I Love Money: Pole Slaw

This week on I Love Money, we start seeing a damn lot of ads for Rock of Love Girls: Charm School 2. I’m as excited about this show as anyone ever could be, but they skanked the girls up really hard for the opening photoshoot. I mean, Heather, really? Really? One of my beloved commenters, itchy, noted that Heather seems so tired on I Love Money. I absolutely agree, and here she looks tired and 47. Additionally, her whole soul is dead. I can’t wait!

We open to Real and Hoopz awkwardly sleeping in the same bed. She clearly can’t do much resting with a camera in her face, and Real is just staring at her, caressing her, etc. The latest development is that he wants to bone the shit out of her, so once everyone’s up, he presents her with a bouquet of flowers. This is actually really, sincerely cute! Of course she tells us in confessional that she has a boyfriend and isn’t interested, but…nice flowers! All of this worries Whiteboy, who he wants Real all to himself.

The Brokedowns gather by the pool to talk game, and Brandi concludes they have a good shot at being Paymaster since there are four of them. She’s really quite logical, this one! They agree to send The Entertainer home, which is a perfect cue for The Entertainer to receive the phone call from CJ. He actually leaps for the phone and says, “Craig’s calling me on my T-Mobile Shadow!” which is motherfucking hilarious. Way to shill, VH1! I’ll be sure to buy one of these phones if the I Love Money cast supports it! Too bad it takes The Entertainer about 25 minutes to figure out how to answer the call. Aaand product returned.

The next challenge involves hanging on and getting wet, so the group is like, “We gotta have sex with each other?” This goes over well, but instead The Entertainer postulates they’ll be hanging on a rope over a body of water. In his own words, “The first person to fall is the dead-ass loser.” Innately I want to be like, “Anyone could’ve figured that challenge out!” but I probably would not have, so all right – good job this once, Frank.

When the meeting wraps up, The Entertainer receives a call on his T-Mobile House Phone.

GET OUTTA MY BASEMENT!

Mom tells The Entertainer that money won’t solve all his problems, which is true, although it would solve a damn good amount. He promises he’ll take care of her, but she snaps that it’ll always be the other way around. Also true! All I can really deduce from this conversation is that The Entertainer’s skin color is, in a word, icky.

Monster Mash.

The chat concludes with Mom and Son cursing at each other, and then Mom starts coughing from what has to be lung cancer. Frank encourages her by yelling, “Yeah, choke!” Aw, family memories.

Everyone loads into the van and heads for the challenge. The Brokedowns are immediately delighted to find stripper poles waiting for them! Yay, stripper poles! Pumkin concludes Brandi and Megan have definitely stripped before, since they have fake titties, and Toastee can probably manage. Therefore they will totally win this challenge. Usually this would seem like flawed logic but really, could you argue with these points? Nah.

The challenge is exactly what The Entertainer predicted, except they’re hanging on stripper poles rather than ropes. But wait, there’s a twist! The first person to fall is instantly eliminated! This makes everyone quake in their stripper shoes, but Brandi has numerous reasons to cry. A) She doesn’t want to go home, B) she’s scared of heights, and C) well, look at her life. Alas, she must compete. Craig hollers at everyone to mount their poles, and they all climb aboard while I fall into a fit of giggles.

Within 23 seconds, The Entertainer is already slipping. You’d think he’d have some experience handling pole, no? Pumkin struggles similarly, complaining that the pole hurts her vagina. They’re writing the jokes themselves, people! While she rants, The Entertainer keeps sliding along, occasionally chiming in from confessional with, “I do not want to go back to my parents’ house!” And then, only 1:16 into the competition, The Entertainer takes the plunge. He’s out! Eliminated! He kvetches about how he’s 29 and a complete loser. It always shocks me when he mentions his age. He looks a solid 42 but…oh. Yipes.

Real tells The Entertainer to go back to Mom’s and eat some pizza with her, which is a delightful sentiment! Whiteboy decides to join him, jumping off his pole about a minute later. Pumkin drops pretty quickly too, followed by Real. Things are pretty much flying along but it’s hard to mock them because holy shit, that has to be hard. I never even slid down the child-sized stripper pole at the playground, so doing the real deal over water sounds pretty impossible.

Brandi drops around five and a half minutes, leaving Toastee, Megan and Hoopz to suffer. The best thing about Toastee’s experience is that she starts to fall, but she just shimmies right back up like a spider or crab. I don’t know what animal climbs and looks cute, it’s not either of those, but whatever; it’s seriously impressive! There’s a couple of commenters who are hardcore riders of the Toastee Train, so for you, I offer this.

