'Selling Sunset' Recap, Season 8, Episode 4 & 5

While other reality shows take months to unravel in hourlong episodes (I truly don’t understand how anyone watching Love Island can also hold a job), each season of Selling Sunset can be binged in a single afternoon. It’s what Kendall Roy would call a “high-calorie info snack,” with relatively few cutaways and almost no flashbacks. But this show’s brevity is as much a liability as it is an asset. The fourth and fifth episodes of season eight, “Sitting on a Secret” and “Once Alanna Time in the West” are full of high-calorie info, but they’re at times a frustrating example of how much work the show expects the audience to do, work the show could be doing for us by adding even just one or two more screen grabs of the things people are talking about. Context is important!

First, let’s talk about Nicole, a person who has one fan, and it’s because I’m not dead yet. I only like her because I am a sick little freak with a weakness for toxic people. Nicole is dark and awkward, and the Selling Sunset mobile game (now available for download from your local app store) recently reminded me of a key piece of Nicole lore: her dog was lost (potentially stolen) in Echo Park! She’s a tragic figure in constant mourning, not unlike Mary, but with a wicked intent. I understand why fans hate her, but without her this show is just a cold, glossy affair where people smile and say hello while Bre makes coy threats to camera. We need Nicole’s friction to generate the heat that makes this feel at all human and real. Only Nicole could turn a simple “congratulations” group chat into a thing that ends with her sobbing in the middle of the office.

Responding to news of the show’s GLAAD award nomination, Chrishell sent a message to their group chat that Amanza explains to Jason (and us) also includes a passive-aggressive dig at Nicole for “trying to spread hate.” If you didn’t sit through the hour-plus-long reunion (a thing that happens weeks after the show airs and is usually very boring), don’t have a Google alert set up for each individual cast member, and don’t check the sub-Reddit regularly, you’d be forgiven for having no idea what Chrishell was referencing here.

So, if you’ve come here seeking answers, here’s the hot broth: Apparently, Nicole replied “Thanks!!” to a homophobic comment on her Instagram last year, and though she claims to have apologized for this at the reunion, we did not see it! What we did see was Nicole playing dumb about why the comment was homophobic (it referenced Chrishell as “that lesbian chick,” which is aggressively incorrect and a misgendering of her spouse, G Flip, who is nonbinary) and Jason explaining that Nicole is “stubborn” and “you can take her to water but she won’t drink.” This outlines her one major flaw: She just doesn’t know when to let things go!

So, of course, Nicole responds to Chrishell’s text dig with a novella chastising everyone for being complicit in Chrishell’s refusal to just let Nicole be obnoxious in peace. It’s this gloriously huge text, which we get to read in full, followed by Chelsea asking to be removed from the group text and Bre replying, “SAME LMAO,” that pushes this pair of episodes into the four-star territory. Maya’s abrupt and brief return feels so much like Jason and Brett making a true last-ditch effort to get Nicole to just stop, and it sort of works! Like three doulas, Jason, Brett, and Maya work together to help Nicole painfully deliver a long-overdue apology to Chrishell, who accepts it with a hug. It’s nice to see Nicole at least doing the work of standing up on TV and tearfully disavowing homophobia. This peace also comes as a huge relief since they’re all supposed to go to Pioneertown later.

Oh, what is Pioneertown, you ask!? Well, it’s only where Alanna went on her first date with and got married to her husband, and it’s a thing they now own. It’s basically an old-western movie set in Joshua Tree you can go shopping in, probably serves as some sort of tax write-off, and where the lonely ghost of a man named Zach prowls the streets, approaching groups of ladies to ask his horrible question: “Are we all taken?” (If you answer no to this, he tries to take you.) Zach tries to get Amanza’s number, but luckily she’s saving herself for Trevor Noah. Though he returns to the streets of Pioneertown from whence he came, his presence highlights how unsettling this whole trip is from the start: Everyone keeps making jokes about murder, loose men are wandering about with inquiries, and half the group didn’t even show up.

