There’s an art to sending invitations on the Real Housewives, as proven by Potomac’s Gizelle and Karen fighting with a mime that was sent to invite them on a trip to France. Coming up with increasingly bizarre ways to invite castmates to parties and trips is a Real Housewife’s biggest creative outlet. And this week, Angie has somebody dressed as the Easter Bunny hand deliver invitations to her Greek Easter celebration. Whitney is handed one on the street, Lisa is given hers while filming a confessional, and Heather is terrified to discover the bunny waiting in the backseat of her car. Not since Lisa Rinna and Kim Richards has a Housewife been so disturbed by a bunny.
But before the big party, we have to check in to see how our friends are doing this week. Justin is feeling overwhelmed being back at work full-time, but Whitney feels like she’s the one who’s really overwhelmed with this new normal. She brings up a recent morning when the kids were fighting, the dog was peeing, the bacon was burning, and Justin was comfortably sitting on the couch, not helping her at all. His complaint, meanwhile, is that they aren’t having enough sex, which Whitney says is just because she needs to feel a connection to want to have sex, and that connection isn’t in a strong place right now.
Speaking of the aforementioned Real Housewives of Potomac, Lisa and Angie go to a place called the Wick Lab to make their very own candles. While they’re there, one of the employees asks Lisa if she’s Jack Barlow’s mom, and she finds out that the girl, a friend of Jack’s, knew about his mission trip before she did. The hits just keep coming. But they change the subject to discuss Angie’s upcoming party, which Meredith is not invited to, but Monica is. While Lisa doesn’t agree with Meredith’s actions, she thinks since Monica was the one who actually said the rumor about Shawn, she’s just as guilty and shouldn’t be invited to Easter either.
Speaking of saviors rising again, we’re back at Mary Cosby’s house, and I can’t tell you how relieved I am to see that she still has the bright green carpeting that her dogs mistake for grass. Finally, after teasing this earlier in the season, we see Mary ask her son if he’s actually married. “I mean, kinda, yeah,†he says, admitting that he and his girlfriend went to the courthouse a year ago, and Mary seems to vaguely remember him being dressed up and in a rush. She cries that her only son got married without her knowing about it, but on a recent WWHL, she admitted that she’s still unsure of the real story, saying that she thinks Robert Jr. forgot about some paperwork that would have made it all official.
Later, Meredith stops by for what seems like an intervention about Mary’s refusal to participate, and Mary says that she thought there would have been improvement and growth in the group since the last time she saw them. But alas, no such growth has happened between seasons two and four. Shocker. So since Meredith, the only cast member that Mary can stand being around, wasn’t invited to Angie’s Easter party, there’s no way that Mary will go. So Mary calls her, mere moments before the party begins, to let her know that she can’t come because her house in Vegas flooded — wait for it — a year ago. But it’s finally been fixed, so she’s going there now.
As everybody else files into the party, Heather gives Angie a bowl of nine lemons, and somewhere Shannon Beador is at peace. “Where do you get all your custom clothes?†Heather asks Shawn as she greets him, and before anybody can accuse her of being shady, Shawn replies, “My gay boyfriend.†They say everything happens for a reason, and maybe we’ve been saddled with Angie for her entertainingly heterosexual husband!
And while I’m in this unusual (and likely fleeting) position of giving Angie credit where credit is due, I must say that I do love this Easter party. Because, unlike most Real Housewives parties that are thrown for the sole purpose of being filmed, this feels uniquely real. We’re accustomed to TV parties, scarcely attended by just those contractually obligated to be there, with all the lights on and no music playing to make it an optimal filming environment. But this party has real people! Background murmurs even! And best of all, the Housewives all brought their families — more on that later.
Remember how Lisa freaked out about Heather extending an olive branch to Angie last week? Well, naturally, Whtiney told Heather all about that, so Heather pulls Lisa aside to check in. There’s some discussion about how surface-level their friendship is or isn’t, which ultimately leads to Heather saying that she wishes they could talk about Jack’s mission in a constructive way. But that’s not something Lisa is open to at all, saying that Heather’s experience with being Mormon differs greatly from her family’s. She doesn’t want to hear anything negative because she has to just be in a space where she supports whatever Jack is doing. It makes sense, particularly because she’s already self-conscious about her son keeping the mission from her in the first place. She doesn’t want to do anything to confirm Jack’s reasoning for not telling her, and that includes hearing what Heather has to say about it.
That being said, Heather’s intent is still good. She’s a wealth of knowledge on the subject, having quite literally written a book about it (that Lisa has not and will not read), so she doesn’t understand why Lisa wouldn’t want to be as informed as possible about what her son is embarking on — the good and the bad. Lisa keeps insisting that her experience with Mormonism is completely separate, but Heather says it doesn’t work that way: Mormonism is Mormonism, and there’s minimal grey area.
While all of this drama is happening, Meredith is in L.A. for the GLAAD Awards, likely being honored for her twink advocacy. To quote Taylor Swift, “Why are you mad when you can be GLAAD?†She’s there with Brooks, who she reminds us is gay, and as a result, she’d never spread gay rumors about Shawn.
That’s something Angie seems to finally be coming around to, realizing that the rumor actually came from Monica and not Meredith, so she decides to confront her about it. Monica admits that she was basically just guessing that that’s what Meredith was alluding to since that’s the rumor that’s been going around the “Salt Lake City streets†for years. Angie says that she’s heard plenty of rumors about Monica, but that doesn’t mean she spreads them. But vague threats don’t work on Monica, who’s a pro at getting ahead of the story. “What do you got? Foreclosure? Check! Divorce? Check! Affair? Check!†A master at disarming her enemy.
As the conversation heats up, Monica’s mother, Linda, takes it upon herself to pull up a chair and encourages them to bury the hatchet. Since Angie can’t really go after Monica with her mother sitting right there, she puts a pin in the conversation. Instead, an argument breaks out between Monica and Linda, which is deeply bizarre. Linda seems upset that Monica is making a scene at this party, while Monica is annoyed that her mother is taking someone else’s side. The subtext here seems to be that Monica doesn’t need her mother over her shoulder while she’s at work doing her job (making good reality television).
But the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and Linda has proven to be really good at making reality television, too, as she follows her daughter around the party, scolding her in Portuguese. The women watching this play out without context and are appalled at how Monica talks to her mother. But as I previously mentioned, Monica is a pro at getting ahead of the story, so we already know that the complex mother-daughter relationship is a two-way street. Even so, maybe leaving her mother alone at Angie’s party without a ride is a bit much? At least she knows there will be plenty of grape leaves there to sustain her.