Did Bravo just, “New phone, who dis?†us? They just went straight in with no lube, didn’t they? No explanation about how this is a new show, why or how it happened, what happened to the old women … Wait. I would never call Sonja Tremont Morgan of the Wesson Oil Morgans an old woman. But we get no explanation of what happened to the [ahem] former cast. Have they been banished to the lower level? Did they clean and decorate down there? Did they make it nice? Is it someplace they want to “Go to sleep! Go to sleep!�
So yeah, here we are with a montage of the new women with the other new women who we also don’t know explaining to us things that we should know about the new women that they don’t even know yet. Erin! “Oh yeah, she’s a true New Yorker.†Jessel! “What can we say? Publicists gonna publicist.†Brynn! “She flirts.†Jenna! “She’s [jazz hands] quirky.†Sai! “She’s not a bitch, but she’s also not not a bitch.†Ubah! “She models!â€
I loved all of their vague descriptions. It was less of a photograph of the new women in the cast and more like a courtroom sketch if the artist forgot their contacts at home that day. And from there, we are right into the hangouts, and we are right into the petty drama. Can’t we even get a breath first? How about a house tour? Can we see one of their husbands shirtless? No! They think we want a fight and, dagnabbit, a fight we will see.
We see two factions. The first is Erin and Ubah, who meet in Washington Square Park as if they’re trying to buy some weed without realizing that they passed about 15 semi-legal cannabis shops on Bleeker on the way there. Ubah prompts Erin to talk about her son drinking celery juice in a way that makes it seem like a bad improv class. She then tells us she got a note from her kid’s school saying he had “blowout diarrhea.†Come on, Erin. We all know that the idiom is “projectile vomiting†and “explosive diarrhea.†A blowout is what you pay too much for when you have a “date night†with your husband. Anyway, she is mad because she apparently had a party and Sai pointed at a plate and asked what it was, and Erin said, “It’s cheese,†and then she said, “That’s weird,†and rolled her eyes. Yes, we are fighting about her weird cheese.
Across town, we hear conflicting reports from Sai, Jessel, and Brynn, who are hanging out at Sai’s brownstone in Brooklyn. Sai comes out with a bottle of Veuve and says, “Champs for all.†Sorry, but Heather Dubrow has that expression trademarked. You are going to have to send her $50 in the mail. Thank you. They’re talking not just about the cheese incident and the “charcoochie board,†as Sai brilliantly calls it, but a restaurant mix-up from another hang. Apparently, Brynn and Sai were supposed to meet up with Erin, Jessel, their husbands, and some other people and go to dinner. However, when Erin booked a restaurant, Sai and Brynn thought it was tacky, so they told the women they were tired and headed home and instead went to a different restaurant. Then they posted about it. Do they not teach Social Media Common Sense in the Brooklyn school system because Sai has none. And she’s supposed to be an “influencer.â€
Erin is talking about the same thing with Ubah, and she says that the restaurant shouldn’t matter. It should be all about them being together as a group and enjoying each other’s company. Erin is right. It’s a little shitty to ditch your friends because you don’t like their choice of eatery, lie to them, and then have a more socially conscious dinner elsewhere. Erin said her restaurant was last minute, it was a huge group, it was all she could find. Yup. Been there. Totally get it. We’re all on Erin’s side.
But the restaurant is clearly Catch, the Meatpacking tourist trap where your Samantha Jones fantasies and fish’s dignities both go to die. I’m sorry, but they made the right call. I know, I know, it’s an asshole thing to do. But Catch? M-er F-ing C-A-T-C-H?! I wouldn’t sit in that restaurant with someone else’s ass. Even if the dinner was free and you paid me in compliments and blow jobs, I wouldn’t attend dinner there. Totally team Brynn and Sai on this one. Post away, ladies, and be free.
Don’t worry, we’ll revisit this fight a little bit later, but first, we get a home scene with Erin where she has her whole Israeli family over for dinner. Erin is the type of person who has no idea that the things she says are going to come across badly, or, in fact, how they might come across at all. This makes for a horrible friend but an excellent Housewife. For instance, the first thing we hear from her is about how the trick to being a parent is “to find ways to get your kids to leave you the fuck alone.†Yeah, I get it, but you live in an apartment big enough that everyone can have their own room. You get that luxury. Also, there are plenty of parents who never want to be away from their children. This will make you look like someone who pays the nannies to raise their own kids.
Next, Erin, who gives me Leah McSweeney on Xanax vibes, says that her family cooks so much, “my sister and I always joke we hang out in kitchens and bathrooms.†Bathrooms? Know who hangs out in bathrooms? Coke heads. Is that what you’re saying, Erin? You and your sister spend lots of time doing coke in bathrooms? Then she says, worst of all, that she and her husband got married when they were 25, which is early. “A 25-year-old New Yorker is like a 35-year-old, I don’t know, Kentucky girl.†Okay, that’s backward. If you’re 35 and in Kentucky, you’re already a grandparent. A 35-year-old New Yorker just started making enough money to afford Domino’s once a week. That’s why we get married and have kids so late. If you’re in Kentucky by the time you’re 26, you are getting no more wedding invitations because everyone you went to high school with is already hitched. But then I totally forgot all of that because her son Elijah walks around in a diaper and talks about how he has poop. Wow, I thought they fired Ramona, but there she is.
