Hello and welcome to the eighth recap of the third season of The Real L Word, a half-hour reality program following nine real women who hoard dead cats, use 765 coupons to obtain 675 boxes of Kraft Dinner for 49 cents, are addicted to hillbilly heroin, dress their 4-year-old daughters in sexy cowboy outfits for Lil’ Miss Pageants, compete against a large group of really stupid guys on steroids for the love of one bisexual centerfold, transform a basket filled with spam and garlic cloves into an award-winning dessert and talk about themselves.

L to R: Dusty, Romi

Reader, this has been a batshit crazy week of television! First this…

…then this…

… then this…


…and now this!

Let’s get started!

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We open in sultry Los Angeles, California, where Whitney, Sarahara and Lauren are imbibing alcoholic beverages in a crazy sexy cool hot nightspot environment called “JUICY CLUB LA,” probably named after Juicy Juice, because isn’t everything.

ready for a three-peat

So, Lauren informs Sarahara and Whitney that she’s taking a red-eye to New York City, which’s insane, because when you take a red-eye you’ve got two choices: 1. drink coffee upon awakening to keep you alert, pleasant and conscious throughout your journey to and within the airport and then face the unseemly side effect of not being able to sleep on the flight, 2. don’t drink coffee upon awakening and feel like holy hell all the way there, inevitably wait for hours as your plane is delayed and delayed, but then sleep peacefully on the flight. I don’t know which one Lauren’s gonna do, especially since instead of talking about this quandary, she’s talking about Kiyomi!

Whitney and Sarahara have a vacation prediction:

there’s also a slight possibility you could fall down a well

Sara: “I feel like Kiyomi has Lauren in the palm of her hand right here just “doo doo doo” hanging out.”

honey i shrunk the cast

Sara: “You gotta keep em guessing, you know?”
Whitney: “Give ’em little tastes. We gave each other little tastes for three years before we chomped and look at us now, we’re a month away from walking down the aisle!”

Whitney asks Lauren if she’s gonna move to New York and then puts bets on “Kiyomi’s moving here,” ’cause people in Los Angeles always think everybody’s gonna move there. To be fair, it seems like everybody has moved there.

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We thus ricochet cross-country to somewhere in Brooklyn during a crucial period in our nation’s history, where Kiyomi and Laura are hitting up a bar to watch Vero scale new heights of sexiness in her surprise role as “bartender.” No wait never mind, they’re there to talk about themselves:

Kiyomi: “The band is really moving at a rapid pace and as soon as the record is out we’re gonna be really busy and we don’t have time to slow down for someone who is sort of wishy washy for where they wanna be in the band.”

cause i was hoping to talk about her for a bit before actually talking to her

Mhm. It’s Somer Fry-day. They’ve decided to boot Somer from the band and they’re gonna tell her at the meeting tomorrow. Vero asks if it’s gonna be an ultimatum, but nope — it’s just gonna be an order.

but nothing’s as hard as being a green valentine

I’ve been anti-this-conflict since the start ’cause Kiyomi was obnoxious and I love Somer so much, but suddenly this week watching this episode something clicked and I finally “got it” and understood where Kiyomi and Laura are coming from because I realized I could relate their experience to my own experiences here at Autostraddle!  It doesn’t matter how awesome or talented somebody is when you’re doing shit like this, ’cause that’s not all it takes — when you’re in charge of a operation that consumes all your time, has negatively impacted most of your relationships, requires heaps of magical thinking, barely pays the bills if it pays anything at all and is in an industry in which 99% of attempters fail — you come to require so much blind faith that anybody who isn’t stark raving mad about your project keeps you up at night. Everybody at the table needs to have something serious at stake, something that prevents them from leaving. “Blind faith” is right up there with “butter” as one of the primary ingredients for Keeping the Dream Alive Cupcakes. It’s not that Somer hasn’t shown interest in the band or doesn’t add an awesome sound to it, it’s that Somer hasn’t shown borderline-psychotic passion for and obsession with the band, and that’s what the band needs, to be everybody’s unconditional first priority.

Anyhow, then Somer shows up and she and Kiyomi sneak off to a corner for some close-talking.

it’s just there’s this girl romi who says her dream has always been to play an instrument on a stage and because she’s a celesbian and everything, we have to take her up on that

Kiyomi and Somer discuss the intricacies of their friendship:

Somer: “I just want things between us to be right and they’re not right right now.”

Kiyomi says they’ll chat about it tomorrow because the sun’ll come out tomorrow, so you better hang on ’til tomorrow!

Sidenote: when we got to this part of the episode on Thursday night, I began panicking that Laneia had yet to pop up on G-chat to watch with me.

