Reality Recap: Premiere, Balance, Party

Lisa Barlow may be beefing with Whitney Rose, but she sure has made a friend in Molly Sims, who she shared the stage with at Watch What Happens Live, accepting a gracious gift from Molly in hopes it might prevent her from losing another $60,000 ring. 

Tamra Judge is still living in a state of absolute delusion, expressing on her and Teddi Mellencamp’s podcast, Two Ts in a Pod, that the heat she’s catching on social media is the result of Shannon Beador buying bots to attack her online. Now Tamra you know damn well Shannon is worried about $75,000 lawsuits, not you and your chemical peel. Please stop. 

One woman who is not stopping, however, is Monica Garcia – who recently announced she’d be narrating the upcoming season of House of Villains. Way to stay on their necks, Monica! And if you thought you were a Bravo fan, ask yourself whether you go harder than this couple, who found a way to include their love for reality TV into their wedding vows.

Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’s season 5 premiere was a work of art

The long-awaited season 5 premiere aired earlier this week and fans everywhere are still discussing one of the most entertaining season premieres I’ve seen in ages, perhaps best described like this. I’m not even sure who we owe the most thanks to – is it the cast? The producers? The editors? The point is, TV magic was made.

When it comes to the cast, these women have all the right ingredients for a solid cast of housewives, reminiscent of the earlier days. We’ve got tons of plastic surgery and Botox on screen, we’ve got an entire cast of filthy rich women, (including Meredith Marks who was dragged and read for filth by Angie K. for being a ‘renter’, a term that moving forward, will really only symbolize poverty, to anyone who tuned in) and to top it all off, Mary M. Cosby is back, giving us TV gold.

Production put their foot in it this season. We’ve seen them do the timeline changing thing before, but not always this well. You know that the minute you see the “three weeks earlier” text appear on screen, the producers are either doing one of two things – providing us with much needed context or being messy af. But if you think about it, in most cases, the pair are not mutually exclusive.

The editing on this episode deserves so much credit. I think often of the editors. I can just imagine the team, working in front of their screens, grabbing clips of women yelling at each other and throwing glasses (at your own party Lisa Barlow? Like, for real?) and piecing it all together in the most entertaining and artistic way possible and I think they need a bit more acknowledgement for the work they do to entertain us. Because that ending scene when everyone is attacking Whitney didn’t go down like that in real life, but they made sure to edit it that way and it created a lot of buildup for that fat f-ck you Whitney gave Lisa. Here’s to hoping the trifecta of cast, producers and editors can keep this same energy for the rest of the season. Because now that we’ve had a taste of this, nothing less will do.

Real Housewives of Dubai strikes the right balance

This week, the Real Housewives of Dubai reunion finale aired and with all the noise (made mostly by me) in the last year about reunion cancellations due to cast members not being on speaking terms, I have to say, this reunion set the gold standard for what a reunion should be. There was just enough drama, just enough shouting, the right instances were revisited and rehashed and perhaps most importantly, there was actual resolution.

I’ve been pretty tough on Ayan this season because I felt like her way of displaying emotions – storming off, screaming, and bringing up her experience with FGM at times it seemed irrelevant signalled a lack of maturity and accountability. But in this final installment, she seemed so much more composed.

I think the other thing that worked in her favour was the amount of credit she got not only from Andy and the rest of the women but from the audience as well when producers, along with Taleen and Sara, all corroborated her story about Lesa knowing about the voice note before it came up at the fateful dinner that seems to have sparked the downfall of her sisterhood with Lesa.

Oddly enough, I think it was Lesa that came out of the reunion looking the worst. It’s unfortunate because I really took a liking to her this season and I’ve been singing her praises these last few months. And while I still stand by the fact that she is a good friend and a very loyal person, I don’t think aligning herself with Caroline Brooks is doing her any favours.

When it was revealed that Lesa, in order to find out how Ayan really felt about her, got Caroline to call her and secretly put her on speaker phone, it seemed like an act of desperation. I totally get Caroline predicting that she wouldn’t be believed (which she wasn’t) when she originally relayed what Ayan had to say about Lesa and wanting to ensure Lesa heard it for herself, but this was just way off side. 

What’s not working for Lesa is the fact that so many of her fights stem from incidents that didn’t take place on camera. And despite swearing on the lives of her children, she’s been proven wrong on more than one occasion, which completely diminishes her credibility. Hopefully she can regain it by next season.

Emily Simpson gets vulnerable on Real Housewives of Orange County 

We know that Emily has had some body image issues in the past. It’s always been confusing to me because I have always found her to be the most attractive housewife in that franchise. But the thing about body image issues is that it has very little to do with how others see you and way more to do with how you see yourself. Given what she’s shared about her childhood, it’s understandable that she sometimes struggles to see herself the way I, or others who find her incredibly attractive and fit, do. 

Having grown up around people who also experienced body image issues, it’s important to understand why she felt singled out at Heather’s event, whether it was Heather’s intention or not, which I genuinely don’t believe it was. 

Despite the fact that after liposuction and going super hard in the gym, Emily is pretty much the same size as the rest of the women, it’s clear that being asked to bring her own pair of jeans, being the only person in jeans and being dressed in the same garment as Alexis was bothersome and kind of tokenizing. Understandably so.

While I’m so proud of her for speaking up for herself and addressing the matter with Heather, boy, do I wish she did that before she started drinking. I think this conversation would’ve been much better had and much better received in a private one-on-one, maybe in a three-person setting, where the third person could act as a mediator, an advocate, or just someone who could assist in explaining to Heather why Emily felt the way she did. But bringing such an important topic, not only for her but also for the audience, to a cocktail, taco and Jenga party at Jennifer’s house? A true disservice.