The Real Housewives of New York City Recap: Roach Motel

I have no problem with the women of RHONY. I love Jenna lending the other ladies her drip and showing up to dinner in a latex top so low cut that it ended south of Trump’s proposed border wall. I love Jessel FaceTiming her husband and telling him that he’s an asshole for teaching her kids to say that she sleeps all the time. I love Sai going to the Hamptons grocery store and playing “How Much Does Shit Cost,” like it’s the newest game on The Price Is Right. (For the record, I also have no idea how much shit costs at a Safeway; there is no way I know how much organic avocado oil costs at an uppity market in Amagansett. I also know that I would totally use that $16 bottle of oil as lube.)

I love all that stuff. What I don’t love is how they fight. Or are they even fighting? What is even going on with Brynn, Sai, and Ubah? Why is Brynn threatening to go home? I just absolutely don’t get it. There’s that old Wendy’s commercial that asks, “Where’s the beef?” What I want to ask is, why the beef? I watch this show diligently and write about it each week, and I have very little idea why they are even fighting over Erin’s shakshouka table. I guess Ubah doesn’t like that Brynn is condescending and interrupts her. Brynn is mad that Ubah won’t let her talk and calls her names. Okay. Is that it? I mean, really? This is what we’re mad about?

When the episode starts back up at Erin’s Pilates Palace, brought to you by Lowe’s, everyone dresses up to go get a lesson with Erin’s super-hot tennis instructor Tino who was named after the invisible character in My So-Called Life. It appears that Erin only employs absolute hotties. The next day she has Jake Cohen, her hot gay chef, come to make breakfast for everyone. This man has one million followers on Instagram, possibly because of the food he makes or possibly because of Speedo selfies like this one. (I have the same bathing suit and … it does not look like that on me.) He’s joined by an equally hot baker named Ben Siman Tov who only has about 500,000 followers, probably because he’s straight and keeps his top on. At one point, when all of the women are cooking dinner, we see some extra help lurking behind the scenes, like they were just going to pretend they weren’t there. Finally, Jenna asks Mercy and Dayanna a question, and even they’re gorgeous. Is this Erin or the Hamptons? Are ugly people not allowed to work there? Is it some kind of zoning ordinance?

Anyway, the only thing that happens at tennis, other than hot Tino, is that Racquel tells us the story of her last name, Chevremont. She tells Brynn and Jessel that her dad was an asshole who basically never wanted anything to do with her. After a terrible Thanksgiving at his house, she told her mother she didn’t want his last name and was going to take hers. Her mother responded that her father was an asshole, too, so they should find a new name. They looked through their lineage and finally found a French person who came to Puerto Rico, and they chose that as their last name. That is an amazing, wonderful, and empowering story, and I am so happy that we all helped topple the patriarchy. The only thing that makes me happier is Racquel saying she can’t cook, but she sure knows how to work a grill. I love our lesbionic Housewives ever so much.

After this, Brynn starts talking about how she wants to leave Erin’s house. She says her fight or flight is activated, and she doesn’t fight, so she’s just gonna dip out like Tom Sandoval. I get that she’s upset that Sai is blanking her and Ubah called her a snake at dinner that morning, but is it that serious? It’s not like someone was trying to make her sleep on the “lower level.” She is helping Jenna Lyons make her world-famous pavlova and Jenna tells Brynn that she can wear all of her diamonds as long as she promises to stay. That is a deal I would make any day of the week. However, $250,000 to carry Jessel’s baby girl? No, Sai. Don’t do it. Though, it would be a bit of a slay. We’ve seen lots of things on the Housewives: fraud, faked cancer, FBI arrests, pooping on the floor. One thing we haven’t seen? An inter-cast surrogacy. Think about it for season three.

Speaking of which, when all of the women are sitting around talking, someone asks Ubah what’s going on with her hot sauce. She says that she’s waiting to put a team together and she’s taking her time. She says, “People say I’m hot and this is my moment, but I’m hot all the time.” Really? Is that true? Doesn’t she want to sell as much of it as she can while she’s on this “platform?” I mean, when was the last time someone ordered a Lynne Curtain cuff? Case closed.

