Despite some glimmers of levity, RHOP continues to be weighed down by the women’s refusal to break free from deeply entrenched oppositional positions.
On July 29, 2022, a young woman from Houston, Texas dropped a fairly decently regarded album called Renaissance – and on the eleventh track, “Heated,” crooned whole lotta textin’ with no conversations / whole lotta playin’ victim and a villain at the same time. Now, Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter may have been referring to the men, fans, and haters in her life who generally can’t get enough of her, but she and Drake may very well have been watching Real Housewives of Potomac when they crafted these lines. At present, the cast is dominated by women who have no idea what role they want to play in their working group from one episode to the next, and it makes for a watching experience that is more volatile and fatiguing than my regular wax appointments.
One of the core arguments of this episode plays directly into this frustration. Gizelle takes an opportunity during dinner to speak on her daughter graduating, and her anxieties around sending Grace off to college at FAMU considering the generally abominable sociopolitical climate in Florida. It’s a touching and fair conversation — nearly every other week the Sunshine State seems to usher in a new layer of oppressive legislation that ranges from anti-immigrant to anti-queer and transphobic to anti-DEI and whatever they believe “critical race theory” to be, while the scourge of gun violence and gun access remains unaddressed. Somehow, though, the emphasis from both production and the women in attendance pivots to Wendy and Candiace’s lack of participation in the conversation, with edited shots of the glances they exchange at the table implying that the two women have stooped so low in their grudge against Gizelle as to insult her daughter. Gizelle goes so far as to announce that she is no longer speaking to Candiace and Wendy because of this slight, a perplexing declaration given that she already committed to giving both women the silent treatment at the outset of the season and has generally applied a six-foot COVID boundary of personal distance from them.
This is an irritating line of conflict because it leaves Candiace and Wendy in a no-win position. Wendy and Candiace are not on speaking terms with Gizelle, who has generally behaved as if there are sentient ghosts talking when sharing space with them, so how could they participate in the conversation? Are they supposed to sit with smiles frozen like the Joker the whole time during a conversation that likely carried on for way longer than the segment they taped? The best they can do is mind their business – save for Wendy briefly adding her own concerns about sending a child alone to Florida – and that is somehow still a provocation. Gizelle has certainly found her face stuck in a position of disdain whenever Wendy so much as opens her mouth, and Robyn made very clear last season that her choice to exclude Wendy and her kids from a family day was about her distaste for the mother and not the kids. In this instance, however, Wendy and Candiace’s inscrutable expressions are deemed so disrespectful that the group is now openly gossiping about the duo at the cabana beach day the next day, only to peevishly clam up when Wendy walks up to confront them. It’s unbelievably childish behavior that falls short of anything resembling compelling conflict.
It’s unfortunate how much space this tension takes up this week, because the episode is full of plenty of light moments. While I would personally still like to be declared ruler of Bravo for a day so that I can summarily ban all contrived game prompts, the women met the moment and gamely went back and forth with their raunchy moments. In quick order, we discover that Juan has a cuckold fantasy, Wendy and Eddie are anal enthusiasts, and Karen claims to reserve her extramarital fantasies to very active wet dreams. It’s silly and a bit out of control, but it also functions as a soft and fuzzy launching pad to discuss the state of the women’s relationships. I will leave it you to ponder what it means that even in his fantasies, Juan wants Robyn to leave him alone, but Ashley becoming squeamish over her sex life forces her to admit that she has yet to fully cut ties with the cryptkeeper and has apparently recruited a “confidence coach” to help her take that next step.
While Ashley has not yet been able to cross the finish line into executing her divorce, she has been investing her energy into another space – namely, her long-abandoned singing career. She has been working on a new song to honor her journey, “Healing and Thriving,” and debuts it for the women (shoutout to Candiace for calling back to their butter knife moment and handing Ashley one to use as a mic). It’s no “Coffee & Love,” but the vocals aren’t half bad! I could definitely hear the melody playing in the background of a tampon commercial someday soon, and it was lovely to see the women continue to encourage Ashley to take the next step.
The two duchesses of deception, Mia and Karen, also continue to circle each other in this cold war. I was bullish on Mia early – no matter how you may feel about her persona, she is built for Housewives, with a knack for stoking conflict, creating chaos, and moving on to the next moment without many grudges held. This episode is prima facie evidence of her stronger qualities. In one moment, she briefly banters back and forth with Karen about each spreading rumors about the other in their marriage; the next, she is turning the whole table upside down with an incomprehensible retcon of her marriage to Gordon. Not only does she breezily admit that her husband is, in her words, “broke as hell,” she claims that when they initially got together while she was working as a steakhouse burlesque entertainer, she had more money in the bank than he did courtesy of a mysterious inheritance that has never come to light until this moment. Now, perhaps it is possible that she has managed to get on the last will and testament of a former sponsor with money to spare, but riddle me ignorant if I find it hard to believe that Mia Thornton didn’t pair up with the married man who was allegedly spending $10,000 a night on her in part due to the security he could provide her at the moment. But hey, if she wants to claim a stripper heiress fantasy for the plot, who am I to stop her? Mia may have a loose relationship with the truth, but at least she knows how to make it entertaining.
The loose and noncommittal energy that Mia has – making a bit out of owing an obligation to Karen, breezily adding comic chaos to the already inconsistent narrative of her marriage, rejecting Karen’s claims of her engaging with a rapper only to admit to sharing intimate company with a rapper moments later – is exactly the burst of lightness that Potomac has been missing this season. We see glimmers of it here and there, like the beachside photoshoots and raunchy prompts, but the show continues to be weighed down by the women’s refusal to break free from deeply entrenched oppositional positions that don’t allow for forward progress. It’s a shame that an episode where Mia jokes about her feet being big enough to handle braking on a golf cart and Karen brings a clown mask as a prop to mock Gizelle is trapped in the fog of never-ending war among the cast, with no seeming end in sight. If the women cannot figure out how to lay their burdens down and commit to turning a new page in their collective dynamic, these sprinkled moments of humor won’t be enough to justify committing to the franchise much further.
See you all next week!
Cherry Blossoms:
• It’s taken a while to get some real camera time with Keiarna, but I am enjoying her presence on this trip. She is quick, charming, and unafraid to step right into the mix and address her concerns – namely, calling out Candiace and Wendy for leaving her in the lurch while she was sick (which neither of them properly apologized for). Also, her confessional look is immaculate. So far, so good!
• Some of the outfit choices are bizarrely comical this episode. Why is Karen walking around in a sheer robe and teddy? Why did Candiace wake up with shades on? Is the mamajuana getting to the women or what?
• The more Gizelle attempts to integrate conversation about Jason into the show, the less I believe that this situation is anything remotely relevant in her life. I believe that they’re friends, but I just can’t take any other aspect of this conversation seriously, and don’t care to know any more, especially if it won’t even be filmed on camera.
