There’s something about this show that is nice and easy. It’s as warm and relaxed as a sunny Sunday on the sand in the town where it’s set. Considering all of the dark and heavy bullshit we’ve been through recently thanks to our favorite Bravo diversion, it’s a nice change of pace. However, I need these girls to turn it up maybe one notch. Not like Lisa trying to cook eggs with the gas burner turned up so high that the flames are making out with the edge of her skillet, just so things go from a simmer to a boil. ’Cause we are simmering right now and the house smells of garlic and olive oil, but I want to taste that home cooking. Okay, I think I’m out of food metaphors.
Just look at Julia’s mystery illness, which is only a hangover even if her Russian pride won’t let her say it is. Usually, when an ambulance gets called, we have Vicki being carted out of an Icelandic hotel with a towel over her head and then returning pissed that no one made her a casserole. Here, the paramedics show up, give Julia an IV, and she never gets out of bed. There’s some sloppiness about whether it’s best to puke in a salad bowl or a trash can, but otherwise, everyone is a little unbothered. Lisa can’t even be bothered to go into the room. I get that. You don’t want to crowd a sick person, and she’s being tended by Dr. Nicole, who is an actual doctor; Lisa doesn’t need to mess around. But Lisa’s giving us nothing. She is not giving us sass, she is not giving us outfits, she is not giving us voice of reason, she is giving us nothing but heavy-lidded staring at the camera and some light whining.
Compare that with Alexia, who finally convinces Adriana, Julia’s de facto caregiver and backup lesbian lover, to call an ambulance. Adriana gets a nurse on the phone and says she needs a “deathbed rescue†IV at the house. Wait, is this one of those IV vitamin-drip places and it has a product called the Deathbed Rescue, or is this something Adriana made up? I need to know. Either way, the nurse wouldn’t get there for hours, which is when Larsa’s event was, so Alexia says to call the paramedics. “I call 911 for everything,†she says. “They know me.†That’s why Alexia is who she is. Everything, to her, is an emergency. If she can’t find the remote for five minutes, she’s on the phone with 911, and a nice man named Marlon says, “Hey, Alexia. Have you looked in the fridge? That’s where it was last time.†You don’t want to know how many times Miami 911 operators have had to tell her how to unplug her router and plug it back in when the Wi-Fi goes out.
That is the caliber of Housewife we need. The caliber of Housewife we are getting is Larsa, who is very worried about her “jewelry drop,†as if it were a new hit single. I thought they were all coming to the Hamptons for some big launch event at a store where there would be lots of people and pictures of the jewelry and milling around. When Larsa asks her assistant how many RSVPs she’s gotten, the assistant says 25. Twenty-five?! That’s not an event, that’s a classroom. That’s a disappointing turnout at a drag show. That’s the third meeting of a new religion that will one day become a cult. She could only get 25 people?
Yeah, yeah, I get it, COVID and all that. But Larsa says she doesn’t want a lot of people. She wants quality over quantity. She wants people with a large social-media presence. So then who are all these people who appear, and why don’t we get to know how many followers they have? She’s worried that Julia’s being sick will ruin her event and all the press she’s going to get, but the only journalist we see is the editor of a website called MiamiSocial.com, which I thought was a gonorrhea clinic. In the end, she brags that she got the cover of Harper’s Bazaar, but the show’s editors are quick to zoom on the “Thailand†hidden in the corner of that title. The sick burn of it all.
There’s a squabble at the party because Lisa is an hour late, then Adriana moves the umbrella away from her because there’s sun on her face, and then she starts fighting with Lisa. It is stupid, loud, and inappropriate, which are usually great adjectives for a Housewives program, but there is something about how Adriana makes her way through the world that I find exhausting, and it’s not just because she wears glittery gold dresses that look like the screen of a slot machine at the Reno airport. It’s like everything has to be perfectly her way, and if it’s not, she shouts about it. But then by shouting about it, she’s also always wrong. I don’t know. I can’t describe it. I wish Julia would vomit Adriana out into a salad bowl so we wouldn’t have to deal with her anymore.
I have a similar problem with Marysol, who at least brings it in the confessionals (though I am tiring of her blinged-out Starbucks cup). After the party, Dr. Nicole has a little sit-down with Marysol to find out why she went after her at dinner two nights before. You remember this fight, when Marysol said that Nicole said that Larsa was a “hooker†and she “didn’t want to be associated with her.†Nicole brings up a number of valid points: that she thinks Marysol was retaliating for Nicole getting snippy with Alexia, that everything Marysol said was hearsay, that Marysol gave Nicole’s words a negative slant, and that Marysol is, in general, thirstier than a marathoner trying to grab one Gatorade paper cup and knocking about seven out of a volunteer’s hand.
Marysol has no good response to any of these claims. She says Alexia “is so stressed out right now,†and Nicole points out, aptly, that Marysol doesn’t know what everyone else is going through. I am sympathetic to Alexia and everyone who is “going through a lot,†but, as they say brilliantly in Dreamgirls, “Effie, we all got pain.†If I was talking to Marysol, I might say, “F you, we all got pain,†but same point. With no out whatsoever, Marysol says, “You have me confused with someone who gives a shit, and right now I don’t give a shit so I’m done.†Yeah, way to just take your toys and go home.
The episode ends with Lisa’s birthday party, where Kiki asks Lisa what her sexual fantasy is, and she says, “My husband,†because Lisa made a bargain with a witch to be pretty and now all she has to do is be as boring as possible for the rest of her life. Even if she only wants to talk about sex with her husband, she could at least tell us a fantasy she has with him, like wanting to bang on a private plane or something. She eventually says she is in love with Channing Tatum. At least she didn’t say Brad Pitt, but that’s one boring step away. Some of the other ladies have more interesting ideas. Nicole says she wants to get it on with John Mayer, which I don’t think is possible because Andy Cohen won’t unchain him from his sex dungeon. Alexia says she was always obsessed with the singer Luis Miguel, and she met him once but didn’t sleep with him because her husband, Herman, was sleeping with him. Oh, sorry. I meant she didn’t sleep with him because she was married at the time.
Things get really spicy when Larsa says she had a fantasy about an actor (and she slept with him) and a fantasy about an athlete (and she slept with him). She won’t say the name of the actor, but his initials are M.J., so we have a blind item right here in the Housewives. Everyone suspects it’s Michael B. Jordan, who is hotter than a toaster on the surface of the sun, so I would indeed be very jealous of that. (He also replaced Tom Selleck as my mom’s No. 1 crush object.) Have we considered it may be Milla Jovovich? We don’t know Larsa’s business, and actor is gender neutral. I’m rooting for this because this season needs a little fifth element to turn it up just a bit.