This episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians deals with cultural appropriation, divorce, AIDS, copyright law and addiction recovery. It is called “Somewhere Over the Cuckoo Nest.”
No, not the cuckoo’s nest, just the cuckoo nest. Not “One Flew Over” it, but “Somewhere Over” it. Let’s begin.
We open on Kylie Jenner, whose biggest Instagram fan, Scott Disick, is watching her do her makeup. He tells her to “plump your lip more,” saying, “You should want your nose to almost hit your lip.”
“That’s what I say,” Kylie says.
“You should go to the mall and get one more Cartier bracelet,” Scott continues, later adding, “You’re younger than you look. You’re 17 and you look 25.”
They set up the plotline of Kris getting back into the dating pool, and that’s that.
Next, we finally get to see some behind-the-scenes action at Glu Mobile, the video game company behind “Kim Kardashian: Hollywood.” Niccolo de Masi, the company’s CEO, is leading Kim on a tour of their office, which is littered with posters of her cartoon likeness.
Niccolo is all business. “Boardroom,” he says. “Proceeds,” he adds, but pronounces it pross-eeds.
Kim is not having it; she has spotted the giant cartoons of herself: “Oh my God, those are so cute.”
Niccolo tries to swerve back to the facts at hand. He explains that they are going to give away some of the “prosseeds” from the game to Bono’s Red charity. Okay, sure, sure. Then, he asks the question we’ve all been waiting for: will Kourtney and Khloé consent to give their images, likenesses and souls to “Kim Kardashian: Hollywood” in exchange for… bupkis?
“Khloé will do it,” Kim says. “Kourtney is always difficult.” She’s right!
In a confessional, Kim elaborates: “I think it could be cute and fun.”
Then, in one of the Kardashian family’s gigantic, throw-pillow-stuffed bedrooms, Scott hangs out with Kylie and Kendall. They steal Kris’s phone and realize she has been texting—maybe even sexting—a guy named Corey.
“Stop!” Kris cries after realizing they have gone through her phone. “Why are you doing this to me?”
Next, Kourtney, Kim and Khloé are pointing and nodding at things they would like to slap their names on for their children’s clothing line. Kim asks if they will acquiesce to be featured in her video game; “we made the characters, they look so cute.”
“Just don’t make me look like a beast,” Khloé says gamely. Kourtney, as predicted, is not down.
“It’s not about the money, it’s just gonna be something you’re gonna do or not,” Kim says, which is PRET-TY RICH. Not about the money? On a game that probably netted Kim $40 million? OH, SURE, OKAY. It would not have been insane for Kourtney and Khloé to have asked for some cash.
But Kim, in a confessional, raises a pretty good point: “When we were first starting out our careers, I would do anything to help them out. Kourtney doesn’t have to lift a finger [to be part of the game].”
Next, Kim shows up at Kris’s house wearing her hole-y Chanel sweatsuit, which is great. She, Scott and Khloé discuss this “Corey” character, whose name suspiciously starts with a hard C and not a K (okay, fine, they don’t talk about that).
Where did Kris meet Corey, Scott wonders?
The answer is at Givenchy designer Riccardo Tisci’s birthday, Kim says, nonchalantly leaving off his last name. Justin was there (Bieber, not Timberlake, sry) and Corey works for him as a road manager. Well, case closed, then!
Next, Khloé finds Kris sitting next to a fire and giggling like a schoolgirl in thousand-dollar sneakers. She is clearly texting Corey.
“I met him at Riccardo Tisci’s birthday with Kim and Kanye,” she says. “He texts me all the time.” She pronounces texts like Texas. “He Texas me all the time.”
Next, Khloé, Scott, Malika and Scott’s friend go to Canada out of nowhere. They’re staying in some sort of budget motel and hosting a Halloween party. Khloé decides to dress like a cat. Malika looks at her and says, “all this to be a black pussy?” in what is only the first of several racially cringe-inducing moments of this particular plotline.
Next, Scott walks in dressed as a Saudi prince.
“I’ve always wanted to be a Saudi prince,” he explains. “So when the lordship doesn’t take you far enough, you have to turn to the Saudi.”
“Yeah,” Khloé concurs. “You have to advance.”
Khloé then posts a photo of the two of them to Instagram with the deeply stupid caption “Sheik Pussy.” Her Instagram followers, unsurprisingly, flip out. She begins reading their comments aloud: “Wow, that’s offensive, can’t expect anything less from Kardashians.” “You really did it this time. Dammit. What an asshole you are.” “Rude to the Arabs.” “It’s a culture, not a costume.”
In what is admittedly a hilarious turn, Scott posts a similar photo and people write things like, “Literally, my life fucking goal is to be you. Long live Lord Disick.”
“Why am I getting hate and not Scott?” Khloé whines.
“Because they know he doesn’t give a fuck,” Malika says.
“I’m not even in any Muslim thing,” Khloé whines again, which… Gurl.
The craziest part is none of them are even drunk yet. They arrive at the club or banquet hall or leftover Degrassi set where their party will be held. Brody is there, dressed like Elvis. There is a girl with him—probably his non-Kimye-wedding-invited-girlfriend Kaitlyn—dressed up in, you guessed it, a stereotypical Native American costume. Is she in brown-face?!
The party rages on, Scott tries not to drink and actually succeeds, and Khloé meets one of her biggest fans, who is dressed up like a giraffe. The fan is sobbing.
“You mean so much to me,” she says. “I’m not comfortable about my weight and I watch you guys… It means a lot to me that you came here.”
This is a nice reminder of why some people identify with the Kardashians. Khloé acts a little awkward, but it must be weird to have someone sobbing at you like that while dressed like a giraffe.
