There’s life in the ol’ girl yet! I was beginning to lose hope, but Belly and Conrad almost kissed! All season long, everyone has been too busy contemplating their own unexpressed feelings to act on them. However, now, finally … well, okay, they’re still not exactly acting on their feelings since this was an almost kiss and not a real kiss, but we take what we can get around here. This is still momentum.
We’re at the end of the episode, where Belly and Conrad are once again alone together in the Cousins’ house. Conrad has hobbled back inside after a surfing accident, and a concerned Belly follows the trail of blood up the stairs to find him hunched over a gnarly cut on his thigh. Rather than drive him to urgent care, Belly nearly brings Con to his knees with a splash of hydrogen peroxide. He lets his head linger on her shoulder a little too long, and Belly is so turned on she nearly sticks her tongue down his throat right then and there. The sudden realization that she still wants Conrad renders all the philosophizing, reflection, and compromise of the past 54 minutes moot. Except that it hammers home the one point that has been staring us all in the face from the beginning. Belly does not want to get married.
Belly does want a wedding. Specifically, Belly wants a quirky, cutesy, pop-punk, backyard wedding that only looks like it didn’t cost $100,000. She wants lobster rolls, which the country club treats as peasant food but still costs like $35 a pop at even the cheapest of roadside eateries. Was the anatomical heart ice sculpture always part of the vision? I’ll bet you all of Jeremiah’s credit-card debt Belly hadn’t even considered the cost of furniture rentals or an event tent before Dick Dad swooped in.
Belly also believes she has perfectly reasonable expectations for the kind of first apartment she and Jeremiah will be able to afford on a joint income of $0 per year. Belly is about to be a grown-up married lady, and an apartment that smells like cat pee is not part of Belly’s grown-up married lady vision for her future life. Grown-up married ladies also don’t ask their fathers-in-law to co-sign their leases for them. (Although they do let their fathers-in-law pay their husbands’ credit-card bills.)
In a couple of years, if he continues to do well at his nepotism internship, Jeremiah might be in a position to pay off his own credit card and sign a lease without a guarantor, but I’m not sure Belly has that kind of patience. Plus, at the moment, Jeremiah is putting in full-time hours trying to talk Belly down from calling the whole thing off, multiple times a day, as if he’s the only employee at a call center and Belly is his only client. Jeremiah’s script might advise, if the client is freaking out about the size of the wedding, say, “Don’t look at them, look at me.” If the client complains they’ll never find an apartment, say, “We’ll find a great place that doesn’t require a credit check.” Note: Don’t worry about the client challenging you on this part, because, despite having pristine credit, Belly has no idea what anything costs or how credit works. Unfortunately, Jeremiah seems to have lost his response binder when Belly calls to confirm that he was the hero of the story about the lost dog named Rosie, not Conrad. The correct answer is to simply lie and agree, “Yes, you’re right, Belly. It was me.” But instead, he tells her the truth, and Belly interprets her slip of memory as some bad omen from the universe, because she is a woman trapped and looking for a way out.
On the other side of this triangle, Conrad has his own Belly-management system, which relies heavily on subterfuge and mostly comes down to attempts to feed her. But he has moments of triumph, such as successfully guilting Laurel into attending Belly’s bridal shower.
He has set up a clandestine meeting with Laurel at a diner. Someplace remote, I’m sure. Off the beaten track, where the fuzz won’t think to look. (We’re doing film noir now.) They stare each other down across the linoleum table, sizing one another up. Laurel orders nothing but Conrad orders them both a full meal. Ha! Classic power move. Laurel eyes her foe suspiciously, surprised that he asked for this meeting, and even more surprised to find herself intrigued by his proposal. Belly is distraught with all the wedding planning, Conrad explains. She’s not even eating the plates of bland chicken he prepares and leaves for her in the refrigerator. She needs her mother. She needs Laurel to go to the bridal shower. But before Laurel can agree, she needs to know one thing. What’s in it for you, Conny-boy? But Conrad has no more time for games. He sighs. Belly’s happiness. That’s what’s in it for Conrad. Then Laurel asks, “But what about your happiness, Conrad?” Which is such a weird thing to say in this context that I’m convinced the ghost of Susannah has possessed her body.
In any case, Laurel does go to the shower, and Belly is so overcome with happiness that nothing can spoil the pure bliss of nonstop gifts and attention. Until she sees “Isabel Fisher” on monogrammed stationery, and she’s jolted into a moment of sanity. Holy shit, she’s about to be someone’s wife! While Belly is watching her 20s flash before her eyes, her betrothed is getting a lesson in Anglo-Saxon masculinity from his Dick Dad. There is much swirling of whiskey in oak-paneled rooms and rare steaks and withholding of affection as DD takes Jeremiah and Conrad to be fitted for their first custom suits. But don’t let the fact that Dick Dad isn’t being actively hostile to Jeremiah fool you. He is still his least favorite son. But Laurel and Belly have reunited to watch Bye Bye Birdie, presumably for the sole purpose of hearing the line, “We love you, Conrad! Oh yes, we do!” So, all is right with the world. Sort of.
• So, I guess I was wrong about the airport times thing.
• In our only flashback of the episode, we see preteen Belly reading for the role of Young Cosette, belting out “Bye Bye Birdie” into the bathroom mirror.
• It is barely worth mentioning at this point, but Steven has now rejected Taylor for at least the third time this season.
• Why does Dick Dad live in a one-bedroom apartment? Isn’t he supposed to be like a Vanderbilt?
• Yes, the Kayleigh who is planning Belly’s wedding is also the Kayleigh that Dick Dad was cheating on Susannah with, much to Conrad’s fury. I, however, think she seems nice?
• The dress code for Belly and Jeremiah’s wedding is “yacht formal.”
• Big D and Steven are trying to start their own company, which is great for them but not really relevant to the subject at hand.
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