Reality Recap

Welcome to Reality Recap. Every week, I pitch tons of stories from the Bravoverse, and sometimes, there are more stories than even I can keep up with. So here are my top three stories from this week in digestible, bite-sized chunks that even the people who don’t tune in can follow along with. 

In third place…

Lindsay Hubbard Cools Down After Raging On Summer House

Oh, Summer House. Hands down, this is arguably the most exciting show in rotation right now – which is a very loaded statement considering there are some heavy hitters currently in season on Bravo. A lot of this season’s excitement is thanks to Carl Radke and Lindsay Hubbard, his f-cking dreaded, awful ex-fiance (though not at this point in the show). 

This season is particularly interesting to watch because we’re getting to see just some of the behaviour that led Carl to the decision to call off their engagement, which I initially wrote about here. And as I predicted, last week we saw how her drinking during his sobriety is not working well for them, amongst a slew of other things. 

This week, the group was a lot more tame, and there were some little spills of tea throughout this episode, and if you blinked you might’ve missed them. The first was Paige DeSorbo informing us all on that call with her realtor that she pays a whopping $8,500 for rent. But that’s New York for ya. It’s just so interesting to hear these reality TV stars talk about money. We know she makes bank off of her social media and brand partnerships, but that is like, a lot of money.

I love that when Craig offered to top up whatever extra may have been beyond her budget (which went up to $9,000 btw, in rent, per month, wtf), she declined. In her confessional she said she would not be having any of that without marriage and was turned off by the mere thought of him having some sort of say in how things would run in her expensive ass apartment. That’s just some of the reason she’s been my favourite Summer House castmate since season one. She’s real af and not looking for handouts (but Craig, I am, so feel free to hit me up).

The other spill was West accidentally letting it slip that in addition to their Monday movie night, he and Ciara were also together the Thursday before they went to the summer house. So they have a legit showmance, but also a real romance offscreen. Is he lying about still being stuck at first base? Are he and Ciara banging? I am here for their romance and Ciara’s affinity for dating white men makes me regret all the non-melanated men I said no to when I was on the dating apps.

The very last spill, which was anything but missable, was Lindsay’s confession that she and Carl only have sex “every few weeks”, which Paige insists is more like every six weeks. Lindsay’s all ticked off because Carl “doesn’t initiate sex” with her. Part of me wonders if she really is this obtuse, or whether it’s all an act she puts on for the camera. Your fiancé just told the group he has to skip coming up to the house on Friday night in order to skip your weekly “Friday night fight” and you think that’s sexy? Ma’am.

In second place…

Real Housewives of Potomac Gets a Lifeline and Karen Huger’s Big Trouble Amid a Boring Season

Before I even get into the punch Real Housewives of Potomac packed this week, can we talk about Karen Huger getting arrested for a DUI and blaming her drunken state on the death of her mother back in 2017? I had to Google the date she died because I feel like we’ve been talking about it forever. I know grief very well and agree with her statement that it comes in waves. But if there’s one thing that woman can do to any given story it is spin it honey. Also, grief has never made me get behind the wheel of a Maserati (not that I have one, and she did this with a suspended registration, by the way) and get into a single-vehicle collision. You’re the Grand Dame, Karen, smarten up! 

About the show, though, this week’s episode finally packed a punch as the ladies got together to see the launch of GNA – the not-so-creative brand name of Gizelle Bryant and Ashley Darby’s joint athleisure, but certainly more leisure than athletic, clothing line. The clothes? Not giving. Like, at all. But I am surprised they pulled off an actual fashion show considering Gizelle was dealing with some family issues (her dad lied to her about having cancer, yikes). 

I was very surprised to see Deborah at the fashion show. Deborah, of course, is the woman Candiace Dillard famously dubbed a Sesame Street character last season, a comparison I refuse to comment on, but you can look her up for yourself. All the women exchanged their typical niceties at the beginning of the night. But once the show was wrapped and that liquor started flowing and, most notably, when the cameras turned off, we got the audio only of what sounded like a very promising confrontation between Deborah and Candiace. This season needed a lifeline, and a confrontation over being called a Sesame Street character is just what we all needed. 

In other RHOP news, though, Candiace appeared on a podcast and had some strange remarks about the child she is working on having with her husband Chris. She said, with her chest, that she has a ‘fear’ that her kids will come out light-skinned. It’s an odd remark in general, but mostly because her husband Chris Bassett is a literal white man. Remarks like this from Candiace don’t surprise me. She’s made her disdain for her light-skinned castmates clear throughout the history of the show, which includes a long history of her questioning Robyn Dixon and Gizelle Bryant’s Blackness. But I think the main question for me in the wake of her remarks is what the response would be if a light-skinned woman said she had a fear her kids would turn out dark- skinned. As I’ve expressed before, I’ve had it with the anti-biracial slander, more about that here.

Annemarie Wiley Gets The Boot From Bravo

 I’ve got good and bad news. Let’s start with the bad so we can end on a high note here. The engagement between Kyle Richards’ daughter Farrah Brittany and her longtime partner Alex Manos has been called off. I highly doubt it was a situation remotely close to Carl and Lindsay’s, but I do feel like it did have to do with the chaos of having to navigate her parents’ surprise separation, I wrote about here, her having to work in such close proximity to her dad, and having to do all of this on camera, now that Mauricio’s in Buying Beverly Hills. 

The good news, though, is that for the first time in a long time, Bravo made a brilliant decision. They fired Annemarie Wiley! Remember when Issa Rae said she was rooting for everybody Black? Usually I am, too, unless you’re Annemarie Wiley. She was boring. Her shoulders bothered me. She was very misleading about her professional and medical accreditations. Krystal ate her up at the reunion. She wasn’t standing on business at any point throughout the season. Everything about her just annoyed and bothered me. Good on you, Bravo. It’s been a while since I’ve given that network a compliment.