Kenny Lets The ‘Sparks Fly’

Ever hear a word so many times in quick succession that it fails to retain any meaning whatsoever? That’s how I feel about the word “murky” after watching this episode. It was the word of the day on PeeWee’s Playhouse, and, yes, we did shout after every time we heard it. After the 197th time, it didn’t have any definition, any correlation to the real world; it was just a collection of syllables thrown around by a collection of people like a poisoned ping pong ball being swatted about a rooftop bar.

We’ll come back to Kenny, Whitney, and the second-grade vocab word that shall not be named in a minute, but let’s start talking about our favorite subject: the slow dissolution of Kymanda. Lindsay, her adorable baby Gemma, and Amanda’s childhood best friend Katie all gather to help Amanda pack her hoard of baggy jeans, scrunchies, paper towel holders, and IKEA bowls so that she can move into her own apartment for a year. When Lindsay arrives, Amanda tells her she couldn’t find a sublet, but she found her own place that is unfurnished with a one-year lease, and the look on Lindsay’s face is the same as that on all of our faces. It is a look that says, “Oh, you are moving out out.” When Amanda tells Katie she has the same exact expression of surprise, confusion, and a little bit of happiness that this is all ending.

It’s almost impossible to see how the end isn’t happening right now. This move seems to be more definitive than what Amanda and Kyle are making it out to be. It’s a sort of half step. It’s like a dude saying that he’s bisexual, but three months later, he’s in a mesh top making out with a marketing executive named Matt in the front row of a Slayyyter concert. We can all see what’s happening here; don’t try to hide it from us.

Kyle seems just as skeptical when the two have burgers at an outdoor cafe and Amanda is laying out the rules of their new arrangement: they have to continue therapy, they should be spending at least two nights a week at each other’s houses, they’re both still single, Kyle does not get a key to Amanda’s new place, Amanda must call before going to Kyle’s in case it is the two (2) minutes a day he’s jerking it in the bathroom. The conversation does seem the lightest we’ve seen from them in years, where they’re actually laughing with each other, but it’s Kyle laughing when he says that he still loves Amanda, and her telling him to stop laughing because she knows that he’s lying. Amanda says that her biggest fear is losing Kyle, but I don’t know. Doesn’t he seem gone already? Does she know that it’s over? Maybe we’re looking at it from a place where the relationship is so completely destroyed, so atomized by this bomb or her moving out (and sleeping with their friend and lying about it to an entire nation), that we can tell it’s not worth saving?

In other relationship news, Lindsay is both trying to convince Andrea and Lexi to have a baby and going out with a sexy country singer who is not the sexy country singer that Rachel Zoe went to see in the Hamptons on this season of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, and, I’m sorry, but you can’t convince me these are two different men. Also, Danielle gets a grocery delivery and talks about how she doesn’t like the way Amanda goes about things, and, with that one sentence, wins back the hearts of an entire fandom. Danielle is pissy that people are talking about her relationship, but based on the preview of next week’s episode, it’s going to turn into a big old fight, so let’s just save it.

That’s because we need to move on to talk about the words “murky,” “spark,” and “semantics.” Though no one uttered the final word, that is what it all boils down to, and it is something that Kenny has yet to master. The episode starts where the last one left off, with Whitney and Kenny’s anniversary dinner, where Whitney is grilling him about what Lexi told her: that Kenny doesn’t think their relationship has a “spark” and that he thinks the future for their relationship is “murky.”

Here is how Kenny explains himself: “The conversation I had with Kyle, the point I made to him, I used to be more in this storybook mindset, and now I feel like I’m in this place where I think about life-long commitment, I have a hard time getting excited about it where that spark isn’t there.” Okay, so while he thinks he has a spark with Whitney specifically, he doesn’t think that he has the spark for marriage or long-term commitment in general. Got it. The only problem is, this woman just moved across the country for him. If he doesn’t want a long-term commitment or marriage, why did he get her to make a long-term committed choice to be with him? Kenny seems upset that people don’t think that he and Whitney have a spark, but I think this is worse. He’s saying that he likes Whitney, but he’s not going to commit to anyone. If I were Whitney’s friend, I would be at Kenny’s place repacking that U-Haul and plotting a course across Route 66.

At dinner, Kenny tells her that he wants a big family, that he wants kids. Sure, but how are you going to get that when you don’t have the “spark” for long-term commitment? This man is talking out of both sides of his mouth. Are the signals a male-female tennis doubles team because, honey, they are mixed? Considering this man wants to be with Whitney but also doesn’t want a long-term commitment, doesn’t it seem like their future is… what is the word for it? Murky? Yeah, that seems pretty spot on.

Kenny gets into two different arguments about this word. He says that by Kyle telling Andrea, Andrea telling Lexi, and Lexi telling Whitney, the “level of drama and nonsense is baffling.” Isn’t this a mess of his own making, though? He says that his words were taken out of context, but he is the one who used the word “spark,” and the context seems to be there. No one is saying he doesn’t like Whitney; they’re all saying that he doesn’t see the “spark” of the future and that the future is uncertain. Dude, that seems like they got all the context. What seems to upset Kenny is that Whitney has been spooked by these people talking about it. Know what would make Whitney less spooked? Giving her a bit more commitment when she had just decided to move across the country for him. Lindsay was right: Why wasn’t there a ring involved? Kenny is mad that people are talking, but what he should be mad about are his own feelings, because those are what are, quite rightfully, spooking Whitney.

At the rooftop party, Kenny gets upset with Andrea because he used the word “murky,” which is something Kenny never said and something that Andrea agrees he never said. Okay, fine. But the situation that Kenny described to Kyle and the way he described it to Whitney is filled with murk. It’s murk all the way down. It’s like peering into a sewer grate and not knowing what you see, but none of it is good, and all of it is sloppy. How would you describe that? Murky! So, yes, he didn’t use the word, but Andrea just took his argument and distilled it. Kenny shouldn’t blame Andrea for the word; he should blame himself for the sentiment. But he’s hung up on the term and keeps hammering away about it until Andrea, usually the guy in the corner observing the “DRA-ma,” becomes the one in the middle of it.

On the rooftop, Gavin has his boy Kenny’s back the whole time. However, the next day, when he meets with Kenny and Whitney at his bar, Bandit’s, it gets a little twisted. Kenny admits to Gavin that he did say that thing about the spark, and then Gavin says that maybe Kenny is missing something with Whitney. Gavin theorizes that maybe everything is a little too nice, a little too boring, and Kenny wants some more passion in his relationship. Kenny says that he’s sick of defending his relationship and that Gavin should know him well enough not to question it. But I don’t think that people are questioning his relationship. They all seem to think that he loves Whitney and Whitney loves him. What they’re questioning is his commitment, and, seriously, that’s all based on his behavior and how he talks about their relationship. If that’s what Kenny is mad about, he has no one to be upset with but himself. (Or the nature of being on a reality show, which is when everyone sits around and talks about each other and their relationships, even when it might not be flattering.)

What no one is asking is how Whitney feels about any of this. In the very opening of the episode, she says that she wants Kenny to be less afraid of their future together, but they are his issues, and she sees him working through it, so she’s not nearly as concerned as everyone else. This right here is what we needed, what they all needed. Instead of Kenny running around playing language police, he just needed Whitney to speak up a little bit more. If she sees nothing wrong with it, if she doesn’t care what he said about “sparks” and whether he did or did not say “murky,” then what does Kenny have to get all worked up about? Nothing. But his fighting, his struggling, his insistence that everyone else is wronging him when he is the one that started this whole situation it makes his connection to Whitney seem, oh you know I’m going to say it, murky.