The Real Housewives of Miami Recap: Chicken Milanese
Even though we regularly take time to celebrate Bravo’s editors, we still don’t celebrate them enough. They could get free lunch and unlimited oral sex every day for the rest of their lives, and it still wouldn’t be a suitable celebration. In this episode, I was especially impressed with both the recap at the beginning and the epilogue. The editors usher us in at lunch between Adriana, Guerdy, and Lisa, where we not only get a recap of the fights that happened at Lisa’s party in the last episode but also get Lisa saying she’s going to Milan to walk in a fashion show, giving us a little preview this episode. As an extra bonus, we also get Adriana saying that her French boyfriend is coming all over her face, and that’s why she looks so young. The intro is everything we need and more. (The “and more” is the facial talk, in case you missed that.)
At the end of the episode, we don’t get your usual, “Next time on The Real Housewives of Miami,” instead we get a title card telling us that while cameras went down after the fashion show, things still got heated between Larsa, Lisa, and Jody. Then, it’s a week later, and we flash to a group dinner scene where Larsa says Jody freaked out on both of them and showed a picture of Jody with his eyes so bulging it was like he was doing an impersonation of Ramona Singer walking in New York Fashion Weekend. It looks like he was enjoying the A/C in Milan just like he enjoyed it at his birthday party in Miami last episode, and just like James Kennedy and Jax Taylor and others were enjoying the “pasta” on camera for years and years.
The skiing-related implications of Jody’s picture aside, this is actually a much better preview than a few misleading clips taken from scattered scenes. It leaves us in the present moment and shows us where the story is going, giving us insight not only into the next episode and the rest of the season but exactly what is going on in Lisa’s relationship and how that affects both her and Larsa. It’s a stroke of genius, really, and this is what keeps Housewives as a whole humming for almost two decades. It’s always refining, always perfecting, always evolving even as it stays wonderfully consistent.
Before we get to the Lisa and Larsa feud that was unfurling in Miami, let’s take a look at what happened back in Miami. Guerdy went to see the doctor about getting another surgery for her breast reconstruction even though Russell, her absolute saint of a husband, would like her to stop going under the knife. Guerdy speaks openly about not feeling sexy and not feeling normal after surviving breast cancer, so it was especially brave of her to bear her chest on cable television and its attendant streaming service. We also got a bit more info about the Julia and Guerdy beef — how Julia took Guerdy as her plus-one on a cruise, and Guerdy made it all about herself — but I’m sure there will be episodes in the future to really focus on that.
The center of the Miami action is Alexia’s maybe divorce from Todd, a fake Rolex Rudy Giuliani tried to pawn to pay his legal bills. Just as I said after the last episode, this whole thing is going to be hard to watch. Alexia’s gay Jonny, who moved to Madrid a year ago, is in town, so she books a dinner for him, a couple of his gay friends, and Julia, Marysol, and Kiki in a rust-colored dress that is so sparkly the camera couldn’t even handle it. (Two perfect outfits in two episodes. That’s our Kiki.) Alexia informs the crew that Todd filed for divorce months ago, but there has been no progress on the case. Consequently, the judge has given him 30 days to finalize it or dismiss it entirely. Alexia says the ball is in his court, but Jonny and everyone around the table tell her that she can decide, too. She can decide to be done with this dangly scrotum of a man.
Then Alexia lets us know what is behind Todd wanting to crash out of this marriage. Many of us, myself included, thought it was money problems he was shielding Alexia from. No, it’s much worse and much more mundane: Todd doesn’t like the show. Alexia says he loved it at first when fans cheered for him, and there was nothing wrong, but when we all made fun of him for his apology to Anthony last year, and he came off looking like a dork, that’s when he turned on it. Alexia says that she offered to leave the show to keep him, and he said it was too late.
What’s most concerning for me is when Alexia says, “I’m realizing that he doesn’t like the show; he doesn’t like the power that the show gives me.” Todd’s inability to control what airs and the narrative that surrounds it is understandable. The primary reason most of us wouldn’t go on a reality show (if they would have us) is because the footage can be edited, changed, and manipulated in all sorts of ways. That I get. What I think is gross is that Todd doesn’t like that his wife is the more famous one. Dump this man immediately. Alexia doesn’t need a man dying to be on the show, but she needs one who will celebrate her and her accomplishments, no matter what they are. She needs a man confident enough in himself and his self-worth that he will love when wine-drunk girlies and gays stop her for a selfie on a Wednesday afternoon at the mall. (You know who you are.) She needs a man who is happy that the world gets to share the woman he loves and sees all the great things about her that he sees.
