The Real Housewives franchise is many things — serialized true-crime epic, not-so-secret canon of queer romance, vehicle for women to soft-launch a divorce — but one of its more underappreciated functions is a platform for women to shill their products and business endeavors to the masses. The ladies are doing podcasts, premade cocktails, T-shirt lines, and lounge tours, and Potomac is no exception. In eight seasons, we have seen competing candle brands, restaurants, cosmetics lines, satin-lined hats, books, and fragrances come, go, and fail to launch. It is well understood that a tradeoff for forfeiting your life to the whims and intrusions of the general public means that you are allowed to shamelessly integrate your wares into the season as a boon to your Bravo contract. The scenarios are often contrived and unwieldy, but as long as the franchise offers enough entertainment between these quasi-informercials, everyone can make do with the sponsored content. When a show like Potomac is in a rut, however, an episode dedicated almost exclusively to the women’s various hustles lands with a thud.
Half the main cast members have found a way to plug their financial investments this week. Wendy and Eddie are pushing their weed partnership, Gizelle and Ashley are showing off their planned athleisure line, Nneka is previewing her sparkling wine, and Candiace is highlighting her upcoming acting roles. Individually, all of this is fine in small doses — this season alone, we have seen Karen move into the resort business with her family estate, Wendy try her hand at a talk show, and Robyn franchises a facials business with varying degrees of success. Having all of these endeavors packed into one episode, however, feels like we are no longer watching reality TV but 42 minutes of promotional materials with some petty fights in between.
Not only are the contrivances jarring, but they are simply uninspired and unengaging. Gizelle and Ashley take us on a tour of a fabric shop and ruminate over polyester fabrics about how to account for coochie sweat and cameltoes, and I barely so much as chuckle as they wade through their endless array of tacky fabric selections. Gizelle’s daughters had the right feedback in mind when they told their mother that their ideas sounded immensely juvenile, but despite their attempts to get “GnA†to correct course, we continue to see the duo purport to aim for Lululemon and land closer to LuLaRoe as they gossip about Karen’s event in Surry County.
Wendy is busy preparing a “weed-rolling†event with her husband — except this was filmed before recreational cannabis was legal in the state of Maryland, leaving us to watch the cast delicately place oregano in rolling papers to prepare for the vague future date when they will be lighting up in their own houses, at which point I am sure they could just look up a YouTube tutorial. It is puzzling in its execution: The only upside to this event is that most of the cast does attend, allowing us another chance to examine how their interpersonal dynamics have evolved. Candiace escorts her husband, Chris, before quickly departing to go back on set, leaving Chris to contend with his first interaction with the women since last season’s fallout alone. But that tension is eliminated quickly, as Ashley, Gizelle, and Chris all make a point not to engage with each other outside of pointed snipes in their confessionals. Gizelle and Robyn do attend, but they don’t greet Wendy at her own event, and Gizelle even highlights her outright disinterest in supporting Wendy’s ventures. Meanwhile, Wendy continues to keep the wall up with her relationship with Nneka, who asks for a one-on-one in addition to her invite to her packing/slumber party. It is unclear what green light Wendy is actually looking for — she claims Nneka skipped steps, but now Nneka is approaching her for a one-on-one meeting before a group event, and she is still rebuffing her.
Karen and Mia, to their credit, try their hardest to keep up the momentum in the show. They squabble on the thinnest of pretenses — Karen is miffed by how Mia rebuffed her last-minute invitation to Surry County — but they keep up enough steam in their dispute for it to linger at both Wendy and Nneka’s respective events. The argument is silly, but it has enough meat on the bone to invite questions over the status of Mia’s marriage.
Mia has used this season to slow-walk her inevitable split from G, and the breadcrumbs she has planted seem to finally be coming together. Their tension is palpable — G left the “Happy Eddie†event on his own, even though the couple came in together, and every confessional Mia offers increasing disinterest in the state of her marriage. In one of the more bizarre events between the pair to date, the duo sit down for a “day†date and discuss how they would navigate a hypothetical separation in the wake of examining the seeming understanding that Ashley has with the scourge known as Michael Darby. From G’s perspective, they never need to divorce formally — they can file some paperwork for some sort of mutually beneficial “arrangement†and move on from there. The conversation is even more curious when juxtaposed with Mia and Karen’s fight at Nneka’s event, where multiple rappers’ names are thrown about in the implication that Mia is maligning Karen. Mia doesn’t exactly disavow it as much as claims that G is fully aware. Of course, we know that G has since claimed that Mia was seeing other people during their marriage and is now fully in a relationship with an Atlanta radio personality. If there’s anyone who can give us hope for entertaining mess in the remainder of the season, look no further than Mia Thornton. Until next week!
Cherry Blossoms
• Lebe finally made an in-person appearance on the show at Nneka’s gathering. I know that I held Wendy to the fire last week for her reluctance to participate in the Housewives trickery, and my suspicions are confirmed: She is still incapable or unwilling to handle the conflict that she and Nneka have directly. It would certainly be uncomfortable, but it is past time to wrap this issue up, and that requires Wendy to confront it head-on.
• When I am lord and master of the universe, my first decree will be to ban overengineered Housewives games. It’s a contrivance with minimal reward. Who needs Nneka to set up a game of “Never Have I Ever†for Robyn to confront Karen over her saved Dixon family photo?
• Michael Darby’s lawsuit against Candiace was recently dismissed with prejudice. May that hopefully be the last time we ever have to entertain him in the public discourse, amen.