The Real Housewives of Potomac are out of the gate running, already giving us plenty to talk about and laugh about. Tonight we take a little step back from cast drama but just in case you’re worried they are losing steam, the ladies have plenty going on in their own homes to keep us entertained.
We join the self-described diamond in the rough Monique Samuels in one of Monique’s FOUR houses. Did you know she has FOUR houses? If you didn’t, clearly you are just joining us and I’m sure it will come up again at any minute. Yes, Monique is just like any other new housewife, following the same formula they always do: come in lashes blazing, flaunting an assistant, talking about all the houses/money/diamonds you have like it’s no big deal, and then bragging about how great your marriage is as a kicker (I’m looking at you, Alexis Bellino).
Monique is packing her bags and headed south so she can watch her husband be inducted into the Alabama State Sports Hall of Fame, which sounds so specific, you would think it’s made up. But apparently it’s a thing and also a big honor (says Monique). Her friend Gigi is there it help? watch? and after Monique sends her trusty assistant to fetch her luggage, Monique gets to folding laundry, which includes the largest pair of drawers we have ever seen. Gigi laughs at the size, saying they look like a pillow case and Monique asserts that her husband can fill them out.
Anyway, despite having FOUR houses and giant drawers to fold, poor Miss Mo has regular folk problems, like a mother-in-law she doesn’t get along with and has to see for this trip. Monique tells us the relationship started out OK but as her marriage grew and the mother-in-law became less relevant, the relationship between them strained. Pack light, Monique, because you have some emotional baggage to bring along with you!
Speaking of emotional baggage, Charrisse Jackson-Jordan has nothing better to do than convert a study into a champagne room. Yep, you heard right – a room for champagne. Why does Charrisse need a room for her champagne? Because this is the “new” her and she doesn’t have to take care of everyone else anymore, just her champagne bottles. Just to prove she’s serious, Charrisse has taken the liberty of drawing a rough sketch of what her champagne room will look like. Based on the illegible, haphazard squiggles covering the page, I can only imagine how much champagne Charrisse drank while making it. Later, when construction begins, we learn that the budget for the whole thing is $92,000 and that’s nothing to Charrisse because it makes her happy. Who can put a price tag on happiness anyway? And in the spirit of design, Charrisse has purchased from Home Goods a glittery framed poster that reads “Save Water, Drink Champagne” so I guess she can officially deduct $14.99 from the budget.
Gizelle Bryant and Robyn Dixon meet up to get their nails done and Robyn tells her about her plan to get the ladies together for the Preakness horse race. Gizelle is game and even more game when she learns that her new rival Monique won’t be there. Thankfully, Gizelle has buried the hatchet with Charrisse of the Champagne Room, who will be in attendance, but Gizelle has decided upon recent reflection that even though she apologized for calling Charrisse out on her fireman boyfriend, she is only sorry because it reflected poorly on herself. Well, ok then!
But Gizelle (speaking in the third person) wants to make sure Robyn knows that she didn’t appreciate her talking behind her back to the Grande Dame of Potomac, Karen Huber, when Gizelle (third person) wasn’t around. Robyn doesn’t even bat an eye and tells Gizelle to her first person that 1) she didn’t put her on blast like that and 2) Gizelle was really wrong for putting Charrisse’s business out there and she knows Gizelle is classier than that. Me, Myself and Gizelle is caught off guard since she isn’t used to be challenged so strongly but she manages to pick her mouth up off the ground to give some form of affirmation to what Robyn just said.
Karen Huger is welcoming her daughter Rayvin, a gift that Karen gave the world, back home from college. Rayvin (who I just realized likely got the unique spelling of her name because of her dad, Ray) tells her mother all the things she has been up to at college. New and foreign things, like being forced to eat a (GASP!) cheesesteak. Karen covers her mouth in disgust, saying that she at least hopes the cheesesteak was organic. Being from Philadelphia myself, I can assure you, cheese steaks are delicious and the Hubers need to slow their culinary judgment roll considering what their kitchen looks like. The cheesesteaks we eat around here are cooked in far nicer conditions than Karen’s dump of a kitchen.
