It’s a new day in St. Barths, and Sonja (who slept in her glasses) wastes no time getting right to work. After scratching the surface of Josh’s Ashley Madison account last night, she takes to her phone to pull up a Daily Mail article with all the details. She reads the article out loud while Ramona dresses her wound, and when she sees that Kristen called the accusations “bananas,†it reminds Sonja of Josh once telling her that her business endeavors were also “bananas.†This is an almost frighteningly remarkable recall. “Who’s laughing now?†she says. “Because I do have an international fashion-lifestyle brand.â€
After Sonja skinnydips in the pool wearing only a baseball cap (instead of a shower), the women all head out for their cooking lesson, on the way to which they decide to squeeze in some work. Sonja, Luann, and Ramona all spend the car ride recording their cameos, resulting in a chaotic cacophony of birthday wishes, which Luann insists gives their fans “three for the price of one.†It’s like watching Picasso paint.
Their cooking instructor is a man, so naturally the women all immediately start fawning over him, even the usually tame Dorinda! And while Kelly initially mocked their unabashed thirst, the second he started butchering the mahi-mahi, something shifted in her and she joined them in lusting over this married chef. Kelly Bensimon’s feud with PETA continues! Meanwhile, Kristen was just as disgusted by the massive fish getting gutted as Luann once was to be assigned Dorinda’s fish-themed bedroom.
Over the meal, Dorinda asks the other women what other RHONY alum they would have liked to come on the trip. Ramona is quick to say nobody, but Luann, Sonja, and Dorinda all say Tinsley, who’s unfortunately otherwise occupied with her new man. But that’s a particularly surprising answer from Dorinda given that her brutal vitriol towards Tinsley is a huge reason she was put on pause. Could she want to make amends? Does she have more licks she wants to get in? Meanwhile, Kelly says someone she wouldn’t want there is Alex McCord, who she deems not real. This prompts Luann to tell a story of a double date she and The Count went on with Alex and Simon as the show was first beginning, after which The Count told her, “Don’t ever ask me to go to dinner with those people ever again.†Kelly misses the main takeaway of this and is instead offended that Alex and Simon got to have dinner with The Count and she never did.
This leads us right back down the path of a flaky Kelly not inviting Luann to a Rangers game. “I did ask, and they said no. I’m not allowed to,†Kelly says. Who is they? Who decided to ban Luann de Lesseps from Madison Square Garden? It’s a miracle that more concert venues haven’t done the same. Meanwhile, Kristen doesn’t understand why the Rangers game is suddenly the hottest ticket in town, but Kelly explains in her confessional that Luann wants to go to meet men (which Lu confirms). It’s just too bad it wasn’t the Islanders; then I’d be able to make a Scary Islanders pun.
Kristen stands up in an attempt to translate and clarify the back-and-forth going on, which annoys Kelly to no end. “She’s acting like a host,†Kelly says, meaning in the Andy Cohen sense, not the hosting a dinner party sense. The conversation continues back at the house, where Kelly is able to express herself more clearly one-on-one with Kristen. She says she thinks that playing host and asking questions is a guard that Kristen puts up so she doesn’t have to be present and vulnerable herself. She thinks that Kristen is producing them so that she doesn’t have to talk about her own stuff, a trick that Kelly says she herself used to pull. If Kelly was the one producing her original run to make herself look good, she’s a terrible producer.
Speaking of that original run, while this is going on, Dorinda is upstairs watching Scary Island for the first time. Though she originally intended on filming with Kelly without any preconceived notions, after lunch she decided she might need to finally see what everybody keeps talking about. “I guess I get it now,†she says as she watches, identifying a pattern and fearing that they’re heading back in that direction. Scary Island is a critical text, much like the Rosetta Stone, and is a useful tool to help Dorinda comprehend what’s going on around her. But will it impact how she treats Kelly? Based on the fact that she immediately calls her “cunty†for how she’s treating Kristen, yeah, probably.
At dinner, Sonja somehow manages to circle back to the Ashley Madison story, unsatisfied with how much Kristen has offered up about it thus far. Did production promise her a bonus if she gets the details? Or is she really still angry about Josh laughing at her businesses? In any case, the woman is on a mission, so she asks Kristen about how much pain that must have put her through, under the guise of wanting to connect with her more. “He actually didn’t cheat on me,†Kristen says, and suddenly she’s lost all credibility. Even if that is true, nobody, including the women at the table, is going to believe it, and they think she just decided to turn the other cheek. “Even with 75 transactions?†Sonja asks, bringing cold, hard statistics to the table courtesy of the article she read back in her room.
Realizing that this was a well-researched line of questioning seems to rattle Kristen, who’s defenses immediately go up. She insists that she never felt the need to research the site, his account, or those transactions, saying that she knows her truth. To be fair, anything salacious on Josh’s credit card statement was probably buried under pages of wide-brimmed hat purchases anyway. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the women at the table all order fish, which makes Kristen visibly nauseous. “Especially after you saw my pretty kitty, you don’t want any more fish,†Sonja tells her, having flashed her in the van just before dinner.
With their orders in, they get back to the task at hand — trying to make Kristen discuss this incident in depth, which involves pulling up even more articles about it at the table, but she maintains that she doesn’t owe them anything. That’s true, but she also can’t pretend like she gave a satisfactory answer, which she seems to be doing in her claims that she explained it all numerous times now. Dorinda pushes back on that, correctly telling her that she’s skirted around it, and all of the women don’t like that she’s making things out to seem peachy rather than talking about how rough it was at the time. What’s getting lost in translation here is that Kristen wants to talk about how she’s on the other side of the incident, and the women want to talk about the incident itself.
Most bothered out of anyone is Kelly, who interprets this whole conversation as Kristen saying she doesn’t care about what went down. At this point, Dorinda, with visions of Scary Island jelly beans and lollipops still dancing in her head, diverts her focus toward Kelly, accusing her of generalizing in a way that makes Kristen out to be a “simpleton.†To quote Luann, she’s startin’, and even an attempt to tie down her hands can’t stop her from waving them about, telling Kelly that she’s not “jiving†with where she’s going.
Kristen defends her choice to work through it to keep her family together, and Kelly takes that as a personal attack since she chose the opposite route. It’s clearly a much deeper issue for Kelly, who’s just taking it out on Kristen — which is something Dorinda has zero patience for. Remember, at this point she’s probably hit her limit with Kelly’s kookiness after watching Scary Island, so now that she’s seeing even a little slice of that in the flesh, she’s ready to pounce. “What you’re saying sounds nutty,†Dorinda yells, and Kelly tells her not to come at her with her “Blue Stone bullshit.†Who’s the superfan now, Kelly?
With the table fully devolved into chaos (It’s good to be home, isn’t it?), Sonja gets up to go take a lap, on the prowl for men. Intent on putting a pin in the conversation, Kristen says that she went through a dark time, so she went to therapy and put in the work to get through it and heal her marriage. Apparently that was all Kelly needed to hear to be satisfied, so they all toast and call it a day. And against all odds, Ramona is the one who respects Kristen’s perspective the most. “Out of all these women, how is it that I’m most connected to Ramona?†Kristen wonders in her confessional.
With the dinner behind them, it’s time to go back to the house — for some. Luann and Ramona aren’t ready to call it a night just yet, so they stay out to paint the town while the rest of the women head home to skinnydip. The pixelation budget for this show alone must have come dangerously close to bankrupting Peacock.