"Now THAT'S Some Sexy F*cking Polo"

It's the Rivals season 2 premiere(s), and It. Has. Everything.

I am so pleased that Rivals is back that I’ve spent the last week with the theme song in my head, wandering around my house trilling it under and even ill-advisedly over my breath. It does not sound good. My children always momentarily worry that I’m injured.

Hulu giveth, and Hulu taketh away: We got an avalanche of three episodes right off the bat, and then a weekly release of only three more before another hiatus. (In fact, I think episode four is already up; I thought it would come out tonight but I actually think it landed at midnight. Oops.) I will bleat until I am blue in the face that a consistent schedule gives people time to find it, to get hooked, to discuss in ways that propagates further discussion and entices more viewers. By the time folks have warmed up to it being in the rotation, it’ll vanish again. Do not squander this moment! We NEED Sexy Fucking Polo Summer, people! Not just Sexy Fucking Polo Late Spring And Then A Chunky Break.

I’m going to cover these first three three episodes in order here instead of wrapping the plot twists together, because maybe you’re struggling to catch up and you want to be able to read this piecemeal without spoiling yourself. I feel you. I want your tawdry, smutty, shenanigans-filled Rivals experience to unfold on your terms.

But before we get into the thick of it, let me share with you the most important plot twist of all:

OF DAMN COURSE Rivals is a Diet Coke production. I knew it in my soul.

Let’s ride.

Episode 1

I bless this show so much for opening on what we want, what we really really want: ENORMOUS HAIR.

Beattie Johnson’s, on the left, is PARTICULARLY tall and full of secrets. Sarah Stratton (the blond) and Beattie (she of the airplane sex in the first season’s premiere) are now co-hosting Corinium’s gossip show, Uncensored, but they’re primarily here tonight to tell us that Tony Baddingham had an accident. As they narrate their DEEPEST and MOST PROFOUND CONCERN for their CHERISHED PATRON, we flash back to secretary Joyce and henchman Ginger discovering Lord Baddie’s body and essentially trying to put his brains back in his skull. And because this show is the best, the whole montage is set to “Alive and Kicking” by Simple Minds. And of course, that’s what Tony is. He has a brand spanking new Dr. Kimberly Shaw scar on the side of his head — sadly, no wig, because if anyone were tempted to RIP IT OFF in a sinister manner, it would be him — and a case of amnesia… or so he claims, but then Ginger brings him the statue that Cameron used to club him. “She’s gone to Rupert Campbell-Black. Hunt the bitch down,” Tony seethes.

Side note on Ginger: He’s the flagrantly evil-looking second-in-command to Tony and he feels very out of place in this show. I don’t even know what his technical job title is because he JUST seems like a mob fixer. Not that I come to this show for subtlety, but he doesn’t read 1980s, particularly. He’s like a time-traveling brute for hire and anyone rolling with Lord Baddie should immediately be like, “Oh, that’s the guy who spies on people and makes Sinister Arrangements.”

Anyway, Lord B is correct. After finally putting his tongue in Taggie’s mouth, Rupert leaves the O’Hara home — I keep wanting to call it Tara; maybe I will — with a happy little smile, only to stop at the end of the drive when he sees Cameron out of breath and with blood on her clothes. “Help me,” she begs. He spirits her away and they both go into hiding without a word to anyone else. The Venturer team makes jokes about how he’s ghosting them for one of his usual sex marathons, and Taggie’s face is all, “RUPERT WOULD NEVER,” despite mounds of evidence to the contrary. Rupert would EVER, Taggie. He would forever and ever. And he is right now: Of COURSE he and Cameron are screwing each other’s brains out because Rupert cannot be alone with a woman he finds attractive without deciding this is the best way to pass the time. It’s incredible how he compartmentalizes his genuine feelings for Taggie, whom he has just kissed, with his “heroic” “obligation” to protect Cameron via climaxing her back to mental health. I genuinely think if Taggie came to his door to question him, he’d be like, “I mean… what else are we supposed to do?” Rupert is the very reason for Harry Burns’s theory that men and women can’t be friends, because he doesn’t actually want to get to know people before he plunges into their genitals. Taggie being the exception.

Speaking of Taggie, they got rid of that reporter who was halfway dating her last season, and so she just sits on her bed crying to her siblings that Rupert kissed her and then vanished. Her arc for most of the episode is exactly what it was last season: She skulks around the fringes being helpful while wearing chintz, and looks like someone has stabbed her every time Rupert touches another person.

It does not take Tony long to find Cameron, because Rupert’s idea of hiding her is apparently to take her to a property that he owns. Come the fuck on, Bridget. However, this does yield a magical scene in which Rupert speeds his motorbike through the fields as opera music slowly seeps in, and then BOOM, a hot crescendo as a Corinium helicopter rises up out of nowhere next to him and then plows toward his house. Rupert panics, but by the time he gets there, Tony has already loaded Cameron inside and taken off. (She went willingly, after he said, “Sorry I’m late, darling. I had a TERRIBLE headache.” David Tennant must LOVE this job.) They end up at the office, where Tony has a red power suit on a hanger in her dressing room waiting for her to fill it, and he explains that he understands why she did it: He hurt her, and she was defending herself. “I lay in my hospital bed and wondered what this meant for our relationship,” he says, which made me laugh out loud, because typically taking a statuette to the head after you assault someone is a very bad sign for your relationship. Tony offers her a bribe: Come back to his side, in every way, and he’ll magically remember that this was all just a slip-and-fall accident. “You don’t love me. You just want to beat Rupert,” she spits. He shrugs, “Can’t a man have it all?”

So, Cameron puts on the suit and slicks back her hair, and stands with Tony at a Corinium meeting where he says she’s been engaging in a little corporate espionage and has now armed them with the intel they need to fight this battle. He says they’re under attack by “Venturer gangsters” and tells them to be vigilant against poachers. This meeting is otherwise only noteworthy because anytime there is a meeting at Corinium and somebody mentions Four Men Went to Mow, they cut away to at least two hot men in sleeveless flannel shirts and flowing hair, standing by and nodding supportively, as if Tony keeps the actors on standby 24/7. Charles takes this info — about Cameron, not the mowers — back to Venturer, and he’s so convinced that she’s on Tony’s side again that he’s not even swayed when Rupert shows up to give them the scoop. And of course, when Rupert arrives to deliver this information, Taggie is wearing a sensible cardigan and putting the empty glass bottles outside for the milkman. Taggie NEVER gets to be, like, in the bubble bath when he arrives, or on her way out to Da Club.