on the street, assuming he was gay. And really, it didn’t seem like that bad of an assumption, since he looked like a skinnier version of Anderson Cooper’s ultra gay boyfriend (don’t believe me? Google it. Ben Maisani.) Kelly was wing-manning her hardest, but even she can’t turn a guy gay on Andrew’s whim, and he biked off into the sunset. Probably on a fixed-gear. Hipster.
While Kelly was shopping for sex toys and hitting on gays for her assistant, some infighting was going on back at the office. Smart Stephanie (who shall now be referred to simply by her proper name, since The Stephanie That Shall Not Be Named is now gone) is getting bogged down in all the stuff that’s expected at her, and Emily appears to be a yeller.
I had a hard time figuring out who was at fault here, and I’ve finally decided that they were both a little wrong. Stephanie seems like she might focus more on how busy she is than on eliminating tasks from her to-do list, which is a problem that a lot of the young women I’ve worked with have had, and Emily flew off the handle at her really quickly. It’s a rare work situation where yelling actually helps anything get done, and it’s definitely not helpful when someone is already panicking.
That’s probably what you get when you staff your entire company with people under 30, however – efficiency and professionalism kind of go down the tubes. It seems like People’s Rev could do with a couple more Mother Hen figures to settle everyone when the natives start getting restless over nothing – Kelly can’t always be there to tell everyone to chill the eff out. But hey, people under 30 with limited experience are cheaper to hire, and fashion is as high-paying of an industry as a lot of people would have you think. Something has to give, and I think we all just saw what it was.
The whole thing kind of reminded me of Office Space – when you have eight bosses checking on you and telling you they need things and that they want their needs to be your priority, it’s overwhelming. Stephanie probably shouldn’t have run outside to flip out on the phone with Kelly, but Emily also seemed completely uninterested in actually managing her employee. But isn’t that a situation that we’ve all seen in our own offices?
Which just brings me back to what I always think while watching this show – this isn’t The Bachelor, these are real lives, and that’s why the show is ultimately compelling. Kelly cares enough about her employees to buy them organic lube and listen to them crying on the phone, even when none of that is a boss’s traditional job.
She obviously wants the best for her employees and hopes that she can help them advance in their careers. When you consider that alongside her interaction with her daughter during the photo shoot for her book cover, the whole show had an unexpectedly girl-power bent to it. On the night following the first time a woman has ever won the Oscar for Best Director, it seemed oddly appropriate and it warmed the cockles of my little feminist heart. How often does reality TV manage to do that?
