The Real Housewives of Miami
Hot off the Press Season 5 Episode 9 Editor’s Rating «Previous Next» « Previous Episode Next Episode The Real Housewives of Miami
Hot off the Press Season 5 Episode 9 Editor’s Rating «Previous Next» « Previous Episode Next EpisodeWhat a strangely structured episode! I’m not complaining; it’s just that we’ve never seen anything like it that I can remember. The episode is bookended by Lisa dealing with her divorce from Lenny, a case of anal chlamydia, but the fallout for that episode is each of the couples on the show checking in on their respective relationships. It feels like a scripted drama, except there is not one drama on Showtime where Guerdy and Russell would talk about how much they are banging while having a romantic beach picnic.
The episode starts with Lenny, an ingrown hair on a 90-year-old nut sack, doing a 180 in the press and telling them that, yes, he and Lisa are getting a divorce, that they’ve been living separate lives for a while, and this was a mutual decision. This is markedly different from his first statements, where he denied the divorce and that he even had a girlfriend but also markedly different from reality. Lisa says she thinks her ex and his girlfriend are talking to the press to hurt her. I don’t think that’s right. He’s trying to come off blameless in all of this. The problem is, we are eventually going to see it. We are going to see what happens, and it does not stack up with the lies he’s trying to peddle on Page Six.
If he and Lisa were living separate lives, why was he posing for cute pictures with her at the party at their house? Why was he having a romantic dinner with her on camera? Why was he even pretending to sit down with the kids and talk about Judaism? Yes, he was totally checked out, but they are about as separate as three edamame beans in the same damn pod. Later in the episode, Lisa calls Lenny after she reads the new girlfriend’s statement in the press. She tells him, “You don’t care at all about the children, or else you wouldn’t be doing this.”
“Fuck off,” Lenny responds. Twenty-two minutes later, when Lisa is at a party with the girls, he texts to ask when she’s ordering groceries and places his order for chunky peanut butter (which was also his name in middle school), bananas, and strawberries. This dude can fuck all the way right off. You don’t get to leave your wife and still have her do her wifely duties. If he wants peanut butter and bananas, he can go buy them himself or have the fucking mistress do it. This is the worst behavior I have ever seen, and he is doing nothing to make himself look good on this here reality television program.
The best conversation Lisa has about her divorce is with Marysol. It’s crazy how Marysol has become the MVP not just of the confessionals but the whole season. She was so bland in the first three seasons, and now she is here bringing the sass, the smarts, and all of the flower crowns a girl outside of Coachella needs. It’s like the spirit of Mama Elsa leapt into her body and took over, and now she’s the star attraction. I bring this up because she goes to check in on Lisa at her house (and the bottle of Ketel One she left if the freezer is still there). She does what she must and listens to Lisa complain about her kids being in a broken home. Seriously, Lisa. What is worse: the kids being raised by two loving but separate parents, or the kids being raised by the two of you fighting all the damn time?
Eventually, Marysol tells her it is her time to be selfish because her ex is selfish. That is exactly right. If that guy is going to be a dick, then take every penny from every boob job he’s ever given. But even better, Marysol tells Lisa to look at her, at Alexia, at Larsa. They’ve all been divorced, and they’re doing great, and their kids are great. (Well, not Alexia’s son Peter, but this recap can only contain so many awful men at any given time.) Marysol tells Lisa the hard truth that a great life is waiting for her on the other side, and she will eventually find it.
Marysol and Alexia say the same thing when they go out to dinner and run into a pair of old queens (I say this as a term of respect) named Bob and Lee, who come over to the table. They’re both dressed in stripey button-down shirts with floral collars that are big with regional gays in the Cam from Modern Family style. They want to gossip about the Hochstein divorce. At first, I wondered why a drive-by at their table would make it to the show, but this is the best illustration of what it is like to get divorced while on reality TV I have ever seen. Everyone wants to talk about it, even if they don’t know you.
Speaking of Alexia, I have a critique of a scene that involves her son Frankie, who was in an accident a decade ago and sustained a brain injury that has required therapy ever since. (I want to be clear that this isn’t a commentary of Frankie.) What I don’t like is the way that Alexia encourages him to act around women. Alexia is hosting a party for the de Moya Foundation (a charity that has done amazing work with Frankie) with several attractive young women who are party planning. Frankie gives each of them a hug and a kiss, followed by Alexia saying, “He’s been waiting all day to kiss you.” It has the same feeling as when a parent calls their eight-to-ten-year-old boy “quite the ladies man.” It’s creepy to sexualize a young boy like that. In Frankie’s case, while he may have cognitive difficulties that he’s working through that may make him seem on par with a child that age, he’s an adult man in an adult man’s body. He may not be capable of understanding the nuances of consent, body language, and the unspoken dynamics of romantic intimacy, so I don’t think Alexia should be encouraging him to kiss and hug women when the dynamics leave so much room for discomfort and misunderstanding.