Riese: LANNEEEIAAAAAAAAAAAA
Laneia: HI
sorry my cable reset itself
fuck
Riese: jeez
Laneia: we’ve been trying to fix it
Riese: you have missed SO MUCH
Laneia: the internet and everything
DAMN IT
what
Riese: no jk, nothing has happened yet
Laneia: i have to call cox and fix it
megan has taken to making me a vodka tonic

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We cut to the darkest deepest chambers of Douchebagville, where The King of the Douchebags is entertaining his new suitor, Romi Flinger.

once again the answer to the question “who’s at the door” is romi

Romi the pop star’s preparing to shoot her first music video by learning how to sing — just kidding! She’s gonna wing it. Anyhow, you know when you’re hugging somebody you wish you were fucking and you are acutely aware of the alignment of your private parts and how every limb in your body can feel every limb in their body and you feel like if you keep hugging like this forever, it’d basically become sex by default? That’s how Dusty and Romi hug.

and by “work” i mean “play”

Laneia: what’s romi wearing
besides a runway of rouge
Riese: a hoodie
and a winter hat
Laneia: is it december there

Romi interviews regarding her Passion for Music:

or really any raised surface of any kind where people will feel a social obligation to look at me and listen to me talk

In addition to always wishing she could be a basketball player, President of the United States, a movie star, Queen of the World, editor of Vogue, One Of Those Bloggers Who Just Writes About Herself All Day In Her Underpants While Bathing in Millions of Google Adsense Dollars And Then Gets a Book Deal, a fashion designer, Starfleet Captain, an FBI agent, a filmmaker or the owner of a Really Cute Bakery, Romi dreams of pop stardom:

Romi: “I love music, I love making songs, I like performing, I love being on stage. I would just love to be able to sing and get paid to do it.”

Romi perches atop the couch singing her new hit single with Dusty. Romi’s reading the lyrics off her Blackberry, which makes me insane ’cause it’s totally unfair that I’ve already accidentally memorized the lyrics to this g-dforsaken song and Romi hasn’t, and it’s HER SONG. I cannot get this shit out of my head.

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romi has fooled us all into thinking she’s reading lyrics from her phone when she’s really just taking instagram pictures for “dustyandromi.tumblr.com in beta”

Romi interviews about her Amazing Artistic Connection to Dusty Ray and what each uber-talented megastar brings to the table besides L.A. Cool and gravity-defying hair:

Romi: “It’s a great team because Dusty is an amazing songwriter who’s very talented, I wanna sing, I can’t write a song to save my life, but guess what I have a really great following and a lot of publicity. So, you give me a song to sing, and I’ll give you people who will listen to it.”

i mean, “ooh la la?” you think that shit just pops into just anybody’s head? No. That’s the work of a true artist. Don’t even get me started on “Dirty Knees”

Laneia’s cable is still broken at this point —

Riese: omg i can’t believe romi just said what she said
Laneia: i’m dying
this is really irritating WHAT DOES THE UNIVERSE HAVE AGAINST ME WATCHING THIS GODFORSAKEN SHOW
i’m on hold with cox listening to the musak version of a foreigner song

Basically, Romi and Dusty Ray have now added “being obsessed with each other” to their already arduous schedules “being obsessed with themselves.”

let’s cut the bullshit and just write a song that goes like “memememememememememememe”

It’s wild, dude! When they jam together, it’s like unicorns having buttsex:

Dusty: “Music is a part of her like it is for me, so when we get together, it’s just like a constant rolling thing, like songs come out, we sing, we mix, we play, and for someone who hasn’t been in the studio before, like she can do anything already, so that’s just like so much fun, you know?”

this is how they transfer energy to each other, like E.T. but not cute

You guys. EW! Just, ew! My feelings about this scene are best expressed by utilizing the graphics fourfour made when Nicole won America’s Next Top Model, Cycle 5:

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I mean honestly.

Before departing, Romi and Dusty share yet another sex-hug:

call your girlfriend, it’s time you had the talk

At this point, I would like to quote The Daily Fill Dot Com: “Reality TV stars refuse to learn a very simple lesson: being famous does not mean you can also make music. No amount of money or lip syncing can make up for a complete lack of musical ability, but unfortunately, that hasn’t stopped countless reality stars from trying (and failing) to launch a music career.”

This seems to be what always happens in later seasons of successful reality shows — the “cast member tries to extend their 15 minutes” storyline replaces whatever storylines made that cast member interesting in the first place.

For example:

i did way too much research for this graphic

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Now we travel forward in time and emotional resonance to a magical therapist’s office undoubtedly located in or around Los Angeles, California. Charlie’s initial due date is coming up and the girls have feelings.

Laneia: have kacorcy gotten pregnant yet
Riese: they’re in therapy right now
Laneia: i might as well just slam my head against the wall

Cori, much like you and me and everyone we know, has jealousy issues with facebook.

Cori: “Seeing pregnant people on my Facebook, like seeing everybody pregnant and all that, that’s hard… it brings like this ugliness, like it makes me jealous and I’m struggling with that and then I’m mad at myself, and I should be happy for these lucky women, but I’m jealous, and it’s hard.”

The therapist drops a gallon of truth serum onto them — and onto me, too, actually, I mean, this is good advice:

Therapist: “But jealousy really is anger. I mean it brings up your anger that it can’t be you, so what you’re talking about is normal, it’s a feeling that you have to have, just like your sadness.”
Cori: “I try to distract myself a lot, but i’m so angry at my body. “

They want to acknowledge Charlie’s Birth-Day somehow, do something for it. Maybe move towards closure, if there is such a thing when things like this happen.

