By Guest Contributor Becky J.
I hope everybody is staying safe and dry in the midst of Irma. Prayers up for those whose homes and families are in jeopardy. At least we have good TV when reality is depressing, right?
Brandi, Stephanie and Cary are getting ready for their trip to Memphis. Cary has a sweatshirt that says “barbells & botox”—cute. Brandi’s little girls are wild! I got anxiety watching the younger one eat Doritos wearing a frilly white dress and wiping her fingers everywhere. Shudder.
D’Andra and her husband are discussing his son, Keatin, who recently dropped out of college and came to live with them. They are disappointed that Keaton doesn’t love living in Dallas and running D’Andra’s designer Ebay boutique. He wants to leave and D’Andra is taking it personally and doesn’t seem to have much empathy for a young kid who is struggling to find himself. It’s pretty normal to not have your shit together at the age of 20ish, right? Her orangey red lipstick in this scene is aging her and the matchy-matchy earrings, necklace, shirt, bracelet thing is too much.
The Memphis group arrives. The three women rejoice that they get to have a couple days off having sex with their husbands. Cary claims Mark needs sex daily, or at least five times a week. First, no wonder she’s in such good shape. Second, barf. Brandi reveals that reuniting with her EGF last season caused her Grandmother to stop talking to her. She hopes that she gets to see her Grandmother while she is in Memphis. This lady is no stranger to drama, that’s for sure.
Kameron is preparing to pitch the pink dog food line to her husband. She puts on a pink suit, creates a fifth-grade looking posterboard visual aid and borrows her daughter’s plastic princess wand to use as a pointer. This whole grown woman in head-to-toe pink Elle Woods charm is officially over for me. She lost me last week when she acted like a spoiled nasty bitch to Brandi at Cary’s house.
If Kameron wants her husband to take her seriously she should probably pay somebody to write her a business plan and figure out a pitch that doesn’t look like it belongs in the elementary school science fair. He listened to her non-pitch with dried blood (or ketchup) on his upper lip. I need him to wipe it. She asked for $100K he told her to make it happen for $10K cuz that’s what he’s willing to spend on “blonde business.” I hate everything about this segment.
Meanwhile in Memphis, the ladies go to Brandi’s family reunion. There is an infant present, which causes a flare up of Brandi’s baby fever. Apparently it’s contagious because Stephanie says she’ll have another baby if Brandi does. Cary observes this conversation in horror. The next day they go catfishing, which requires that they wear hip waders and touch worms. Housewife fish-out-of-water scenes are always good fun.
I just realized why I’ve been feeling so calm and living for this episode—no LeeAnne! Here’s the evil one getting ready to go out. She pouts to her boyfriend that Brandi didn’t invite her to Memphis. We all know she is incapable of a sincere concern for others, so she would have ruined the trip had she been included. Her boyfriend tries to cheer her up by getting down on one knee to tie his shoe and pretending to propose. Please don’t let this be foreshadowing of an annoying LeeAnne engagement. I probably won’t be able to live through a season of her saying, “It’s my wedding!”
Now we have dueling girls’ nights: Memphis and Dallas. Memphis starts out fun with a ride in a Cinderella-esque horse-drawn carriage while the Dallas ladies just do a plain old valet. I’m tiring of the Brandi/Stephanie dating analogies. We get it. They love each other. D’Andra and LeeAnne both need readers for the menu. I don’t know why, but this made me laugh. LeeAnne confesses a woman-crush on Kameron. She’s sure to say “not in a Stephanie way” which is typical.
In Memphis, Stephanie asks Brandi why she didn’t invite LeeAnne. Brandi admits she doesn’t trust LeeAnne around her family. She says her girls remember her coming home crying last season after LeeAnne hurt her feelings, so they are scared of her. I’m not sure I buy this, but I do understand not wanting to expose her family to that crazy person.
Kameron tells LeeAnne that she is not allowed in Brandi’s home. LeeAnne denies this, then thinks about it for a minute and starts to get mad. I said it last week, but Kameron is a natural (shit-stirrer). She’s good. The problem is I just don’t know if I have the capacity to passionately hate two Housewives from the same franchise. And Dallas already has LeeAnne. Wait—I pretty much hate everybody on OC right now. Okay, I’ll give it a try.
