The Real Housewives of Potomac Recap: Unfriendly Black Hotties

Despite the high-octane preview in last week’s “to be continued” teaser, this week’s episode is actually a bit slower paced. That isn’t always the worst thing – one of the best things about an episode with less conflict is that it forces production to engage in unintentional character studies of the state of the cast individually and amongst each other in the build-up to the next major conflict. In this instance, a more deliberate examination of all of the women only reveals that the more seasoned ladies (and OGs especially) have gotten a bit too comfortable resting on their laurels, and the disruption brought about by the newcomers is activating their worst mean girl traits.

Surprisingly, Gizelle is acting like the biggest team player out of the bunch. She is undoubtedly frustrated by Karen’s behavior at their competing events and makes a point to express her frustration, but doesn’t linger on the point after making her irritation clear. She makes nice with Wendy, even attempting to honor her wish to contain the drama to before Wendy’s 40th birthday. It is an unexpected change of pace for her so far this season – I don’t know if Robyn’s firing put her ass in gear or what, but a more conciliatory Gizelle who still isn’t afraid to stir some mess is pleasant to watch.

Her only real mean moment is when she contributes to the pile-on against newcomer Stacey. Without wading too deep into it just yet, Stacey’s demeanor seems to not quite gel with the girls in a way that seems collectively hard for them to describe, and so they land on “boring” or “stiff” for lack of better phrasing. Neither of those labels seems to make sense for what we see on camera so far; I am more prone to land somewhere closer to “quirky” and “corny,” but hey, Wendy is a full corn on the cob and she has managed to make it work for five seasons in a row, so I don’t know if that justifies the collective dismissal. It could just be chalked up to new-girl hazing, but also, Stacey has a quality about her that reminds me of Kenya Moore – maybe it’s because they’re both Detroit girls who seem to come from that hostess/pageant-girl style training, but Kenya similarly rubbed women the wrong way for being too familiar to quick. Time will tell how it all shakes out, but so far Stacey is taking the critiques in stride, which is really all you can ask of her at the moment.

I do have lingering questions over her non-flying pact. DC to Charlotte isn’t all that long of a drive, but does she just not take any bicoastal work during this month? I get that it is meant to honor a family member who was in a plane accident, but is this a practice that she picked up from someone else? I have genuinely never heard of something like this before.

Wendy is similarly uninterested in wading into the muck, holding onto delusions that she will manage to accomplish a peaceful 40th birthday, a tradition that has never been honored on this show. I mean, the person hosting their trip to Lake Norman tried to fight Wendy at Karen’s birthday celebration just two years ago. That said, finally realizing that Wendy is a Gemini is making a lot of her traits make sense: indecisive, impulsive, can’t commit to an idea or a personality. I do think she is balancing out this season, but I don’t know how it didn’t click until now. When it comes to the drama of the trip, however, she is relatively muted, save for kicking off a very bizarre “sidekick/sidechick”  triangle between Jassi, Jacqueline, and Mia.

I am generally waiting to render my verdict on the new women of the cast until the Eileen Davidson Accords embargo lifts (so, next week). However, this is our third season interacting with Jacqueline in some capacity, and I am left more perplexed than ever about her function on this show and relationship with Mia. Last season, we watched her and Mia have a brutal falling out that resulted in the duo levying very damaging allegations at each other. At some point they made up, which is fine, but now Jacqueline is right back to their weirdly possessive and slightly incestuous relationship that raised eyebrows in the first place. What does it matter that Jassi makes a joke about being Mia’s best sidekick? Why are you both arguing over who is the number one sidekick? Why are you sharing a bed with your friend again in a massive house? It is all very bizarre and befuddling, and Mia does nothing to ameliorate the situation by letting everyone who meets them know that Jacqueline is insecure and territorial about their dynamic. It crops up in the weirdest of places: Mia’s friends come to dinner and started sharing old memories, and Jacqueline simply had to interject and remind us that her memories with Mia are older. When Jacqueline got up from the table and insisted that she was the “main course,” I cringed so hard. I have no idea what or who she is trying to prove with these moments, but they are awkward, embarrassing, and simply not landing.

Speaking of Mia — I generally let her get away with her half-truths and outright lies as long as they are not too distracting, but I need her to lay out for me the timeline of her origin story. Is she from DC, from Miami, or from Charlotte? I feel like she has claimed all three at different moments, and I am more confused than ever. Nevertheless, Mia did her best to throw a nice getaway — personal concierges, meals at the ready, activities scheduled — in what felt like an attempt to make up for the fiasco of the Miami trip she handled previously. Ultimately, they’re in a suburb of Charlotte so there is but so much to do beyond paddling around the water in a riverboat, but she still tried to make it nice!

