‘The Real Housewives of Miami’ Season 5, Episode 11 Recap

I love nothing more than when the Real Housewives make my job easy. So often, I have to consider both sides of an argument, see who I think is right, and then describe why one side is right, and one side is wrong. This episode of Real Leather Crop Tops of Star Island features not just one or two but three fights where someone is clearly wrong and someone else is clearly right. That’s three, as in M3gan’s 3 — that is how iconic this episode is from start to finish.

The first person who is clearly wrong is Alexia, the Cuban Teresa Giudice. While the guests were inhaling alcohol out of balloons, Adriana and her man Thierry were ending Alexia’s reign of terror about their relationship. He first proposes a toast and says, “Here’s to people minding their own business and not starting bloody rumors about me.” Alexia answers that he is in the wrong group for that, which, amen, sis. You’re not wrong.

I will take this scene slowly because I am absolutely stupefied by how wrong Alexia can be at every turn. First, she says they didn’t know him, so she was trying to help her girl. Well, if you don’t know him, then why talk about him? She then asks him to prove that he isn’t married to someone else. Like this is a mini-reunion, he reaches into the couch cushions and brings out a photocopy of his divorce papers. “Can you read it?” he asks. “Do you need glasses?” Okay, this was a shitty thing to say. Despite being like, “Do you need glasses” and Adriana later saying that it was dark at the party, we all know that is a save for this guy insulting Alexia’s intelligence.

Alexia responds, “You’re talking to a woman, so please respect me because I’m not disrespecting you. I could give a shit. I could wipe this in my butt. I don’t care. I’m not dating you. I don’t care.” Let’s take this one phrase at a time. Yes, he was disrespectful, but she was disrespectful to him, saying that he was married and then bringing out her own receipts to prove that he was not after Adriana asked him about it. Why should he be respectful when she hasn’t been at all? After all, she started this. She then says that his proof doesn’t matter. Um, she just asked for proof. When he delivers it, then it’s nothing but toilet paper? Then she says she doesn’t care and is not dating him. Exactly! So why are you riding so hard for this guy and continuing to be wrong?

Then, after dismissing his proof. She pulls out her phone and shows him her proof that he’s still married. So, do we want proof or not? What is going on? Alexia gets mad at Adriana for pointing out mistakes, for Marysol for even briefly siding with Adriana (and the literal truth), and storms out of the party.

Later, when Alexia has everyone over, she says that if she had just scrolled to the bottom of the page of her proof, she would have seen that it said he had been divorced all along. Jesus, Mary, and Josephine Baker. What is wrong with this woman? What I’m hearing is that if she had just scrolled down when she found that proof, this wouldn’t have become a huge, protracted battle? This is a rumor that was made up by her, spread by her, and is all her fault because she had the evidence she needed under her nose the whole time and was too stupid to see it. The last thing I want to do is tell Adriana de Moura that she is absolutely and utterly correct, but here we are. She says, “It was not nice to be accused of going out with a married man. It was not nice to say he was married when he was not. it was not nice to go dig for his records when it’s not of your fucking business.” That’s it right there. Done. Dusted.

However, Alexia refuses to apologize and doesn’t think she’s wrong. When they all sit down with a family attorney, Adriana asks if the divorce papers are real, and he says they are. “I already told you he’s divorced,” Alexia says as if she is the one who determines the truth. She says the guy isn’t married but is still an asshole. Yeah, he was only an asshole because you pushed him into being one! And even if that were true, she could at least say, “You’re right, he wasn’t married, and I’m sorry I kept going so hard about it. But he was pretty rude to me.” But she can’t.

Onto our next fight, which is Dr. Nicole, an anesthesiologist vs. Dr. Larsa, a podiatrist, apparently. What annoys me most is when Larsa talks to her friend about it and uses the worst defense in the reality television arts and sciences. I call it the “don’t poke the bear” defense. She says she will hit below the belt as soon as someone says anything about her, so they shouldn’t talk shit. Um, because she is a vile human with no impulse control, everyone should control themselves around her because she’s an awful, volatile person? Maybe if you don’t want people to talk shit about you, then you should, and it’s just a thought, be nicer to them. Give it a whirl.

In the same conversation, Larsa says, “You want to believe everything you’ve heard, but you don’t want me to not tell you what I heard?” Here’s the thing, Nicole didn’t believe everything she heard. She looked at Larsa’s OnlyFans on her own so that she could form her own opinion, and acquitted Larsa and said it wasn’t that bad. Why is she hung up on this?