It’s so easy to dislike her. LeeAnne is at fake TV therapy again. She’s talking about how she wants to get engaged to Rich. Please save us from this storyline!
D’Andra and Jeremy confront Keatin about his lack of motivation in life. D’Andra is unreasonably mad that Keatin doesn’t want to live with them. Also, she has on an embroidered headscarf in this scene that is distracting me. She is a chronically over-accessorized person. D’Andra starts yelling and calling him selfish, then she ends by basically telling him he will never amount to anything in life. He stomps out. I don’t blame him.
Later, Keatin leaves. Like he moves out that night. She doesn’t have the loud headscarf on anymore, so maybe it’s the next night, it’s hard to tell. D’Andra is so emotional and saying feels like she let him down and can’t figure out what she did wrong. I’ve ever been a step parent, but I’m going to take a wild guess that trying to make him research and photograph designer dresses for Ebay and then screaming at him that he was failing at life wasn’t a super way to bond.
Brandi and her mom set out to see her Grandmother. Brandi is the one who goes to the door. She has a big bouquet of flowers. Grandma won’t answer the door, even though Brandi can hear her. I have a total deja vu of Kenya trying to see her mom in Detroit. Brandi is really sad. When she gets back to the hotel, the Memphis three get in bed together, drink wine and put on gold moisturising face masks. I love this trip!Seriously, this is how friends act. It’s nice to see. Also, they’re on WWHL tonight. FUN!
Next week, an awkward dinner party with Kameron, Court, Cary and Mark, maybe a gross carny proposal for LeeAnne (is my nightmare coming true?) and D’Andra is yelling at LeeAnne some more. Then everybody gets dressed up in fancy hats and yells at each other!
There’s something really dark about Cary and Mark’s relationship. She’s coming off like an abused wife this season, with the whole “he tells me what to wear, when to come to work, what to eat, and when to bang him” shtick. It’s like a cry for help every time she jokes about the “codependency” (which actually seems wholly one-sided).
I hated the Brandi door-knocking stuff, it was an echo of Kenya and her mother, and I just don’t think these moments belong on camera. It gives castmates something too deep and too personal to bash her with at a later date, as we’ve seen on RHOA, and I’d prefer they keep the conflict a little bit lighter personally. There are some issues that should only be covered in a superficial way, so as not to do irreparable damage to family relationships for the future. I hope she works it out with her grandmother before it’s too late.
I’d feel sorry for Kameron if she wasn’t annoying. At the risk of sounding like Holden Caulfield, she’s just so damn phoney. It’s like she reached this big old age, had a couple of kids, got married, and doesn’t know who she is – so she just stole some dumb pink character from a movie to try and be interesting. I just want to shake her and say, “pink is not a personality trait, honey!”
Love the Catcher in the Rye reference!
Agree with everything
I like Brandi but why put her grandmother in such an awkward position….. Maybe she didn’t want to be on camera..? Idk. Just made her grandmother look badly.
So far, I like this season of this franchise. Very entertaining.
Thanks Becky J.
I am still enjoying this season so much and for some reason I think it’s because after other franchises, this is legit wealth and just pure entertainment.
Plus it’s not the same exact show/story over and over and over.
Maybe it’s me but it seems like three of these women have the same voice. If I was blindfolded and asked to tell the difference about which one said what… I would be lost>
Lovely recap Becky J. And yeah, that was an intense scene between D’andra and her stepson. For some reason I really really like her. Though her emotions were definitely out of check at the time she had the discussion with him, I have every impression there is a laundry list of reasons she was trying to tell him to get his s*** together. If he had taken it upon himself to go and find another job, he wouldn’t have had to be involved with the eBay work. It’s just not okay for a 20 year old to be sitting around the house with no job having dropped out of college playing video games sleeping until noon and not contributing to the Family household in one way or the other. He has proven that left to his own devices “going and finding himself” is not going to consist of any additional effort and so in my opinion, her delivery was very bad but her message was unquestionably spot-on. I’ll bet the real reason he wanted to leave in less than two months is because his father and his stepmother did in fact require him to do something constructive, he just didn’t want to do it, and had another out as he drove away in a brand new sports car someone else bought for him. I don’t know, I just get so frustrated with these kids who think the world owes them something and simultaneously allow themselves to go to waste in the interim. But I do love your recap!
