Selling Sunset - Season 7 Episode 1 Recap
Sex parties, ball bags, and titties out -- The girls came to play!
Recapping the Golden Bachelor has been the most fun Karyn and I have had on Substack, so we talked about keeping the momentum going. Unfortunately, Love Has Won didn’t satisfy us in the same way as Gerry/Gary/Jerry did. (But at least now Karyn will be more discerning if she were to join a cult.)
Point is, we’ve been on a quest to find something else we can do together.
We discussed covering that British naked dating show, but there’s a possibility that it might kill me. Also, Jen Mann’s take on it was perfection.
Turns out the answer was there in my Netflix queue, wearing a napkin for a skirt. Thus, we are delighted to bring you a weekly dose of Selling Sunset, Season 7. So clip in your extensions and sharpen your claws; we’re doing this. We’re only doing one a week even though the whole season has dropped. (Please be fine with that.)
This show is basically Xanax for me. I can put it on and it immediately makes me happy. It’s beautifully shot and color-saturated. There’s plenty of real estate porn, the skies are endlessly sunny, and the drama is the same kind of rich-women’s-lady-business problems that made me a Bravo fan for life. The villains are perpetually over the top and their crimes are minor at best, like not inviting someone to a baby shower or criticizing someone’s vegan empanadas. They make the Kardashians look like the Kissingers and I am here for it.
Hello, Karyn here! My additions will be in red this week. I live in LA and yet every time I watch this show I wonder where in the hell these people live. Suffice to say, my LA experience and the LA experience on the show are drastically different.
We open on a recap of last season where almost nothing happened, but everyone acted like it was the end of the world. Everyone works for Jason Oppenheim of The Oppenheim Group, which is a big-time real estate brokerage in LA. Jason’s identical twin brother Brett left The Oppenheim Group to open Oppenheim Real Estate, which I am sure is in no way confusing to any of their clients, friends, or family. There’s always been chatter that the agents—all of whom look like supermodels—aren’t really agents but actors and to that I say, I do not care how the sausage is made. However, this becomes important later.
Now that I’m consulting in the luxury real estate world, I appreciate exactly how strategic this marketing effort disguised as a show is. Also, because I’m consulting in the luxury real estate world, I’m not going to go full Regina George on some of these people (ahem, Chrishell), so let’s see how that works out for us.
First scene is Bre walking up a steep driveway in ridiculously high heels. (If you’re partial to drinking games, this is a common trope and you will be shithoused if you take a shot every time you see one of these gals tottering unsteadily up a hill in punishing stilettos.) Bre is one of Nick Cannon’s baby mamas and she is perfectly content about this. She’ll thank you not to come for her about it. Noted.
Bre strolls around this multi-tiered home with giant glass walls. It’s built into a hillside and has views for days. The light is golden and perfect. Two other agents arrive. Again, it’s germane to mention that every woman is six feet tall and a size zero. Their degree of perfection is other-worldly. Once my friend Stacey and I went to a People magazine party in New York and it was staffed by models. The thing is, models are so disproportionate from regular folk that they look like aliens when walking amongst mere mortals. Stacey and I were the only people at the party who were plus-sized, so every single member of the wait staff came to us first with the passed appetizers. Mortifying.
Anyway, Amanza is one of the arrivals. She sort of sells real estate and also sort of does home staging. She is carrying this handbag:
If you think, That looks like a black basketball suspended in chain net gold hardware, you would be right. She’s carrying it as a handbag, even though it is a BALL and it DOES NOT OPEN. They’re selling a used one on Sotheby’s for $7,500. I don’t want to tell Amanza how to live her life, but her storyline a few years ago was of her being broke and not getting child support, so…
Regardless, Sotheby’s does offer complimentary shipping if you’re so inclined.
Amanza is only there to show off her outfit and she totally borrowed that ball.
The other agent is Emma and she has a line of vegan empanadas. She once matched with Ben Affleck on a dating site. I am not clear if they had a relationship, but she is in the realm of attractive people with whom Ben Affleck would match with on a dating site. They hug and talk about the difficulties in the current market. This house is listed right under $16 million and would generate almost $500,000 in commission. Then they discuss how Amanza’s purse is not a purse but a ball in chain net gold hardware. No one thinks this is weird. Then Bre pulls a hot Cheeto out of her Birkin bag and this blows everyone’s mind.
I only call her Emmapanada and will do so for the rest of the season.
Emma shares the news that Jason followed Chrishell to Australia. Chrishell is another agent and when Josh Flagg made fun of her for not really being an agent, she had zero chill about it. Zero. She’s a former soap opera star and was dumped in Season One by This Is Us’s Justin Hartley, and she’s been riding the wave of viewer sympathy ever since.
Crishell is my favorite! She totally came out of her shell last season and started standing up for herself. Don’t come for her.
Chrishell and Jason dated last season but they broke up because Jason doesn’t want children. This is, like, first date conversation. Don’t go down the road with someone who doesn’t want the same things as you.
Now we are in Australia. I don’t know how to describe Chrishell’s outfit, so I will leave that to Karyn. Chrishell is down under with G Flip, a non-binary musician/DJ and they seem really happy with the down under of it all. She’s boating with Jason, Brett, and Jason’s girlfriend Marie-Lou. Back in LA, the real estate girlies speculate on how awkward their meet up is. Emma scales a wall of firewood in 5” heels.
Crishell looks like a hot babe in her outfit. It’s like she’s wearing a body suit, but she left the vagina part unsnapped and it’s dangling below her belly button. Oh, wait, it might be a corset? I don’t actually know what it is, as I’ve never worn something like this, but I’m going to call this look “vagina snaps.”
Back down under, Chrishell offers Jason and Marie-Lou $1,000 to jump off the yacht. I’m thinking if you have a whole stack to throw away on a stupid bet, the luxury real estate market isn’t as bad as they’re trying to make it seem. They talk about going back to LA and we see a shot of Marie-Lou’s RBF. She takes a moody sip of her champagne. She is not a Chrishell fan, I suspect.
Marie-Lou is like the French ladies I read about in my book during Oui Oui Week. They’re not girl’s girls, and always think you’re trying to sleep with their man.
New day, new house, new agent. Today it’s Mary and Nicole navigating a driveway at a luxury property in shoes I couldn’t walk in on a bet. Do any of these people own Birkenstocks? Mary had been the office manager last season, in addition to her real estate agent duties, and if I recall correctly, it didn’t go well. She’s with Nicole, who’s being set up to be the bad guy. Nicole has sold more than $100M in real estate and she’s been with the agency since long before the Netflix deal. I believe the conflict between her and Chrishell is because she actually does business but she can’t say that on the show. I recall liking Nicole last season, but I always like the “wrong” people. (Of course I loved Christine Quinn. Of course I did.)
For the record, we wear Birkenstocks over here in Beachwood Canyon/Los Feliz area. Also, in the Chriselle vs. Nicole fight, I’m team vagina snaps.
Mary is wearing a jacket with just a bra underneath it. Nicole is wearing a blazer with nothing under it. Is it called commando if you’re not wearing underwear on your top half?
I think the correct term is “titties out.”
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