It is not every day that we get to witness a birth. Since this show returned last year, Dr. Nicole was one of my favorites. Like Kyle Richards or Kandi Burruss, she always seemed like an actual person, someone I could see myself having dinner with. (You know, as opposed to someone like Ramona Singer, whom I would consciously move away from if I saw her at a social function.) But with this episode, Dr. Nicole died and Housewife Nicole arrived. All it took was a mirrored invitation sent to Larsa Pippen’s house when, quite conveniently, both the cameras and Guerdy were already there.
The fight between Nicole and Larsa is a continuation of an argument that started in the previous episode when Nicole tried to explain to Larsa why it’s hurtful that she keeps bringing up her “ex-husband, the teacher.†It devolved into Larsa saying that Nicole had judged her last season and checked out her OnlyFans page before meeting her. Larsa is still fixated on this, but she doesn’t remember that Nicole checked it out, saw it wasn’t that bad, and decided she was cool with meeting her.
I always thought Dr. Nicole was in the right here. If I were told that I have a new co-worker and they have an OF, I am of course putting on my investigative-journalist hat and booting that shit up. (Hello, I already did it for journalism.) Even if they didn’t have an OF, I would still Google them because that is what we do. I’m with Nicole; if someone is coming to your house, you want at least a scintilla of information about them, not even to judge them or allow them in, just because you’re curious.
Larsa’s reaction is to say she heard Nicole has slept with every doctor in her hospital, something that is as unprovable as I assume is false. Alexia isn’t wrong — where there is smoke there is often fire. But there is no way Nicole slept with every doctor at the hospital. There are probably some gay ones and a couple who are so gross that Nicole wouldn’t dare. There might even be a few who would turn her down. But what is most likely is Kiki’s answer: No one has the time to have that much sex. I’m saying that maybe she had an affair with one dude, which I could believe. But the entire staff? Come on. Not even optometrists’ wives will get jiggy with them.
Nicole says in confessional, “I went to school for so many years to be a doctor, to take care of patients, and this comment’s coming from a lady who sells her feet for $5 on the internet?†Yeah … I don’t love the slut-shaming undertone that has been running riot among Housewives lately, but her point is valid. Of the cast, Nicole is the only one with a real-person job where she pulls a paycheck from a boss. She could easily get fired for this, just like Justin Rose on RHOSLC lost his job. Larsa is not at any risk.
She accuses Nicole of judging her based on something she read on the internet. Um, no. She judged you based on something you deliberately put into the world to profit from. Bonus points to Nicole for bringing up the very substantiated rumor that Larsa is dating Marcus Jordan, the son of her ex-husband’s archnemesis, something Larsa is refusing to put on the show. Bonus points to Larsa for this extreme pettiness. Bonus points to Marcus for being hot. Good work all around on this one, honestly.
I am very pro-Nicole in this argument, especially because she figured Larsa out like yesterday’s Wordle. Nicole says that when Larsa is challenged or uncomfortable, she picks the meanest thing she can think of and launches it at that person. We see her tell Adriana that she is bipolar, we see her tell Julia that she was making out with a dude, and we see her do it immediately in this scene when she says Nicole must be unhappy at home and that’s why she’s doing this. After their interaction, Larsa goes back to Nicole to say that Nicole may be friendly to everyone, but Larsa is fake. Um, what is fake is pretending to be these women’s friend and then trolling out the most DeuxMoi baseless bullshit she can think up in her head.
Later, we see Nicole and her fiancé, Anthony, at a fancy dinner, and Anthony talks shit about Larsa and makes fun of the way she looks — I do not like this one bit. Anthony, that is our job. I don’t try to do attorney insurance or whatever. But Nicole tells him she did something that will handle the situation.
The scene is intercut with Guerdy visiting Larsa as a box from Nicole arrives in the mail. Guerdy says, “Oh goody. It’s something to help along your friendship.†Um, Guerdy. I know you’re getting all of that good nerdy firefighter D at home (the things that man knows about Star Wars have my basement flooded like the water planet Kamino). This probably has you a little slaphappy, but this is not a gift that is wishing well. This is a gift meant to destroy.
