Last night on Vanderpump Rules Jax & Brittany Take Kentucky, the show tries to answer the question that has plagued VPR since its conception: will Jax Taylor ever grow up? That would be a big and resounding NO. Because you can’t fix a 37 year old man who has been slinging his own self-absorbed ego around L.A. since he arrived four nose jobs ago. Just like my title suggests, if you put lipstick on a pig it’s still a pig, even if said pig is Mamaw’s adorable new piglet, Bacon Bit. Just like you can’t make Jax do farm chores and expect him to suddenly be all wholesome.
Case in point: after many fishbowls of alcohol, Jax gets belligerent drunk at the bar with Brittany Cartwright and it causes a huge blowup between them. Not only does he try and start a fight with some locals and yells white trash at them, but he also repeately tells his own girlfriend to eff off and antagonizes her best friend. Thankfully, there was no chunky sweater to abandon in a parking lot while challenging someone else to a fist fight this time but clearly, Jax has not come very far since that moment years ago.
To compound the night’s events, when Brittany confronts Jax the next morning and asks for an apology, Jax refuses and it causes a heated argument that her sister overhears before Jax storms off and takes their truck into town. Brittany fills in the blanks for her sister out on the porch, explaining how Jax happily threw the $12K that he recently donated to her brother and SIL’s fertility fundraiser back in her face and said she would have nothing without him. If I were Brittany, I would be mortified to know that my boyfriend is saying things like this, let alone in front of my family, but Brittany treats this as more of a run of the mill venting session with her sister.
When Jax pulls up after getting some coffee in town and “cooling off” we can see that he’s done anything but. They immediately start arguing, with Brittany’s sister stuck in the middle, whipping her head back and forth between them as they hurl insults at one another. AWKWARD.
Brittany just wants Jax to take responsibility for his actions and grow up. But this request quickly turns into a pissing match about who works harder at SUR, with Jax lecturing her about how she should realize how good she has it before speaking to him like this. I am literally cringing so hard my shoulders hurt. The ego of Jax knows no bounds, not even in God’s Country and definitely not in the presence of Brittany’s family. Jax tries to defend his horrifying behavior towards Brittany by saying that in Kentucky, it’s okay to be a housewife, but in L.A., everyone has to work. I have a little newsflash for Jaxy-poo: it’s okay to be a housewife anywhere and maybe some housewives in Kentucky think that serving a martini with your shirt unbuttoned down to your belly button doesn’t count as real work. Just sayin’.
Eventually, Mamaw goes to try and talk some sense into Jax and he admits that he doesn’t remember anything from the night before. When she suggests that he just apologize, he whines that he did but then Brittany kept attacking him. Mamaw realizes that this is going nowhere and tells him they have chores to do just to get out of the conversation. Mamaw goes back to Brittany and gives her the stupid advice to just talk to Jax once they have both simmered down when what she should really be telling her to do is dump his ass. Down at the barn, Jax and Brittany tensely work together feeding the chickens but barely talking. Jax must be sniffing too many cow pies because he doesn’t understand why Brittany can’t just get over it.
Once the chores are done, Mamaw takes Jax out to lunch and they rehash the events of the morning. Of course, Mamaw thinks that the source of all these problems is alcohol. What she doesn’t realize is that the person consuming all that alcohol is fatally flawed himself. It’s not the alcohol, Mamaw, it’s JAX. Either way, the talk turns Jax saying that he isn’t ready to give Brittany the ring he’s designing just yet because blah blah blah, issues needing to be resolved, blah blah blah, Brittany has lost her spark. Oh so we are on this again? Jax is really trying to make this a thing and I can’t understand how everyone in her family doesn’t see that Jax is using the oldest trick in the book by pinning something so vague on Brittany as the cause for their relationship not moving forward. I’m not the problem, she’s the problem! What’s her problem? Well, she’s fixable, I think, but she just doesn’t have the same spark. How do we get her spark back? I don’t know that’s on her. Over and over and over again.
Mamaw, for all of her Southern sass and gumption, is falling for it hook, line, and sinker. Sure, she makes sure that Jax isn’t throwing Brittany’s weight gain (that he brought us as evidence of her lost spark) back in her face, but when he assures he that he never does, she simply tells him he’s gained weight too and then goes on to say how happy she is that they found each other and she will make sure that Brittany is good to him. Oh, jeez, why don’t you just take the poor girl behind the barn and shoot her now instead of pawning her off on this ogre? Is ANYONE going to stick up for Brittany???
The couple heads over to Don’s house so they can go four wheeling, which Brittany says is the best activity when you’re mad at your boyfriend. So is breaking up with him and that doesn’t require four wheels and a helmet but whatevs. After they cruise around for a while, they stop and talk and Jax still refuses to apologize for his behavior. He doesn’t just stop there – he reminds Brittany yet again that she needs to be more grateful and should say thank you more. To Jax. For being her boyfriend? I don’t even know at this point but I’m too blinded by rage to dig deeper into this. Jax really does think he’s a gift and I’m not sure who has been feeding that notion but he’s clearly not going to stop thinking it anytime soon.
Jax goes on to tell Brittany how he’s been enabling her behavior of waking up late, not going to the gym, and eating poorly. I’m not quite sure how low your self-esteem has to be to sit here and take all that simply because the guy who is telling you just so happens to pay for the ratty, one bedroom apartment you live in, but Brittany takes it without even flinching. It’s almost like she’s heard it before. Finally, Brittany has no choice but to come to an agreement of asking Jax to show her more respect and then praises him for how great he has been on this trip home.
While Brittany may be willing to forgive Jax easily, there is one person who isn’t so willing to get on the Jax Admiration Train that’s her dad, Don. He invites them over for a little cookout but Jax says he needs a break from Don so he opts to stay back at Sherri’s house and sit in his bunk bed. Brittany sits down with her dad at the campfire and asks him how he thinks Jax is doing. Don is impressed at Jax’s generosity in donating so much money to the fertility fund, but that quickly goes out the window when Brittany tells him Jax has been throwing that back in her face for the last few days. Don is the only one with any sense and recognizes that’s a clear sign of Jax trying to control her and he wants to make sure Brittany doesn’t put up with it. Brittany passes it off to Don and asks if he will have a talk with Jax, hoping he will see more good in him than bad.
Now that’s a tall order.
Photo Credit: Bravo
