‘Real Housewives of Miami’ Recap, Season 7 Episode 10
I think that private jet trips on Real Housewives should be like third-grade birthday parties: You need to invite the whole class. I didn’t like Stephanie deciding which three among the cast (along with producers, camera people, and probably a stray sound guy named Al) would fly with her from Miami to Seville, I didn’t like her playing the other women against each other to earn those coveted spots on the plane, and I didn’t like Larsa bringing it up at the first group dinner to rub it in the faces of those who didn’t make the flight. I didn’t like it at all. I think Housewives is best when everyone is on a level playing field — except obviously the friends-of, who are second-class citizens who should have to row their own galleon over to Spain in a feat of reverse colonization.
Stephanie using her wealth to elevate some women over the others is like a day-old scallop, it’s leaving a bad taste in my mouth. It gets even worse on the jet, where the ladies who made the plane also get gift bags, including a pair of branded Shoma pajamas and one of those crazy red-light masks that I previously thought only existed in Instagram ads. Shouldn’t she have given the gifts to the other women, as if to say, “Sorry you couldn’t make the jet, but I got you a little something because I like you too”?
She doesn’t really care about that, she just cares about showing off her wealth. She gets out of the car to get on the plane with her $70,000 “limitless Birkin” saying, “The Birkin goes first,” and then adds that the Birkin is full of other Birkins. My eyes made enough rolls for 13 dozen bacon-egg-and-cheeses. When they arrive at the hotel in Seville, we find out that Stephanie’s husband has upgraded her to the Presidential Suite and left rose petals, balloons, and a gift of Chanel rainboots. Okay. We get it. You’re rich. Yes, I love it when my Housewives have real money, but it should be an accessory to an interesting personality, not the entirety of it.
To get at what is really bugging me about Stephanie, however, we need to talk about her fight with Alexia and the collateral damage of Adriana and Julia, whose approval ratings are going down faster than me at the annual Middle-Aged Gay Sluts Convention. (This year’s takes place in Vegas from November 14-16, coincidentally the same dates as BravoCon. See you there!) On the plane Stephanie asks Adriana and Julia if they’re good or if they’re fighting and Adriana says they’re good, but she thought that Julia should have lobbied for her seat on the plane a bit harder. (Yes, I hate the plane, but it is giving us good story fodder, so I’m sure we’re stuck with it.)
The rift in their friendship really heats up when Stephanie starts talking about Alexia and how she “belittles women.” Julia says she wishes Stephanie would say that Alexia belittles her, rather than belittles all women, sticking up for her absent friend. Adriana quickly jumps in to ask, “You didn’t see her belittling me for two straight years?” The answer is yes, yes she did. Did Adriana deserve it some of those times? Probably. Still, the point is made. The editors even give us the treat of showing the time that Alexia belittled Julia by saying she would make the best hooker because she’s Russian. Julia asks why Adriana (and I guess the editors) want to go into the past, but it’s not like this was a decade ago. These memories are still fresh. She might not want to hold this grudge forever, but the evidence of Alexia belittling women — and especially women new to the show, like she and Marysol did to Dr. Nicole — is well documented by, well, here are all the damn recaps.
As soon as the private jet girls link up with the public jet girls, Julia runs up to Alexia and says, “We’ve been talking about you.” Julia tries to frame it like it was compliments and good things, like when you’re saying how cute a friend looks at a cocktail party and they walk up and you say, “Oh! We were just talking about you!” But no, this is, “We’ve been talking about you,” as in, some people had some things to say that she might not like.
When Stephanie sees this, she says, “We haven’t even been off my plane for two hours and this is how she repays me. She doesn’t let me have the conversation, she goes and gossips. That is one horrible, disgusting move.” While I agree with the second part of this statement, it’s the first half of it I take issue with. Stephanie is basically saying that, because she took Julia on the plane and gave her gifts, she is owed some kind of loyalty. Julia should treat people well because it pays to be a good and kind person, not because she was paid to be good and kind. But also, Stephanie is expecting loyalty because she laid out cash to court Julia’s friendship. Loyalty can’t be bought, it has to be earned. Alexia has earned Julia’s loyalty, erroneously or not, and that is always going to trump purchased loyalty.
