Reality Recap: Garcelle's exit

Bethenny Frankel ripped Teresa Giudice a new one for landing herself in yet another marriage with financial woes after the Real Housewives of New Jersey star made headlines for owing $3 million in back taxes. Her response? This ultra glam #MondayMotivation photo. Oh, Teresa. So far, the Married to Medicine reunion is more entertainment than any of us deserve, with Quad and Toya firing shots at Sweet Tea and the legendary Phaedra Parks, queen of a read, leaving the women with some painful parting words. 

And lastly, the Southern Charm reunion is off to a very strong start with the cast in a tizzy over Craig and Paige’s breakup, the details of which seem conflicting, depending on who you ask, whether it was true love between Shep and Sienna, and whether JT is a lying, cheating prick, with the first part ending on the cliffhanger of Venita going to grab her phone and give us our favourite thing – receipts. 

Real Housewives of Beverly Hills season ends with a bang

This week, the season finale of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills wrapped up in St. Lucia, and with this season ending with the women in carnival costumes, I am thrilled to say that my two worlds have finally collided. Not even a fortune teller could’ve had me believing I’d see Kathy Hilton and Sutton Stracke on stage dancing (though, very offbeat and very stiff) to soca, but it happened and I’m ecstatic. 

But the real spectacle came after the season finale. Two events have fuelled a firestorm on social media. First, the teaser of Garcelle walking off stage at the reunion, telling the women they were bitches and that they could all go f-ck themselves. Cinema. And second, the chatter online about whether Boz is a sellout for not having a better relationship with her only Black castmate. 

When it comes to why Garcelle is leaving, gee, I can’t imagine how she could have possibly had enough with this group of women. Perhaps it was how true and faithful of a friend she’s been to Sutton over the years, only to get shit on time and time again. As we saw this season, Sutton was so busy waging a war on Dorit and was wedged so far up Kyle’s ass in her quest for her approval that she either didn’t notice how much she pushed Garcelle away or simply didn’t care. Garcelle grew tired of being a top tier friend to Sutton, only for her to turn it around and make everything about Dorit, or not having Kyle in her corner, despite the fact that Garcelle had been in her corner since day one.

If we’re being really honest, I think the reason Sutton is after Kyle’s approval so much is because Kyle’s constant rejection is reminiscent of the dynamic between Sutton and her mother, and she therefore thinks love and friendship is about the constant pursuit of approval you can’t have. But what do I know? I’m no therapist. 

Fans have pointed out that Garcelle’s friendship with Sutton and wanting to ensure she had support was the only reason she stuck around. But when Sutton made it very clear that Kyle and her approval was more important to her than Garcelle’s friendship, it left her no reason to be there. Besides, Sutton has Jennifer Tilly now, who, by the way, is very rich. 

Or, perhaps Garcelle’s exit was fuelled by the years-long disrespect she faced from the women, which included her book being thrown in the garbage, Erika’s fiasco with her son, and most recently, as we saw in the reunion teaser, Erika telling Garcelle that she wished she was “more interesting”. That remark coming from the woman whose main storyline this season was the renovation of a rental apartment is very rich, though not in a literal sense of course, which I’ll get to in a moment. So what does any of this have to do with Boz?

Well, Boz and Erika appeared on Watch What Happens Live, and when they were asked about how they felt about Garcelle’s departure, they didn’t have much to say. In fact, Erika got really sassy and said, “Won’t he do it?” The answer to which we got yesterday when news outlets reported Erika will be heading to trial after being hit with a lawsuit over allegations she spent $24 million in misappropriated funds that belonged to her ex-husband’s former clients. 

See what happens when you speak on people you have no business speaking on? This is a major yikes moment for her and given her legal troubles she should’ve known better than to feel so emboldened to speak the way she did about the only Black woman in Real Housewives history to enter an all-white franchise and stand on business. 

With Black fans stanning Garcelle since day one, seeing Boz’s lack of interest in building a friendship or even speaking up for her earlier this week raised some serious eyebrows and begged some questions about whether she’s a sellout. Despite the fact that I’m not entirely on board with the idea that just because Garcelle and Boz are both Black they have to be besties, especially considering they had a lot of different opinions this season but still got along pretty well, I do wonder why Boz felt the need to stay silent for as long as she did on that episode of Watch What Happens Live. Whatever it was, she obviously clocked it and felt pressured to issue her lame ass mea culpa when she started catching heat on Beyoncé’s internet. 

I also find it odd that Boz formed more of an alliance with these women than Garcelle, who, by the way was so disrespected not only by the women but by the network that Andy Cohen himself had to apologize, which I wrote about here. Based on what I’ve seen on social media, Boz lost herself a lot of Black fans in the last few days because it appears she chose the popular girls over Garcelle, and many people are pointing to her very early alliance with Dorit, who is guilty of microaggressions toward Garcelle over the years, as a sign we should’ve seen this coming. Other people are also speculating that this was natural for Boz because she was around so many white people in corporate America. But baby, this isn’t corporate America. This is Bravo.

If you ask me, Garcelle is the true winner here. There are only a handful of women who have walked away from Real Housewives, and she now joins their elite ranks. She came on the show successful and is leaving with even more success. She helped bolster her son’s modelling career, has had her praises sung by Andy Cohen and she was wished a goodbye by Alex Baskin, FFS, executive producer of several current shows on the network. The door has been left open for her in the event she wants to return. If you ask me, she had an epic run and an even more epic exit. 

This, my friends, is why NeNe Leakes once said, “Bling bling bling, bitches is mad.” Because the bitches really are mad. 

Attached - Garcelle at an event the other night in Beverly Hills.