Everyone is getting ready for the group party at Jenna Lyons’s house, but no one can figure out her dress code which is black, khaki, gold, and metallic. I mean, that gives you a pretty wide range. You could mix and match even. Why are they all stumped by this? That is because they are not Jenna Lyons. Okay, for me, there has never been an aspiration Housewife dot dot dot until now. Just like Brynn wants to do to Sai, I want to kill Jenna, wear her skin, and take over her entire life, except maybe the sleeping with women part, but I am willing to do that if it gets me an apartment with an elevator that opens right into it. The chicest thing in the entire universe is having a Manhattan apartment with an elevator that opens into it. That is canon. That is lore. That is part of the devil’s bargain we all make when we move to this tiny slip of overpriced luxury shopping mall that we all flock to.
Erin says she doesn’t know what to make of Jenna because she’s so odd. Okay, what’s so odd about her, Erin? “She hates dill, but she loves parsley. She likes olives, but not the black ones,†she says. Um, that just makes her a picky eater and also correct because black olives are garbage. I swear to God they are made with smegma and compressed dumpster juice pressed into spherical shapes. So just go on being wrong yet again, Erin. It seems like that is what you do best.
Jenna has everyone over to get to know them, and she, of course, serves only cheese. That bitch said, “Oh, they think cheese is weird. Let’s have fondue,†and when she said fondue, she did snap with both fingers and waved her arms akimbo like a camp flamenco dancer. Okay, not really, but that is the Jenna of my mind. But that move is like one tippy-toe step away from animosity and passive aggression, which is perfectly admirable.
When Erin arrives, she gets a tour of the whole “pad,†as she calls it, with the fluffy pink couch, the lush fabrics, and the shoe closet that the editors scored with angelic organ music as befits it. She says she has around 800 pairs of shoes, but unlike going through Bethenny’s closet, you know that every single one is stylish and amazing and that she’s not going into Zara, giving a review of the shoe, and then posting it on TikTok to your grandmother’s delight. Erin doesn’t like the flow of Jenna’s apartment or thinks it will sell, but Erin is the only thing on this planet that is wrong more than the iPhone weather app, so just let her be. The only thing wrong with Jenn’s apartment is a giant O leaning against a fiddle-leaf fig plant in the corner. It looks like the O from an Oprah magazine cover but made out of gold tinsel and merkin lint.
Brynn arrives and she’s scared about confronting Erin because she says Erin takes everything personally. Yeah, we could tell. We can tell just by looking at Erin’s highlights that she takes everything personally. Luckily, Jenna first makes them play a game where they all talk about sex. Brynn is talking about her ideal porn, and it’s about a massage that goes too far. She says whenever she gets a massage, she’s always pushing her ass in the air to make it happen, and the therapist says, “Ma’am, this is the Four Seasons.†I LOL’d IRL fr fr. I don’t want to like Brynn, but her hair is so perfect, and she’s so pretty, and I bet she knows all the best brunch places.
Eventually, Erin brings the conversation around to how Brynn and Sai dissed them because they didn’t want to go to Catch. Ugh, do we have to? Do we have to fight? Can’t we all just get to know each other first? I’m sure you will find plenty of things to hate about each other; just give it time. Why are we forcing this fight about cheese that no one understands? Maybe we would understand this fight if there was footage of this party. Know what? I think there is. I think all of this happened when Lizzy Savetsky, who was announced with the rest of the cast in October but bailed shortly after filming started, was still with the group, and they had to nix all the footage of her. That is just my theory.
Then Brynn and Erin get into it even further about Catch and all that nonsense, and Jenna tells them they’re past the point. She is right. No one cares, not in that room, not anywhere. Then Erin takes Brynn to the other room to finish their conflict in peace. God, Erin, just stop. Stop trying so goddamn hard. When they get onto Jenna’s bed and start talking, Erin says, “I feel like you decided who you wanted to align yourself with, and then you got weird with me.†What? Really? We’re one episode in, and all fights on the show are already about the show! Erin felt like she was getting left out by the cool kids, and then she wouldn’t get as much screen time, and then no one would love her.
I hoped we might have a little time. I hoped with a whole cast of newbies no one would play by the rules. I hoped we could go back to those glory days of Early Housewifery, where it seemed more organic, more authentic, more unexpected. But no. I think that ship has sailed. I think we will never again get women who are being only themselves, but it will always be getting Housewives fully formed. We’re getting women preprogrammed with all the tricks of the trade rather than trying to invent them out of thin air. Yes, it’s not the start I was hoping for, but as far as being thrown into the deep end goes, it’s pretty good so far.