Last week, when Sonja Tremont Morgan of the Ace Bandage Morgans almost brained herself on the dinner table during a drunken tumble, I was very afraid for her safety and welfare, especially since we were treated to a preview of a gurney in front of their luxury vacation rental bathed in the ominous strobing of red and blue lights. My worry was superfluous. Our favorite floozy is made from tougher mettle than that. In fact, she wakes up the next morning feeling as fresh as a daisy and, she reports, that is exactly how her coochie is smelling, too.
In fact, everything that Sonja says after her fall is absolutely hilarious. As Bethenny is picking her up off the floor, she’s still slurring, “I’m gonna knock you out. I’m gonna knock you out,†repeatedly, like she’s doing the world’s worst LL Cool J karaoke. After Bethenny and Barbara put Sonja to bed, she’s lying there saying, “All I want is a kiss,†to Bethenny, and, “I just want to sleep with you.†As Bethenny is trying to call the paramedics, she says, “Look at that ass, it’s such a nice ass.†Then Sonja literally kisses Bethenny’s ass, making literal what has been figuratively happening with all of the Housewives for years.
When the paramedics finally show up to tell Bethenny and Barbara that Sonja won’t die in her sleep, she sees that they’re very attractive and says, “Will you check Bethenny, too?,†trying to get some cheap thrills for her lonely, single friend. Even in a blackout, Sonja is still the world’s best wing woman. To test if Sonja is coherent, Bethenny asks who the president is. “Clinton,†Sonja responds, because in her arrested development, it is still the early 2000s and she’s married to a Morgan, never got sued over a bad movie deal, and hasn’t flushed one BlackBerry down the toilet of her townhome. When she’s pushed, she says, “That fucking Trump guy,†which is exactly what he is called in the Moylan household but a bit ironic because Sonja supposedly dated Trump, most likely banged him, and definitely voted for him.
The real LOL moment for me, though, was when the EMT asks if she takes any medication daily and she says, “No, but I’m allergic to dust mites,†as if that might be applicable to this particular situation in any way. She is clearly wasted and possibly banged up, and she thinks the most pertinent detail is that she is allergic to something that may or may not even exist in Miami.
But as amusing as Sonja is during the whole ordeal, most of her cohort is not. Ramona and Tinsley literally walk right by a stretcher and an ambulance to get to their Uber to go have drinks somewhere in Miami. Luann really beat them in a race to the bottom, though. I understood what all of the women were saying about how self-absorbed she is this season, but I didn’t really feel it until now. Now it sort of feels like all-over eczema, which I can’t scratch but I just have to because if I don’t I’ll have to live with the ickiness of doing absolutely nothing.
Luann’s conversation outside with Ramona the morning after is one of the most awful, tone-deaf, self-absorbed things I’ve ever seen in my life and I follow Ivanka Trump on all social-media platforms. Luann doesn’t seem to care that much about Sonja, she’s just upset that everyone at dinner last night told her that she was being annoyingly self-absorbed. She answers this criticism by … talking about herself [shrug emoji, skull emoji, a not yet invented brain-exploding emoji].
“I finally found something I love and they rip it apart, all of them do,†she says about her cabaret career. “After falling on my face all they have to do is rip me down.†This seems to be the crux of Luann’s problem this season. It reminds me of something she said when showing off her upstate house: “I landed on my feet, didn’t I?†Luann is so embarrassed, so insecure about her arrest and everything that went down since getting engaged to Tom that she has to prove to everyone that she has her life together. She has a job, she has a house, she is going to AA meetings. She wants to prove herself so badly that she’s retreated into herself, like a dog’s lipstick boner after a cold bath.
She is also totally misunderstanding the situation. “They don’t want to see me do well,†she says of the other women. Why would that be true? That, along with “They’re just jealous,†are the biggest red herrings that narcissists believe about themselves. All of these women want Luann to do well, that’s why they helped get her into rehab and have been supporting her ever since. She just can’t see what an asshole she’s being, can’t blame herself for what is going on, so she turns it back at those around her.
Her assessment of Sonja’s drinking problem, however, is the annoying proselytizing that Dorinda accused her of last season. When she confronts Sonja about it she says, “Face planting on the table is not normal.†Sonja responds that it was just a year or two ago that Luann herself was falling in the bushes. “But I own that I have a problem with alcohol,†she says. Um, no she didn’t. She did once she got arrested and the court made her. And even since, we know she hasn’t been going to her own AA meetings, so to try to convince Sonja to go along with her seems richer than 17 Scrooge McDucks.
I’m going to skip over the women’s trip to Wynwood Walls because there are only so many jokes I can make about tacky resort art and, well, I just don’t want to make any of them. The tempus is fugiting, or in Luann’s case, the tempus is fugitive. Instead, let us go directly to this hodgepodge party where all of the ladies invited their Miami friends to come by for some stale sushi and splashy cocktails that will never have enough ice in them for Ramona Jane Singer. (I made up that middle name.)
I don’t care what you say, but I am a Ramona and Mario shipper. Ramonio? Marmona? I don’t know. I don’t care. These two are endgame to me, mostly because that montage of past awkward sexual moments between them reminds us that these two can fuck. The sexual dynamism between the two, along with some hydroelectric dams, could power the entire nation of Nicaragua. They’re so goofy and familiar together and, I don’t care what they say, they’re both so incredibly in love. Even that dude Kevin that Ramona’s been dating and invited to the party sort of looks like a cross between Mario and Tim Cook.
Ramona says she invited both her ex and a date because she didn’t want Mario to think that he had to spend the whole night with her. What kind of logic is that? Did she just want to make Mario miserable? Did she want to run her date off because her ex was there? I don’t understand this gambit at all and neither does Sonja, who keeps blowing up Ramona’s spot whenever possible, which, hear me out, still makes her a great wing woman. Sonja is trying to fling Ramona and Mario back together by making Ramona’s machinations bald, which might bring Mario around to make a move. Okay, maybe not.
With all the guests gathered around, Dorinda makes a speech to the assemblage of hucksters and grifters that the Housewives have arranged on this spit of land that will disappear in three years time. It ends up just like the speech at Ramona’s fundraiser, with all of the women yelling non sequiturs about themselves over each other, much to the consternation of those who are staring awkwardly into their vodka-sodas or, as Ramona calls them, vodka with lots of ice in a wineglass with soda water poured over it and two limes. They are no longer fit for public consumption or public speaking. We have ruined their manners, we have ruined their ability to function among laypeople. We have destroyed these women, and thank God for it.
I guess we can’t quite finish this recap without talking about Tinsley and her inability to get over Skott the Koupon Kabin King. Her sister Dabney (named after comedy great Dabney Coleman) came down from Palm Beach to the party and Tinsley talks about how sad she is to be single. They’re outside on the patio by the pool, the humidity curling their straightened hair by increments, and Tinsley is crying remembering all the good times they had together in Miami. Tinsley’s tears, like Swarovski crystal hearts, fall awkwardly down her cheek as Dabney tells her that there is someone out there who will love her for all of that fabulousness. Tinsley cocked her head as if to say, “Is there though?†but instead she caught some flash of light, some glint off the ripples in the water or maybe just a headlight reflecting off of a bird in the air. Something, some little grain of hope that Tinsley took as a sign. That and the smell of hot tub chlorine is going to have to be enough to get her through. And it will. It will.