I have the reputation of being a picky eater, but there are only three things that I don’t eat, but they are major ones. One is cheese. Much like Ubah, I think cheese is disgusting and never touch the stuff except for the occasional slice of pizza and whatever the fuck that dust is on the original flavor Doritos. The second is eggs on their own. Eggs in a cake are great, or like French toast, fine. But an omelet, a quiche, à la Francaise, those all make me want to gag harder than when I think about who Ramona Singer must be supporting in the Republican primary. The final food is anything spicy enough to burn your mouth. An Indian friend who is an amazing chef literally makes me a “white people bowl†when I go to her house because I couldn’t even handle the first wing on the hot wings challenge.
I tell you this only because if I woke up and the only food in the house was a shakshuka with Ubah hot sauce, I would probably go back upstairs, wrap myself in the duvet like a burrito and attempt to eat myself. (Remember, Brian, guacamole is extra.) We get the very tail end of the women’s trip to the Hamptons at the beginning of the episode, and my girl Sai is just as starving as I would have been if I was at Erin’s. “I had a great time even though you didn’t feed me,†Sai jokes as she takes her remaining roles of Charmin to the black car to head back to the city. Then she asks the driver, “Do you know how to get to Provisions?†Okay, that one made me LOL IRL. As a group, these women really are winning me over.
The craziest thing about breakfast, though, was how every one of the women reacted when Jenna came downstairs in the morning to help Erin cut tomatoes and was wearing a whole suburban house’s worth of diamond tennis bracelets. “That’s an interesting morning look for the Hamptons,†Brynn says in her confessional. Between that comment and her diss of Erin’s house for not being in Southampton, I have to say that Brynn is jealous. She wants these things and doesn’t have them, so she makes fun of the other ladies for not being up to her standards even though her only coat seems to be Jamie Lee Curtis’s fur from Trading Places.
I know, I know. I have told so many Housewives that it is never jealousy. When they say, “Oh, they’re making fun of my husband because they’re jealous of our relationship,†that is not it. They are making fun of her husband because he is an asshole. (I was not thinking of a specific example here, but you could honestly put like 80 percent of Househusbands into this scenario, and it would totally make sense.) It’s never jealousy, but it looks, to me, like Brynn is jealous. I mean, is there a reason we haven’t seen her apartment yet? Is she Bethenny 2 point oh no she didn’t?
I was happy to learn more about Brynn this episode because I think her upbringing really brings this jealousy into perspective. Sure, Sai was shopping at the dollar store and had a sad Christmas with a tree on top of a speaker, but it sounds like Brynn had nothing. We have two great scenes where Brynn talks about life in Indiana. The first is when she goes to the hair salon and talks about being raised by her white grandmother, who had no idea what to do with her biracial hair. Her grandmother’s Black coworker made her take her to the Black hair salon in South Bend (Mayor Pete has never been), and that’s where she learned not only about Black hair but Black women, Black culture, Black everything.
The other conversation happens at Brynnsgiving, the Friendsgiving party that Sai throws because she wants to burden the November holidays with more portmanteau than you’ll find in a 2005 gossip magazine. Brynn talks more about her parents, how they were only around for the first six months of her life, and then they “had some trouble.†The details are a little fuzzy, but it sounds like they went to jail; whether it was for mistreating her and her two siblings or something else is not clear. Because of this, I will forgive her when she insists on greeting everyone at Brynnsgiving by turning around, showing the open back of her white gown, and shaking her ass like it’s the dinner bell on a dude ranch.
We get to learn a bit more about several of the women in this episode when their home stories are featured. Erin shows off her Duolingo Spanish by ordering around the people flipping an apartment she’s designing. Okay, great, but I feel like we have over-indexed on Erin’s alone time so far in the series.
Next, we check in with Ubah and her friend Kathleen. Ubah is struggling to find an investor for Ubah Hot, her line of hot sauces that, much like saying “or were you silenc-ed,†is one of Oprah’s favorite things. Ubah tells us she developed her sauces when she was a model because all she ate was steamed vegetables and steamed fish so she needed something to make it taste good. I guess one way to get over bland food is to just singe off your taste buds so you can never eat a Provisions sandwich or a banana ever again.
