The Ex List S1E3: Protect and Serve

“My sister is a big sausage fan. ”

Bella gets robbed, and the cop who arrives on the scene is her ex-boyfriend Ronny. We flash back to Bella’s sophomore year of high school, when Ronny was just a young tuff. Her father, who is in the military, sends Bella away for the summer to keep them apart. Ronny doesn’t seem to care much. In the present, Bella is turned on by Ronny’s casually dismissive manner and sexy uniform. Ronny tells Bella’s landlord that the apartment isn’t up to fire code, so they can’t raise the rent. She is thrilled. I find it quite strange that all of Bella’s old boyfriends still live in town.

Throughout the episode, Augie is mildly jealous. I think under the surface he’s seething. He slyly tells Bella’s dad Jimmy to pretend to love Ronny so that he will therefore be less appealing to Bella. Jimmy does so, but it doesn’t have the intended consequence. Instead, Bella is offended that her father is treating her like she’s 15 years old. Everything goes great between Bella and Ronny until the day that Bella sees a neighboring store owner with a black eye. He had been irritating her as of late, and when she asks what happened he mutters, “Ask your boyfriend.” And the shit hits the fan when Bella realizes that this is what all those “favors” Ronny has mentioned are. She unceremoniously dumps him.

On the side, Vivian finally has a storyline that makes her somewhat likable. You see, Vivian is a high school history teacher, and some of her students hang out at “her” beach on the weekends. The boys stare, drooling, at their hot teacher lounging in a bikini. She ignores them. But then the principal receives a note claiming that Vivian is engaging in inappropriate behavior with these boys. In the end, it turns that a somewhat plain girl who likes one of the boys wrote the note. And the next time Vivian sees them at the beach, she wears a modest cover-up and lets the girl enjoy her time basking in a swimsuit and flirting with the boy.