The men’s private lives continue to get complicated in this fifth episode. Woody’s been stalking his estranged wife Kenya. He catches her coming home from a trip one morning (after he sat in his car in front of her house all night) with her boss Owen (Shannon Mosley) and confronts them both, accusing them of having an affair, which they both deny. Woody doesn’t buy their denials and storms off in anger.

On their radio show, Nandi surprises Spencer by inviting two men who are auditioning to be contestants on her upcoming reality dating show. This is for the audience to vote on which one she should go out with. As she openly flirts with both men, Spencer sits there looking extremely uncomfortable, in the first hint that his interest in Nandi is more than professional. We later see Nandi filming the show, out on a date to the beach, and then dinner with a man called “Thunder” (Jay Hunter), but she finds the whole experience cheesy and feels no chemistry with him at all, despite her manager Wendy’s attempts to get her to pretend otherwise to make the show look good.

When Aspen tells Gabriel that she and Sabrina are going on a girl’s trip to Jamaica for a weekend, this makes him begin to suspect that those two are having an affair. When he brings it up with the guys later, they all just laugh at him, thinking he’s being paranoid. We see Sabrina show up at The Jump Off to check in with Earnest, and it seems like she’s more interested in him, although he doesn’t seem to catch on to that. She asks him if he wants to get dinner the next night, but he can’t because his ex-wife Portia called him, finally agreeing to meet, which he’s hoping means he has another chance. Sabrina ends up planning dinner with Aspen again, which just furthers Gabriel’s suspicions about them.

We see Lauren meet with Harris, the young football player from the previous episode, while he’s training on a field, where we learn that he’s adopted and Lauren has managed to unseal his adoption records for him. She hands him the files, which include his birth certificate that has his birth mother’s name, Tasha Sanders, but his birth-father is not listed. It has an address for Tasha and it’s in Miami, and he’s conflicted about whether to track her down or not. Lauren promises to help in whatever he decides. Dmitri shows up to meet with Lauren, and while watching Harris play she remarks to him that Harris is like a “mini-you.”

The foreshadowing isn’t that subtle…

Later, back at his mansion, Dmitri and Lauren start heavily making out. They get so far as him having her pants pulled down to her ankles, and her shirt and bra pulled up as he starts sucking on her titties, but then she stops him and says she’s not ready for this yet, and she leaves. Talk about a cocktease!

Things come to a head that night as The Jump Off, where the 5 guys are hanging out. But then still-unnamed woman played by Grace Chavez, whom Earnest met and hooked up with before, shows up following her very angry husband, Micheal (Jensen Atwood). He shouts at Earnest for sleeping with his wife, and despite Earnest swearing that he had no idea that she was married, he punches Michael in the face. Dmitri rushes to Earnest’s defense and starts fighting Michael, as the other guys try to break them up. During the chaos Dmitri falls and hurts his shoulder. As Micheal is dragged out of the club, Earnest yells at Grace for not telling him she was married, to which she replies that he never asked. It’s at this moment that Portia had walked in, having heard everything, and tells Earnest she doesn’t want to see him after all.

So Earnest’s chances with his ex-wife are blown, and Dmitri is now facing a potentially serious injury that could impact his football career. That’s one heck of a cliffhanger ending for this episode. With all of these developments, it’s a sign that the series is getting more intense

We get two full sex scenes in this episode, an opening scene between Earnest and Grace, and one between Gabriel and Aspen, which follows Apsen dancing on a stripper pole that they have installed in the bedroom. It’s hot stuff.

Chacebook rating: FIVE STARS

Jason Majercik is selling this UNRATED 4-DVD boxset of Zane’s The Jump Off season 1 for $39.99. Email him at quinn_nash@hotmail.com for his softcore inventory list