Everyone gets really dolled up for dinner, and Brynn looks stunning in a green pleated dress that looks like a sculpture. Jenna is in her latex and telling stories about how she went to sex clubs back in the day with her “boyfriend” who was a “reporter” writing a “story” about them for “the New Yorker.” Mmmmhmmm. Sure, Jenna. Even more embarrassing is the story that Becky Minkoff tells at the top of the hour, where she was lactating in a Paris club and made her husband relieve her. Does that mean he suckled the milk out of her boobies? Are we sure this isn’t a fetish thing? I mean, I get that lactation is natural and all, but I would rather carry Jessel’s baby for free than have my man suck milk out of my boobs.

All of the women prepare a dish for a group Shabbat dinner, and Jessel says it’s her first Shabbat ever. It’s not ours. Remember Black Shabbat? Yeah, I wish I couldn’t either. Erin is saying the traditional prayer to start the meal and can’t remember all the words. Becky finishes it for her. Erin, in confessional, says, “How are you Jewish and a Scientologist? I don’t get it.” I guess that’s as much criticism that the “religion” is going to get here on Bravo.

At the end of dinner, Erin and Brynn play a prank on everyone. Didn’t we learn last season that Erin is not to be trusted with practical jokes? Haven’t we decided, as a community of Bravo fans, that the least funny person in Andy Cohen’s pantheon is Erin Mew Mew Lichy? She decides that she is going to put two plastic cockroaches in Jenna’s pavlova. Brynn immediately tells her that Ubah is going to hate it. When Jessel pulls it out of her plate and holds it in the air, Ubah immediately runs to the bathroom and pukes up all the lamb, potatoes, plantains, rice, and beans that she has previously consumed. When Sai goes to check on her and sees the retching, she pukes in Erin’s sink. I’m sorry, but Erin’s sink gets everything she deserves. Yes, all of the women are laughing (and, to be fair to Erin, it is pretty funny), but that a joke got to the point of vomiting isn’t convincing me that Erin has the sense of humor she thinks she has.

The next morning, everyone convenes for breakfast, and this is when Brynn and Ubah have another meltdown. Apparently in the middle of the night they had a chat and Brynn didn’t want Ubah yelling at her because she doesn’t want Ubah to come across as the “angry black woman” on television. I understand where Brynn is coming from, but that is going to happen no matter what. Just by behaving on television, that terrible archetype will still exist. Every Black woman on all of reality television could sit with their legs crossed and their hands folded in their lap, and there are still going to be people to trot out negative stereotypes about them. I’m not saying I agree with it, that’s just what happens when you live in a racist society. I think the way to change that isn’t by trying to fight the stereotype, but by having as many depictions of Black women on television as possible. Some of them will be like Ubah, who seems to feel all her emotions — from joy to anger and back again — very intensely. Some of them will be like Brynn, who doesn’t like to yell and instead just flirts her way through life. The way to get rid of the stigma isn’t trying to avoid it but trying to bury it under as many depictions of real Black women as we can possibly get. Hello, my name is Dame Brian Moylan, and welcome to my TED Talk.

What’s really at issue here is that Brynn doesn’t like it when Ubah calls her names like “snake,” and Ubah doesn’t like it when Brynn condescends to those in the group. Ubah isn’t wrong about the way Brynn treats people. Rather than yelling, she’ll just make a coy grin and throw a little dig at them. Yeah, it might not be a name, per se, but it’s just as bad. But Ubah also makes a valid point that Brynn interrupts her when she is upset, and since English isn’t her first language, it gets her sidetracked, and then she has a hard time expressing herself. I also see Brynn’s point that Ubah doesn’t let her talk or express her feelings because Ubah is feeling her feelings like no one has felt a feeling before. It’s all a lot, but it’s also all nothing. It’s vibes. It’s the dew on the Hampton’s grass. It’s the neon yellow felt stuck on a tennis racquet. It’s the braided Challah made by a hot gay dude in your kitchen. It’s a plastic cockroach, it’s frozen eggs, it’s a breast pump that fits in your pocket. But no matter what it is, it’s somehow all real, and we’re all stuck with it.