This week’s episode of NYC Prep was all about teaching the adult viewers of the show new teenage euphemisms. For example, we learned that “going and talking French” to someone means that you are going to hook up with them. And we learned that “hooking up” is anything from pecking on the lips on the sidewalk to briefly tonguing on the sidewalk (further downtown). Oh, and “I need a drink!” is a euphemism for “I want a Diet Coke.” We found ourselves having to seriously unlearn some things.
Of course, the king of euphemisms is PC. Let’s examine the things said by and about him, all of which obviously — but obliquely — indicate one thing and one thing only:
• “I find that to be one of the hardest things is to look inside yourself and open yourself up.” —PC
• “It’s very hard for me to connect with someone.” —PC
• “I broke up with him because we were at very different points in our lives, and he needs to get more comfortable with himself.” —Amanda, PC’s ex
• “What I’m craving for is to really just do something different and not be with the same people and the same reputation.” —PC
• “I don’t need that gorgeous girl that has a nice rack.” —PC
• “Prep-school kids like to work out and stay in shape.” —PC
All of these things, we learned last night, are euphemisms for: “I/He really, really needs to get it over with and date a cougar already.” (No?) Luckily, his 25-year-old friend knew just the woman for a blind date. Unluckily, she stood him up — which may have won him the episode. Onward, to our winner’s tally!
Bravo producers continue to decline us the pleasure of seeing another side of Sebastian’s ever-shifting Rubik’s Cube of a personality. What sort of interior life is going on behind his Bumble and bumble.–groomed, Young Michael Skakel–like exterior? Does he cry himself to sleep at night on the Jitney back to the Hamptons? Does he read books, too, or does he just ask girls about them because it turns them on? (And does going on one date still mean that you are “dating” in high-school terms? Seriously, we want to know.) The boy is a sphinx! Until he breaks down in a televised therapy session and the obviously complex personality is revealed, Sebastian will never win this game.
Camille gave a strong performance in last night’s episode, starting with the way she let Kelli get herself worked up over the Sebastian and Taylor romance. Her resolution to do recon on the Taylastian relationship (live with it) and come back to share juice with Kelli was the most teenagelike thing that happened on the episode (even though they were in a hot tub at a spa wearing mud masks as they plotted it). Her deadpan response to Kelli saying she didn’t like to gossip, however, was startlingly adult. “You’re not a gossiper, wow, I feel out of it,” she said, without even a roll of the eyes, whereas we would have ripped the mask off our face and said, “You are SUCH a liar! You just said that because the cameras are there! You’re the BIGGEST GOSSIP THERE IS.” Satisfyingly for her and us, Kelli couldn’t stop gossiping for the rest of the episode. But our favorite Camille moment was the way she pretty much held it together when Sebastian pointed out at the party and incidentally on national television that she had something in her teeth, disproving PC’s statement that all the girls on the Upper East Side “cry when they lose their eyeliner.”
Most people on NYC Prep like monochrome booties. Jessie likes leopard print. Also, she likes scaring girls, but does not like being seen as a bitch. And you know what really pisses her off? People being intimidated by her. “Like what the eff!” she says to her long-suffering downtown friend Zoe, after being told by PC that she acted bitchily toward Kelli and Camille at last episode’s party. “Like, you don’t know me.” If they did, she reasoned, if they had any sense whatsoever, they would know that she is 17 years old and has a career to build and a life to conduct. “I was networking. I don’t have time to dillydally. Fashion is cutthroat.” But you know what? It doesn’t matter to Jessie what they say about her, even though she’s spent the last twenty years of our life talking about it: “I don’t CARE what they think of me,” she tells the camera later. “I don’t care what anyone thinks of me.” Sigh. Once again, Jessie’s bitchiness was so obviously a cover for her extreme vulnerability and insecurity that we couldn’t help but feel for her, even as she slapped us in the face time and time again with her Prada bag. The sole amount of delusion it took to hear “they said you were a bitch” when it was, in fact, PC who said “you were kind of a bitch” to her tugged at our heartstrings, and when she “sassily” asked PC if he wanted to make out, we had to put our head under our sofa blanket and cringe. But ultimately, whether she is on the inside or not, Jessie does act like a bitch, and when she said she only comes downtown to go to Blue and Cream and did the Mean Girls thing of telling Zoe she “loved” the creaky old elevator in her loft only to turn around and tell the camera twenty seconds later that it was “the most dangerous thing I have ever been in my life,” she lost the episode.
Kelli’s crush on Sebastian really startled us this time around, as she seemed pretty blasé about it last episode. Still, the boy has clearly mastered the art of the guy-friend flirt, which is well known to render all teenage girls incapacitated and vulnerable. We found it endearing when she revealed that one of her “things” is being “obsessed” with cupcakes, even though she felt she had to say, “Like, I like them more than I like cake.” (Duh, everybody likes them more than they like cake. That’s like having to explain that you like jelly beans more than you like beans.) And we liked it when she slipped in, almost inaudibly, that she went to a French restaurant with her dad, and it was Per Se.
But still, until Kelli steals Sebastian back, she’ll continue to lose to Taylor, who was charmingly nervous and overwhelmed throughout the entire show. Sure, she did that thing that we all do around hot guys, which is to act like she is stupid. (Why do we do that? Is it because cavemen liked the women best who were easiest to bonk on the head and drag back to the fire pit?) She was reading One Hundred Philosophers, for fun, and she made it sound like it was the latest Stephanie Meyer novel. And we sincerely suspect that she actually speaks French better than Sebastian, and she really, really should know in this day and age that ordering a salad with no dressing is pretty lame. But all in all, we liked her demure gutsiness, but her awareness of money and class made us uncomfortable — like when her friends at the thrift store asked which of her suitors had more money. Though we suspect this position is being forced upon her by the producers, it still lost her the episode.
That honor, however, was saved for PC, who delivered some of the most subtle and unsubtle lines about himself from the beginning to the end of the episode. “I flush the toilet before I’m done peeing, maybe I’m a little impatient,” he tells his therapist, whom he’s clearly just met and who probably should be disbarred or whatever for letting this be filmed. “I used to play ice hockey, and I wanted to be a professional ice-hockey player, but I wasn’t the best at it in the league, so then I stopped playing.” These are deep things, people — and they demonstrate that at least he knows he’s supposed to provide good television. Some other times, though, his age showed through, like when he griped about the bendy straw that a waiter had put in his drink because it was a Shirley Temple. But by the end of the episode, when he realized it was “karma” that he got stood up on his date, we realized that there were two shows going on. The one that involved Kelli, Taylor, Sebastian, and Camille, and the one that involved PC and Jessie tearing herself to pieces over him. For now, it’s the latter one we want to keep watching.
Auxiliary Winners:
• That adult gay who cruised PC at Blue and Cream
• The female sales associate at Blue and Cream, who has now appeared in two episodes and is practically a character
• Cercle Rouge, Hiro, Blue and Cream, Juvenix Spa, Clay Health Club, Intermix, Alife
• Audrey, PC’s therapist, who is caught on camera halfway through the session realizing what a bad idea this was
• PC’s trainer, who is caught on camera halfway through the session realizing what a GREAT idea this was
• Cole, who is every ex-boyfriend, ever
