Well this was a particularly meaty episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, in respects both literal and figurative. There were late-night fast food binges, there were dudely heart-to-hearts, there were private investigators – it was all very scintillating! Per usual, there were three plot threads to follow. We’ll start with the most frivolous.
As I warned you in my recap of last week’s episode, Rob has put on an impressive amount of weight since last season. Stars, they’re just like us – they eat their feelings, and sometimes they sneak a box of Pop-Tarts into their rooms, and they hope their sisters (who they live with) don’t notice, but they totally do. Kim and Khloe were worried about their little bro, but what really burned their biscuits was the fact that newly zaftig Rob was “all over the blogs.” Is there anything more shameful than being all over the blogs? The fam made light of Rob’s situation, even as they said things like, “He told me he pulls over in his car and cries once a day.” Obviously, Rob’s extra bulge is far more offensive to the Kardashians than the idea that he might have serious, deeply-rooted emotional issues. Rob approached Kim about his fatty guilt, had a “come-to-Jesus” moment, and vowed to change his food-loving ways.
Rob was admittedly depressed because he was worried about how his flub was going to affect his career in the fashion industry. (You remember his forever-in-development sock line, yes?) He was so depressed that he flaked out on an 8am gym appointment with Kim’s personal trainer. Nine times. After he flaked on a tenth gym date with Kim, she hunted him down while he was enjoying a pile of ribs with some guy friends, and started piling on the slacker shame. (I don’t want to make it seem like Rob was literally eating his way through the episode, but it was certainly staged that way.)
Khloe and Kim hatched a brilliant scheme to kickstart Rob’s fitness party big time by overindulging him with fast food. I should note here that neither of these Kardashian sisters are licensed dieticians. Their plan backfired, of course, because FOOD IS DELICIOUS. And if you came home and your pregnant sister told you “I couldn’t decide what to eat so I ordered burgers AND pizza AND Chinese food, you too would be like, “YES! BEST NIGHT EVER.” I don’t think that’s an insane reaction. You too might crawl into Kim Kardashian’s giant pillowy bed and hand feed her chocolates, and it wouldn’t be weird at all! (It was weird. This was a weird moment. Was it weird for you? I worry about Rob sometimes.) Having leftover burgers for breakfast the next morning, however, might be a tad questionable.
Anyway, absolutely no headway was made with Rob’s weight issue, and I think we can probably all just sit on our hands until he gets an endorsement deal with Weight Watchers. (That is the idea, right?)
On to more hard-hitting emotional fare – as I also mentioned last week, Bruce’s sons from his first marriage, Brandon and Brody, will feature a lot more prominently on this season of the Kardashians, because the show is at an awkward stage where Kendall and Kylie don’t get into enough trouble and Mason and Penelope aren’t old enough to form cohesive sentences, so the show needs new recruits! Strangely enough, Brandon and Brody are just as indistinguishable from one another as Kendall and Kylie. What is it with those Jenner genes?
Anyhoo, Brody had/has beef with Papa Bruce because he wasn’t around when he and Brandon were growing up, because Bruce’s divorce from his first wife was apparently unspeakably bad. Brody tried to broach the subject in the most awkward way possible while the Jenner clan was enjoying a day at the beach, but Bruce was quick to shoot it down. Meanwhile, Brody’s older bro Brandon seemed totally zen about the whole thing, which seems odd, because as the older sibling, you’d think he’d have more residual resentment.
I should mention that now that the extended Jenner clan are cast regulars, Brandon and his wife Leah’s band get a fair bit of screen time. Their music doesn’t suck, though, so they get a pass for a little self-pimpage. Brandon and Leah spent a fair bit of the episode trying to push Bruce and Brody to spend a little time together, and they finally arranged for dad and bro to get together over a little homemade almond milk. (Yes, Brandon and Leah make their own almond milk, because they’re kind of adorable.) They continued to almond milk it up in the kitchen while Brody and Bruce stepped outside to hash out some MAN FEELINGS.
Bruce admitted to being a crap dad to Brody and Brandon, but heavily implied that he was basically pushed out of the family by his ex (without using those exact words), even though both Jenner bros swear their mom never spoke ill of him. The cams at some point shot back to Brandon and Leah, shamelessly eavesdropping/tearing up in the window. Both Bruce and Brody finally conceded that mistakes had certainly been made, and their relationship wasn’t perfect, and could probably use a little work. Or something to that extent. (Nothing makes me feel more awkward that dudely dudes trying to express their innermost feelings.)
Now on to the truly beefy stuff – Robert Kardashian’s widow has apparently made a decent chunk of change throughout the years selling overly sensational stories to the tabloids. You remember the rumor that Khloe wasn’t actually a legit Kardashian, which was officially disproved last season? That was apparently started by the woman ominously referred to as “The Widow”.
“The Widow”’ is at it again in this episode, telling the tabloids that Kris Jenner beat the Kardashian girls when they were children, which is pretty ridiculous, because Kris Jenner is many things, but I seriously doubt she was ever a child beater. “The Widow” has been a continual source of stress for the whole fam for a full decade, and Kim finally (rather dramatically) resolved to take action, 40 minutes into the episode. She called upon her “go-to PI,” a tall, brawny dude with a thin Fu Manchu mustache, to dig up a little dirt on “The Widow.”
Fun facts about “The Widow”: she was first married when she was 15. She’s been married a whopping 5 times, and she’s filed for bankruptcy twice. After the Kardashians threw a little dirt about “The Widow” on national TV, they met with an attorney to discuss their plan of action. I like how everyone pretended that a defamation of character suit wasn’t totally instinctual. (I spied a sunny yellow Birkin in Khloe’s lap in this scene – did you catch it?) The ladies finally decided to file a suit, but of course, things can never be that simple. “The Widow” eluded the law for a while, probably in an attempt to crank out a few more Kardashian tall tales for cash money before she was legally banned from doing so. Finally, “The Widow” was served her papers via a little bit of perfectly legit trickery. “That slippery snake has been served!” declared Kim. END SCENE.
It was all very melodramatic, wasn’t it? What was your take-away, Kardashian fans? Apropos of nothing, I saw a lot of great pumps in this episode, but I couldn’t properly ID a single pair. Feel free to do the honors in the comments!
