Well, Alexia Echevarria took the week off, so it is up to the rest of the women to carry this show, and, well, sadly, they drop it like a dead body flopping out of a coffin. Guerdy and Adriana did their best, but, hoo boy, some of these ladies need to remember that they’re on a show here. Yes, Dr. Nicole, we get it that your mother was poor. Yes, Larsa, we know that you and Scotty still haven’t finalized your divorce. Yes, Lisa, we know that you look pretty in gold fringes. But, in the immortal words of Janet Jackson, what have you done for me late-ly. Everyone has a great individual story, but they don’t have stories with each other. They don’t have an interaction or conflict that seems worthwhile. Can we get to that, please?
Starting with Alexia, we ended the last episode with her about to meet Bleep, her dead husband’s gay ex-lover. We should have known that he wasn’t going to show up because they never said his name, and they blurred out his face in all of his Instagram thirst traps they showed onscreen. But Alexia had to wait for an hour to learn this lesson. The next day, she sees Marysol and her gay bestie JNY, which seems like how someone like JNY would want their first name and personal brand to be spelled. She says they talked for four hours, and her takeaway was that Herman really loved her, which is an interesting thing to glean from a four-hour conversation with the lover of your dead gay husband.
Next, we see Larsa shopping with her 12-year-old daughter for back-to-school clothes, or maybe they’re just lie-around-the-house clothes, or perhaps they’re go-to-the-roller-rink-to-terrorize-the-other-girls-from-your-class clothes. I don’t know. Who cares. I think that we’re supposed to be like, “Oh em gee, can you believe Larsa spent $7,500 on clothes for her daughter. She’s 12. She doesn’t deserve Fendi!†But you know what? I don’t care. Let Larsa spend however much of her money on her only daughter as she wants. I’d much rather her spend that money on clothes than faking she is on the lacrosse team so that she can get into USC or something.
Larsa also sees a mansion in Boca Raton that she doesn’t intend to buy; it is just too far away. But the show wants us to see a house with automatic doors into the “master†bedroom (even though we don’t call it that anymore, kids). Okay. Seen. Got it. Don’t want them because, as displayed, they’re only going to break and make your life more difficult. No one really wants to live in a “79 Questions†Vogue video. We just want to watch them.
The thing to me that is curious about Larsa and Scottie is that it doesn’t seem like their romance is over. They hang out with each other and the kids all the time; he comes over to her house whenever he wants. He’s raising the boys, and she’s raising the girl on nothing but Fendi shorts and Fiji water. What they need is a modern arrangement. Stay married, but let each other have the freedom to do what they want. The two of them can make up the rules. If they’re in love and it works for them, I wish them the strength to not let anyone tell them how their relationship should work. I’m in a giving mood — amnesty for everyone.
The only one who gets no amnesty is Adriana, who is trying so hard that she shows up to a party with a poodle that she tortured for hours to turn its ears pink and its feet purple. Just looking at Adriana won’t let you get a word in edgewise. She meets Julia at her “farm†with Guerdy, and Julia says, “Let me take you on a tour.†Adriana says she’s been there so many times she doesn’t need a tour, but she goes anyway. Yeah, she’s been there so many times, but she still wears a white dress and white stilettos to walk around in goat shit and chicken feed. If you know this house so well, wouldn’t you know that a pair of Allbirds and some Lululemon would be better? (But seriously, don’t wear Allbirds. Life is too short for that, and your feet will die of embarrassment, and you’ll have to spend the rest of your days peddling around on stubs.)
Because Adriana’s feet are so dirty, Julia washes them off and gives her a foot massage, and Guerdy looks at it like she just saw someone eating a Cinnabon and an Aunt Annie’s pretzel in one mouthful at a mall food court. She’s a-gooped and a-gaped and a-gagaed as if their whole schtick hasn’t been that they’re best friends who might want to scissor, which they don’t because women only scissor in porn made for straight men.
When it’s finally time for the party, Adriana shows up ready to hate Guerdy because her mind is already made up for some reason that she hates her. It might be because when Julia mentions she had a son who died at four months of shaken baby syndrome thanks to a negligent nanny (please make a Lifetime movie based on this, thank you), Guerdy also started crying because she had a miscarriage of a daughter at four months.
When Adriana arrives, she says she is already “underwhelmed†by what Guerdy has done to the place. I mean, it looks fine. The theme is supposed to be Tulum, and Guerdy put a bunch of flowers and feathers and other accoutrements all over the farm to spruce it up. What do you want from a professional party planner who is doing some work for free? She did the best that she could and more than it deserved. And, frankly, this place looks way too nice for a home that surely smells like a barnyard. No amount of Party City décor will cover up the smell.
Julia is super pleased with it, though. In her red, Mexican-inspired dress, she’s doing photo shoots with goats and spreading chicken seed like she’s in a season four America’s Next Top Model photo shoot when Tyra made the girls live in Ames, Iowa. (This did not happen, but it could have.) Meanwhile, Adriana is spoiling for trouble because she’s trying to make it to full-time next year, so she makes everything about herself and her hatred for Guerdy.
When Guerdy once again brings up the foot massage at dinner to get Martina all riled up, Adriana snaps. She does not like Martina asking what she did to deserve a foot massage when she has never gotten one in 14 years of their life together. Instead, Adriana lashes out at Guerdy, picking on how loud she is and how she’s hunched over so she can’t talk to her friend. When Dr. Nicole gets up to sit next to Guerdy to offer her support, Adriana tries to get Guerdy to move into Dr. Nicole’s seat. Guerdy, instead, stays put. And good for her. This is just a way for Adriana to exert her dominance, show she is better friends with Julia, and prove that she, not Guerdy, should be holding a mojito and giving some of the worst taglines in Housewives history.
Then Guerdy starts crying about everything she’s been through, and then everyone gets mad at Adriana, and then Guerdy is like, “I won’t talk about it,†and the whole scene is a mess. It’s two messy people getting their mess on, but only one of them is authentic, which makes me hate Guerdy a little bit less. Adriana says that Guerdy does everything to hold the center of attention, which she should know because that is the only play in her book. Adriana has been doing that for four seasons now, making her a great Housewife but a horrible person. It seems like it’s that sort of thing where she hates Guerdy because she sees herself in her. But at least we finally get a fight, something for all of the women to talk about so that next time Alexia takes a well-deserved vacation, there might be something actually going on here.