The Kardashiad, Part 12: The Majestic Return of Keeping Up With the Kardashians

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Fake dubstep, aerial shots of Calabasas, we are home, oh god, we’re home:

Brandon and Brody Jenner show up to the Jenner house in Calabasas and suddenly we’re witnessing the Stills-Young Band version of a Princes of Malibu reunion. Brody’s wearing some kind of flannel/hoodie hybrid and a soul patch. Brandon looks ashamed, like he already knows his shirt looks ridiculous buttoned all the way to the neck like that but it’s too late to do anything about it now. There’s a sadness about Brandon, like Dignan just broke him out of the psych ward. Bruce asks Brody a weird question about his ass and Scott says something inappropriate and Gabbana the dog farts and Kim freaks out and moves to a different chair. Everything’s going to be all right.

Kim, with bangs, itemizing stressors: The baby Yeezus she’s gestating; the divorce she’s still going through; the big fancy house she can’t find and buy herself with all her and/or Kanye’s money. They’re in New York: Kim, without bangs, is doing The Today Show with Kourtney. Kourtney’s breast-pumping in the green room, camera-ready with a little diamond bracelet on, her suction-cupped nipples pixilated. She’s got 30 more seconds’ worth of milk to pump. On their way to the set, Kim and Kourtney pass Matt Lauer on his way in to work. Kim touches his cashmere-ish-looking overcoat and remarks on how soft it is and Matt Lauer does a girlish little twirl around and says, “Touch it some more,” and Kim touches it some more. Kim makes a joke on TV about how she wants Kourtney to be a wet-nurse for her baby. Meredith Viera smiles like someone you could probably replace with a posthumously-computer-generated hologram without unduly affecting anybody’s user experience of Meredith Viera.

Oh, establishing shot of the Old Town Calabasas sign, I think I’ve missed you the most. Here, at the door of the Jenner house, is a guy named Chuck, ID’d only as “Bruce’s Friend.” He has a James Gammon mustache and a remote-controlled helicopter. Kris explains that she’s pretending trying to be less uptight, so she’s encouraged Bruce to invite the guys from his “helicopter circle” over to dinner. Why, yes, a “helicopter circle” is what they’re calling it these days, why do you ask? The other two helicopter-circle guys are named Roman and Sergio, and Kris asks them if they’re Armenian and they say that yes they are, as if Kris actually cares what the answer is. Bruce whips out his own remote-controlled helicopter and starts talking about its technical specs before the helicopter guys have even finished eating, and Kris calls down from upstairs to say she’s tired and going to bed, and then Bruce annoys her by bringing Roman up to look at the master bathroom because real estate is Roman’s line.

At Khloe and Lamar’s house there’s a weird closeup of a bowl of hummus, like the Sabra people are getting their backs scratched. An ever-more-hulking Rob is showing pictures of his new girlfriend — not “the girl from Runyon Canyon,” some other girl. Congratulations on being not even the most important person who let Rob Kardashian do stuff to her, girl from Runyon Canyon! Scott asks Rob, “You’ve thrown it in the back door before, right?” Rob says he has, with two girls, and Scott asks, “Did you have to lube up?” like he’s asking logistical questions about scuba diving. Rob says he did not. Yeah, that sounds about right. Scott says Kourtney considers that zone a forbidden one. When he tries to get Khloe involved in this already-pretty-creepy butt-stuff rap session, Rob volunteers that Lamar told him that he and Khloe do butt stuff at least three times a month. Scott and Kourtney leave but Scott brings it up again with Kourtney in the car. Khloe sprays the edge of her kitchen island with something in a can and wipes it with a paper towel.

11:30 p.m.: At the Jenner house, Kris is upstairs in bed, performatively kept awake, while Bruce and his helicopter buddies are flying little toy helicopters in the foyer and roaring with laughter. It’s one of the most adorable moments that’s ever occurred on this show, so of course Kris wants to kill it and eat it. Bruce’s friend Chuck has his glasses on a chain, a black polo shirt tucked into black slacks.

