It’s only the second season and they’re trying to make a visit to Erin “Mew Mew” Lichy’s Hamptons manse a thing. While it was always fun returning to Dorinda Medley’s Blue Stone Manor or Ramona Singer’s Boniva Cliffs, there is not much that’s fun about Erin’s Pilates Palace Brought to You by Lowe’s. Like Erin, it’s just so tastefully ordinary, even though she will tell you that everything is new, it’s all redone, especially the kitchen. Meanwhile, the editors, the cruelest people on this whole show, contrast a picture of last year’s kitchen with this year’s kitchen, and it’s exactly the same except there is now a marble counter in the kitchen island. This is the redecorating equivalent of when, in the last episode, Erin cut off a measly 1.5 inches of her hair in solidarity with her mother, who is about to go bald from chemo. Erin wants to do the least but expects oohs and aahs from the crowd.
Yes, everybody is trying to do last season’s disastrous but ultimately funny trip. Erin has everyone out, but this time there is more food than just caviar on Pringles. There’s a charcoochie plate so big you can smell it from Quogue, a place Sonja Tremont Morgan of the Round Swamp Farm Morgans will never go. There are also full-size sandwiches, a plate that is just entirely pieces of bread, and maybe even a tiny little fruit platter. No one is going to tell Erin she is starving them this year. Sai is also on it. She brought toilet paper — but only one roll — plus her own rolling rack to set up all of her outfits in Erin’s daughter’s room, which has a rather violent poster in the corner.
Oh, and the gifts. If this weren’t a Jewish household, I would say it looked like Christmas morning at Erin’s house. She got everyone a deluxe gift bag, which, of course, included her new mezcal line, which I am not naming because I need it to fail, just like FrameworK, Erin’s impossibly capitalized handbag line. There is also, I assume, a Diva Cup or something like it, only because Becky Minkoff (Crystal Kung Minkoff’s evil stepmother) starts talking about it. If you don’t know what a Diva Cup is, from what I understand, it is a reusable cup that collects menstrual blood and can be emptied out. I do not have a uterus or any of the attendant parts, and I certainly have never had a period, so I’m not sure about what Becky says next. However, she has a harrowing story. She says she tried one and she sneezed and it came flying out, and it “looked like a murder scene.” Again, I am not up on my vaginal physics, but if Becky were wearing clothes or even the thinnest of underwear, wouldn’t that keep it in at least a little bit? How would it go flying unless she were naked and it had a clear path? We don’t know — but if one sneeze is enough to dislodge the cup, would anyone use it? One must sneeze quite regularly on her period. Don’t you think this would’ve been something the blood-moon engineers at Diva had already figured out and fixed? (And while I’m asking questions about periods, what ever happened to those undies you could just bleed in that were always advertised on the subway? Are those no longer a thing?)
After Erin’s completely innocuous offering, Jenna says it’s her turn for gifts. Reliving last year, she gives everyone lingerie, and this year it seems actually sexy and as if it might actually fit one or two of the girls. However, she got Jessel, who was saddled with that hideous nightie last year, something else. It’s in a huge Bottega Veneta bag, and you know Jessel was about to sneeze out her Diva Cup thinking it was a handbag. Sadly, no. It is a Christmas-tree costume, which is the kind of funny, light shade that we love on a Real Housewives program. Jenna has been taking notes, apparently. Even better, she knew the first words out of Jessel’s mouth would be “But where’s my lingerie?,” so Jenna had one more heart-shaped box for Jessel to shut her up for good.
I would much rather talk about the gifts given in this episode because the fights are exhausting. Let’s start with the most fun one, which is Racquel versus Sai and Ubah. When Sai and Ubah, who drove up in Sai’s brand-new Range Rover, which is enormous but still smaller than Erin’s charcoochie platter, arrive at Erin’s, Erin says something like, “I can’t believe you wouldn’t let Racquel sit in the front.” Sai and Ubah are like, What? Apparently, Racquel gets violently carsick, so she had asked Sai if she could drive. Sai thought she meant drive her own car out there, but Racquel meant she would drive Sai’s car. Sai didn’t get it and asked Racquel about Dramamine, and Racquel took that as a hint that she should hop in her Porsche and drive herself out to the Hamptons.
