Field Notes on Heterosexuality
Through the looking glass and into the Summer House
Dating discourse is one of the most reliable drivers of engagement on the internet. I’ve been on Twitter (I will never call it X) since 2007, and I’ve seen about ten thousand different iterations of Am I the Asshole? posts. There’s something so specific about straight people steadfastly believing that the people they flirt with, crush on, fawn over, hook up, date, and marry are a completely different species, replete with alien thoughts and emotions.
Nothing makes this more apparent than Summer House. The series follows a group of ambitious New York terrors who rent a house in the Hamptons together for weekends between June and Labor Day. Summer House is fascinating because unlike Vanderpump Rules, the cast skews normal (at least for the first few seasons). They aren’t especially charismatic or engaging, or model/actors who skate by on charm and superhuman good looks. They’re normal people of above average attractiveness who treat one another horribly.
The most fascinating thing about the show is that it seems locked in an eternal pattern of introducing a pair of hot singles and watching the will-they-or-won’t-they dynamic curdle beneath a sea of mixed signals, missed communication, and resentment. From the outside, it seems like the biggest hurdle to many of these relationships is the inability to communicate in any meaningful way. I’m not lying: Seasons 1-6 all feature this dynamic between at least one of the potential couples. I haven’t watched Season 7 yet but Season 8’s West Wilson and Ciara Miller ended up in the New York Times because of their participation in this eternal dance.
A quick runthrough of the Season 5 cast, clockwise from middle:
Lindsay Hubbard: A publicist who wields her abandonment issues as a cudgel, Lindsay sabotages relationships by falling into the classic “yell at them until they leave and then blame them for leaving” trap. She yearns to control the mechanism of the abandonment: if she forces them to leave, she’ll never be surprised when they choose to.
Kyle Cooke: The self proclaimed “alpha” of the house, Kyle suffers from Peter Pan syndrome (he is currently a DJ wearing stacks of bracelets), a likely dependency on alcohol (he tends to black out and cheat on his girlfriend/fiancee/wife), and rage issues. Kyle was in a will-they-or-won’t-they with Amanda before eventually marrying her, but marriage only served to make them hate each other more.
Amanda Batula: It’s hard to be objective about Amanda because there isn’t very much there there: she spends most episodes of the show crying about how poorly Kyle treats her or crying about how much she loves him despite how poorly he treats her. Amanda is the girl we all knew in high school who craves the relationship with the emotional stability of a roller coaster, a Shonda Rhimes character brought to life: love isn’t worth it if you don’t suffer for it. Her entire identity has become enmeshed with Kyle’s, quitting her job to work at his company and crying about wanting to move to the next stage of life (getting married, having kids, buying a home). It would be comical how mismatched they are if not for the fact they are real people: her dream in life is to be a Bergen County stay at home mom while Kyle wants to drink and DJ. I can’t even wish them an ounce of luck because Kyle spends multiple episodes talking about how much he hates her and calling her a “fucking bitch” who “wants to control him”.
Hannah Berner was famously fired from the show in 2021 but a lot of the emotional manipulation/situationship drama concerns her so I’m focusing on Season 5. Hannah was a cool girl comedian who found herself swept into the vortex of a bad man in Season 4 and promptly lost her mind in Season 5. S5 was the COVID season where they locked themselves in the house together for six weeks vs. going back and forth to New York, and Hannah’s downfall began when she forgot to take out the garbage a few dozen times in a row. The cast conspiring to get her fired is unforgivable.
Carl Radke: Carl is similar to Luann De Lesseps in that he’s had as many iterations as there are years he’s been on television. Carl began the show as a medical device salesman/fuckboy before getting fired. He treated every woman he came across horribly for four seasons in a row and began drinking heavily, only deciding to turn his life around after the death of his brother. (This pivot was good for his image, but he tanked it in 2023 when he broke up with Lindsay on camera and spent S8 orchestrating ways to make it seem like her fault).
Paige DeSorbo: An acerbic mean girl from upstate New York, people love Paige but I haven’t warmed to her. My theory is that she gets away with being horrid to people because she’s a tiny brunette (Bravo loves a charismatic evil blonde, but they’re usually a classic villain in the mold of Regina George). Paige refuses to show vulnerability on camera and spends her time making quips and jabs at the expense of her castmates.
Ciara Miller: my nemesis as of season 6, Ciara is a nurse/model (how I wish I was kidding) who craves male validation likely due to a complicated relationship with her father and growing up in predominantly white areas.
Luke Gulbranson: a collection of Pinterests board glued together, Luke is a model/hockey coach/jewelry designer/singer (again, I wish I was kidding) who outsources all of his emotional support to various female “friends” in his life. He believes that if he never makes it official with any of them, he can’t be blamed for stringing them along or breaking their hearts, not acknowledging this is winning on a technicality. He spends season 4 flirting with Hannah before bringing Ciara onto the show in order to finally consummate their “friendship”.