Kim, in traffic the next day with Khloe driving: “Stress, stress, stress, all the way around the board … Isn’t court so stressful?” They’re talking about Kris Humphries pushing back the date of some deposition to mess with Kim. Khloe’s wearing heart-shaped glasses, playing with her hair, adjusting her breasts. At Scott and Kourtney’s house, Kourtney comes into the kitchen in leather shorts and Scott reads this as more of an enticement to do butt stuff than it actually is. Instead, Kourtney takes out a carrot and a chocolate doughnut and uses them to demonstrate what the doing of sex “in this brown eye that you speak of” will do to that selfsame brown eye. Apparently it’ll break in half and fall on the counter and then she’ll eat it? Scott counterargues by wetting a gummy-peach ring with water from the sink tap and sticking almost half a cucumber through it.

Kris is getting a massage in her bedroom and Bruce, in an ugly argyle pullover that probably cost $45,000, calls her from downstairs over an intercom howling with static, so update your link-bait Bruce Jenner’s 18 Hackiest Bits slide shows, terrible-slide-show updaters. Kris comes downstairs pissed off, accuses Bruce of using the knowledge he’s gleaned about her in the course of their 22 and a half years of marriage to push her buttons, then angrily suggests that he get a man cave so he can hang out with his stupid dog and his helicopter friends. He calls her bluff and says he’ll start looking for a place.

Kim hears her baby’s heartbeat and sees its face. The doctor asks if she wants a picture and Kim says she doesn’t, and Kris says “How could you not want a picture?” I’m choosing to believe Kim doesn’t want the picture because she wants there to be one instant of this baby’s life that remains sacred by virtue of remaining undocumented, although probably she’s just in a hurry to go get her eyebrows done or something. She does take time to ask the doctor why somebody would ever eat their own placenta, and the doctor somehow resists the temptation to say “Publicity?”

Bruce takes Kendall and Kylie with him to look for a man cave. He says everything’s fine. The place they’re looking at is in the Marina, right by Venice, which I’m pretty sure puts it around 30 miles from Calabasas. Meanwhile, at what looks like the Dash store — there’s a wall of unsold copies of Kris’s awful book — Khloe and Kourtney are looking at their phones because they’re busy businesswomen who run a retail establishment. Khloe’s looking at a picture of Kim wearing insanely high heels that Khloe told her not to wear and Kourtney’s reading a text message from Scott about how he wants to do butt stuff.

Bruce goes on another house-hunting run, but this time he brings Rob and Brandon and Brody and Brody’s wife, Leah, along because sometimes it’s important to get the opinion of people who don’t matter. Rob’s in a giant Lamar Odom jersey with the Lakers logo blurred out lest his physiognomy hurt the parts of the Lakers brand that are about physical conditioning and athleticism. Bruce looks at a place in Malibu with a million-dollar view and acts like he’s going to take it. Leah asks him if he isn’t going to get lonely out there and Bruce smiles and says, “Maybe lonely would be good,” like it’s either this or start doing the terrible things the spirits who speak to him through Gabbana have been telling him to do.

Acting on a suggestion from Khloe, Kourtney tells Scott she’ll let him do butt stuff with her if he’ll let her get a dildo and do butt stuff to him first, which is sort of the Sicilian Defense against unwanted butt stuff. Scott freaks out — a little too loudly and a little too stridently — but vows to call her bluff. It’s basically a B-story echo of Bruce calling Kris’s bluff on the bachelor-pad issue except with way more people saying “dildo” on basic cable.

Kim shows Khloe around the house she and Kanye bought together but says they’re going to change everything about it. She points at a wall and says, “This whole wall? Live greenery.” I could have watched about 40 more minutes of Kim explaining weird Kanye interior-decorating ideas to Khloe. This whole guest bathroom? Live moths Super Glued to slabs of reclaimed wood from churches burned by Norwegian death-metal bands. Around the time Kim tells Khloe they’re going to move the outdoor pool from one end of the hillside to the other because “it’s not livable now” in its present location, you can see Khloe start to realize that maybe Kim’s in denial about the major life transition she’s about to experience. Khloe asks Kim if (and, by implication, how) she’s going to baby-proof the house and all its giant baby-killing spiral staircases and reminds her that babies start walking within a year, and Kim says “No they don’t” like this is the first she’s heard of this.

