For years when my Bravo friends, especially the Black ones, asked if I watched Married to Medicine, I would shrug them off. I believed nothing else could give me that specific Real Housewives high, the rush of dopamine my body experiences upon hearing the particular frequency of screech achievable only at a Housewives reunion. I was reluctant to start what I had preconceived as a “second tier†Bravo show. But two episodes in, I was hooked and running around my apartment singing, “Now paging Dr. Jackie!â€
Following the lives of female doctors and doctors’ wives in the Atlanta community, Married to Medicine features a cast of women who are both relatable and completely absurd, and they share incredible chemistry. Watching it feels like watching early Housewives episodes, before the franchise became larger than life. You can feel the authenticity of this sisterhood.
Nine seasons in, Married to Medicine is giving what a lot of Bravo shows have been missing lately; this past season of Real Housewives of Atlanta was kind of sleepy, while Beverly Hills was doing entirely too much, both onscreen and off. Married to Medicine cleansed my eyes with entertaining story lines, real friendships, and drama that, even when it goes too far (as some of this season did), never rises to the level of unwatchable, like RHOBH is starting to feel. In just 18 episodes, there was more compelling drama than on RHOA’s past season and more authenticity than RHOBH’s past two seasons. Of the three shows, only Married to Medicine delivered a season legitimately worthy of the three-part reunion it received. Here are some standout reunion moments that illustrate what makes this show Bravo’s hidden gem.
Dr. Heavenly’s Hellish YouTube Channel
Within seconds of the reunion’s start, Dr. Contessa got into a verbal altercation with Dr. Heavenly. Before even getting fully situated in glam, Contessa followed Heavenly onto the street to confront her about her social-media antics. Both women had to be held back, with Contessa finally yelling, “Have a good reunion,†and blowing a kiss at Heavenly before returning to her trailer.
This blowout is the culmination of a season-long feud between these previously close friends. Although Heavenly always had a habit of running her mouth, this season her YouTube channel created rifts within the group. From saying that Contessa is in an abusive relationship to implying that Quad slept with her married contractor, Heavenly used her channel to talk shit about anyone and everyone. This culminated in an early-season intervention giving us a great meme of Contessa in a purple wig and the instantly iconic Dr. Simone quote “This is America! I get to choose who I fuck with!â€
At the reunion, Heavenly again had to answer for a pattern that everyone, including Andy Cohen, has tried to point out to her for years with little avail: Heavenly will air out her friends’ business for the world to hear, deliver a half-assed apology, and then begin the cycle the next day. Her relationship with Contessa has suffered the most, with the two going from being travel buddies to fighting on the street — but that’s not enough to stop her from being messy, though she said she would shut down her channel if it started to affect her money.
Heavenly may be messy, but unlike Lisa Rinna, who uses her social-media account as a weapon for maliciousness, she genuinely sees her YouTube as a space to talk further about things that are already on-camera. There’s something likable about Heavenly despite her shortcomings; as we’ve gotten to know her over the years and learned more about her childhood, her lack of filter makes more sense. But that can go only so far because Heavenly is a grown-ass woman who knows exactly what she’s doing and chooses to repeat the actions she’s constantly apologizing for. I’m not sure what it’ll take for her to watch her mouth, but her excuse that “we all talk shit about each other†is tired. Maybe the montage of years of reunion footage discussing the same problem will inspire change.
Rampant Receipts
It seems even Andy has more fun at the Married to Medicine reunions than he does with the Housewives. This one featured an amount of polygraph tests and receipts that would never be permitted at a Housewives reunion, and Andy was living for each one. (Wendy’s poster printout and Rinna’s envelope that never made it to air would like a word.) Quad produced a polygraph attempting to prove she never had sexual contact with her contractor, who happens to be married to one of her friends. She also clarified that she did not have sexual contact with any of her castmates’ husbands … even though no one asked. And Anila produced a polygraph attempting to prove she did not stage her home break-in and didn’t start the rumor that Toya was cheating on her husband. I’m telling y’all, a lot goes on in this show.
As we learned during the cursed “Lucy Lucy Apple Juice†RHOBH season, polygraphs are not the most accurate tests and are usually not admissible in court. But the cast found the results of Quad’s polygraph sufficient to bury the rumor. Contessa made a great point that, while all of this is juicy drama for us, the contractor and his wife have suffered from the accusation. And Heavenly, who repeated the rumor multiple times on her YouTube channel, admits that despite joking about the scandal, she doesn’t believe Quad was sleeping with married men. So why did she spread the rumor? Because she thought it was funny. Heavenly has no shame.
The silliest receipts were the papers Anila pulled from under the pillow in yet another attempt to get us to take her blogging career seriously. This season, she claimed that all of the furniture in her new home had been given to her in exchange for blog posts, and at the reunion, Andy, through a viewer’s question, asked what we’ve all been wondering: “How does someone with less than 100K Instagram followers, less than 5,000 on Tik Tok, and whose blog hasn’t been updated since May 2019 get almost half a million dollars’ worth of free furniture?†So Anila produced a “blogging press release†to try to validate her claim, though nothing but invoices would convince me she’s telling the whole truth. And what is a blogging press release, anyway?
Ms. Quad, Ms. Quad, How Does She Do It?
Following the tragic death of her brother due to heart complications, Quad took in her nephew, Mason, going from the single life to the family life instantaneously and in the process upgrading from her “bullshit-ass apartment†to a 14,000-square-foot multimillion-dollar home. Throughout the decade that we’ve known Quad on the show, we’ve seen her go from newlywed to divorcée, all while juggling a few side hustles: She was a host on the now-canceled talk show Sister Circle and a brand ambassador for BCBG; she published a cookbook and designed a doggy-couture line. Not to knock a sister’s hustle, but it’s hard to believe these ventures allowed her to buy such an extravagant home and furnish it. The other ladies, especially Dr. Simone and Toya, were also suspicious of where these funds were coming from.