Danielle Olivera: I wanted to support my Latina sister, but Danielle also craves male validation in a way that’s deeply embarrassing and therefore not worth engaging with.
The main issues I see are twofold:
Commitment/Ownership
During the first two seasons of the show, Carl Radke began hooking up with one of the housemates, Lauren Wirkus, one half of the “Wirkus Circus” (blonde twins despised by the fandom). Instead of having a conversation regarding dating other people or beginning a relationship, they danced around one another until he started sleeping with other girls, setting her off and causing tension in the house. (This culminated with Lauren shoving a cake into Carl’s face for mistreating her.) I’m not saying gay men have it any easier in the dating department, but there definitely is an understanding that sleeping with someone doesn’t bind them to you forever. Lauren wishing that Carl would one day decide he wanted to date her if she stood near him long enough is a reality that’s unfortunately far too common.
I recently got in trouble for making a video about Ciara and Austen (above), who had a similar situation. Austen, a failson from Southern Charm (a Bravo show about the descendants of slave owners) was cast on Winter House, a Summer House spin-off featuring the casts from the two b-tier shows. While there, Austen began sleeping with Ciara, and between December and July told her he did not want to be in a relationship with her.
On SH season 6, Austen showed up and immediately began hooking up with Lindsay Hubbard (above). Ciara proceeded to lose her mind, running around the house raging, confronting Lindsay (who ignored her) and throwing a glass at Danielle after she defended Lindsay’s right to hook up with Austen. Multiple housemates defended Ciara, explaining that she was allowed to be hurt that someone she had slept with slept with someone else. To me, it read as a bizarre sense of ownership. Ciara had no right to be upset: everyone involved was a free agent. It’s nonsensical, but to the denizens of the summer house, it made perfect sense. Another mystery of straight culture: the right to be upset someone you had a casual relationship with is having a casual relationship in your vicinity. Got it!
Lack of Communication
A lack of communication seems to be the biggest recurring issue on this show, and one that’s constantly playing out on social media in dating situations. I often ask people on SituationshipTok (and those truly cursed Are We Casual Now? slideshows) did you have a conversation where you defined the relationship? Did you set boundaries? Did this person say they wanted to date you?
So many —truly so many— dating issues could be solved by simply exchanging a few words or asking a few simple questions. On the U Up? podcast, they often mention that people don’t ask questions because they don’t want to know the answer, but I have mostly Earth in my chart: if you enter into a dating situation with someone after they tell you they don’t want to date you, I blame you.
On season four of Summer House, as mentioned above, Luke and Hannah entered into a flirtation and hooked up twice. They never explicitly discussed if they were dating or not: Luke was grieving his failed engagement and Hannah was flirting with someone else at the time. On Luke’s end, it was understood that Hannah was a “cool girl” he could hang out with, flirt with, and not have anything expected of him. On Hannah’s, Luke served as a placeholder: he isn’t my boyfriend yet, but someday he might be.
This blew up in both of their faces on season five, where Luke failed to cut the cord and let Hannah believe they might someday date, despite him explicitly bringing Ciara onto the show to date her. The nuclear fallout of his inability to say the words: “I think you’re awesome but I don’t ever see a romantic future for us” destroyed both of their reputations, eventually leading to Hannah’s firing from the show and the fandom turning on Luke. Luke’s fear of being seen as the bad guy ended up being his downfall.
Sometimes ten minutes of awkwardness are worth it to avoid the ire of millions of women who now believe you’re a manipulator because you hold women emotionally hostage in order to avoid working through your emotions on your own: why go to therapy when you can have a roster of women to be your surrogate girlfriends, each of them praying one day you’ll date them? (The reveal that Ciara was one of the women Luke was constantly texting during his initial flirtation with Hannah during season four was shocking. How many girls were there? We’ll never know.)
If anything, this show is teaching me more about straight culture than Jersey Shore, Mob Wives, Housewives, and Vanderpump Rules combined. The formulaic reshuffling of potential couples has unearthed a deep curiosity within me. I get why this is so addictive! I called it the Am I the Assholeification of everything on TikTok, but the unadulterated engineering of drama driven by men acting carelessly sucked me in. It’s prescient and timely, and nothing is more relatable than watching people sleepwalk into their own devastation.
Neat Little Morality Slogans
If you want to read a book written in the style of field notes, I still recommend Primates of Park Avenue. It’s about a PhD who moves to the Upper East Side after her financier husband gets a new job, and she’s immediately thrust into the world of very wealthy, very bored stay at home moms who have opted out of the work force. Fascinating social commentary, despite it falling out of fashion after it was discovered the author changed details about the women she was writing about.
I can’t get over “a group of ambitious New York terrors” the best way to describe them lmao
“a collection of Pinterest boards glued together” hahaha!