This week, The Kardashians is really testing our interest (and patience) regarding the most tiresome headlines the illustrious family has produced this year. And they’re not doing a great job of holding our attention, even with a wedding, a 60-year-old artifact, and a $100 million lawsuit all on the line.
Preparation for Kourtney and Travis’ Italian goth wedding kicks into high gear, as the couple goes to Milan to get some custom looks from fashion supervillains Dolce & Gabbana. While the aerial paparazzi photos from the event were certainly something to observe on Twitter, the lead-up to the pair’s nuptials is not nearly as fun to watch or even mock. Hopefully, this storyline will become slightly more intriguing when we presumably get to witness the ceremony in all of its hideous glory.
The rest of this episode focuses on the remaining days before the Met Gala, which is the first time all of the sisters have attended. (Khloe repeats several times that she has, indeed, received an invite before.) The girls are still trying to convince us that red carpets—and the influencer ball now known as the Met Gala—are a huge deal at this point in their A-list careers. And Kim’s still talking about this Marilyn dress moment like she’s about to perform at the Super Bowl Halftime Show. Oh yeah, and they’re still being sued by Blac Chyna. Let’s get into it!
Kyndall: Let’s get the dullest portion of this episode out of the way first: Kourtney and Travis’ wedding prep in Milan. I’m already deeply unemotional about weddings. But it's especially hard to drum up excitement for these two, given how boringly pleasant and predictable they are as a couple. Who cares about a marriage license when their relationship is already eerily perfect and seemingly conflict-less? However, I did enjoy watching their entourage fake-chuckle and “aw” throughout Kourtney’s dress fitting at the Dolce & Gabbana atelier and their awkward interactions with Domenico Dolce. Simon Huck is a real trooper.
Coleman: I’ve found that the best way to watch these two dullards is tapping into their mutual shared brain cell for a tinge of whatever combination of love, xanax, and edibles they’re on. Kourt and Trav walking around Milan and pointing out architecture and molding may as well have been a stoner comedy. Kourtney looks up at a church door that’s 5,000 years old and is like, “weeeoowww look at this dooouuurrr.” I even managed to make myself laugh thinking about a scenario where Kourtney meets with the pope and says in her confessional, “So today we have a meeting with His Hooooliineess.”
Simon Huck and co. were doing some of the most convincing acting I’ve ever seen put to screen in that atelier. Most of the meeting scenes at the Dolce office made me want to smash my head against a glass coffee table, until they started splicing reaction shots of Kourtney’s bored minions into shots of her standing in the bones of her dress, hoo-ha out, set to a hysterical non-royalty stock song. Surreality is the name of the game in Milan, and I was thankful when we could break free.
Kyndall: As were Kourtney and Travis, I’m sure. We get the impression that this whole wedding was some marketing ploy put together by Kris Jenner and not something the two of them volunteered to do when Kourtney says, “Remember when we said we were going to run away and get married? We tried.” End scene.
Coleman: You know, I actually did not catch that. I was busy thinking about how, when Travis laughs, he barely shows his teeth, like he’s holding hot soup in his mouth at a dinner party and can’t talk. But you’re right, the Kris Jenner interventions were everywhere. The next one was just a hop over the Atlantic and back to Miami, where Kim arrived at Ripley’s Believe It or Not Headquarters—which is armed like NASA—to make her Marilyn dress dreams a reality. Cue one of the funniest fittings I’ve ever seen, when Kim tries to fit into the actual gown and not just a crude replica.
Kyndall: The juxtaposition between Kourtney at Dolce & Gabbana in Milan and Kim at the Ripley’s Believe It or Not headquarters in Florida was actually very amusing. Every time Kim mentioned that she was in Florida, she sounded like she couldn’t believe the words coming out of her mouth.
But yes, we learn that Kris was able to pull some strings and strong-arm the poor Ripley’s employees into letting Kim try on, and possibly destroy, a priceless artifact with her giant butt. It turns out Kim’s crash dieting and sauna-suit workouts have somewhat paid off, as she’s able to fit most of her body (minus her rear-end, obviously) into the dress. They end up holding the back of the dress together with some string, which gives some context to that viral photo where it looked like her butt broke the zipper. But luckily, they never even tried to zip it up. Monroe Hive on Twitter can rest a little bit easier.
Coleman: There is no funnier, more perfect metaphor for the differences in beauty standards across two generations than Kim Kardashian—patron saint of the Instagram Body—standing smack-dab in the middle of the musty Ripley’s Believe It or Not offices with her entire (SKIMS-covered) badonk poking out of a priceless historical artifact.
Also, neither here nor there, but I have a bone to pick. Pete Davidson was in Florida at Ripley’s with her. She talks to him in that terrifying video where she’s given a lock of Marilyn’s hair. Why, by the grace of my penchant for seven-foot-tall trashy charmers, is he completely absent from this season too? Instead, we’re left with some tangential musings about the Blac Chyna trial before Kim hops her jet back to pollute the entire length of the American south.