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We starsweep all the way across the United States of America to Brooklyn, New York, where a group of carpet-munching rockstars are assembling for a meeting. Somer’s there first, obviously, with Kiyomi and Laura lagging behind:

don’t think twice, it’s alright

The ladies settle in and Laura and Kiyomi sharpen their knives, lick their lips, and dig in:

Kiyomi: “The first thing to talk about that’s the most obvious thing is the elephant in the room, is that you know we decided that we were gonna make a decision whether you were gonna commit to the band or whether the band was gonna commit to you, what the right thing to do was after the tour, at this point we’re feeling like it might not be the right fit because of all the things that we have gone through and I hope that we could figure this out in the most respectful and positive way.”

Damn.

this would be a good time to tell you that the black cups contain coffee and your white cup is basically an arsenic latte

Kiyomi: “At this point in Hunter Valentine there is no room to slow down, eight years in the making and it’s gotta keep going full force.”
Somer: “I don’t wanna slow that down by my decision or my inability to be on tour.”

Kiyomi’s slightly relieved that Somer seems to “get it,” but is also sad. Meanwhile, Somer interviews that much like an attractive well-jawed and deceptively tiny jungle animal, she feels ambushed:

Somer: “It’s not only disappointing and frustrating but a little bit heartbreaking, it felt a little bit like an ambush, and I wish we could’ve had more of a conversation and maybe we could’ve seen what we could fix and move forward and maybe do something awesome together as a band.”

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especially the part where 12 soldiers jumped out of a bush, pinned me to the ground and took me hostage as a war captive

The band agrees that they want Somer recording the album with them but then that’ll be that. And even if Somer wasn’t one hundred percent about the band on the run, it still hurts to have somebody else make that decision for you, and unexpectedly, too.

three ways of looking at kiyomi

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Elsewhere in the Los Angeles metro area, Sarahara is tittering about the room in a lacy headscarf, straightening chairs and looking at the wall as Whitney sits on the couch, demonstrating how to finger a detachable vagina I MEAN sticking her finger in and out of her ring, asking Sara if maybe she shouldn’t wear it ’til the ceremony, lest it lodge itself in Sarahara’s cervix, causing her to birth tiny golden dragons.

hey hey my eyes are up here

The topic of this scene is that the wedding’s a month away and they’ve yet to plan anything, which’s befuddling — like really? They haven’t sent out invitations yet? Last week I got an invite to a wedding taking place in the Spring of 2013, for Christ’s sake.

Whitney: “I’m more of a planner, you know Sara kinda likes to fly by the seat of her pants.”

hello excuse me i’m here for my “save the date” invite as promised

Apparently they’ve yet to invite people, get outfits, taste cake, replace the chandelier, do a BevMo run, shoot me in the face, audition flower girls or find a DJ. West Hollywood is teeming with lesbian DJs so that shouldn’t be a problem. But you know what is a problem? THE FACT THAT “WEDDING PLANNING” HAS RE-EMERGED AS  A “TOPIC” ON THIS SHOW.

Whitney: “Alright — what are you doing?”
Sara: “Baby, I’m getting addresses.”
Whitney: “All I know is that you’re —”
Sara: “Baby, trust me, okay? I’m making headway here.”
Whitney: “I understand you’re making headway except for the fact that all I’m saying is that you’re hopping from Facebook to sending things to color schemes to —”
Sara: “So what? That’s how I work. Is there a particular way you’d like me to do it? How is that, please tell me.”
Whitney: “Yes, organized.”
Sara: “Cool. Don’t piss me off.”

can’t you tell, that’s why i’m wearing my headway headscarf

All this thinking has left Sarahara exhausted and Whitney frustrated.

Sara: “Planning a wedding is exhausting and we’ve got tons of work to do.”

Whitney would like Sarahara to do some of this work, and the beat goes on…

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Cut to New York, New York, where Donna Somer are contemplating a future sans Hunter Valentine. Somer says she needs some heart-to-hearts with Kiyomi to ensure maximum friendship maintenance.

Laneia: i think my cox service provider is taking a smoke break
i should do that
IT IS ON
beers in ny
hunter valentine feelings
Riese: YES HELLO
yes they gave somer the boot

the only regional rep i need is right here with me

Somer interviews about her one area of lament, re: Hunter Valentine:

Somer: “With Hunter Valentine — it was a taste of what it could mean to be a professional musician, I mean that was the dream, so yeah a part of that felt sorta crushed not being part of the band.”

