The Real Housewives of New York City Recap: Ubah All Along

I have defended this season of RHONY, saying that Bravo is trying to do something a little more upscale and a little more aspirational and that not every franchise needs to vibrate at a frequency as high as RHOSLC. I stand by that, but as the season progressed, it seemed like everything was a little bit boring. Everyone was holding things back, and they weren’t willing to be Housewives and really go there.

I wasn’t sure who to blame. At first, I thought it was Erin Mew Mew Lichy’s fault because I didn’t like her and I always want to blame her first. Here, she is not talking about her husband selling his crypto or letting him make jokes about how they take mushrooms. Oh, and how can we forget about the myriad ridiculous pranks that no one asked for? Then I thought it was Jenna’s fault because she set such firm boundaries after the first season and still became a fan favorite. I assumed all the other women thought, “Well, if Jenna’s not talking about stuff, then neither am I.” Then I thought it was Brynn’s fault because she kept stirring up drama based on manipulated versions of the truth so we could see how what was really happening and what Brynn was saying didn’t line up. I never really blamed Sai, Jessel, or Racquel because I think they’ve been as present and willing as they could be. And, well, I try not to think about Becky Minkoff unless I really have to.

However, I’ve come to a new conclusion. It was Ubah all along. Just like Agatha Harkness showing up at the eleventh hour to take credit for the chaos she hath wrought, the true demon behind this slumber of a season is Ubah Hassan, and, just like with Agatha, now that she has revealed herself, it makes perfect sense, and we should have seen it all along.

The reason that everyone is withholding is because if they bring anything up to Ubah, she just shouts at them until the conversation ends. The reason why there isn’t any drama in the group is because whenever there is, Ubah jumps in and overrides it with whatever she’s mad about that day. The reason that no one is having fun is because every time they try, Ubah shuts it down. If it’s not something she agrees with, if it’s not her cup of tea, or if she’s simply not in the mood, she pouts and frowns and drags down the mojo all around her. Ubah is, in fact, destroying the show.

Because it’s not like the ladies are without beef. That’s what this trip has taught us, they’ve all just been sitting on their grievances all season for it to finally come flying out all at once at the very end. That is what happens when you suppress things and put them under pressure. They don’t go away, they just explode with a million times the force it took to keep them down that long. Look at all the fights that are erupting all at once — Erin, Brynn, and Sai think Jessel is corny; Sai thinks Jessel’s husband owes her an apology; Ubah thinks Brynn got her job by having sex; Brynn thinks that Erin never has her back; Erin thinks that Ubah should mind her own business about her marriage — these have all been here since the beginning of the season, but it’s just now, at the very end, that they’re all coming out. I think the reason they haven’t before isn’t because the other women were trying to protect themselves from the public; they were trying to protect themselves from Ubah.

A perfect illustration of the problem is when Racquel goes to talk to Ubah about her inappropriate behavior at the beach, telling her she didn’t like it when she loudly said that it was “disgusting.” Ubah says, “But it was disgusting. It was disgusting and it smelled.” Ubah can’t see Racquel’s point and not only reasserts her disdain but adds to it to make it even worse. Ubah tries to say that if Racquel behaved the same way in Somalia, Ubah wouldn’t care because it was the truth. Please. If they all went to Somalia, the first person who even batted her eyelashes wrong would get Ubah with both barrels.

Then Ubah tries to tell Racquel, who hasn’t been to Puerto Rico in six years, that she has been four times and cares more about Puerto Rico than she does, which is just absolutely ludicrous. It’s totally insane. Sai has entered the room at this point and both of them try to tell her that with everything the island has gone through after Hurricane Maria (hello, remember RHONY season 10?) her comments hit differently. But Ubah still doesn’t get it. She tells Racquel not to listen to the other people on the cast if they say that Ubah is being rude, that she wasn’t being rude, she was being herself.

Yeah, but in this instance, being herself was rude! And it wasn’t other voices telling Racquel that, but her own feelings. I think the point that Racquel missed was saying that it was rude instead of saying it hurt her feelings. Racquel took them to a real Puerto Rican beach, one that was her favorite since childhood. She was trying to give them a real experience of what life is like on the island and open up to them by showing them an important place to her. As soon as Ubah arrives, she starts trashing it and throwing a temper tantrum. Sorry, but that is rude, it’s unfounded, and it’s not nice to Ubah’s supposed friend. Maybe if she had seen that both Sai and Racquel were hurt on a deeper level, she would have reacted differently, but I don’t think so. Ubah can’t be told differently; she thinks that how she feels is absolute, and all of her opinions are justifiable facts.