Let’s do some marriage check-ins, shall we? The first is with Martina and Julia, who makes her wife the first dinner she ever cooked for her 14 years ago and sets up a table on their dock overlooking the ocean. It’s so romantic to come out the back door, see the rose petals lining the stone walkway, see the champagne on ice by the table, see Julia in a stunning (and stunningly tight) dress, and then see … all of the lighting and cameramen to film the whole thing for television.
Julia asks Martina, in the spirit of Lisa not knowing that Lenny was unhappy, what she can do to be a better spouse. Martina only asks for two weeks of skiing in Aspen every year. That’s it? That’s all she wants? She wants to take you on a luxury vacation where you could run into anyone on the slopes, from Ramona Singer to Melanie Griffith and Goldie Hawn, hanging out together and smoking cigarettes in their furs, and you don’t want to do it? Shit, I’ll become a lesbian for those two weeks and go with Martina. Martina ends it by saying that the dinner is perfect, and so is Julia. “I’m not going anywhere, and I love you,” Martina says, and I swear to God I shed the exact same tear that Lisa Rinna shed when Kim Richards gave her back the blue bunny.
It’s all spoiled, though, when Julia has to escort Adriana for her “non-surgical” Brazilian Butt Lift so that it will be on camera, and she’ll get it for free. While there, Julia shares that Martina came up to her after dinner and said that if Julia wanted to adopt a child, they should. No, Martina. Don’t be fooled! Julia is having a hard time dealing with having an empty nest. The answer is getting some therapy to cope with it, not making sure that your nest is never empty. Can’t Julia enjoy the next ten-ish years as a swinging young wife to a tennis great before she gets some grandkids in the mix? That will fill the nest up right quick.
Guerdy and Russell, who is Mr. January through March in the Hot Househusbands Calendar in my mind, have a romantic beach picnic. It’s at the site where he proposed a jillion years ago, and then they celebrated by going to the Macaroni Grill — this is a perfect story about love in modern America. I love Guerdy’s quote about the beach proposal: “I was not prepared aesthetically, but this bitch said yes.” Poor straight people and their proposals having to be a surprise. Just let a girl know so she can have her hair and nails done, have a cute outfit on, and have the Insta filter preselected. Normalize letting her know when it will happen. That’s real love.
Guerdy also asks Russel if they’re okay with their marriage, and he agrees that she works too much. He says that when she gets home, all she wants to do is get in the Sleep Number and “watch your shows which I don’t want to watch.” These must be Bravo shows, and Russell should try harder. So should Guerdy. Straight guys love a Below Deck moment. They also love a Pump Rules or a Summer House. All he wants is more time and more sex than he’s getting. But he’s getting three times a week. If I get three times a month, I count myself lucky before checking myself into Sex and Love Anonymous. Three times a week, and she has a successful business? Couldn’t be me.
The episode ends with a fight I didn’t see coming. Dr. Nicole sits down with Larsa at the party because she has a bone to pick. Larsa keeps referring to Dr. Nicole’s “ex-husband, the teacher,” and Dr. Nicole doesn’t like it. To be fair to Larsa, when Nicole brought up her divorce to compare it to Lisa and Lenny’s, Larsa was correct that it was a different divorce. Larsa and Alexia can talk about what it’s like to divorce a man with a lot of money. Nicole’s situation, where she had to pay the ex, is remarkably different.
But, as the flashbacks remind us, Larsa has brought this up a bunch, and it is not innocent. She keeps talking about Nicole’s ex, “the teacher,” because she’s implying that Nicole is some gold digger who divorced the teacher to marry a rich lawyer. Umm, Nicole is an actual medical doctor. She’s an anesthesiologist, the profession with the single highest average salary across America. She does not need to dig for gold.
Larsa comes back with some old shit from last season about how Nicole wanted to know about Larsa before getting to know her. Larsa says she felt judged and says, “I heard you slept with every doctor at the hospital, but I didn’t say it.” Well, now you said it. Now we can’t put that genie back in that particular bottle, and we’re just going to have to wait for next week to find out what bad-faith argument Larsa has for us this time. But it’s worth noting she doesn’t even have a relationship for us to check up on, so maybe Dr. Nicole won already.
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