'The Kardashian's Episode 4 Recap: Landon, Atiana, Alabama, and Carl

Now that Kim successfully completed her UCB training and crossed guest-writing for SNL off of her New York alt-comedy bucket list, The Kardashians can finally focus on Kourtney. Travis is proposing to her in Santa Barbara. I like Kourtney this season, maybe because she hasn’t been on screen much, and more likely because she’s the only of the girls who seems to not actively be suffering from panic attacks right now. The Kravis kourtship is offering true open-mouthed romance on this show without any of the sinister narcissistic elements of Kimye-era stunts like, just as one example, when Kanye presented Kim with a hologram of her father, who died of esophogeal cancer in 2003, as a 40th birthday surprise.

The entire family meets in Santa Barbara, even Kylie and Kendall. My colleague Fran Hoepfner aptly called the two Jenner girls “the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of The Kardashians.” They’re in the wings, doing their own thing, mixing Pepsi with 818 Tequila, renaming their son “Wolf,” oblivious to the plot. But the real outlier this week was a teenaged individual named Carl, who was in every single shot of the engagement party footage, housing Shirley Temples. We learn about Carl via a chyron when Travis’s kids are hanging with the Kardashian women before the big surprise event: there’s Landon, Travis’s son; Atiana, Travis’s stepdaughter; Alabama, Travis’s daughter; and Carl, family friend.

Kris, Kourtney, and Khloe maintain that it’s okay that the Barker kids (and Carl) are present, even though Kourtney’s kids are not. They’re older. Really, they’re afraid to tell the kids’ father Lord Scott Disick (who also happens to be Khloé’s soulmate; they’ll get there eventually) that his ex-girlfriend is getting married. They all keep justifying this decision on a loop, trying to convince themselves that their cowardice was a way to protect the kids.

Of course, they get engaged, Kravis tongue pokes, and the Barker kids post it all on TikTok for the Disick kids to see. Maybe they even saw it on Carl’s page. He seems pretty famous on there for gonzo-style comedy such as Smacking Girls Butt In Public Prank and White Guy Giving Out N Word Pass Prank. (I’m not sure why he wasn’t consulted for Kim’s SNL monologue, but we’re past that.) Kourtney has a million missed calls from Penelope, who is nine-years-old, and when her mom calls her back, Penelope is sobbing. Reign, who is seven, isn’t happy either. “Not exciting,” he says. They’re likely at Scott’s house. Kendall wants the sisters to see all this from Scott’s point-of-view, but gets a little too aggro with it. Later, she arm-wrestles Landon. That’s a wrap on Kendall. Kylie dissipated into nothingness. In two weeks’ time, she will attend boyfriend Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival, where ten audience members would die from compressive asphyxiation during the rapper’s set.

Back in Calabasas, Kim and Khloé go on a walk at the same place where she once hid in a bush (remind you of anyone?). “Just the fact that it’s a lifelong meme,” Kim says, not finishing her thought. She doesn’t have to. Khloé agrees to just the fact that it’s a lifelong meme. Khloé’s man is going to therapy and recommitting to his family. Once again, the lag between filming and airing is tragic, and not necessarily in a dramatic irony sort of way that heightens tension in the show. It’s just sad. This scene was filmed in mid-to-late October 2021, and Maralee Nichols gave birth to her son by Tristan on December 1 of that year. Kanye stormed out of SNL halfway through Kim’s monologueand hasn’t talked to her since because she said she was “divorcing” “the world’s greatest rapper” and he contends that she merely “filed for divorce” and he is so much “more than just a rapper.” I thought that Kanye and Kim co-wrote this with the help of Dave Chappelle, so I would assume he knew about this line? I don’t like having the privileged knowledge of how the Kardashians’ lives unfold before they do anymore, especially when all the Kanye stuff is so bleak.

Then Khloé goes to see the only man who really appreciates her for who she is, through fillers and filters, her sister’s ex-boyfriend and the father of her nieces and nephews, Scott Disick. His new dog that goes for $25,000 “market rate” pees on the floor, which isn’t gonna work for Khloé, who arranges her Oreos every thirty days. She cleans it up and Scott yells, “Oh there you go, get down on it, Khloverton!” and tells her he’s going to hire her as his maid, but like a hot topless or bottomless maid. For what it’s worth, he’s fine with the engagement, but feels sorry for his kids, who wanted to be there.

“I couldn’t do the job of being with her. So I salute Travis. Kourtney is not the simplest when it comes to everything,” he tells Khloé.

But Kourtney seems easier than she used to be when she’s with Travis. They make out in a matted tour bus bed on the way down to San Diego in matching Phoebe Bridgers skeleton pajamas, as I’m sure Travis has done with countless women. But this time’s different: they’re doing an egg retrieval. Inside an exam room, a nurse hands the couple a bunch of condoms, lubes, and a specimen cup, then shuts the blinds so that they can have sex to collect a sperm sample.

The old Kourtney wouldn’t get this much screen time. The old Kourtney wouldn’t dare do this. She’s happy. And luckily, family friend Carl’s caught it all on video. Just kidding.

Last week: ‘The Kardashians’ Episode 3 Recap: Let Us Be Covered in the Blood of Christ