The ladies arrive at Preakness and it makes Robyn a little sad to reminisce about her old life, the one where she went to the horse race and hobnobbed with the who’s who of Baltimore. I didn’t know Baltimore had a Who’s Who list but I also had no idea that one could devote an entire room to champagne or that men’s underwear came in size grizzly bear so what do I know? Robyn dodges questions about her relationship with Juan because she wants to keep it private while simultaneously being on reality TV. Ashley Darby is anything but private and when Gizelle asks how the baby making is going, the flood gates open. Ashley tells her all about how making crocodile sliders is way harder than it looks and how it’s taking a toll on her marriage and sex life. I guess only one down under can have all the attention and that’s the restaurant. Gizelle wants to know if the ladies can do anything to help, like put Oz on their social media (snort!) or have a “Gizelle Night”. I think it’s going to take more than a random housewife to get people into a place that serves emu as an appetizer but hey, at least Gizelle offered before moving on to talk smack on Monique while she wasn’t there.
As the ladies head to a sunny spot outside to relax before the race, they get all horned up and distracted as “hot jockeys” on horses ride by them. You would think no one gets laid in Potomac with the way they ogle the men at Preakness. They peel their eyes away long enough to place their bets and Gizelle comes away as the big winner of the day. Not surprising since Ashley admitted she didn’t even understand what odds meant when placing her bet. Here’s a crash course in how odds work, Ashley: there are two to one odds on your restaurant closing by the time we get to the reunion.
After the excitement of winning, Gizelle places an even bigger bet on the not getting her head snapped off by Charrisse when she asks her if she is ready to let Gizelle back in her good graces. With a smile tighter than the Spanx holding her in, Charrisse of the Champagne Room demurs, “sure”, which is a cause for celebration indeed. Now I know I’m coming hard for Charrisse but hear me out: it’s not just her uppity attitude that annoys me, it’s the tired story line of reinventing yourself after a divorce that I’m so bored with. Now everything Charrisse does from pouring herself a power smoothie in the morning to getting a damn bikini wax is because she’s a “new person”. I get it, you spent a lot of years invested in someone else but that doesn’t mean that going to the gym today is akin to a spiritual rebirth so can we please take it down a notch?
Back to someone else on track to join Charrisse in the Divorcee/Reinvention of Self Road: Ashley. Since Oz is killing her sex life faster than a dingo can eat your baby, she feels like she has to do something to get it back. She joins her husband Michael to do some indoor sky diving and hopefully have some much needed fun. Afterwards, they sit down and she shares her concerns about where their marriage. Michael admits they are in a bad spot, but neither of them know how to get out of it. Can’t Ashley just click her heels three times if she wants to get out of Oz?
Down in Alabama, Monique and husband Big Drawers go out to lunch with the in laws and extended family so Monique can rap over appetizers and royally piss off her MIL. The dynamic is as cliché as it comes – Monique overcompensates about being herself while her MIL takes every word uttered as a threat to her role as the matriarch of the family. When Monique says she had big babies, Mama says she had bigger ones. When Monique says they are looking for a bigger house, Mama Joyce reincarnate huffs under her breath that she should get some of that good fortune too. It’s awkward to watch and obvious that Monique is needling her MIL in her own passive aggressive way. But Mama won’t back down easily and while Monique may have FOUR houses, Mama wins the day with just four words: “set that heifer straight” is exactly what she did at the table.
Monique leaves Alabama for the friendlier faces of Potomac. Scratch that, it looks like Gizelle is coming for her on next week’s episode so it’s a good thing Monique got some practice sharpening her claws.
TELL US – IS GIZELLE JEALOUS OF MONIQUE?
Photo Credit: Bravo TV
