Southern Charm Beer and Trembling Season 5 Episode 11 Editor’s Rating 3 stars * * * « Previous Next Photo: Bravo

I have a weird problem with Ashley. I hate her so much, it’s even more than just flames on the side of my face. It’s like a volcano erupted out of my cheek and the lava is just pouring all over my body like some kind of fiery drool. I hate her so much that I relish it, like rolling around in a pile of scabies because I like being tickled. I hate her so much that I don’t want to watch her, but I also hate her so much that when she’s not on the show I don’t know what else to talk about. I just want everyone else to pop up to talk about how much they hate Ashley so that I can reaffirm my loathing of her and bond with those other people because they hate her too. It’s like when you drink out of the quart of spoiled milk and say to your partner, “Oh, this is disgusting. Drink it.” That is what Ashley is, a quart of rancid milk in your fridge that you want to share with everyone.

I loved when Kathryn and Craig met up to talk shit about her, because if Kathryn, a reformed whirling dervish, and Craig, the sound of one public-school eraser clapping, can hate this woman then how can anyone else on the face of the planet even like her? I don’t know. You can even tell that Whitney, who is so cool that he would burn out all of his nose hairs just so couldn’t smell his own farts, hates her but has to be supportive of Thomas. I just want Whitney, who can’t even manage enough energy to tell a diner waitress how he wants his eggs cooked, to lay into Ashley so that everyone on the show is on record detesting her. But he won’t.

Can you believe that Thomas took Whitney ring shopping for her and was going to buy the two of them matching rings with the Ravenel family crest on it? What kind of idiot is he? Here is a woman who has been literally begging him for months to marry her and put a baby in her and he’s going to buy them matching family rings? Oh, that’s not going to send the wrong message at all. Nope. Never.

With all of this Ashley talk we got so little of her this episode. Just a few scraps where she was being a jerk to Thomas while applying her mascara and then where she offered some exceptionally husky and withering words about Kathryn at Austen’s beer party. I wanted more. No, I needed more. There’s always next week. There is always hope.

What is this show without Ashley? It’s just Cameran talking about her boobs shooting out milk now that she’s a mother. It’s just Chelsea trying to pick out an outfit with her roommate who looks like a real-estate agent on an episode of House Hunters. It’s just Craig pretending like the crazy cast thing that he’s wearing is actually a puppet. Wouldn’t it make sense that Craig would just have a puppet on at all times to kind of look at him and then look at the viewer and then look back at him as they both had a confused expression on their faces.

Speaking of Craig, he goes to visit his girl Carol at the fabric store and he shows her the pillows he’s designed for Patricia and, well, they’re awful. One looks like an inspirational magnet a colorblind kid would buy for his mother at the school craft fair. Craig has no idea how to design anything. His idea of home décor is putting an oar where a banister used to be. How do we expect him to do something other than including computer graphics on fake pillows? Even Carol, who is a woman who works in a fabric store, thinks that Craig’s designs are trashy. When he finally shows her one she likes, she then goes and picks out all of the fabrics for Craig. He did zero percent of the work to make this pillow. He wouldn’t even be able to muster up the energy to lie on it.

The story line that the editors and producers are trying their hardest to make happen is the Shep and Kathryn romance. I would love it if they got together, but that’s sort of like putting two positive sides of a magnet together. You can get them really close, you can even make them touch, but without pressure they won’t stay together naturally. You can see the reality-TV strings that are keeping this idea afloat. It’s like the producers put them in this position to go bowling, ask them both a bunch of leading questions, and then stitch it together to make us think that there is sexual tension.

What I do love is how honest Kathryn is about their sexual history. She admits that they’ve hooked up a bunch of times both before and after she and Thomas broke up for good, and that they have really amazing sex. That’s great. It’s nice to know that all the practice Shep put in in that particular department has paid off.

While Shep might do well between the sheets, someone really needs to get him to wear better underwear. At the bowling alley when he takes his pants down to put on his knee brace we see that he’s wearing red and blue plaid boxer shorts that are as sad and lifeless as the faces on the reporters in the White House briefing room when Sarah Huckabee Sanders tells a demonstrable lie. We also see Austen in a pair of saggy red boxer briefs when he’s getting ready. Can’t someone just take these guys to a TJ Maxx and upgrade their undies a bit? Shep is almost 40. He should not be wearing drawers that look like he just picked them up off the floor of a dorm room. Doesn’t the cast of Queer Eye record somewhere near Charleston? Can they please rescue us?

Speaking of Austen he has a party for his as-yet-unnamed beer and I think everyone’s congratulations are a little premature. All he did was tell a dude to come up with a recipe for a beer that he would like and now the guy made it. It’s like taking credit for fixing your car when you brought it to Midas to have the muffler replaced. Austen didn’t really do anything other than have a vague idea that he wants a fruity beer and then pay a dude to make it. I’m glad he’s doing something with his life, but big whoop.

When Craig and Austen go to taste the beer he says it has a “fruit forward nose.” Oh shut the hell up. I can’t stand when people talk about beer the way they would talk about wine. Beer is never going to be wine no matter how hard these Dorito brains try to make themselves think that all of these varietals are somehow different. I mean, I can barely stand when people talk about wine like it’s wine, but for them to talk about this like it should be elevated into an art form makes me want to take up CrossFit just so I could die dropping a dumbbell on my skull.

I guess we should talk about Chelsea and Victoria and how Austen is really in love with Chelsea and not his girlfriend Victoria, but that seems so boring. I mean Victoria shows up at the beer party wearing a hat that Blake Lively made popular the first season of Gossip Girl and that was like, what, ten years ago now? She’s such an easy target. And no matter what Victoria does, she will never be as evil as Ashley. Ugh, I hate her so much. I hope we get to see more of her next week.