RECAP: Southern Charm — Craig and Whitney Go Head to Head [Season 3, Episode 7]

It’s time to be Southern Charmed, y’all. This week starts with Craig Conover and Shep Rose meeting up for lunch. Shep is hung over, as per yush. He invites Craig and Naomie to his grandparents’ cabin in North Carolina. Craig, ever the Boy Scout, asks if femme fatale and pregnant damsel in distress, Kathryn Dennis, will receive an invite. Sure, Shep would like to include her, but Whitney Sudler-Smith and Cameran Eubanks won’t come if he does. Lines have been drawn, and Shep is torn between alliances. But diabolical Craig comes up with a plan. Since Kathryn is on bed rest, why not invite her, knowing she won’t be able to attend? That way Shep won’t have to take a stand and can still look like a good guy, even though he’s totally caving into peer pressure. Shep thinks the idea is ingenious.

Over at Kathryn’s house, the downstairs is empty except for a hot pink chair and empty cardboard boxes. Thomas comes over to put together a Plexiglas baby bed and Kathryn asks if he’s going away with Shep and the rest of the Charmed Ones. Thomas has refused to go. Kathryn tells him it’s fine. Go. Have fun. But Thomas, like a wily feral animal, scents a trap. Could Kathryn be serious? He compromises and says he’ll head up to Asheville, but will only spend one night before returning back to Charleston.

Cameran is freaking out about having kids and it’s becoming a sore spot in her marriage. Her invisible husband, Jason, has baby fever. Kids are such a downer, though. So she seeks out a therapist to find out why she’s so anxious about procreating and realizes it all stems back to her parents’ divorce when she was in middle school. Can Cameran overcome her anxiety and give Jason the babies he desperately wants? I’m really trying to work up some kind of emotion during this scene, but frankly, Cameran has become much less likeable this season. My advice: get a cat and be done with it.

Landon Clements is back from New York. She heads over to see her sister, Bam. Yep. Bam. As the oldest sib, Landon should have her shit together, and she’s starting to feel the pressure. Talk soon turns to Kathryn. The sisters decide she’s a big ole slut with no prospects. What a loser, huh? Um, Landon honey, your hypocrisy is showing, and it’s not a good look. 

Before leaving for North Carolina, Craig visits Kathryn and takes a look around her empty abode. While her womb may be fertile, her house is barren. Craig offers give her the couch that is sitting idle in his garage, then he gets to the real reason why he stopped by. He lays out his elaborate theory about why Whitney hates her with a passion beyond all reason.

Told in flashbacks, Craig carefully lays the groundwork for his hypothesis. Kathryn slept with T-Rav. A week later, she was bumping uglies with Whitney, keeping her things in his bedroom—you know, the one at his mother’s house. But when Whitney took Kathryn to a pool party, she left with Thomas. That night, Whitney texted her, saying he’d thrown all of her crap outside. Craig thinks Whitney was starting to care about Kathryn, and when she chose Thomas instead, his feelings were wounded, his man-child pride bruised.

Kathryn gives Craig a wide-eyed gaze, convinced that he’s right. She and Whitney did have a five day relationship, after all. No wonder he hates her now.

While Kathryn sits at home, everyone except Thomas, JD, and Elizabeth hop aboard the party bus Shep rented. On their way to North Carolina, they all start day drinking. Shep talks about Bailey, the closest thing he’s had to a girlfriend in years. Landon looks uncomfortable. Is she jealous that her friend has snagged Shep’s attention? Even Cameran wonders if Landon has a heart-on for Shep.

And why didn’t Shep invite Bailey? Because he has to set boundaries. The girl he ends up with needs to understand that he’ll never change. He may disappear for days at a time and that has to be okay. Yeah, because that’s the way relationships work.

How does this guy get so many women? Someone answer that for me, will you?

Thomas meets the group in Asheville, and they spend the evening on a pub crawl. Because the Charmed Ones never do that back home. Thomas gets hammered and flirts with a girl on the street. She’s got stripes of color in her hair and he wonders if she has a pierced tongue. Or a tramp stamp. Hey, is she into that new thing all the kids are raving about—what’s it called—oh, yeah, grunge? Whitney pulls T-Rav away before the barely legal girl can start screaming for help.

At another establishment, everyone gathers outside while Whitney and Thomas hit the bar. Whitney is convinced it’s a lesbian hangout. It never occurs to him that no woman is interested in his frozen face or snotty attitude. Thomas says that lesbian bars are the best. The Sapphic sisters want to experiment with a little thing called a penis, and T-Rav is ready to oblige.

JD and Elizabeth arrive. After dinner, all of the girls, except for Landon, head back to the hotel to get their beauty sleep while the rest of the group goes to yet another club. Thomas finds a woman who shows him her tattoos. Then he dances with a local lovely and grabs her ass. By this time, he’s slurring his speech and staggering. She threatens to slice and dice him with her pocket knife. Then she makes a beeline for Shep and spends the evening dancing with him, leaving Thomas on his own.

The next morning, T-Rav stops by Shep’s room. Last night, he confronted Landon about not inviting Kathryn to Shep’s birthday party. She finally admitted the truth. No, she didn’t invite Kathryn, okay? And she’s not sorry about it either!

Cameran and Whitney decide to rent a car and forego the party bus. All those twisty mountain turns will make Cameran’s anxiety go into hyperdrive. As the bus pulls up to the house and we see the cabin is massive and overlooks the mountains on one side and a valley of colorful fall leaves on the other. Shep assigns rooms and everyone gets settled.

While the girls take a nap, JD talks to Craig. That the VP position of the bourbon division was always out of Craig’s reach. JD wants to give the position to Danni, and he wants Craig to encourage her to take it. Craig reluctantly agrees, still sad that he won’t be the bourbon baron of Charleston. 

Later, as Craig preps steaks and burgers for dinner, Shep confronts Landon about the fact that she lied. She half-heartedly apologizes for not inviting Kathryn to the birthday party, but she needs to apologize to the group for wearing nothing but an oversized sweatshirt without pants. I can’t with her. I’m tired of her baby voice and sense of entitlement. Girl needs to go.

The Charmed Ones consume yet more booze. Craig graciously puts the meal together and is cooking for everyone, but Whitney wanders over and asks if Craig salted the steaks. Because Whitney is low sodium, people. Yes, he can knock back a fifth of whiskey in five minutes, but he draws the line at salt. Then he gripes that Craig used the same spatula for both the raw and the cooked meat. Yet Whitney doesn’t offer to do anything except open a bottle of wine. And then he uncorks the whine, and berates Craig for messing up dinner.

As the group sits outside and eats, Craig mentions that he supports Thomas’s decision to go back to Charleston. With her troublesome pregnancy, Kathryn shouldn’t be upset right now. Cameran’s eyes nearly pop out of her head. Whitney claims Kathryn is a psychopath. JD thinks she uses the baby for her own benefit. (For the record, I don’t think he’s wrong.) Craig tells Whitney he’s just jealous that Kathryn dumped his sorry ass in favor of Thomas. 

Everyone’s mouth pops open, and they’re all speechless.

To be continued…

So, what did you make of this week’s episode? Is Craig right—was Whitney falling for Kathryn? Is Landon hot for Shep? Is Cameran’s fear about having children real? Where was Patricia and her colorful caftan?

 

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