When Erin and Brynn are trying to play a (oh, Catholic Jesus, no) prank on Erin’s husband Abe, just look at what happens next. Erin calls him and he’s on speaker with Brynn and Erin and the whole group surrounding them and Brynn is pretending that she and Erin are in the bath together and trying to get Abe all worked up. As far as pranks go, it’s seemingly harmless, and Abe clearly knows that he’s on speaker, and because it is a work trip, he knows he’s also on camera. That’s why he was so careful with what he said but also went along with the game.

When Ubah sees what’s going on, she shouts, “Abe, you’re on speaker phone, and everyone is listening to you.” She storms off and talks about how wrong it is for Erin to do this to her husband. Yeah, but it’s Erin’s husband. She can treat him how she wants to, and he clearly doesn’t have a problem with this, or he would have hung up. Everyone is fine with it. Even if Ubah thinks it’s dumb, just let everyone have a little laugh. Brynn is right: Ubah is where fun goes to die. But to make it worse, she shouts, “Have some respect; some of us are praying for a husband every single day.” Okay, Erin playing a trick on her husband is disrespectful, but how Ubah behaved at the beach earlier that day is not? Where is that GIF of the lady doing impossible math when you need it. And why is Erin’s behavior disrespectful to people who don’t have husbands? Copy and paste the math lady GIF again, please.

Jenna might keep large parts of her life off camera and won’t even tell us how much money she made at her stoop sale (maybe for tax reasons?), but she is a good sport. When she comes outside and all the ladies have silky smooth merkins to make fun of her, she starts laughing hysterically. She’s in on the joke. She even goes so far as to try to style them so they look better. Then Jenna tries to get all of the ladies to do synchronized swimming with her, which she has loved since she was a child. (She says if there was a gay team, she would join it, and I am happy to report that there is one in New York City, and I bet they would love to film for next season.) It’s the only time in the season that I can think of when the women are all together and having fun. We need more of what Jenna is bringing — minus creaming Racquel in the forehead with her elbow — and a lot less of what Ubah is bringing.

When the artistic swimming routine is done, Ubah asks Erin what’s wrong and Erin tells her that she didn’t like her yelling about Abe. “Every minute, you find something to be mad at,” Ubah yells. “She ruins everything.” Okay, that is a projection. You know how I feel about Mx. Mew Mew Lichy, but it’s not her that is always mad at something or who ruins everything, it’s Ubah. And also, Ubah, maybe if you weren’t so rude and bombastic all the time people wouldn’t always be getting mad at you.

Then it’s time for Brynn and Ubah to get into it, with Brynn telling Ubah that she is a commercial flight and Brynn only flies private, which is the kind of annoying and stupid read that Brynn always likes to make, but Ubah tells her, “With who? Someone else’s husband?” Okay, that is just below the belt. Ubah is taking the nastiest things that people say about Brynn on the internet, bringing it onto the show, and throwing it in her face. And, don’t make me do this, but Ubah thinks she’s of the same caliber as Naomi Campbell and Gisele Bündchen? Please. Where is her big fat mansion? Where are all of her Paris runway walks? Where is her Russian oligarch and/or Super Bowl-winning husband? Naomi and Gisele don’t even know Ubah’s name, she’s not in the same league. Period. Sorry. But she made me!

This is when Erin and Brynn start their little fight about whether or not Erin had Brynn’s back (she didn’t) and then Erin’s third fight of the night erupts, when Ubah tells Sai that earlier when they were talking to Erin about what Erin, Brynn, and Sai said about Jessel last episode, Erin said it was just them talking and her listening. Okay, that is classic Mew Mew, to blame all the shade on others, but Ubah’s behavior also had a hand in this argument. As Erin said, if she told Jessel and Ubah what was said, then Ubah would yell at Erin for being a pigeon. Now, she’s getting yelled at by Ubah and Sai for not wanting to say anything. That’s what I mean about it being Ubah’s fault; all of the women feel trapped by her behavior. No matter what they do, they’re going to be victim to irrational and mean-spirited yelling, and they don’t want to poke the bear, as it were. Many lesser casts would poke the bear at every opportunity, having the same fight over and over again until we’re exhausted by it. Luckily, this cast only clocked in to have the fight once, at the very end of the season, and, for the first time since episode one of this season, I can’t wait to see how this fight ends.