Mia’s clear objective, however, is to attempt to kick up mess with Karen, who is grumpier and meaner than ever on this trip. Karen’s face seems perpetually stuck in a look of disgust or distaste in every scene: she can barely contain her irritation at the women attempting to keep the drama out of Wendy’s birthday when all of her on-camera celebrations have been unmitigated disasters, and is prepared for combat with Gizelle over their competing events even though the facts are clearly not on her side. Mia’s feeble attempts to get Karen to show some remorse and regret in their one-on-one conversation in the Sprinter is roundly dismissed, with Karen insisting that she is not ready to say she “effed up” even though she screamed that she “could have died” the episode prior, a bad look that makes her look deeply self-serving.

Her ugliest moment by far, however, is laying into Jacqueline for the crime of mentioning one of Karen’s most longstanding habits among the cast: drunk dialing her friends and rambling about whatever is on her mind. It is not a new behavior – Gizelle and Robyn called her out on it years ago, and Charrisse made a point of bringing up Karen’s sloppy drunk behavior whenever she got a chance. Even if Jacqueline fully made it up, which I don’t believe she did, the venom with which Karen addresses it completely outweighs any perceived offense. She is so unrelenting that Jacqueline is reduced to tears, only for Karen to respond that “you can cry til the cows, come home, I don’t give a fuck” — a jaw dropping moment that unmasks Karen as a person who is willing to throw anyone overboard if she thinks that it would keep her afloat.

Karen can call herself the eighth wonder of the world all she wants, but at this point it reads more like a natural disaster: uncontrollable, unavoidable, and devastating to themselves and others. It simply does not read well for her to be so vengeful at any attempts to hold her accountable for her behavior, and it transforms her natural sense of theatrics into blustering, malicious, rants. It is unseemly at best and cruel at worst; most shockingly, for someone who generally seems aware of how her behaviors would read on camera and has cultivated a pretty loyal fan base over the years, it betrays a stunning lack of foresight. The Grand Dame is behaving more like a court jester, and it is pretty hard to watch her downfall – especially at the hands of Mia, who is willing to meet Karen at her level and freely sling mud to put her right back in her place.

And after a day of Karen’s ill-advised antics, Mia does just that, setting Karen up by bringing a friend they had both gone out with to let the group know that Karen once drunkenly butt-dialed them both and accidentally let slip that she was spending time with someone not named Ray. The blue-eyes storyline is back in full force, and I don’t think Karen can escape the allegations this time around.

Next week the drama at Lake Norman continues. See you all then!

Cherry Blossoms:

• Serious question: why is Ashley so broke? She’s constantly doing hosting appearances, trying to get this business off the ground, and making it sound like she’s robbing Peter to pay Paul and keep up her lifestyle, and it doesn’t really add up. She’s nine seasons into her tenure as main cast on a major reality show — that is a good high-six figure check. I would assume she gets minimum 10-25K per hosting gig. Her not-quite-ex is handling the house. Where is her money going? It can’t all be the manufacturing costs of the spandex tights for GnA. Are her kids in some elite private school or something? I am perplexed at the state of her finances.

• I don’t know what y’all consider funny anecdotes between friends, but what comes to mind is a prank gone wrong or embarrassing injuries that we can laugh about – not my man sucking my toes at the dinner table. I cannot get the image of Incs tiny hands caressing Mia’s gargantuan feet out of my head and am seriously forever scarred.

• The jury is definitely still out on Stacey’s friend TJ, but I am astonished that so many of these women are making a big fuss over celibacy, especially since several of them consider themselves devout/practicing Christians. When Gizelle compared TJ to Jamal, I gasped – wasn’t Jamal’s incessant sex life a massive part of what broke up their marriage after all? Self-awareness seems to be in absentia this season.

• Many props to Mia for fully circumventing the standard chaos of room arrangements; I have always found it to be the most childish farce of the franchise. Now, would I have been comfortable being assigned to a bunk bed on what is supposed to be a luxury vacation? Absolutely not, but from what I understand this is a family house and I would assume that this room is for the kids, and people were simply forced to double up because the cast is a bit loaded this year.

• Every time these women talk about their relationships with their male partners they keep relating details with pride, yet all I hear is glaring red flags. What do you mean you are helping your man’s business and he is publicly calling you an employee? What do you mean you had to give yourself a fancy title while he kind of lets you take on all this extra work? If you need a hobby or some extra work to do, just go to grad school like every other Black woman going through a life change!

• All drama aside, I am glad to hear that Gordon is taking his mental health seriously. I can’t imagine all this disturbance in his personal life is helping things, but it is clear that Mia was covering for his reckless decision-making for some time, and that is likely what contributed to him being pushed out of the family business.