My favorite part of this whole story is that Sai didn’t get mad at the mix-up; she got mad that Racquel, whom she had just met, had asked to drive her brand-new car. I’m with Sai. That is intimate. That is like asking to borrow someone else’s bathing suit — it’s just a little too weird and a little too personal. Neither of them was upset about the crossed messages, but it was Erin who made it into a thing and tried to make Racquel look nasty. It’s the same thing she did to Jenna last season when she told everyone that Jenna wouldn’t fly coach.
The next fight is Brynn versus Sai, who are still mad at each other from the party in the premiere. They sit down and Brynn immediately apologizes. She says she’s sorry and wants to move on. Sai makes a very valid point, which is that she hasn’t even expressed her feelings yet. Brynn doesn’t know what she’s apologizing for. For someone who seems a bit confrontational, Brynn doesn’t want to deal with the fallout of what she creates. As Sai points out, Brynn wants to sweep it under the carpet so they can all just have fun together and pretend like nothing ever happened. But Ubah is also right about Brynn when she says that Brynn will pretend she’s over it, but then she’ll start a conflict between that person and someone else to show that she’s still mad. I like Brynn, but she’s turning out to be the season’s villain. (And we haven’t even talked about her incessant queerbaiting yet.)
As far as the actual argument goes, I think it’s an everyone-is-wrong situation. Sai is mad at Brynn for telling Jenna that Sai doesn’t like her. Jenna tells Sai that Brynn was one of many people that told her Sai was talking shit about her. So, yes, it doesn’t really matter that Brynn told Jenna, but Brynn should still have to listen to what Sai is saying because I think she has a bigger point that isn’t entirely illustrated by this Jenna bullshit. Speaking of Sai being wrong, when Jenna doesn’t remember telling her at the party that Brynn said that, Sai says in confessional, “What are you going to do about an old lady who doesn’t remember things — beat her up until she remembers something? I just have to let it go.” Okay, that’s mean. But also funny. I guess we’ll allow it.
After a lovely dinner during which we learn more about Racquel and learn that Becky’s parents would rather she start boning at 16 than doing drugs, Ubah is back at Erin’s talking to Jessel and the queen of the manor. She says that she can’t open up to the other women because they all twist one another’s words. She has a great point here — this whole show is a giant game of telephone. This is what Ubah means about the pigeons we heard so much about in the trailer: Everyone is carrying news about what the others are saying behind their back, but no one will actually confront anybody.
This is a problem not just with the friend group but also with the show. It seems that, for a group of Housewives, they’re all allergic to confrontation. Even Sai, who is the only one who seems scrappy enough to really throw down, is trying to come off as nicer and calmer. When Brynn joins the conversation, Ubah tells her that Sai isn’t happy with their conversation because she thinks Brynn doesn’t take her feelings seriously. Here it is again. Pigeons. Telephone. Whispers. Discord. Drama. But it’s not interesting drama, because there is nothing behind it. You can’t have a TV show just about words — there needs to be action. We need something to watch. If this is just going to be about conversations, then maybe this should be Andy Cohen’s first foray into the podcast market.
The fight ends, appropriately, with Brynn and Ubah at Erin’s barely new kitchen island just making “Da da da da da da” sounds at each other. It’s a whole lot of sound and fury signifying nothing but us wanting something for real to happen on this here television program.
The next morning, they all sit down to breakfast, and the topic of Jenna’s unpaid Uber ride comes up. She says, “I was just making sure Erin could afford it,” which, again, is the kind of funny, light shade these shows run on. Might Jenna Fucking Lyons actually somehow turn out to be a good Housewife in the old mode?
When Ubah joins the table, she says the reason Sai isn’t there is because she’s still mad at Brynn. She tells everyone they need to clean their ears and stop being pigeons. Well, isn’t Ubah also pigeoning by airing Sai’s beefs when Sai isn’t even there? At this point, I don’t even know what they’re mad about, who is mad at whom, or who said what to whom to make them upset. All I know is that Erin’s new kitchen island sucks and somehow I want to be transported back to last season and Jessel is stomping around looking like a Christmas tree. We don’t need a do-over; we just need Jenna to save us with some more jokes.