Kyndall: The entire length of the American south! LOL. I’m sure that’s accurate. On the Pete Davidson note, I was starting to wonder if they had filmed him at all. Then I remembered the trailer where Kim is depreciating yet another one of Monroe’s gowns and asks if he wants to get in the shower with her (gross!). If he’s not in that episode, we can assume he doesn’t want any more footage of him with Kim circulating on the Internet for unhinged Kanye stans (or Kanye himself) to get a hold of.
The whole Blac Chyna trial subplot continues to be a waste of time, and I applaud Khloé’s attempts to make us think this is somewhat of a big deal. Meanwhile, Kourtney’s having brunch in Italy, and Simon is joking about how Kourtney’s exclusion from the trial is so classically her. And Kim is treating the trial like some sort of field trip at the imaginary law school she attends. I honestly think this storyline should’ve been completely omitted, given that it didn’t cause a huge stir on the Internet outside of the very funny courtroom sketches.
Coleman: I think part of the onus has to be on the producers and editors here. Everyone’s a bit at fault, and certainly the most of it is falling on the sisters for not holding our attention, but imagine what kind of cuckoo material could be drawn with, say, a Real Housewives-level producing and editing team. People who know how to make even the most stale material seem like can’t-miss television.
The real hilarity is that $100 million is such a superficial and cosmetic amount of money to these billionaires that they can toss it around like a cat toy. The date of the verdict is landing on Met Gala day, and while traveling to New York, they couldn’t seem less aware. That said, I always perk my head up when these girls get on a plane. Kris’ repetitive tales about being a NYC-based stewardess are like my Calm App sleep stories. Once they’re settled, Kim has to go through the (legitimately) grueling process of turning her entire head of jet-black hair platinum blonde in just two days. The amount of foils they hermetically sealed onto her like a Thanksgiving turkey was getting me excited for the holidays.
Kyndall: Watching Kim get on all fours in a shower while a stylist rinsed out the dye really took me back to those painful childhood days of having to bend over a sink while my mother washed my hair. Why doesn’t this outstandingly rich woman or her stylists have a shampoo bowl if this look was weeks in the making?? I was also confused as to why she didn’t just wear a wig, given all the advancements we’ve made in fake-hair technology over the past decade. She could have paid me to make a realistic-looking lace front! This whole endeavor seemed like such a waste of time.
Coleman: It was giving Coleman circa 2014, manically dyeing my hair after one too many Lime-a-Ritas from the bodega. But for Kim, beauty is pain. Masochism is an irremovable bedfellow to beauty. It’s why she told us again in this episode that she had to crash diet and exercise to lose 10 pounds before fitting into this dress. But it was there that she actually said something I found both astute and very compelling.
“This feels like a movie role, you know?” she asked the camera, mid-workout. “How, like, an actor will lose weight or gain weight for roles? It feels like my role is Marilyn Monroe. I’m determined.” Suddenly, this whole debacle actually clicked for me. It is sort of like that, in this very twisted and demented way. Kim’s whole existence is a role, her life is her job. Examined from that wider scope, I actually found the Karilyn moment to be—please, kill me now—performance art.
Sibling Superlatives:
Strongest Sister: Our highest honor goes to Kim Kardashian for her checklist of body modifications pre-Met Gala. Kim was Crimes of the Future-ing herself for weeks, transforming her laboratory-perfected body to fit the rigid demands of the ghost of Marilyn Monroe. She even went as far as strapping so much foil on her head that she could’ve generated enough solar energy to power multiple small countries for the day. All for one extremely basic-looking red carpet moment. Who among us hasn’t put in an absurd amount of effort only for it to be kind of a flop? Our relatable queen.
Worst fashion moment: This episode was very fashion-heavy, but none of it was nearly as jaw-dropping as the Kardashians and their cronies made it seem. From Kourtney’s half of wedding dress to her deconstructed Met look to Khloe’s Golden Globes—I mean, Met Gala gown, these women are really giving us nothing, as a famous YouTube commenter once put it. The least we can count on the Kardashians for in this current era of decline is a stunning red-carpet look. And it seems like everyone has lost the plot post-Kanye telling them what to wear.
Least charming cameo: It goes without saying that Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana are some of the most nefarious people in the fashion industry (which says a lot). Their crimes over the past decade include opposing the idea of gay people procreating, creating a “slave sandal,” and calling Selena Gomez “ugly” on Instagram. They also make very ugly fashions and are currently relying on celebrities like Normani and Madison Beer to keep them relevant. All this to say, this hyped-up cameo of the two designers wasn’t quite as impressive or sweet as Kourtney clearly wanted it to seem. We’ll take a Heidi Klum appearance over these two any day!
Most Repulsively Dramatic Decorum: In the bowels of the Dolce Dungeon (OK, fine, in a well-lit room), some true nastiness was afoot. After Kourtney and Travis’ fittings, the group celebrated with some strange Eyes Wide Shut shit. An opera singer appears out of thin air to scream some arias while floating around the room. Caught up in the romantic(?) drama of the situation, Travis and Kourtney lean in—not to kiss, but to flick their tongues together outside of their mouths, like snakes trying to say hello. We’re anything but prudes, but this felt extremely private. Maybe even illegal in several countries.