Todd is not that man. Marysol, who is not just Alexia’s show best friend but her actual, real-life, no-cameras-around best friend, agrees. That, to me, is the most damning evidence against Todd. At dinner with her fiancé, Steve, whom she has already married twice (I don’t get it either), she says that the Alexia who is with Todd is not the best Alexia and that he is always cutting her down, which makes her angry and defensive.
There are similar sentiments around the table. As Alexia rails against Todd, both the girls and gays agree with her, telling her she needs to get rid of this narcissist. Julia, like me, says she keeps going back to the idea of Todd packing up all of his stuff in front of Alexia’s son, Frankie, and then just leaving him alone on the couch, as if he’s not even worth noticing. Who wants to be married to that? Jonny tells an enraged Alexia, “See how this makes you feel? You want to stick around for this?” Exactly! She shouldn’t. Even Alexia ends the scene with an ardent, “Fuck Todd.” But we all know what happens. We all know they’re still together. We know that those feelings at that dinner don’t last. No matter what her friends said or did, Alexia didn’t listen to them and got back with Todd, a pre-scratched lottery ticket you found on the ground and inspected to make sure it wasn’t a winner. It was not. They never are.
Speaking of losing fights, Larsa and Lisa go to Milan to continue their fight where no one is right and no one knows what they’re mad about anymore. It’s like a game of stupidity chicken where they’re both so enraptured in being wrong that they’re going to see who can hold out being moronically obtuse the longest. They’re both traveling to Milan to attend the Philip Plein fashion show, where Lisa is modeling, and Larsa’s Preston is making his runway debut. Have you heard of this Philip Plein character? He’s basically the German Ed Hardy and his jewel-encrusted wares are just as tacky, if not twice as expensive.
It turns out they were on the same flight to Milan together, but neither of them acknowledged the other. That can’t happen when the fashion brand only sends one car for both of them and their traveling companions to share. The same fight continues. Lisa and Jody are mad that Larsa was a jerk at Jody’s birthday party. Larsa is mad that Jody hung out with her ex, Marcus, after they broke up, considering he was sending her threatening texts.
I understand Larsa’s point of view, but I don’t see why Lisa and Jody are doubling down on their position. If they didn’t know that Marcus was treating Larsa badly and threatening her, they could have just said, “Sorry, we didn’t know what was up; we won’t see him again.” But they don’t, or they refuse to, for some reason. They’re still trying to square the small difference that Lisa didn’t hang out with Marcus; only Jody did. Guess Marcus had some really good pasta that he served Jody in his A/C-ridden condo. When Lisa brings up that she hasn’t been thinking about their fight because her father is sick and could die at any moment, Larsa, instead of being sympathetic, says, “Then why did you come?” I get her point. Being with your family is more important than a fashion show, but that’s not what you say to Lisa when you’re literally in the car on the way to the show. Just as Larsa is winning, she stays losing.
After walking in the show there is a big fat party for the fashion brand and Lisa and Larsa start talking again, probably because they were bored and didn’t know anyone else at an Italian fashion event. Then they get a shocking intervention from the unlikeliest of sources: the rapper Fabolous. He comes over and says he wants to be messy and find out what is up with the Housewives. We love to see it. Larsa tells him that Lisa isn’t loyal. Lisa says that Larsa called her a “bitch” and her boyfriend “cheap” in his house. Fabolous seems inclined to take Lisa’s side, and then Larsa says that Lisa was hanging with her ex. Fabolous makes a face that says that is wrong and asks Lisa if that’s true. Lisa says no, that her boyfriend was. Fabolous comes around and says, “That’s not her, though.” Then he offers some great insight: “This is how we squash it. You don’t hang out with her ex, and then she won’t be disrespectful to you.”
Yes, it’s that easy. That’s all it would take for someone to back down from their position in stupidity chicken to say that they’re sorry and it won’t happen again. Who knew that Fabolous was the peacemaker of our time? Can he do Teresa and Melissa next? Let him loose on Angie K. and Lisa Barlow. Let him host The Valley reunion. Thanks to the brilliant preview, the peace seems tentative and short-lived and that seems to be Jody’s fault. As the episode ends, Lisa has no idea where Jody is. She looks around the party, trying to scope his perfectly shorn head about the crowd. Where could he have gone at this Italian fashion party where they don’t know anyone? Is he smoking cigarettes with Preston outside? Is he sidling up to a model? Is he trying to make a deal to start importing Bugattis to America? (In this economy? With the tariffs?) She checks her phone, she checks the crowd, and she checks her phone again. Back and forth, but no Jody, no nothing, just the presence of a friend she’d already discarded before she knew she was going to need friends now more than ever.