Chrishell, Emma, Chelsea, and Bre are missing from the trip for the very good reason that Bre told Chelsea about her husband kissing a pretty 20-something in the lobby of the W by the Christmas tree. Well, this is why Chelsea is missing the trip. Emma and Chrishell are just staying back to support her, and Bre just didn’t respond to the invite because she thinks she’s too good for Pioneertown. Bre, if you’re reading this, let me explain something to you: The truly wealthy and powerful never turn their noses up at a chance to romanticize the lives of the rural poor. Do you know who else had a Pioneertown? Marie Antoinette. Yeah. Yeah.

Bre is doing a lot to make us think she’s pained at having to tell Chelsea about her husband’s dalliance, and she’s pretty convincing! Or, maybe I’m convinced because Chelsea seems to accept that Bre has brought this to her in good faith, and Chelsea isn’t the type to play nice for no reason. It also helps that Bre brings up her ex-husband’s infidelity — being cheated on is sort of her origin story — to underscore that she isn’t gleeful about someone else going through this.

One thing I wonder is if the cheating wasn’t exactly news to Chelsea. Her reaction feels more like she’s experiencing an on-TV reality check than learning wholly new information. Also, her husband is kissing people in public in Los Angeles after appearing on television with his wife, so he can’t possibly care much about being discovered. I mean, they were in the lobby! All they had to do was go upstairs!! Maybe he’s just that stupid, but this begs the question of whether everyone already knew Chelsea’s marriage was on the rocks — Mary has already suggested she’s “going through something” — and Bre is simply bringing it to camera. My only evidence for this is that these episodes appear to have been filmed around February of this year, and Chelsea filed for divorce in March. That feels quick! But Chelsea seems like a person who is unafraid to do what she wants. While that has led her to do some incredibly mean and messy things on this show in the past, she’s clearly grown a lot. She carries herself through these episodes like a woman whom life has humbled but can’t humiliate, making amends with both her enemies, Mary and Bre, with her apparent new mantra: “We’re all the same.”

Re-enter Nicole, who is not the same and is going to make damn sure we know it. In what is easily one of the goofiest scenes I’ve ever witnessed, Nicole tells everyone at their Pioneertown feast that Emma is rumored to be dating someone who is married. She does this by insisting she’s not going to bring up this thing they all know, and when only Amanza understands what she’s getting at, she joins Nicole in trying to get Mary to remember what the three of them learned on Thanksgiving and that has something to do with Orange County and a person named Jenn. These are the clues to a mystery that Nicole assures us “could really affect families, marriages, and Emma’s reputation.”

This is the incredible weirdness Nicole brings, and I do just love it. She uses a sort of childlike logic in social situations that I just find so amusing. It’s like she thinks if she repeatedly says that she’s not saying something, in between saying that thing over and over again, it doesn’t count. She’s on base! She’s safe! It does get eventually annoying — I do wish she had the chutzpah to just openly wreak havoc instead of immediately trying to act like a victim — but hey, at least she’s trying something. Without this awkward reveal, there’s basically no reason for us to even see them on this trip. No offense, Alanna, Pioneertown is obviously a very special place for you, but revealing a secret affair at dinner is what separates the Emmy-nominated reality docusoaps from the infomercial/travel shows you wake up to if you fall asleep watching Saturday Night Live.

• Things We Learned About Alanna: She was a dancer and a model, which we pretty much already knew because she looks like that.

• There are few things I respect as much as Amanza using her platform to raise awareness that she wants to date Trevor Noah.

• Nicole asking who gets to punish the citizens of Pioneertown made me realize she’s best described as a bumbling Disney villain whose Kronk is always pulling the wrong lever.

• Bre saying she’s not a girl’s girl is concerning, to say the least. Chrishell having to explain to her what that actually means is even more worrisome.

• Mary’s boob exploded and she still went to Pioneertown.