At the Jenner house, Kris sits with somebody named Rhonda, who’s identified as her best friend. They’re going through a binder of recipes; Kris says the name of each fancy dish like someone who’s cooked food more than once in her entire life. Pâté maison, sweet potato soufflé. She couldn’t do this if Bruce were here, she tells Rhonda. She’s wearing her thick, black smart-person glasses. It’s not like a separation, she tells Rhonda. The whole scene is like something Nancy Meyers wrote at gunpoint. At Bruce’s house, he and Bruce and Leah are drinking Coronas and eating takeout food and playing Ping-Pong in the kitchen.

Kourtney sits by a fake gas-jet fire and opens a box containing a dildo — purple, pixilated — and a dildo harness and some sort of a black spritzer bottle that looks lube-ish. She straps it on over her pajamas, sneaks up on Scott as he’s reading in the living room and pokes him in the ear with it. Scott says Get out of here, you little freak and she chases him around the house, and then eventually Scott kind of gets the point that he’s making Kourtney uncomfortable and promises to quit it, and then if that dildo’s final destination isn’t Scott’s hope chest I’ll pay you a million bucks.

Then everybody but Bruce and Bruce’s kids are at the Jenner house. While Kourtney makes a big show of enjoying some pasta we’re maybe supposed to think Kris cooked, Kris shows Kim a room that she’s going to do up as a nursery for when she and the baby visit. Kim admits to Kris that she’s freaking out because she’s about to have a baby even though she’s still married to somebody else. Kris says pregnancy was the most wonderful time of her life and she just wants Kim to have that same experience. Kim starts crying and then Kris starts crying like you’d cry if maybe every single difficult thing about somebody’s life were somehow your fault, maybe, I don’t know. The nursery’s still too heavy of a scene for Kim to handle, so she leaves. There’s a shot of a bed, where that news photographer from The Wire who used to plant burnt dolls at fire scenes has conspicuously placed a pile of brand-new stuffed animals.

Time-lapse montage of Kris alone at the Jenner house feeling bored and weird without Bruce’s spirit to break. The next day she’s giving Kylie a driving lesson in a white SUV and Kylie tells her, “You need to go get your man,” so they drive out to Bruce’s place in Malibu, where he’s basically eating chips and salsa off Frisbees. Kris gives him a hard time about the mess and orders him to grab his stuff and meet her at home.

Another sonogram. Kim and Kris show up and Khloe and Kourtney are already there in the waiting room. Kim’s finding out the sex of her baby today. Kris asks the doctor if he sees “a little pee-pee” and the doctor replies that no, he doesn’t see any pee-pees, and Kim says “It would definitely take after its father, so you would see it.” It’s a girl! Also Kanye has a big dick, apparently.

Kris puts on a fancy dress and serves Bruce dinner in the dining room — the same thing they ate on a date at the Ivy once. Bruce asks Kris if she remembers what he said to her the night they met, and Kris says “‘At last, in the arms of a real woman?'” in kind of a Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life voice. At her house, Kim puts little iPod speakers on her stomach and says “This is your daddy singing.” Maybe what specific song it is is another thing she prefers to keep to herself, or maybe E! was too cheap to pay for the rights, or maybe it’s actually an MP3 of Kris Humphries pillow-smothering Zac Brown Band deep cuts at karaoke; either way, I like to think it’s that Katy Perry song where Kanye raps about wanting to bathe his ape in Katy Perry’s “milky way.” Hey, I brought it back around to butt stuff almost! It’s kind of amazing that my old journalism school has never invited me to give a speech.

Coming up this season: Khloe and Kris TP Kim’s house; Kendall says “I will hit you in the throat” to somebody, maybe God, who knows?

Filed Under: Kanye West, Keeping Up With the Kardashians, Kim Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, Kris Jenner, The Kardashiad

Alex Pappademas is a staff writer for Grantland.

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