Strangely, Ubah continues to be somewhat reserved. Sure, she can’t say “cackling hags†and is very funny about it, but she’s not really letting us in yet. We learn that she misses her mother, who died ten years ago, but yeah, that’s totally natural. I miss my mom every day, and she’s still with us. But what else, Ubah? What is going to make us fall in love with you and figure you out?
Finally, there is Jessel, that one college friend you have that you avoid talking to at all costs. There are a few things about her that really annoy me. First of all, her accent won’t settle. One minute she’s speaking like Ratso Rizzo, a native New Yorker who is walkin’ here, and the next, she’s ordering tea and crumpets without moving her jaw like the poshest presenter on the BBC. I get this isn’t her fault, and as an American living in London, this is probably more triggering for me than most others in the audience, but listening to her is like trying to stand up in a canoe.
The other thing is that she can’t dress. She can’t. Period dot exclamation make a statement without saying a word. It’s not just the Alexander Wang and Balenciaga in one outfit thing. It’s not even the green lingerie that she hated. It’s everything else. When she arrives at Brynnsgiving, she’s wearing this chunky brown sweater that is somehow both off the shoulder and wrapped around her neck like the fleshen shackles that Alex McCord wore for an entire season in her confessional. It doesn’t quite hit the top of her pants, which are gold sequined and look like they are made in a fit more akin to sweats than anything you would wear to a formal event. They look like the kind of “going out pants†your mom’s friends would wear when they come over for “sangria,†which is really just white wine with Diet Coke in it.
The women all think that Jessel has no idea how the things she says come across, and I concur. It’s not just when she asks Erin about her grandmother’s memorial, which she attended earlier in the day before Brynnsgiving. In that instance, Jessel says, “I’m glad it all went well.†That just seems to be a misunderstanding. Jessel should be offering condolences, but she’s treating it like an event — a party that goes off without a hitch — rather than a sad occasion. It was weird but not awful.
What’s worse for me is when she’s at home talking to her husband, Pavit, about where to send her children. She wants them to go to Montessori school so that they can make banana bread and learn about snakes from a guy they call Rick in Brown Door. “The open house was very elevated. I mean, they had a [charcoochie] board and wine,†she tells her husband. Oh, that’s how we judge what schools to send our kids to now? The one that looks most like a Soho House? She then tells us in confessional it’s about who her kids are associating with, who their friends will be, and how she and Pavit can network with the parents. She has no idea how gross this is going to sound when most people can’t even afford public school, and that shit is free ninety-nine. But I do give her a little leeway because this is a very English way to approach the world.
The thing that annoyed me the most was not even her comment about the “cackling hags†she made to Jenna when they hung out, though I do love that Jenna brought it to the group. When a producer asks her why she says, “I don’t know,†but I think those are just her innate instincts for the Reality Television Arts and Sciences kicking in. When they have their chat shopping, Jessel tells Jenna if she’s upset with her that she should talk to her about it. Jessel accuses Jenna of being immature because Erin and Sai had to point out to her that Jenna was upset when she was shouting about an ugly Christmas tree like she’s playing Lucy in the live-action version of A Charlie Brown Christmas. (Please, please, please don’t make this.)
Jenna wasn’t being immature at all. Usually, when we see the “you should talk to me before going to the girls†defense, it’s when a person tells the group they’re angry before addressing it with the person. In this instance, Jenna didn’t say anything to Sai or Erin. They’re just smart and socially adept enough to read how upset Jenna was on her face and decided to bring it up because they knew Jenna would never. Ugh, maybe her innate Reality Television Arts and Sciences instincts aren’t as sharp as I hoped. But that shows that Jessel is the one being immature, in that she can’t admit what she said or did was wrong and that Jenna might have been justifiably upset. It looks like we have a new villain in our midsts, and thank the Catholic Jesus because I’m sick of fighting about cheese, shakshuka, and Provisions. I mean, what channel is this? Who is going to host the reunion? Guy Fieri’s goatee?