Agree 1000000% – there was more to the stepson story and – as a stepmom, it broke me. Stepparenting is incredibly difficult – my bet is that’s a fight she’s had, and an outcome she foresaw, many many many times, and her husband and his ex fail to see reality, so the kid just keeps fucking up, spending their money, etc. when she said to her (hot) husband – “I know you’re mad….” – so, so real. I’m living for her.
Great recap! I was so happy to see it. Thank you!
I am glad you are not limiting yourself to disliking on HW (joke) — maybe one new one and one old one? I am actually nervous when LeAnne is on the screen, so I understand how Stephanie feels in her presence. D’Andra seems like she is really showing herself; Kameron (with a K) seems entirely phony. I think she believes she is cutely portraying herself as Elle Wood. The pink dog food doesn’t even pass the laugh test — clearly her husband is just throwing money at her to shut her up. And I still haven’t forgiven her for her horrible treatment of Brandi last week.
I’m going through something similar with my own son, and so are half the families I know, it seems. I think we’re on the path of him re-launching. He’s only 19 so I’m not crazed about it.
But man, does control freak parenting run in D’Andra’s family or what? At least her own mother has some charm to micro-managing. Poor Keaton just looked to side for a minute and D’Andra lost her shit because he was “rolling his eyes.” It’s obvious that she just is massively high strung and he’s really chill, and they just aren’t going to do well living in the same house. He has the wisdom to see this, young as he is, and she doesn’t.
*”At least her own mother has some charm to in her own micro-managing style,” sorry.
I love this show! I get so happy when I see your recaps! I hope I’m wrong but Carrie seemed a little bit jealous on wwhl. Andy was mostly focusing on brandy and Stephanie. I do love the way these three are so comfy w each other that they’ll all get into bed together. Leanne has her moments where I feel bad for her . Let’s face it, Brandi dumped her and once the “Carney” gets hurt she makes everyone pay !
Ok, so we have seen a lot on those shows, but the scene with Brandi was the one that made me the most uncomfortable ever. Yes, I have immediately seen Kenya in front of closed doors. It was too much then, it was way too much now. Does Brandi have a brain? Grandma is mad at you, it is something deeply personal, you come knocking to talk to her with CAMERAS behind your back. It is just emotional violence. Someone I love is hurt and I come to fix it together WITH ENTIRE AMERICA because I love him. Moronic.
Superb recap! I like the Dallas franchise.
I haven’t seen this episode in Oz yet. What is an EGF please someone? I googled it and nothing came up!
Just a couple of random comments: In the talking heads from the episode before, I thought Brandi’s eyebrows were much nicer- they hadn’t been done at such a sharp angle, which make her look cross. Also, I do think Leanne has got beautiful eyes. That’s it.
Ex-grandfather. Her grandmother when finding out Brandi reconnected with him (her grandmother’s ex-husband) she cut her off.
Thanks, Cheryl!
Brandi has been addressing the much talked-about eyebrows on Twitter. She says that because they’re blonde and she’s so fair-skinned, she got them tattooed on a million years ago (I think she said in the Nineties), and there’s not much she can do about it now. She acknowledged they’re kinda terrible.
I don’t know why so many people are noticing this year – I don’t recall it being mentioned at all in Season 1? I guess LeeAnne’s blush was too distracting last time….
Really? I didn’t know they were tats. Anyway someone did them really nicely with a more gentle arch, so they’re not a lost cause!
I don’t understand how someone who enjoys the housewives shows could hate someone like Leeann. She’s exactly what these shows need.
See also: Danielle Staub (although the racism really soured me on her)