Quad maintained that she has made good investments and has used her own money to fund her lifestyle. She then tried to spin the situation, asking the others if they think the only way a single Black woman can live a lavish lifestyle is if she’s “laying on her back to get it.†It was a reach — but so are 85 percent of the things that come out of Quad’s mouth. She’s sitting in a room filled with Black doctors and doctors’ wives who get paid to be on the same show she’s on and are familiar with the cost of living in Atlanta. If they’re suspicious, so am I.
Toya vs. Quad, a Feud for the Ages:
Quad and Toya have a long history of below-the-belt jabs, petty shade, and passive-aggressive behavior. Quad has said that Toya and her husband, Eugene, had to “beg, borrow, and steal†to get one of their houses, and Toya has repeatedly said she believes Quad is a conceited liar. It’s a yearslong back-and-forth between two of the most opinionated cast members, and it got extra-heated throughout the reunion, with the main source of contention being Quad perpetuating the rumor that Toya is cheating on Eugene with someone in their neighborhood. During the season, Quad said, “It’s been stated a million and one times that Toya has cheated on Eugene,â€Â and at the reunion, she said the rumor began at a girls’ night at Anila’s and that Anila shared this information with her over the phone. Anila staunchly denied this, making it hard to discern what is real since Anila and Quad are the show’s most unreliable sources.
When Eugene finally came out to address Quad’s shady comments about him — she called him “Eugina†in a heated tweet — he emotionally asked her why she keeps coming for his marriage. Quad replied that she will leave them alone when they leave her alone. At this point, I don’t even know what began Quad and Toya’s feud, and this reunion did not lead to any type of resolution. But hopefully, now we can stop talking about the size of Eugene’s dick.
The Sajja Movers
One of the funniest and shadiest moments from the reunion was Toya joking that since Anila and her husband dressed as U-Haul movers to poke fun at her family’s constant moving, the Harrises should dress as burglars to poke fun at the Sajjas’ home invasion that occurred while filming this season. Though obviously, I feel bad that Anila and her family had to experience a robbery, I’m here for the drag. I lost so much respect for Anila; her husband, Kiran; and Quad for even slightly insinuating in their confessionals that Toya would have had anything to do with the burglary. Beyond being an extremely harmful accusation in general, intimating that a Black woman (one with two young children and is married to a doctor, no less) would organize a robbery is especially distasteful on a show well positioned to honor Black women and Black health-care professionals. And who would go on vacation and break bread with someone they thought would try to get them robbed?
At the reunion, Quad stood ten toes down on her theory that Toya knew Anila’s home would be targeted. The tea, according to Quad, is that previous cast member Kari Wells told Quad that Toya told her that there was “a hit†on Anila in their neighborhood. The language itself is bizarre. As Simone said, in my world, a hit means someone is going to get their ass beat or worse. Married to Medicine has always been rife with shade and drama, but as Contessa said, accusing someone of a felony is too much.
Once she was in the hot seat, Anila backtracked, saying she was “merely stating the facts,†and out came the polygraph results showing there was “no deception indicated†when she was asked if Kari had informed her of a hit or if she had staged the robbery. When Andy finally asked her point-blank if she believes Toya had anything to do with it, Anila stuttered her way to a less than convincing no, but I guess I’ll take it.
Turning the Narrative
Luckily, the reunion offered a powerful counterpoint with a moment highlighting one of the show’s ongoing concerns: the issues Black Americans face in the medical field. As Dr. Jackie and Dr. Simone spoke about during part two of the reunion, Black infants are two times more likely to die if they don’t have a Black pediatrician, and Black women are more likely to die during childbirth because of both individual and systemic racism. Married to Medicine lifts the veil on the world of Black medical care and informs viewers about how much racism impacts Black health. As Simone said, “people are simply not listening to Black patients.â€
This series is aware of its position as one of the few predominately Black shows on Bravo and uses the platform accordingly. Compared with those other shows, the conversations about race on Married to Medicine are much more nuanced and intentional. The discussion surrounding colorism on RHOP is necessary but lacks depth, and RHOA sometimes grazes the surface regarding the double standard for Black women in the public eye but rarely takes it further than that. Some of this may arise from the stigma of being considered the “Black Housewife†franchises, and we all saw what happened on RHOBH and RHONY when even a single sentence was uttered about race after Black women joined the cast. By not being associated with the Housewives, Married to Medicine has managed to carve out a lane for itself when it comes to open discussions of racism and issues facing the Black community. Jackie’s devotion to breast-cancer awareness, Contessa’s urging people to vote locally to ensure abortion access, and the numerous medical missions for underprivileged communities — all are just as integral to the show as the fighting and the shade.
What Happens in Vegas Stays on Bravo
Despite the seriousness of the medical advocacy and the constant drama, no one has fun like the cast of Married to Medicine. You can tell there’s a base level of respect among everyone on the cast, and they feel comfortable letting their hair down — even if it means Dr. Jackie showing up to the strip club in a shawl with her glasses on. From getting $2,500 vaginal injections to increase the power of their orgasm to admitting to some raunchy activities during a game of “Never Have I Ever,†the Married to Medicine ladies laugh just as much as they fight. The reunion set was based on the lit Vegas trip they went on this season, and to pay homage to the experience, instead of ending the reunion with shots, we were treated to some fine male strippers. Much to Andy’s disappointment, they never actually stripped, but it definitely provided a perfectly chaotic ending to a roller-coaster season. Oh, and Contessa’s husband’s random rap was a nice touch too.