I wasn’t planning to watch the Season 5 reunion of Selling Sunset, which dropped on Netflix last Friday. I’ve dipped in and out of the show over the years, getting sucked in by a particularly wacky Christine Quinn look (the chair purse, her Barbie platform shoes) then zoning back out again when the vapidity and pettiness got too much for me to handle. Christine, let’s be honest, is easily the best part of the show; she embraces her villain status with aplomb, and her explosively extra fashion blows every other cast member’s feeble attempts out of the water. When promo stills first hinted that Christine didn’t show up for the reunion, I figured, that’s that — no point tuning in.
Then I checked Instagram sometime in the mid-afternoon on Friday, and the stories of a good half of the lesbians I follow were filled with clips from the reunion of real estate agent Chrishell Stause, 40, and her new lover, 27-year-old nonbinary Australian musician G Flip.
I’d known that these two were apparently dating for a while now, having seen reports from queer internet sleuths who’d noted Chrishell hanging around with G Flip and their friend and collaborator Lauren Sanderson. But Chrishell confirming the relationship on the reunion added a whole other layer of bizarro-world intrigue to it all, and suddenly I was hooked. I hadn’t realized that Chrishell’s ex Jason Oppenheim — co-owner of the Oppenheim Group, the luxury real estate brokerage where the Selling Sunset cast members work — would have to watch his now ex-girlfriend make out with a person dressed like a 14-year-old white boy cosplaying as a gangster for a gigantic international audience.
The Selling Sunset reunion was shot many months after the season's conclusion, by which time fans had already seen and reacted to it. That also meant that cast members’ lives had moved on in the interim, giving us new gossip to hash out — most significantly, that Chrishell and Jason had ended their relationship, seemingly because Jason didn’t want to start a family, and Chrishell is now dating someone who seems comically unlikely to settle down and raise small children anytime in the near future. G Flip is “living their best rock-star life,” Chrishell says during the reunion, revealing that she’s given herself permission to back off on planning her family and just have fun in the moment.
That means we’ve been treated to a TMZ report of the couple’s messy makeout at a gay club in Los Angeles, and Instagrams of Chrishell showing off a persona she invented, “Chaz Malone,” inspired by G Flip and Lauren Sanderson: in sunglasses, a backward hat, and a leather jacket, Chrishell flicks her tongue out of her mouth and makes a “come on” gesture at the camera. The queer fuccbois have taught her well, and it is frightening.
During the reunion, we’re shown a few mind-melting moments from G Flip’s forthcoming music video for their single, “Get Me Outta Here,” premiering later this week on May 13. The two first met when mutual acquaintances suggested Chrishell could be a fit for the video, and on set they fell in lust. The song makes me feel unbearably old — every time I listen to it all I can think is, “this is just noise!!” — and the music video perhaps even more so. (Though I have to admit that Gay 4 Me, G Flip’s collab with Lauren Sanderson, is kind of a bop.) The released clip reveals Chrishell as an early-aughts video vixen, with crimped hair, a key necklace, and a tight black tube top; she pouts for the camera while singing along to the words in a convenience store. G Flip, in typical form, wears a black mesh tee over a sports bra, black sunglasses, and a trucker hat, and they’re constantly flipping off the camera, baring their teeth and sticking their tongue out. In the convenience store, the two push each other up against shelves of chips and make out aggressively. It looks terrible and sounds even worse, but the awful spectacle of it all is mesmerizing.
The best part of the reunion by far was watching Maya Vander’s completely baffled expression as she reacted to the news that Chrishell is dating this particular person, of all people; it instantly became a meme. From someone else, and in a different context, Maya’s open-mouthed confusion might have come across as anti-gay, but knowing what we do about Maya — the most down-to-earth of the bunch, someone who wears her plain business-formal LBD to the office and the reunion alike — it comes across as genuine astonishment without real malice. “I’m still processing everything,” she says when reunion host Tan France asks her why she looks so shocked. “I’m happy for you. Whatever makes people happy, it doesn’t matter.” Maya explains that upon hearing G Flip uses they/them pronouns, she wasn’t sure what to expect. “I was just like, ‘Wait, what?’” She then adds that she knows Chrishell wants to be a mom, and she hopes G Flip “is in the same boat or whatever.” It’s an absolutely hilarious moment. Surely most of the people on that couch, as well as those of us watching at home, were also thinking “??????” This relationship is a head-scratcher not just or even mostly because G Flip is nonbinary — they’re also 27, and Australian, and they dress that way, and they sound like that, and their name is G Flip.
Chrishell knows this and got in on the joke when she posted the meme of Maya’s face to Instagram over the weekend, adding “me realizing how many people didn’t know you could adopt children on your own,” and assuring fans that she and Maya have laughed over the moment and remain friends. In the caption, she writes, “I know a lot of you are confused. But what is important is I am not.”
And you know what: True! Generations of queer activists have fought for a world in which Chrishell Stause, who was once engaged to Glee star Matthew Morrison, can have a whirlwind rebound romance with a queer Australian rock star who wears trucker hats that say “horny” on them. This relationship is all but assured to last a cool six to ten weeks before Chrishell and Jason try to make it work again for the sake of the reality show that’s made them both unspeakably famous, but for now, we can enjoy footage of Chrishell giving G Flip tattoos and try to ignore the way this show perpetuates harmful body standards. Love is love!!!!!! ●