Ending things with The Valentines raise big questions for Donna Somer though, ’cause Somer’s at that key turning point in a lesbian’s life when one must determine if one is ready to spend the next howevermany years hunting sperm and raising subsequent spawn or if one still requires the freedom to be an uninhibited artisic queer with big not-child-friendly ideas.

and not the olive garden kind of family, like the wailing fetus kind of family

Donna’s ready to get knocked up, but Somer’s not certain —

Somer: “I wanna have kids with you, don’t think that I don’t, I’m just… it’s gonna take planning and being in a better position…”

Donna interviews that Somer lives day by day and fears children will cramp her style but that eventually you’ve gotta “bite the bullet” before they age and their wombs turn into shriveled raisins of decay.

about the possibility of ilene chaiken selling our birth tape on the black market

Laneia: how did this happen i’m sad for her but also happy
whoa they went from being kicked out of a band to getting pregnant
oh this conversation would kill me
she has an amazing jawline
fuck
Riese: i want it

that beer is blessed to be so close to somer’s perfect jaw

Somer: “It’s hard ’cause I wanna give music a shot so, I guess it makes me nervous to know that she’s ready and wants it now.”

Two conversations straight men never seem to have on television:

a) Can we afford the months of doctor’s visits and sperm selection necessary for two ladies to have a baby together?

b) Is my career baby-friendly?

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We starsweep on back to New York City, where Romi returns from having imaginary heterosexual sex with her eyeballs to her home, where her patient lady-love has been sitting kindly in bed reading a book and, hopefully, hatching a secret plan to get the hell out of this relationship.

if kelsey was wearing an autostraddle t-shirt in this picture it would be a fantastic marketing tool for our demographic

Laneia: Romi is back from the tundra!
Riese: do you think the camera was sitting there
just watching kelsey read for hours
Laneia: i think she grabbed the book when she heard romi’s car in the driveway

Kelsey notes that Romi looks “bright and cheerful” and then tells Romi that she’s been having nightmares about Romi acting like a nightmare, which’s difficult to imagine considering how nighmarish Romi already is during her waking life.

Kelsey: “I don’t know if they’re dreams or if they’re premonitions.”

for example, i had a dream about 9/11 on 9/10

Romi recalls Kelsey waking up that morning with a nightmare-over, which’s a word I just invented to describe waking up the morning after a shitty nightmare.

What’s Kelsey having nightmares about?

Falling off a cliff?

Wheelers?

Vampires?

All her teeth falling out?

via kathrynleighaz.wordpress.com

Nope. None of that. Kelsey’s just having nightmares about Dusty and Romi!

Romi: “What are you having nightmares about?”
Kelsey: “I have nightmares about you, crazy.”

DON’T WE ALL

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Romi, laughing like it’s something to do, asks Kelsey what Romi says in these dreamanitions:

Kelsey: “You said, I can’t hold these feelings back for a man, that’s who I really am, Kelsey, I’m sorry I’ve been stringing you along. That’s what the dream was…”

are those kale chips you’re making or are you just happy to see me

Romi interviews that Kelsey’s “a little sensitive to the penis right now,” but unfortunately Romi’s “jumping into a new career 100%,” which means her girlfriend will have to take the backseat. Kelsey interviews that she thought Dusty Ray helping Romi would be a one-shot deal but now it’s turning into a lifetime commitment, and although she’s disturbed by Dusty Ray’s presence in Romi’s life and this show, she has to be supportive, make kale chips, etc.

real talk: she has to make you happy, too

Kelsey: “Be careful what you do in my dreams.”

Laneia: My internet is out
Riese: what the
so now your cable is working
but not your internet
Laneia: yup
i’m on g-chat on my phone
Riese: I wish Kelsey had had a preminition about this situation

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Let’s smear on back to New York, New York, where Lauren’s struggling to get her taxi driver to pull the fuck over. “Here, here, here, here, stop,” she says before lurching from the vehicle with her cumbersome rolly-suitcase while interviewing that Amanda’s already shipped back to the City of Angels ’cause her trip to see the ex got real shitty real fast. But whatever, says Lauren, she’s here to clamdive with Kiyomi.

oh hey i thought you were the weed guy

Lauren: “I have intense feelings and I wanna spend as much time with her as possible.”

You know how you hug somebody you wish you were fucking? That’s how Lauren and Kiyomi hug:

maybe later we can hug with our legs

Kiyomi interviews that she fears their romance could wither in the light of day, far from the romantic wet t-shirt contests and drunken STI exchanges of Dinah Shore:

Kiyomi: “I hope that we have the same chemistry at Dinah Shore, ’cause you know Dinah Shore could be comparable to like, a summer camp romance? You know, summer camp romances, you don’t bring those things back to the city, so I hope that it’s not that type of scenario.”

They lie together, nervous with excitement and also nervousness.

maybe you should take off your clothes now so we can re-ignite the spark

P.S. Lauren slept on the plane

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Cut to a radically different emotional playing field somewhere along the beachy California coast, where Kacy and Cori are walking and crying as waves lap at their little feet.

Kacy: “Today marks the day that Charlie was supposed to be born.”

Kacy: “There is no real way you can prepare for a day like this, but when we wanted her, we grabbed our friends and dragged them to the beach and threw flowers into the ocean, and I just thought that it was fitting that Cori and I go and do the same thing to say goodbye.”

