The holidays have come and gone, we have entered a New Year, New York City has finally witnessed its first feeble snow of the winter season … and yet, after a two-week hiatus, the ladies of Potomac are still inexplicably trapped in Austin. Adding insult to injury, Ashley seems to have booked this trip only to showcase her collection of increasingly befuddling, shabby-not-so-chic cowgirl-inspired frocks. We have reached an unbelievable low for the franchise. The level of effort has been completely abandoned, the hostility has seeped into the group so much that the girls don’t care about showing up to work, and it shows in the effort they put into making a scene coherent, interesting, or marginally more enjoyable than clipping my toenails. Case in point: the Grande Dame, Karen Huger, has been held hostage in Texas for so long that she is now entering her 60s at a public hotel pool, preparing to acknowledge her milestone with a sip and paint, apple pie, and a group appearance at a drag show. Until conservative legislators became obsessed with fear mongering about drag queens and children, most of this could have been re-created at a kids’ party.
In any other season, Karen would throw a fit at such blatant laziness and disrespect, but her role this season is to try to get the girls to show up and show out, so she gamely commits to the bit of trying to make it as enjoyable as possible. Production does its best to beef up the scene, but we have wrung out all possible titillation from that Etch A Sketch caricature of Karen from last season, and the well is dry. We have the mole, the references to iconic moments (and wigs) of seasons past, but at the end of the day, it’s amateur art projects from drunk reality stars. That said, of the collective, Gizelle did the best at capturing the “sexuality†that Karen requested (despite misspelling “Tripleâ€), and Nneka did a comically awful job.
Despite Karen doing her best, the bulk of the episode highlights the deepening fractures within the group and in the show. Conversations that have been beaten into the ground continue to be revisited with no forward progress; individuals who need to speak one-on-one refuse to show up and do the scene required to close the story line and move on to the next topic. Instead of evolving the plotlines or dialogue, we’re just circling the drain.
Ashley is a key culprit in keeping this cursed ecosystem going. There is a lot that is going on in her life. By her own admission, she is slow-walking this divorce. A separation keeps Michael off-camera and allows her to be no longer publicly accountable for his missteps until they finalize a number that she feels will allow her to be independently comfortable (which will likely not happen anytime soon). Aside from minor early grumbles about that, it seems to have largely been abandoned, as has her “dating†journey. More pressing, however, is how she has, throughout the years, alluded to significant family issues, which she has largely been given a wide berth on the outside of the early season with her journey to see her birth father. The reason has been obvious — the antics of the festering wound known as Michael Darby took precedent — but with him out of the way, why are her discussions of these lingering tensions within her family limited to asides? She hasn’t gone to her mother’s house in two years, remains at odds with her mother’s partner, and has lingering trauma around instability. These are issues that were hinted at when Michael threatened to cut Sheila off, and now they are still here with Michael out of the picture. Instead of fleshing out the context that would let us get to know her better, Ashley continues to dig at the wound between Robyn and Candiace for maximum impact over dinner.
Generally speaking, the best housewives fights are when everyone is a little bit wrong, a little bit right, and a little bit delusional. All of these factors are technically at play here, with an additional wrench: Everyone is extremely annoying. I don’t know what audience Candiace is playing to when she acts as if her social-media temper tantrums don’t run afoul of her friendships on the show, but she needs to stop acting like she and Chris didn’t go on a campaign and imply that Robyn should be demoted for her actions. That’s the true subtext of what Robyn thinks is unforgivable. Not that Candiace called out the alleged or seeming diversion between Gizelle and Robyn during the season, but that Candiace suggested that Robyn, as the main breadwinner, should lose part of her largest income as a result.
Regardless of whether you agree that Robyn participated in a plot with Gizelle, Robyn’s rebuttal that “None of [them] should use social media against [one] other†is laughable. Candiace may be the most vicious and lack a filter at her most emotional moments, but what is the Reasonably Shady podcast if not a platform to comment on their colleagues at their convenience? Just because they are not Reality Von T(eas)e doesn’t mean they are not all manipulating the discourse when they see fit, whether through their own platforms or giving statements to blogs.
This conversation was doomed from the start. Robyn refused to accept a one-on-one discussion with Candiace, which allowed for too much interference from the peanut gallery. Trapped in the same pattern, it inevitably devolved the way that almost every group scene has this season: with the ensemble splitting into groups on opposite sides of the restaurant, desperately rallying their position before regrouping to the next location. It is such a pathetic rinse-and-repeat cycle that I was already prepared for Juan to yell at Robyn in disgust when she called him; how on earth is your husband not even validating your emotions over a woman that you should both hate for talking about your marriage?
The girls all smooth out those ubiquitous Mugler bodysuits and make their way over to the drag show. Finally, it feels somewhat like a proper Huger birthday — the La Dames showed out with their Karen Huger merch! A delightful touch for the event, which was a perfectly fine drag show — glad to see the girls acknowledge the need to support the queer community and that they came prepared to tip well. The drag names were cute — Robyn wins as the GreenEyed Gobbler — and the women were eager participants. Karen played up dramatic older sexpot to her fanbase while crawling on her hands and knees, Mia dropped down and got her eagle on, and Ashley promoted her TikTok choreography.
Despite the mostly fun vibes in the venue — the only vibes you can really have while drinking cocktails with penis straws — we still couldn’t avoid yet another childish moment with this collective. While Wendy did her cute little runway strut in the extra but slightly try-hard way that is her signature, Nneka made a point of giving two thumbs down — a moment which had long since leaked and gone viral on social media — and when asked about it tried to give some shade that landed flat, along the lines of “I love her Mugler outfit. I hope she didn’t return it already.†Now, if you’re going to go for the bitch moment, you (1) better be serving your tens in wardrobe and styling yourself that day, and (2) need to be ready to pump down the runway when it’s your moment. She delivered on neither. So, what was the point of going for the insult? Either stunt on the hoes or don’t, but there ain’t no such thing as halfway crooks in the rules and regulations of housewives gaggery.
In the words of a drag-queen lip-sync classic, y’all, there may have been times when I thought I’d crumble, even lay day down and die, but we have survived the Austin trip. Next week, we are finally back in the DMV and Wendy’s mother takes to the mic. What shrine do I need to pray to that can free us from this sinkhole?
Cherry Blossoms
• Mia is starting to soft-launch her split from Gordon, and I am very curious to see how this finally explodes, considering that she is now very publicly with a new man.
• The girls debuted some new confessional looks! I have no idea what Candiace was thinking with the single iridescent disco-ball arm, but if Ashley had given us more Austin styles like the chocolate finger waves and the studded jean jumpsuit, I might have hated her trip 15 percent less. It’s a great look for her.
• Karen is still quick like a whip with the off-the-cuff phrases. I will be saying, “My mouth has been retired for years; you see how good my cheeks look?†to myself for the next 72 hours.
• Finding out that Wendy’s mom was in the hospital adds some context to why she started tearing up to Mia, of all people, when she was defending her mother. Wendy still needs to learn how to handle these confrontations well, but it was clearly a sensitive time for her, and I understand why she didn’t feel like telling everybody.