The Real Housewives of New York City Recap: Wham! Bam! Thank You, Glam!

After the first season of RHONY 2.0, I wasn’t worried about what would happen in season two. In late-stage Housewifery, all fights on the show are about the show, so now that the women had a season of show under their belts, they would have a lot more to fight about, I reasoned. Well, it took only 13 episodes and I was finally right. What took you ladies so long? The first show-fights start when Brynn, Sai, and Erin are sitting on loungers in Puerto Rico, talking about Jessel’s house and how it looks like a Restoration Hardware showroom. This moves on to them talking about Jessel in general and how much she has changed. Oh yeah — this feels like a gang-up on the fan favorite from season one.

First, it’s on a very superficial level with Brynn saying that Jessel has both a new face and new teeth, but then she says that something about her has changed in the past year. Now, she wants to have photographers at all of her events, including her son’s birthday party. She wants to always be in glam and seems uninterested in hanging out if there won’t be cameras around. There is also some other petty gossiping about how Sai hates Pavit because he called her a bitch and some other kind of regular Housewifery that the women haven’t given us so far in non-prank form.

Erin says they’re upset about “her level of openness and honesty.” Um, that is true of nearly everyone on this show. None of them are open and honest, and that’s why many of the episodes have felt as if someone is trying to make it out of the elevator before they let out a beefy fart. Ubah won’t talk about her boyfriend; Erin won’t let her husband joke about doing mushrooms; Sai is nearly closed off entirely, except when she talks about her mother’s death; and Brynn, well — it’s still not totally clear what she does for work. They’re worried about Jessel being open and honest? It’s funny how Jenna, the one who has set the clearest boundaries, is also the one who will foster a conversation about her strange pubic hair that seems as though it could have its own Pantene commercial. Would Angie K. say it’s high-body-count hair? Probably.

Erin then steers the conversation to say that Jessel is “pissed” at Brynn because they were at a photo shoot together, and Brynn went before Jessel because she thinks Jessel is a camera hog and she wanted to get home to her puppy. This comes up at dinner, and Jessel says that someone asked if she had ever been mad at Brynn, and she said “no” but that this one time, this thing happened, and it annoyed her. She seems not fussed about it, not having thought about it much, and it was just an offhand annoyance rather than something threatening their friendship.

At dinner, Brynn starts by saying that Jessel has glam and photographers around her all the time, and all of the other women around the table are like, This is dumb. If she wants those things, let her. I have to agree, and Brynn is shut down because she can’t articulate her larger point, which is that Jessel has changed. But even if she could, as Jessel points out, how is this affecting Brynn? Why does Brynn get to bring this up, and why now? She can’t, and she shouldn’t, so the whole argument is stupid. Like always, it seems as though Brynn is picking at scabs to see who bleeds.

Then Erin butts in and mentions how Jessel was mad about the photo-shoot thing when Jessel says, “Shut the fuck up, Erin.” She is totally right, too. This has nothing to do with the conversation, and Erin is inserting herself in a way that doesn’t belong. Then Erin starts shushing her and saying she doesn’t want to talk to Jessel and she’s a liar. Ugh, this is why I can’t stand Erin Mew Mew Lichy: If someone doesn’t agree with her or tell her exactly what she wants to hear, she tries to shut them up and shut them out. She even continues talking about Jessel with Brynn and Sai at the other end of the table, and when Jessel tries to get her to say it to her face, Erin shushes her again. When Jessel tries to defend herself, Erin tells her to shut up, but God forbid anyone get in the way of Erin trying to explain why what she said wasn’t offensive. She’s the worst.

Anyway, through some reality-television alchemy, this somehow becomes Ubah’s problem. She’s across from Jessel with a headache and on her phone, so Brynn asks her why she’s even there. Ubah has what can be called nothing but a temper tantrum, slamming her foot on the table like she’s Nikita Khrushchev and telling Brynn that she doesn’t have to go anywhere. I think Brynn’s question is a valid one. If Ubah isn’t feeling well and doesn’t want to eat, can’t she ask for a ride home? However, Brynn doesn’t say it out of concern; she says it to get a reaction out of Ubah, but getting a reaction out of Ubah isn’t difficult.

As this is going on and continues on the way to the Sprinter, Brynn says in her confessional, “She’s mad at anyone who disagrees with her, and if you say anything that she doesn’t like, she flies off the handle.” She means Ubah, but this is also true about her friend Erin.

Then Ubah, like the world’s fastest elevator, takes it to a whole different level. She says that Brynn is bullying her for trying to tell her what to do, which is ludicrous, and Ubah says she got the job on this show by being herself. She doesn’t know how Brynn got on the show — maybe she slept with someone. Okay, is that subterranean oral? It is the lowest of all the blows. Ubah should know that Brynn didn’t get her job that way, and she should know that with all the allegations that Brynn has faced from the public and some of her castmates that it’s beyond the pale. Also, if Ubah really thinks that, this is one argument on the show that is about the show that we haven’t seen before.

Back at the ranch, while Jessel extends an “olive leaf” to Erin over their tiff, though she admits to doing nothing wrong, things between Brynn and Ubah are only getting worse. Ubah continues to get worked up about Brynn poking at her. Ubah then says that there are some things we just need to accept, that someone’s mother will just get cancer and die, and there’s nothing you can do about it but accept it. Dude, Erin is sitting right there! You all know that I am her biggest hater, but even I was like, Um, Ubah. Ixnay on the ancercay.

Erin, who is helping both of her parents through cancer treatments, goes to cry in her room, and Ubah says, “Well, it’s the truth.” Yes, it is the truth, but it’s also not something you say to your friend. It’s also not the only metaphor she could have used. That’s the thing about Ubah: She says what she wants and hurts whomever she can with her words and then, just like so many of the women on this trip, refuses to take any accountability for her actions. This time, however, she did go and apologize to Erin and make her feel a bit better, but an ounce of prevention is worth a ton of pleading to your friend to forget what an asshole you are. That is how the saying goes, right?

They all go to the beach, which was Racquel’s favorite when she was a child, and on the way there, Becky Minkoff lets us know that she is that girl who won’t go in the water because she’s afraid of sharks. Really, sister? I feel like a shark would take one chunk out of her leg and, just like the viewing audience, think, That’s not for me, and move on to something with a little bit of flavor. Though Racquel told them all about her good memories of this beach, Ubah is already pitching another tone-deaf fit. There’s a little river of water, and she refuses to cross it. She says that there is a dead pigeon in the water. (God, I wish this season were better so that I could write my media-studies thesis on the use of pigeons as a leitmotif in RHONY.)

Ubah decides, instead, that she’s going to go around it, and her solution is a metaphor for her entire time on the show and her entire personality. Instead of just keeping quiet and playing nice, she then tries to jump over the little river with her purse open. She misses the other side, her foot landing squarely in the pigeon water, and the contents of her purse spill all over the sand. Now she not only has a foot wet with water and microbes, but all of her belongings are full of rotting-pigeon sand. She stands there, slowly collecting her things, and, like so many flocks of pigeons (or is that seagulls?), starts braying for attention, calling attention to the dirtiness, distracting from the reason she is there, harboring a sense of malcontent that no one wants to deal with. She’s the pigeon, and it seems as if most of the women wish she would just lie on the sand and be quiet.