Work it!

Toastee drops shortly after 15 minutes, and then it’s just Hoopz and Megan. Hoopz doesn’t seem like the stripper type to me – she seems like a young Stacey Dash, who totally poses naked but is still classy. That said, girl can clench.

Thighmaster of Love.

Hoopz starts to fall, but Whiteboy encourages her to stay on, totally blowing Megan off. This is unfortunate because based on Megan’s pole skills, she might’ve blown him off in exchange. Instead of dropping within seconds, the gals make it on for minutes…hours…days. Finally after 40 freaking minutes, they start to work out a deal. Hoopz swears to keep Megan safe and with that, Megan drops and makes Hoopz the Paymaster!

After she celebrates, CJ voids The Entertainer’s check and sends him on his way. I say this with no sarcasm: he leaves with little fanfare, no yelling or anything. He swears he’ll start punching himself in the face once he’s on the plane, but for now he’s good. Go figure, he makes himself likable right when he’s leaving the show.

Back at the house, Hoopz and Real converse with Pumkin and Toastee. It turns out Pumkin and Toastee are sort of bitchy, who knew? They hop on the Shit-Talk Express and start rooting to get Megan or Brandi eliminated. Whether or not Brandi knows this, she’s inside the house weeping. Pumkin joins her and is like, “Um, don’t cry, I guess.” Then she breaks the news that she wants Brandi to turn on Megan, but they’re best friends! They’ve been so close for approximately two weeks!

The whole house shares Pumkin’s sentiments. The problem is, Hoopz promised not to turn on Megan, so she’s conflicted. Hoopz and Real talk this over while Megan stands right next to them, which is kind of delightfully uncomfortable. It takes her way too long to figure it all out, but then lo, she is unhappy! In fact, she stretches her freakishly long torso in discomfort.

Stretch Armstrong.

The next morning, Megan confronts Whiteboy and lets him know Toastee’s always wanted him out. Whiteboy replies, “All that is irrelevant” since he’s the ultimate champion of the world and no one will ever eliminate him ever. He finally makes Megan pinky swear on this statement, since that’s how you conduct business in the I Love Money household. She and Brandi quickly trot in to ask Toastee if she wants Whiteboy out, but since they ask in front of everyone else, Toastee denies it all. This is an utter shock! A screaming match ensues, and the most interesting part is that you can clearly see the line where Brandi bleaches her mustache.

We quickly cut to the vault, and Real steps up as Beezy Master Extraordinaire. He immediately throws himself in the box so he can go on a date with Hoopz, which is totally ridiculous and awesome. It would kick major ass if he got sent home for it, but alas, probably unlikely. He conducts the rest of the ceremony in an obnoxious Jamaican accent, just so you know. Whiteboy gets zero votes, Toastee gets two, Pumkin gets two, and Megan and Brandi get almost the whole damn house.

Whiteboy opts not to vote for anyone, but Real makes his vote doubly known by calling Brandi and Megan out hardcore. I genuinely dislike him, not because he’s anti-Megan but because he seems like someone I’d enjoy punching in the face. He seems like that guy who comes into your workplace and immediately gets irate over petty bullshit. Real follows this up by shouting about how he heard things outta their own moufs, so Megan asks Whiteboy to back her up. This pisses Whiteboy off though, and he seriously goes, “I do what I want, when I want!” So that clears everything up. Unsurprisingly, Brandi weeps.

Everyone goes back to the house, and Brandi is fucking pissed in between her tiny tears. She rags on Toastee and Pumkin for eating again, and Pumkin makes some odd hand gesture I can’t understand. It makes her look really large though, so it’s probably not the look she was striving for.

Fatty fatty two-by-four.

Brandi tells them the benefits of lipo. Admittedly that screencap made Pumkin look bad, so let’s take a look at Brandi, shall we?

What a lady garden.

What the hell is going on there? Really, she looked at all options for a tattoo and chose that area? Right on! Instead of calling her out for that nonsense, Pumkin races after Brandi and shouts in her face, like ya do. To her credit, Brandi just laughs and shrugs it off, even when Pumkin calls her “a piece of face.” That’s the worst name in the book! Meanwhile, Megan’s in a confessional interview and hears screaming, and she literally takes off running to save the day. It’s so ridiculous and also completely adorable! What she plans on doing, I have no idea, but she runs like her life depends on it.