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We cut to The House of Klinger, deep in the Jungly Southern Wilds of California in this great land of America, where Romi’s dipped in to have dinner with her family and make us feel guilty for not liking her.

drinking orange juice from a wine glass is actually sort of adorable

I’d thought Romi’s Mom was a lesbian but apparently she’s bisexual because she has her very own Slab of Man these days:

Romi interviews that her two brothers are special needs kids ’cause her Dad was exposed to Agent Orange — basically, during Vietnam, the U.S. military enacted an “herbicidal warfare” program via which the U.S. military sprayed nearly 20 million gallons of the toxic herbicide / defoliant / jet fuel hybrid Agent Orange all over Vietnam in hopes of destroying the forests guerrillas hid in and the land citizens farmed to survive. Agent Orange killed a shit-ton of people, and vets exposed to Agent Orange have shown increased rates of cancer and nerve, skin and respiratory disorders and Agent Orange has also been known to cause birth defects in their offspring. It’s one of many unfathomably fucked situations faced by veterans in this special country.

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Romi chats with her family about her upcoming superstardom, and then interviews:

Romi: “The reason that I work so hard and do all of the things that I do is so that I can support my family. I wanna take care of my mom, I wanna be able to give her a vacation, I wanna take my brothers on vacation. My mom doesn’t have a lot of money, and like spoil her in a way, she takes such good care of all of us us. I am the one that is capable of making something of myself, my brothers don’t have the opportunity that I have, and I take advantage of that, I don’t take it for granted, that I’m capable of working.”

Initially, this scene briefly warmed my cold heart towards Romi and made me feel conflicted about her, but then goddess blessed me with two important thoughts:

1. Doesn’t everybody who loves their family want to support their family? What loving daughter doesn’t wanna take their Mom on vacation or help with bills for relatives with special needs? On a scale of “a normal person with a nice family” to Katniss Everdeen, you don’t get a cookie for that.

2. If you genuinely plan on supporting your family any time soon because they cannot survive without you, “trying to make it as a musician” — especially when music is just a side passion, not something your friends, family and teachers have been telling you to pursue for your entire life — is quite possibly the absolute worst way to do so. Ideas with greater success rates include playing the lottery and searching for hidden treasure.

Anyhow, it’s still a cute scene and it’s nice to see Romi expressing love and positivity towards her family. Seriously!

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Smear to another cool sexy evening in the sexiest city in the Los Angeles metro area: Los Angeles. Whitney and Sara are drinking drinks with Amanda, who Whitney invited to get Amanda’s mind off The Ex and onto The Sex.

and then i was like “but i got the nobel prize last year! wouldn’t it be awk to get it two years in a row?”

But Amanda wants to talk wedding:

Amanda: “I’m not a designer in any way, but I’m really good with fashion and all that jazz, and I would love to be involved, and help.”

Whitney’s open to Amanda’s input on all that jazz, especially considering their lack of jazzy accomplishments, but Sarahara’s not having it. Sarahara interviews:

Sara: “It’s frustrating to me that Amanda keeps trying to find a way to involve herself in the wedding, this wedding is really important to both Whitney and I, and it has nothing to do with her, it really is none of her business and she is bothering the shit out of me.”

tbh your makeup is really bothering the shit out of me

Amanda rubs seductively against all Sara’s nerves by offering to get a license on the internet to officiate their wedding, which’s dumb ’cause they did that part in Connecticut, but whatever, and Whitney interviews that Sarahara’s got this “little switch” that goes off, leading to a “drastic shift” in mood which results in housefires, foam parties, crying kittens, five thumbs on one foot and Hurricanes. Whitney’s gotta figure out what’s wrong with her, since it’s probably really important and potentially transformative.

Amanda: “Whitney and Sara are so crazy right now, it’s like hard to even be around them.”

throwback to previous seasons where whitney and sara fought outside the bar all the time

More importantly, the camera repeatedly shifts over to this girl, who’s got no lower third and doesn’t speak or get spoken to. Maybe she killed Jenny.

The dynamic duo fight about something/nothing outside the bar for some unmemorable reason I can no longer remember, but nobody dies or slips on a banana peel, so NEXT

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Back in New York City, Kiyomi’s taken Lauren out on what they both determine is their first date, although Lauren smartly points out, “we’ve eaten meals together before.” That’s not all they’ve eaten together HEY-O!

no you’re the prettiest princess!

What will they eat? When will they kiss? I’m on the edge of my stack of boxes! (We’re in the middle of moving right now)

kiyomi and lauren sitting in a booth, K-I-S-S-I-N-G-fluth

Kiyomi interviews that they’re still getting to know each other but there’s “something different” in Lauren that could make her change her ways. Kiyomi tells Lauren about the convo with Somer which segues neatly into a conversation about how busy Kiyomi’s gonna be with LA Fashion Week I MEAN on tour. They tour a lot. Tour Tour Tour.

Laneia: Tour?
TOUR
Tour
Riese: tour
tour tour tour tour
TOR!

Kiyomi and Lauren talk with their faces close together about how far they’ve come since Dinah Shore when they were drunk and young and unattached! Now they’re these mature creatures eating with real silverware and talking about TOUR!