When they all sit down at Alexia’s when the lawyer comes over, Nicole brings it up and says that the problem between her and Larsa is that Larsa has bad intentions. She brought up that rumor to embarrass her. Larsa says she has DMs to prove that someone told her this, but she won’t show them.

Then the whole table erupts into screams and shouts, and the poor lawyer, Michael Alman, wades right into this chaos. He is a family lawyer, and he is there to answer questions from the group so they can better help Lisa navigate her divorce. The lawyer immediately can’t handle it. They’re shouting and fighting over him, and he just wants to call a time-out and get them to calm down. If his nervous laughter were a renewable energy source, it could power Miami-Dade County for a decade.

First, there is the fight between Adriana and Alexia that plays out. Then Dr. Nicole asks about defamation of character, and Alexia gets out of her chair and tells her that it’s a stupid question. She says he’s a family lawyer and not to waste the time she is paying for. Dr. Nicole gets up, fetches her Birkin, pulls out her black card, and slaps it in the guy’s lap like she just saw something she wants to buy at the Magic Mike Live show, and that thing is an entire human being. Between this move and last week’s mirror stunt, it is clear that Nicole has decided to quit being a doctor and is now a full-time reality television professional.

After the brouhaha about whether or not Nicole should even be allowed to answer the question, he sides with Larsa in this argument and says that he doesn’t practice this kind of law. See, Alexia, if you just let the man speak, he would have given you the answer you wanted.

This is when Marysol brings out a DM she got from someone she doesn’t even know, saying that Dr. Nicole had an affair with a resident, which is why she separated from her first husband. Okay, so we’re just going to believe some random fan over what Nicole says? She, of course, has a rational explanation. She didn’t fuck the whole hospital; she had a consensual relationship with another resident when she was separated from her first husband. See, nothing wrong here. No scandal, no foul. So if they had just brought this to Nicole to ask her about it rather than, as she says, saving it as a trump card in their back pocket, they would have discovered that they didn’t have ammunition on their hands, just a bunch of wet firecrackers.

The best part about the lawyer coming over is when Lisa starts asking questions about her friends “Harry” and “Sally,” and the rest of the women join in, so they blur out Lisa’s face and put “Sally, Lisa’s friend” under her. Where are all the skull emojis? I need every single one for how dead I was. 💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀

Lisa gets some good advice — inventory everything, she doesn’t need to leave the house, if he buys a house in a trust, make sure the terms favor her — and goes back home to deal with Lenny, an attack of thrush you get from sucking on dirty balls. The genius of the episode’s final scene is that Lisa goes in calmly to Lenny’s room and fully warns him that she is mic-ed up and currently filming. She then asks him, dispassionately, several straightforward questions, and he is just an absolute dick to her.

She asks why he didn’t say hi to her when they were in the same house. “I have nothing to say to you,” he says in a sing-song voice that is so derogatory, so disparaging, so condescending that I wouldn’t even use it when talking to Larsa and Alexia. He says to leave him alone because she refuses to cooperate in the divorce. When she asks what she won’t cooperate with, he says, “everything,” but has no actual specifics. What he means is that she won’t immediately leave his house and take his kids so that he can live like a bachelor and fuck his girlfriend in his black-bottomed pool that makes the rockin’ world go round.

He tells her he is trying to give her more than she deserves, so she should be more accommodating. Oh, fuck entirely off! This guy divorces her out of the blue, treats her like shit, rubs his new girlfriend in her face, cancels her kids’ playdates while they’re having fun in the pool, and he wants her to say, “Thank you” for the privilege. He asks her, “Do you get it or not?” like she’s some child. If he has so much contempt for her and thinks she’s so stupid and awful, why stay married to her for so long and work so incredibly hard for her to get pregnant not once but twice? It’s absolutely insane.

Lisa, to her credit, just walks out. She pads barefoot across the hardwood floors, down the cool marble staircase, to the even colder tile of the kitchen. She lowers her head to the marble countertop and nestles it in the cradle of her arms, which are folded on the flat surface. Her eyes are closed, her arms are blocking the lights, and everything is dark. She thinks for a minute that she could fall right into that darkness. Suddenly she jolts up, looking out on the kitchen, strewed with half-drunk juice boxes and crushed Goldfish crackers. She wants to cry and wishes she could, but she runs her hands through her hair and picks up the Goldfish crumbs, even though that is the nanny’s job.