She gets inside and immediately throws a drink on Pumkin, who shouts about how Megan’s not a bigger person just because she’s taller. Megan responds that Pumkin is obviously the bigger person, and oh God, I just love Megan so much. She’s so sour all the time! Since the girls can’t hit each other without being sent home, they do what anyone would do: food fight! Whiteboy is so freaking happy about this, he jigs his legs up and down.

As food fights go, it’s pretty fabulous. They don’t throw mashed potatoes or anything, but they pour out nearly every liquid in the house, including a whole gallon of milk. The whole time this goes on, Real screams, “I’m loving every minute of it, dawg!” To his pleasure, it lasts for like 35 minutes and then they have to choose to either end the fight or dump out all their beer. Understandably, the fight ends.

Real steps outside to call CJ on his T-Mobile Shadow, sold at a T-Mobile store near you! He wants to do something special for Hoopz, so he needs a favor. I so hope he’s requesting some condoms with which to fornicate on the beach. Unfortunately we don’t get to find out right away since we’ve gotta jet off to the Power Outing. We arrive on the scene, and Megan and Brandi immediately get a little kinky.

Save a horse, ride a ho.

Brandi promptly starts to sob over her last day with Megan, but she pulls it together long enough for lunch. Lunch is a fine place to drink and talk shit, her favorite things! Brandi doesn’t mind if she goes home today, but she wants Hoopz to know about Pumkin and Toastee’s terribility. They gossip about the secret alliance, and then Hoopz has to pick one person for solo time. Luckily she doesn’t even have to choose – Brandi and Megan opt to cuddle on their own, that way Real can have his date. So sweet!

A lady comes over and delivers a package to Real, which doesn’t faze Hoopz in the slightest. She probably figures it’s drugs. Real asks what’s going on in her mind, and when she mentions things other than him, he’s like, “What the hell, dawg?” Then he tells her he loves her, like really loves her…and oh yeah, by the way, will she marry him? The little package is a ring! Seriously! He fucking proposes!

Cha-ching!

Brandi reacts more joyfully than Hoopz, literally screeching from across the beach. In the commercials, I thought maybe a jellyfish stung her but she’s just motha-effing jubilant! Real continues his proposal, and Hoopz just laughs and laughs. Honestly though, what else can she really do? She finally covers her face in shame and then bursts out, “Why did you pick me?” She starts to get kind of angry, asking why he couldn’t have waited until she got things sorted out at home. I do like that she implies that she’s gotta see if her boyfriend still digs her, and if not, then she’ll shack up with Real. Still, it’s all very weird so he tells her she can answer at the end of the day. Lucky Hoopz!

The group goes home, and for one reason or another, Brandi is distraught. This puzzles me deep in my soul, having never once seen this girl cry. Hoopz ignores all that, going upstairs to talk to Whiteboy. They exchange pleasantries, like, “Yeah, glad the Power Outing went well” and then Hoopz announces she might be engaged. Whiteboy laughs in her face and then goes, “No time to be laughin’, your husband’s coming.” Hee! Real enters, and Hoopz looks at him and goes, “Fuck.” That does a lot to calm the butterflies in his stomach, as you can imagine.

Downstairs, Brandi is all kinds of wrecky.

What a beautiful…soul.

She moans to Megan over how “we’re fucked, baby.” All of a sudden they’re weirdly very dykey. I don’t know about y’all, but I’ve never had a friendship where I crawl into bed and stroke my best friend’s body. These touchyfeely times last well into the elimination ceremony, where Brandi straight-up acts like someone died.

I’m melting!

They exchange “I love you”s and Megan wipes Brandi’s tears away, and it’s all so very gay! Before CJ can even make it through his ceremonial speeches, Brandi interjects and just bawls all over the place. She tries to approach the strongbox and he yells at her, and it’s all delightfully bipolar.

Once she can speak, she announces she’s quitting – void her check, she’s done! Megan grins wildly in the background, which is totally hilarious. She’s sooo concerned about her best friend, but also just wants to win some damn money, okay? So bitchy and delightful. CJ double checks that Brandi legitimately wants to go home, and she confirms it. With that, she’s eliminated.

But wait, that’s not quite the end! Even though Brandi jumped ship, Hoopz still needs to choose someone to go home! There has to be a third option for elimination, so suddenly everyone is forced back to the vault to choose one more nominee. It’s not that easy for us viewers though. We’re left with a cliff-hanger, designed to leave America wailing and grinding their teeth, only the thing is: VH1 immediately aired a promo for next week’s show and pointed out the final five. Fabulous! I won’t spoil it for you but uh, don’t turn on VH1 because they will.

If you haven’t seen the results, who do you think will go home next? Who do you think will pull out the win? Leave your thoughts!