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We then travel cross-country to somewhere over the rainbow, where a kitten is listening to Cori flush the toilet as Cori interviews that she takes pregnancy tests every morning, just for funsies and to practice her ability to control the direction of her urine stream.

But today’s test isn’t like all the other days’ tests:

It’s positive!

maybe the cutest screenshot ever

The happy couple does an impromptu interview outside in Adorableland, ’cause they are so giddy and cheerful all over!

Laneia: Babies! They are so cute
Riese: i need a doctor confirmation on this
aw look at kacy’s baby dinosaur hair
Laneia: PLEASE I just want this show
Koraci show
God
It’s too fucking cute

…eeeeeeeee

I’m too nervous, I can’t be excited ’til a gyno confirms it and/or Cori posts a pregnancy photo on instagram, I don’t wanna get my hopes up. Seriously.

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Back to the Enchanting Tale of Whitney and Sarahara’s relationship, happening right this minute in Whitney and Sarahara’s bed, of all places.

wake up, we’ve only got 20 more minutes ’til mcdonalds stops serving breakfast

What happened last night? Whitney interviews:

Whitney: “Amanda inserting herself was kind of the tipping point but it wasn’t the real root cause, I think right now we’re going through a lot of anxiety and stress and all of the planning it’s just a lot.”

They shift this thrilling conversation from bed to couch, cry a little, and talk about how they need to be a team and how the cameraman just fell asleep and died from boredom.

these are two people who need coffee

Sara: “I just want it to be good I want us to be happy I want it to be a fairy tale, you know? I do.”
Whitney: “I know, so do I. But we’re both fucking not perfect at all but nobody is and lets deal with our fucking issues together.”

Mature responsible loving adults have a problem and reconcile it rationally. hm. NEXT!
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Oh reader! Our next journey will be perilous, for it will be a journey into The Long Night, when the sun hides for years and children are born and live and die all in darkness. It is the time for fear, my little Lord. Fear the giants and ghouls and the white walkers. Fear it all, little Lords, because today we are visiting the set of Dusty and Romi’s first music video.

this is the opposite of the album cover for “The Freewhelin’ Bob Dylan”

The concept of the video is “Dusty and Romi look in the mirror, like what they see.”

best enjoyed with a serious pair of noise-canceling headphones

There’s so many reasons to be excited about this!

is that what they call it these days

Romi: “It’s probably the happiest I’ve been in a really long time with anything that I’ve done.”

They’re so happy, they can’t stop hugging!

jolene, jolene, jolene joleneeeeeee

So Romi’s having a great time in her makeup and hair and outfit singing on the stage with Dusty Ray the Amazing Songwriter! Then Rose shows up, and then Kelsey shows up to “support Romi and be there for her.”

arial view of the emotional crime before it happened

Unfortunately Romi is unable to resist the Power of the Douche and even during giant chunks of downtime, she stays glued to Dusty while ignoring her girlfriend.

you’re just too gross to be true, i can’t keep my hands off of you

Kelsey: “Here I am to see Romi, I go out there and I’m like HEY… it was almost like I’m walking in on a conversation that I wasn’t supposed to or just that I wasn’t welcome to that conversation and I was like, whoa, this is weird, like I’m not gonna come up to my girlfriend and feel like I can’t talk to my girlfriend, like I’m in a weird situation.”

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somebody’s having a party in their pants

In fact, Dusty seems literally unable to grasp a life-form besides his own and Romi’s even exists, let alone acknowledge it, so Kelsey’s like, this shit is bananas.

taking back what i said about him being a cuter version of jay

Kelsey interviews that Romi should consider laying off the flirting in her presence and “have some fucking respect,” and Romi interviews that she’s got no room in her heart for anybody else’s feelings besides her own:

Romi: “[Kelsey’s] not happy with the energy that’s going on with me and Dusty, she’s pissed off and I don’t have time for it. I don’t have time for it right now. I have things that I have to do, I have — I can’t do this right now.”

kelsey drowns her sorrows in the Springs of Poland

Kelsey standing around looking unimpressed is more than Romi Flinger, World Famous Pop Star Celesbian, can handle.

Romi: “If you’re gonna do this to me, I’m gonna ask you to leave.”
Kelsey: “Okay, I’m going.” [starts walking away]
Romi: “No, I don’t want you to, Kels.”
Kelsey: “No, I want to.”
Romi: “No, I don’t want you to! Can you stop? Come here!”

ding ding ding

The best part is how Kelsey storms out just as Dusty’s darting in, and he sort of mock-winces and dramatically hops out of her path-way (unnecessarily, really) like “oops, there goes the collateral damage!” and it’s really gross.

in and out

Romi sighs dramatically and goes outside to make Kelsey feel worse:

Kelsey: “I see the way you guys interact, I don’t like it, and I don’t want to be around it.”
Romi: “Don’t go there! Talk to me. You have to talk to me instead of making little comments like you do and it isn’t fun when I’m trying to like have fun and make a video —”
Kelsey: “Okay well, make your video, but I don’t want to sit around on set. I don’t like the way you guys interact with each other.”