Larsa opens the package, and it has a message written on it as if Nicole just got booted off RuPaul’s Drag Race. It doesn’t only expose Larsa as being fake; it exposes her as not having done enough School Reading Assessments when she was in the fourth grade. It says, “Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fake one of all.†Did Larsa read it wrong, or did Nicole write it wrong? It could go either way. It ends with Nicole saying that Larsa is no longer invited to her engagement party and instead she has to stay at home and clean up dog drool in her athleisure.
I mean, slow clap for Nicole, y’all. I haven’t been this impressed with an act of pettiness since Kenya Moore showed up with a drum line at Marlo Hampton’s wig launch. (You know those drums launched Marlo’s wig right up to the International Space Station.) Yes, disinviting someone is tacky and silly, and you would never do it in real life. But it is becoming de rigueur on our favorite docusoap, and Nicole has mastered the art. How quickly did she get a mirror, get a box it would fit in, find a pen that would work on the mirror, get Larsa’s address, find out when Guerdy and the camera would be there from production, and get that shit in the mail? That is like a $400 prank, and it was worth way more than the $15 I paid for pictures of Larsa in a bikini on OF.
Nicole’s engagement party looks amazing, but why is she wearing a (gorgeous) white dress? Isn’t that bad luck? She’s snippy about Marysol wearing white to the party, but it’s only a faux pas to wear white to a wedding. I think we can let this engagement party slide, especially because Marysol is so patient with Nicole’s father, Mike, who Marysol points out is just a villain from an episode of Miami Vice. You know there are white blazers five sizes too small crowding up that guy’s wardrobe.
We learn from the dinner Nicole and Anthony have that her father has been invited, but she made it clear his girlfriend is not welcome. I’m sure Nicole has a valid reason for hating this woman, but she needs to tell us what it is. If it’s something dumb, like she doesn’t like the color of the lady’s hair, I will say that it is dumb and she should move on. If the new girlfriend is Anna Delvey, then there is a perfect reason why Nicole wouldn’t want to be around this woman at all.
Mike isn’t horribly behaved even though he drunkenly flirts with every female-presenting person in his path, especially Kiki, the world’s most perfect “friend of†and the subject of an upcoming retrospective at the Real Housewives Institute. He is trashed, pulls Nicole over, and says Anthony “will never be like me. One day, he’ll come home at 11 p.m. and say, ‘Nicole, listen to this …†At this point, Nicole cuts him off and says she doesn’t want to have this conversation. Um, yeah, but there is three of us here: Nicole, her father, and us. We want to have this conversation. What was he going to say? Where was this going? What will Anthony one day say to Nicole? We must know! Guess we’re going to have to call Allison DuBois, who will tell us that he will never emotionally fulfill her. Know that.
At the end of the party, Nicole sits with all of the women and tells them she disinvited Larsa. Julia claps and says Larsa needs to learn that she can’t just make these accusations like she did to her, too. Alexia, however, loves every rumor about someone other than her and says that maybe Larsa is telling the truth. “Anyone can say anything they want,†she says, which you know is true until someone says her son Peter was arrested for domestic violence and then she says it’s all the woman’s fault. Sorry, Alexia, if you’re the moral compass, we would get lost in the bedding section at Target.
As the rest of the women call it a night, Larsa sits at home in her Lululemon drinking a half-warm La Croix out of the can. She looks out her full-length windows onto the shimmering city below her, on the stars that dimple up the sky, on a cloud that is quickly closing in on the moon like it’s Pac-Man going for a Power Pellet. She walks over to her table and sees the black box Nicole sent her half propped open. She lifts the cardboard lid and catches her face at a bad angle in the mirror. She stares down at her face and then out the windows at the wide world beyond. She goes back and forth silently for about five minutes, occasionally taking a sip of her drink. Then, as she walks away, more out of carelessness than intent, she sends the box and the mirror to the floor, crashing and shattering, with shards of glass skittering across the floor and under the furniture. She goes to bed without cleaning up any of the mess she made.