Last night was a corker! Well, as much of a corker as this curiously muted Hollywood travel guide series gets. Lauren and Audrina rumbled and lurched toward each other, hooded-eyes blazing with the passion and energy of a mostly-shut-down power plant in the hazy brown hills of the Inland Empire. Justin Bobby kind of acted like a normal person, Audrina's sister Maudrina really acted like a normal person, and Heidi and Spencer... Well, in strange juxtaposition to their sad loveless marriage, their sad loveless relationship seemed on the brink of a rupture. Seemed. Just seemed. Nothing ever actually Is on this show. It's all Camel Light smoke and compact mirrors. Read all about it after the jump. It appears that Audrina had, while rolling around town in her rickety old shopping cart with her big helmet on like she does, heard a wicked rumor. That her grunting, aloof fellow fair Justin Bobby had—at some point, the chronology was really (deliberately?) unclear—"hooked up" with her best friend in mournful facial expressions, Lauren. What misery! She confronted Lauren and JB alike, off camera, and they both said that it never happened... But she couldn't believe it. The chap who told her the rumor, evidently one of her Claremont hobo friends named Dino, must be very reliable! So the sunny episode meandered, with Audrina pensive and whiny in her comfy new apartment and Lauren indignant and sad and mad in the house they used to share. Of course they'd have to eventually cross paths. Audrina showed up in the kitchen while LC sorted mail, and they briefly chatted. But Lauren, her jaw hard with principle, would not even give the question the dignity of a response, so Audrina angrily flopped out. What would become of these two nearest and deerest friendsies? Justin Bobby was no help to poor sad Audrina either. He at least denied it but, with his hair shellacked to near Elvis doll degree, he needed to get home and lie down because his scalp hurt terribly and those birds were looking at him funny. He did mention the string of "f yous" and "f this"s that she left on his answering machine. So that was kind of funny. But yeah, he skedaddled. So Audrina was left to stir herself in her rumor soup and worry her upper arms into unrecognizable sticks. Srsly. They're tiny. Her sister offered some cold comfort ("Are you going to apologize?" "No, what did I do?" Um...) but Audrina needed to see Lauren one last time. So they chose a great place for talking, the loud black and candle bar Winston's. Lauren keened, shrieking "You did this! You did this!" We assume she meant the ruination of the friendship, because while she did say then that she was no longer "pointing her fingers," Audrina would not back down off her initial suspicion. Lauren said she found Justin Bobby disgusting, which is always a nice thing to say about your friend's disgusting boyfriend. Anyway, nothing was resolved. Lauren wept into her champagne while Lo drunkenly caressed her and whispered things to her and in her head did small pirouettes and jumps because this is what she's wanted all along and it's finally just now happening and you never know how good it's going to feel to get what you want until you get it and oh happy day more champagne. Otherwise... Holly. Spencer. Fight. Holly. Heidi. Fight. Heidi. Spencer. Not really a fight, just a resigned and defeated admission that Spencer will never do anything right or be a good person. The details are too grim and stupid and repetitive to go into, just know that Heidi no longer has her office, just a sad little cubicle and that, when told he is a bad person by Holly, Spencer made a small quiet lost and bewildered face. Just for a moment you could see the dim glimmer of humanity sparking beneath his skin, but then the electricity was sucked back in by that Inland Empire power plant and the lights went out in Spencer again. Towards the end of all of this, after the winds come and the trees go, there will be some Animates left to briefly scare us while we cower in our shelters. They won't have full capacity, they can't walk, because their batteries will mostly be sapped and the water will still be acidic. But they'll occasionally flicker on and move slightly, their eyes glowing softly, a raspy metallic breath escaping their once-ravenous mouths, their joints creaking in the night. Like old porches on a summer evening. That's what that moment with Spencer was like. He's Post-World. He's from the ruined future. And he knows something we don't. Or... eh. Fuck it.