and honestly i have a hard time taking you seriously with that situation on your head

Romi interviews regarding how frustrating it is to be the center of the universe with all these deviant planets out there:

Romi: “This is my day. And I know Kelsey is like Romi Romi Romi I need I need I need she’s selfish bla bla bla but yeah today is my day, I am shooting a video that’s about me. So just step back and let me have it today. Step out of yourself, step out of your issues, step out of your insecurity, and just see that the girl that you say you love is doing something that she’s dreamed of doing her entire life.”

and don’t even try to ask me for tips on how to do that because i have no idea

Romi wants to know why Kelsey didn’t ask her about the shoot or express excitement about what’s happening on set, and Kelsey points out that she did, actually, ask her about the shoot and did act excited but Romi didn’t answer or notice because her head was up Dusty Ray’s ass. So Kelsey busts the hell out of that popstand.

But of course this fight wouldn’t be complete without Dusty Ray’s compassionate hug:

Laneia: She is so obnoxious
Riese: ugh, i don’t like her
Laneia: She’s a cunt
Oh and a blowpop?
Nice

On the upside, a TRLW cast member who shall remain nameless sent me a DM on twitter containing a link to a photograph of a dude with a crazy hairdo from a movie with the instructions: “this is a gift for you…you will know what to do when the time comes.”

Indeed, after watching this scene, I knew what to do with that mystery photograph:

ta-da

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We then catapult and cartwheel cross-country to the scenic Williamsburg Bridge, where Kiyomi has taken her houseguest to push her into the river JUST KIDDING to ask her to GO STEADY.

picture-perfect

Kiyomi: “I wanted to ask you if you think it’s like an okay idea if you want to like, just be with each other?”
Lauren: “Yeah.” [SMILES]

Kiyomi interviews that there are a lot of obstacles but she’s not gonna put boundaries around her feelings. They even do a cute interview together!

Aw.

They’re really cute and happy! It’s cute.

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Back to sad evil Los Angeles, where Romi’s at home thinking about how many puppies she’s gonna kill tomorrow when Kelsey arrives back at the ranch, wondering why Romi hasn’t responded to her texts. Romi interviews that she’s still mad at Kelsey because Kelsey fucked with her “energy” and “turned the day into something that it didn’t need to be.” That’s right, Romi’s mad at Kelsey.

Romi says Kelsey’s texts expressed the following ideas: Kelsey is moving out, Romi is choosing money over her relationship.  Romi would like to know “what money?” and also would like to start saying all of her words so loudly that they probably woke Kiyomi and Lauren up three weeks later and three billion miles away.

ooh la la la , oooh la la la

Romi pumps up the volume on her voice to scream “ARE YOU READING YOUR BBMS?” and then shit hits the fan and Romi dresses herself in it and continues screaming.

more importantly, are you having your regular BMs??!

Romi: “ARE YOU READING YOUR BBMs?”
Kelsey: “OH MY GOD!”
Romi: “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!!”
Kelsey: “Do you not see it at all, the way you act with him?”
Romi: “I do!”
Kelsey: “And you’re okay with that?”

i mean, the guy takes his shirt off like he’s Aiden or Jacob and homeboy is not a wearwolf or a vampire. You’re okay with that?

Laneia: Are you even reading your BBMs??!
Riese: that was amazing
i wrote down for grace to cap the hell out of that
Laneia: Kelsey is vying for the spinoff tonight
Love it
Riese: romi is being a snake
Laneia: “she’s a really good actress, or a total asshole.” -megs

Romi: “This is a friend that I have known for almost six and a half years now —”
Kelsey: “He’s not just a friend, he’s an ex-boyfriend.”
Romi: “He IS my ex-boyfriend.”
Kelsey: “And you keep referring to him as an ex, not as a friend —”
Romi: “Yes. He’s my ex-boyfriend. He’s my ex-boyfriend. He is.”
Kelsey: “And the way that you act with him isn’t okay.”
Romi: “We know each other. He’s not a stranger in my life.”
Kelsey: “Out of ALL the people in LA to make music with you choose your ex-boyfriend?”
Romi: “It happened to end up that way.”

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no more wire hangers!

Kelsey interviews:

Kelsey: “Romi choosing to make pop music with her ex boyfriend is so completely fucking insane. And maybe the Kelsey a year ago would’ve been fine with it, would’ve sat back and would’ve just let Romi do whatever she had to do. But I grew up a lot in a year, in two years, and to the point where I have too much respect for myself to sit back and watch someone mistreat me like that.”

(Sidenote: the time frame here is tighter than usual — Romi and Dusty started working together literally like two days after they got back from Dinah. Just keep that in mind.)

the only thing those two should do together is crystal meth

Here’s the moment for Romi to step up and say, “you’re right. I love you, you’ve done nothing but love me, and despite this I’ve fallen for someone else.” If she’s totally unable to be kind, she could at least try the dickish but not 100% evil “the only way your heart will mend is when you learn to love again.”