Later on, Khloé has escaped from the Great White North and is back in Calabasas with Kourtney, who has received a contract from Kim’s attorney. It seems like Kim is trying to wrap the image and likeness stuff up with the AIDS charity so that Kourtney will be guilted into signing.
“Her video game is a pop culture phenomenon,” Khloé says. “I feel like, your sister is asking you to do something, so do it.”
“Do whatever you want, I don’t care, but I’m not going to do it,” Kourtney says.
Then, Khloé is posing for a step-and-repeat at some event, saying weird things about her boobs like, “They’re a mouthful, just what you need. Good morning!”
Some E! person, Ken Baker, tells her that sources have confirmed Kris is dating Corey.
Khloé “pretty much feels ambushed at this point.” Sounds traumatizing! So when she gets home, she asks her mom what the eff happened. Kris flips out; Khloé suggests she take a Xanax.
“It’s one flew over the fucking cuckoo’s nest with you, dude,” Khloé adds.
Next, there is some casual ginger-slamming as Khloé tells Scott that Malika would date some guy named Tomer if he wasn’t a redhead. Scott asks if Malika has ever dated a white boy. Yes, Khloé responds: Nick Carter. Sad trombone. They talk about Scott’s maybe-real-maybe-just-a-plotline drinking problem for a sec, then the scene ends.
Khloé then heads to Dash to have a summit on racial sensitivity. She asks two employees, Durrani and Nazy, if her “Sheik Pussy” photo was offensive.
“I don’t think it was the caption, it was how you looked,” Durrani says, which kind of makes sense; if you didn’t know Khloé was wearing cat ears, you might think she was wearing a dumb sexy-Halloween-costume approximation of a hijab. The caption “Sheik Pussy” becomes even more horrifying when you look at it that way.
“I don’t think the whole covering was the true issue,” Nazy says. “I think that like.”
“Were you offended by my words?” Khloé asks.
“I think the more what’s more, like, upsetting is the fact that just the words,” Nazy says (verbatim). “You know what I mean?”
“To put the words together,” Khloé says.
“Yeah,” Nazy responds.
And that’s that. Khloé says in a confessional, “After talking to Nazy and Durrani, I’m really upset that I’ve offended anybody. I’m even more bothered that a lot of the commenters are thinking that I’m poking fun at their culture.”
Next, Kim and Kourtney have a deliciously nasty fight about the video game that ends with Kourtney calling Kim a “joke,” while Khloé mulls around the kitchen in one of the family’s trillion Yeezus T-shirts.
“I got it, you’re not gonna be in it,” Kim says. “It’s ridiculous you don’t wanna be in my video game and for Scott to call me and say, ‘You should buy her a pair of shoes.’ I’m like, ‘Buy her a pair of shoes? All the shit I’ve done for her?’ I said to Scott, ‘I’m not buying her a pair of shoes. I bought her a fucking career.'”
KIM HAS A POINT.
Kim asserts that she has “bent over backwards to do business deals” for her sisters when she could just do her own business deals.
“You never asked as a favor,” Kourtney says, which seems like a derailing tactic. “Never once. If you presented it as a favor and said, ‘Do you wanna do me a favor?'”
Kourtney says she doesn’t want the money, even though earlier she said she did, and also complains that she “doesn’t care to do random things.” Uhhh… since when?
“You don’t have to do a thing,” Kim says, then mocks Kourtney for seeming to think she is too overexposed.
“You’re like such a joke,” Kourtney says. “People want different things in life.”
Next, at “Jenner Communications” (?!?!), Kris and Kim admire the amazing lighting Kylie has set up in Kris’s office. Kris then tells Kim she has received a cease-and-desist letter… from KOURTNEY!
Kim calls Kourtney, who shrugs, “I’m protecting myself to get some legal paperwork.” Oh, okay, well then.
“Obama has a character, and Kourtney Kardashian is being difficult?!” Kim asks. Good point.
Kourtney pretends that it’s not about money and that it’s about the fact that Kim “never asked as a favor.” Yeah, okay. They fight over who gets to hang up on whom, and Kris tells Kim to have a talk with Kourtney IRL.
There is some great symbolism in the next scene, with Kourtney wearing a black devil-horn sweatshirt and Kim wearing an angelic white dress. They pretty much kiss and make up and Kourtney accepts Kim’s request to use her image, and keeps insisting it’s not about getting a check but about “how Kim asked.”
Next, Kris and Khloé appear and Kris says she is going to Lance Bass’s wedding with Corey, but not until after Kourtney insanely barks at someone about her devil outfit, “It’s actually a robe, you dumb fuck, so get over yourself.” Jeez.
They notice a hickey on Kris’s neck and talk about to what extent their mother should be “doing” her.
“Do you, boo, do you,” Kim says.
“I don’t know how to do me,” Kris responds. In the end, they all conclude that “life is about having fun.”
Then, everyone is in Vegas; Khloé’s boob is popping out; Kris talks about standing on her head and “sucking down beers as hard as I could.”
“The shit you guys make me do,” she muses. “You didn’t know I was so limber, did you?”
Khloé acknowledges that her mom seems pretty happy with Corey; at a club later, Kim says they are cute together.
“I’m just happy if my mom’s happy,” Khloé says. “Based off of tonight and seeing how my mom is dancing and just like getting her groove on I am happy for her.”
Next week, Kris will use a Neti Pot and change the executor on her will from Bruce to Kourtney. It would make sense, if Kourtney wasn’t the most resentful and passive-aggressive person on the face of the earth, a.k.a. probably the worst candidate for being an executor of a will. Scott does something with a car; it’s very dramatic and everyone is asking Kourtney what the hell he is doing. See you then.
