Winter House Recap: Touch and Go

Ugh, do I have to defend Luke, who stole away in the middle of the night with all of his flannels stuffed into a million hockey bags? Do I have to defend Craig, whose mussy, drunken hair gets closer to poking out his eyes with each passing day? Why is this show putting me in a moral quandary? All I want to do is lust after Kyle Cooke and Jason in his boxers and stare at all of Kory’s holes. (The ones in his needlessly distressed shirt! What did you think I was talking about?)

The episode starts with Rachel getting up at 6 in the morning, and she has to clean up all the shit from the night before. This house isn’t just trashed, it’s in absolute tatters, hanging on by a thread. The inside of this house looks like America’s reputation on January 7. Even Ciara’s bed looked at the house and was like, “You need to take a shower.” Rachel does some of the heavy lifting, but she has to wait another six hours (without her phone or a television, the absolute saint) for the rest of the house to get up and chip in.

When everyone decides it is time to clean, Craig, who made a majority of the mess when he punched open a piñata and threw glasses all over the floor, refuses. “I’m 34 years old and I have plenty of money,” he says. “I go on vacation and someone cleans for me.” Yeah, in this case it is a young florist from New York, so don’t get it twisted Craig. Then he says, “If I have to clean up after myself, I’m not going to party like that anymore.” Yes! That is exactly the point. You should not be destroying the house that is shared with a dozen other people because you want to have a good time.

There are plenty of fun things you can do at a party that have nothing to do with wanton destruction. You can play beer pong. You can take stupid pictures with your friends. You can wait until Kyle passes out and then draw things on his face. You can go through every pair of shoes Paige brought on vacation and make fun of them. You can pee off the deck and watch the snow melt in dribbles two stories below. You can, I don’t know, have a conversation that doesn’t entail absolutely yelling at everyone in your general vicinity. Those are just a few simple suggestions.

This argument comes up once again when the group returns home from the bar and Kory finishes the wine in his glass and then launches it across the room so it shatters on the living room floor. Amanda says, “I am over the broken glass.” Amen! Scream and yell. Dance on the tables. Do what you want, but stop taking it out on the stemware. Someone is going to step on that. If they don’t have shoes on, that is a trip to the emergency room. If they do, that is ruining their shoes or the floor or both. I think this is a very good boundary to put on the action, one that is so simple everyone should be able to follow it.

Not our Craigy! “If we’re not going to trash the house, it’s going to be a boring trip.” Once again, this vacation is not about tearing through Vermont like the Tasmanian Devil with an Adderall prescription and a chip on his shoulder. He then goes over and tells Amanda she looks silly for picking up the glass. Why? Because she cares about everyone else in the house? Because she wants Bravo to get their deposit on the house back? (Yeah, good luck with that.) Just let Amanda clean up if she wants to. God, why does Craig care and why is he so intent on just listening to the sound of his voice all the time? I came into this season as a Craig fan, but he’s going out to the bar, buying shots for everyone in the establishment, and bragging about how people don’t want to see his American Express bill. What is wrong with him? Why is he always counting his money in public? And why is he spending so much? The pillow billions can’t be all that.

Other than Craig, we got some little fun plot points along the way. Rachel and Jason seem to have a bit of a spark going on. Amanda hurt herself sledding, and I haven’t seen someone tumble through snow like that since I went to the bathroom at Dorit’s dinner party. Paige is trying to get it poppin’ between Ciara and Kory, but Kory doesn’t want to mess around because of Austen, who thankfully has yet to appear. Kory and Jessica go to the grocery store together and Jessica does not know that there are non-alcoholic seltzers or what sardines are. Jessica seems to not know a lot of things, including how she sells real estate in the metaverse.

Speaking of Jessica, the other big story of the episode is about her and Luke. It starts with them in the hot tub, just moments after she tells Luke that she is into him. She doesn’t want to kiss because she says, “As a girl you need to know, ‘Is this safe? Is this a good investment?’” Here is a girl who is putting all of her money in crypto, what does she know of good investments? Making out with Luke makes way more sense than DogeCoin ever will.

I’m being flip about this when I shouldn’t be. As the episode progresses, Luke keeps sitting next to Jess at dinner. He drapes his hand over her leg. He comes up behind her and massages her. She tells Amanda she’s not into it and tries to point it out with her body language, but even when Amanda asks if she’s okay when Luke’s hand is on her, she says yes. As the girls in this house already know, and as Amanda tells her, Luke needs to be told explicitly that she is not interested. I’m not blaming her for her discomfort, but someone needed to tell Luke to back off, maybe even Amanda or Kyle. Someone needed to give him a signal to spare Jess, because he wasn’t picking up on it himself.

Sadly, that person had to be Craig. (But, then again, if even drunk Craig can pick up on the fact she doesn’t want to be touched, shouldn’t Luke have as well?) Craig and Luke are at odds all episode, especially about the fireworks at Luke’s cabin and whether or not Craig should have lit them off. Craig’s defense is, “Have you ever walked in somewhere and seen a bag of fireworks and not lit them off?” Um, yeah! It’s called self-restraint. That’s like asking, “Have you ever walked into a Domino’s and not eaten every single pizza in there?” Of course I haven’t, because I am a human and know how to control myself. (Well, mostly. I wouldn’t leave me alone with your weed and Girl Scout cookies.)

When Craig sees Luke touch Paige’s knee  — which might be a little too familiar, but I think acceptable between drunk friends — Craig loses his shit and tells Luke not to touch Paige or Jessica again unless they say they want to be touched. I think this is a good rule of thumb for all humans to follow, but coming from a shouty, red-faced, blotto Craig, I don’t think it’s a message that Luke is really going to receive. He then tells Luke if he does it again, he’ll “throw him out a window,” which gets the hockey bro in Luke riled up and he turns into a human “fuck around and find out” meme.

Then the evening descends into complete chaos. It’s 3am and everyone should be passed out in bed on top of the duvet wearing their clothes, like Kyle and Amanda are. (Since when is there a shouty bro fight and Kyle has nothing to do with it?) Jessica goes into Paige’s room and starts crying because the boys are fighting over her and Paige says just the right thing: for her to let it out and that it is not her fault.

However, Luke is in his room crying on the phone to his poor sister who he clearly woke up to complain about a drunk dude. Luke wants to think that he is a good guy who wasn’t harassing the girls. I don’t think he is a bad guy, just a guy who’s a bit thick so he didn’t realize that he was harassing the girls, or at least his advances weren’t as welcomed as he believed. There is a lot of gray area here, but the one thing that is not gray is that none of the women should be made to feel unsafe ever, anywhere, but especially this house, because it is essentially a workplace.

Luke reacts by saying he doesn’t want to be in the house anymore and Craig is ranting in the kitchen about the same thing, saying that Luke needs to go or he will. (I’m somewhat surprised Craig didn’t say, “If Luke doesn’t leave, I’m going to buy three cabins next door and move myself and all of my family into them to teach Luke a lesson and then I will give everyone $1 million and stock in Sewing Down South.”) Luke makes the decision for everyone and packs up the car and I am left with so many questions. Is he really gone? Will we miss him? Will the show be better when Austen finally shows up? And where the hell are the Toms? And Carl and Lindsay? But, most pressingly, after wine and Jägerbombs and drinking games and everything else, should Luke really be driving?