But no, instead Romi turns it around on Kelsey!

Romi: “Can you not be even happy that this is working for me?”
Kelsey: “I was happy, I was happy you got to make music —”
Romi: “When? When?”
Kelsey: “The first time I met Dusty, I was totally fine with him.”
Romi: “The first night.”
Kelsey: “— and then spent all this time with him, and you’ve been with him, and you’ve been alone with him, and I come into it and I see the way that you are with him —”
Romi: “You haven’t liked that I’ve been working with Dusty once this week, why can’t you just admit it? Are you gonna blame me?”
Kelsey: “I do admit it. I admit it wholeheartedly because I don’t like the way you act with him, maybe if you treated him like a friend and not like —”
Romi: “How do I not treat him like a friend? I treat him the way I treat Drew and Rose and everybody else, I’m affectionate with my friends. It’s because it’s him. We’re close.”
Kelsey: “—and that’s the whole thing that you don’t obviously see.”

just some of the many facial expressions romi employed in this scene

Romi: “You don’t obviously see that I am trying to do something amazing right now that I am so excited about that is absolutely one of the most amazing things I’ve ever gotten to do with somebody I’m so excited to do it with and you don’t see anything from where I’m coming from!”

I think she’s coming from Whatthefuckville but regardless, if Kelsey didn’t see all that, she would’ve been weary of Romi’s time spent with Dusty like a billion lightyears ago. Obviously Kelsey sees all that.

Kelsey: “Yes I do —”
Romi: “No you don’t, you haven’t said congratulations, you have said nothing, all fucking week!”
Kelsey: “And why do you think that is?”
Romi: “Because you don’t like it.”
Kelsey: “I don’t.”
Romi: “Guess what, your girlfriend is really excited about something. I wanna make music with him. I want to.”
Kelsey: “Okay, then make music with him.”

Romi’s constantly attempting to protect herself from guilt by referencing blanket ideas about how people should act — girlfriends should be excited for their girlfriend’s dreams coming true, even if that means working with an ex. Girlfriends should trust their girlfriends to keep work and pleasure separate. But the fact is that Romi does like Dusty, there is sexual energy there, and they are together now — nothing exists in a vacuum, this is the context, and Kelsey wouldn’t feel so put off by the situation if that context wasn’t exactly what it is.

this is the “what have you become” look

Romi: “What is it that you want me to say? I don’t get it.”
Kelsey: “You know what? If I was making music with my ex-lover or my ex-girlfriend, and I was flirting with them and I had this “ENERGY” with them and it was SO GREAT and WE NEED TO BE ON STAGE, you would have a problem with it.”
Romi: “So what?”
Kelsey: “Would you be okay with me doing that?”
Romi: “No.”
Kelsey: “There’s your answer. Did you ever think maybe you fell back in love with him? Did you ever think about that? When you open that door, that’s what happens.  [Kelsey starts crying] And when you’re in a relationship you don’t do things like that. You just don’t. I would never do that to you.”

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Kelsey interviews:

Kelsey: “I’ve always been a sucker for Romi because I’ve been in love with Romi. And you do crazy fucking shit when you are in love. Love gets you somewhere where you’re hurt and you’re abandoned and you think someone’s your best friend but really you were just a fucking filler.”

via kelseychavarria.tumblr.com

Kelsey says she’s gonna move out and take her stuff and find a new place to live, at which point my girlfriend asked “how is she gonna move when she hates the wind?”

Kelsey: “You’re gonna lose me, how does that make you feel? Honestly have you even thought about it?”
Romi: “I can’t comprehend it yet.”

Romi suggests they take a few days to think it over, and laments, “Why do you have to be so dramatic? I’m tired.”

from all that yelling and being dramatic i just engaged in

Kelsey: “We’re not together anymore. This is it. I want you to know that.”
Romi: “Okay.”

Kelsey gets the fuck out of there and Romi picks up her phone. Romi interviews:

Romi: “You know, I’m gonna start working with Dusty, I’m gonna start traveling with Dusty and spending every day in a studio with Dusty, it’s about to happen. Dusty and I have something really strong happening that I can’t control anymore. And I don’t want to. “

reserving the dustyandromi dot tumblr dot com URL

The actual feeling of having a perfect loving girlfriend or boyfriend while falling for somebody else is actually terrible, and heartbreaking and sad. Because you’re hurting somebody you love, somebody who loves you. We’re all fickle humans and sometimes people fall for the wrong people at the wrong time and can’t stop it, sometimes that happens and it feels inescapable. And then if your perfect partner asks you about it, you have to tell them the truth, because if you really love them, and really want them to be happy, you’ll want them to cut their losses as quickly as possible, even if that means they’re gonna hate you for a while or maybe forever. It doesn’t feel like this at all, it feels like this. But not only did Romi fail to come clean or care, she actually tried to turn it around on Kelsey!

Life is not people following their hearts off a cliff, life is people building things and climbing mountains together! You know what this is, Romi?


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Next week on The Real L Word‘s Season Finale, Romi pulls a Meredith Grey as Sara and Whitney get married!

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