When all the ladies — minus Lisa, who we will get to — sit down for their first group dinner, Marysol treats them to a super-weird flamenco singer doing a Spanish version of “Waking up in the morning, thinking about so many things.” After that, Alexia starts asking what Stephanie was saying about her. Alexia tells Stephanie that she’s not going to come into the group and change the dynamics, to which Stephanie responds that Alexia can’t tell her what dynamics to change or what to do. I find Stephanie’s retort a bit off. It’s like when Brit Eady came onto RHOA and made a stink that Porsha hadn’t invited her over to her house, and Porsha and the other ladies who had been on awhile told her how things are done, and Brit quickly corrected it. Yes, Alexia shouldn’t be ordering Stephanie around, but Stephanie should be smart enough to listen to a veteran about how things may or may not be done.
Instead, it seems like Stephanie is coming in here with a fat wad of cash and trying to bribe her way to the center. (Based on the reunion seating chart it’s working.) Take, in contrast, someone like Dr. Nicole, who showed up, was hazed by the OGs, but slowly won nearly everyone, including the fans, over by being her true self and trying to form actual relationships with every woman. It doesn’t surprise me that Stephanie says she doesn’t have a group of female friends and never went on a girls’ trip. She doesn’t seem interested in being part of a group. She seems more interested in buying her way into group dominance and, to quote a decades-old piece of internet ephemera, “Ain’t nobody got time for that.”
Stephanie thinks that by yelling louder than Alexia and beating on her chest that she can holler her into submission, but Alexia, a one-woman storyline factory and perhaps the last of the Catholic martyrs, will always be here. She will always be famous. Yes, I think Adriana is right that she is threatened by Stephanie, but Alexia has put in the time and suffering and she has our hearts, even if she can drive us absolutely insane. Since Stephanie can’t send every viewer an infrared light mask, she has given us nothing. And just because she can pay for a private jet for half of them doesn’t mean they should excuse her acting out and shouting at the dinner table.
Alexia hits on what I’m seeing, accusing Stephanie of trying to buy her friends and dangling the carrot of seats on her PJ over the group. Stephanie says she hasn’t done that, but, girl, you have. We saw it, just like I saw every single rugby locker room video on the Internet. We have seen the tape and we have judged. She can go around the table and say, “Did I buy you? No. Did I buy you? No. Did I buy you? No,” answering the question for all the women she just bribed. That doesn’t mean we have to believe her answer.
This isn’t to say that I don’t like Stephanie. Just as Stephanie and Alexia decide to bury their beef and move on, I think I can do the same with Stephanie. Contrary to what Alexia says, I do like that she’s challenging the dynamics. I like that she’s giving them new things to fight about. I like that she’s rich and doesn’t care. What I don’t like is that she’s trying so damn hard. She’s trying to conquer Housewives when she needs to just let it happen to her and see how she can fit into the format of the show. She is not stronger than the institution, and the sooner she realizes this the better she will do at winning the game.
All of this brings us to Lisa, who, of course, missed her plane from Miami to Seville and then had to get on another plane to London, then another plane to Madrid, and then a train from Madrid to Seville which, a cursory Google tells me, takes about three hours. She was complaining about her long journey, saying it felt like it took, “weeks, months,” but you know how she could have avoided this? By fucking being fucking on fucking time! God, I can’t stand Late People.
What’s worse than her being late, however, is how she treats the women both in their absence and when she arrives. She couldn’t send a text to let the ladies know she wasn’t going to make the plane? She couldn’t update them on her journey? She couldn’t send a picture of the smelly inside of the three-hour train she had to take? Use this derailment to bring yourself closer to the group! Instead, Lisa just lets it drive her further from everyone.
When she gets in, 23 hours and 47 minutes late, she tries to make nothing of it. As Alexia says, when Lisa does something wrong she tries to show up with the giggles and make sure it’s forgotten. Alexia doesn’t want that to happen, telling her repeatedly how they felt disregarded and disrespected, not only by her lateness but by her radio silence. “I’m not doing that with you right now,” Lisa tells her. “I’m here with positivity and light and love.”
There is a possibility that something happened with her kids, her boyfriend, her ex, or someone else close to her that she can’t talk about that made her that late and uncommunicative. She says when we find out the real reason they’ll all feel like assholes. Okay, sure. But that could be true in this one instance of her being late. What accounts for all the other times that we’ve seen throughout the season? Lisa says she “can’t do this” with Alexia, but she needs to. Alexia is telling Lisa for the group — see, Stephanie? A real alpha — that they don’t want to tolerate this behavior anymore. Lisa won’t let her discuss it at all, compounding the disrespect of her lateness with the disrespect of not listening to or caring about her friends’ feelings. That’s like stealing someone’s milkshake and then pooping it out right in front of them. Then again, maybe this is all a ploy to make sure she gets to ride on a jet. I wouldn’t put it past that naughty monkey Lisa.
