Panda Bear

I thought of the same thing, so I guess we're both old!

I thought maybe Jackie didn't want to eat Melissa's salad because Melissa had just gotten over an illness that involved a lot of puking.

I don't know. He's won an Elimination Challenge and a Quickfire already. It seems like when he's able to use scientific tools in the kitchen, he's really good. This one just totally threw him for a (fruit) loop. Yes, I see it! I didn't much care for Andie, so maybe that's why I haven't warmed to Sara yet.

I also hated how Tiffany handled that confrontation with her mother. And when she kept hassling her about eating dumplings with the family, I kept thinking, "Your mother seems a lot more comfortable with her mask on. Why are you pressuring her to eat with you, which means she'll have to remove it?" Imagine if one of the many maskless people we saw Tiffany spend time with this episode had been positive for COVID and Tiffany passed it along to her elderly mother, all because she was so desperate for her to eat dumplings while listening to her talk about how she didn't give her enough attention as a kid.

I've gotten the impression that Evan was okay with making an appearance or two over the last few seasons but didn't really want to be featured on the show. I feel like we hardly saw him during Jackie's first season and he was gradually getting more comfortable with it, especially after hanging out with the other husbands and filming lighthearted group scenes. To then realize that his wife's castmate was spreading rumors about him cheating at his birthday party with his real friends and family, and he was going to be part of a main plotline and have people speculating about his character on national TV and the internet for months... They willingly signed up for it, but I can get why he might have some misplaced anger at Jackie for putting their family in this situation. The TV show part of it has to go unsaid so they don't break the fourth wall, but as a private person myself, I kind of get it.

Somewhere along the line, the producers seem to have gotten the idea that they need to make this show super! dramatic! when that's not what people like about it. I'm thinking of those cliffhanger endings they always stick at the end of the season (Kathryn might be pregnant! Landon and Thomas slept together! Landon is best friends with Ashley now!) and how ridiculous they seem. Maybe it's because Kathryn and Thomas made the show dramatic just by being themselves, but I always found their scenes tedious and wished they weren't such a focus. I think we just want to see these people hang out and be friends and have small arguments over lighthearted stuff. This episode was actually charming and fun and you could see that, actually, these people don't just scream at each other whenever they see each other. I noticed most of the footage they used was before COVID. The Republic anniversary party, for example, was at the end of February 2020. I do get that they had to address everything that happened last year, post-lockdown, but I think there was a way to balance that with this other stuff so it didn't seem so... bleak.

LeeAnne Locken had a lingerie bridal shower in broad daylight at a Dallas restaurant. The NYC women often skinny dip or parade around naked during their vacations while interacting with service workers. Erika dressed up in a PVC dominatrix outfit while they were in Berlin, just to have dinner, and I think Lisa Rinna wore a trench coat with only her underwear underneath to that same dinner. The NJ ladies may keep their clothes on for the most part, but they threw cake across a restaurant's patio while in Miami and have had many other embarrassing public fights. I can see thinking the S&M party was gimmicky and a bit trashy, but I can't see comparing these ladies to any of the other franchises and thinking they come across worse.

Good point. Dang, she must really feel stuck with him.

I don't remember the exact wording but it was something pretty definitive like "I can't make it to the podcast, so you'll have to find somebody else." And, again, Monique's hair was the same short style at the lake house (assuming it was filmed on her birthday: October 6) and the winery (October 16) but long in the scenes discussing the podcast, as it had been earlier in the season. And she did say several times at the lake house "It's my birthday." I guess that weekend could have taken place earlier and I know women can change their hair frequently, but I think this was sloppy editing. In any case, it actually makes me side with Candiace more. If she dropped out three weeks ahead of the live podcast (October 12) instead of a few days before it, it means she gave Monique plenty of time to replace her. I just think it's interesting that Monique might have been stewing about this for much longer and it might be part of the reason she was such a jerk to Candiace at the lake house. It couldn't have just been the s'mores!

I was wondering about this too. The show pretends like these women don't make any money on their own, but of course they do. Karen didn't bail Ray out with her La'Dame money; she helped with her Housewives money. And Ashley would have her own money if she chose to leave Michael. And Candiace was able to finally get financially free from her mom because of the show.

What's interesting is that they showed the date Candiace texted Monique to back out of the podcast taping: September 21. But we know they all went to Monique's lake house the weekend of her birthday, October 6. (You can also see that Monique is wearing her hair short in the October lake house and winery scenes, but it's long in the scenes discussing the podcast--because those were taped in September.) So Monique was already mad about the podcast by the time everything happened at the lake house, but for some reason the producers decided to make it seem like Candiace backed out after that...

I agree with you, except I don't think she was doing fine before the last kid. She ran her car into a tree in season three because she was exhausted (and perhaps drunk from day drinking with Ashley). She was already at her breaking point before she had Chase, but her husband didn't seem to give a shit then and he still doesn't. As frustrating as I found Monique in this episode, I feel really bad for her. I also remember her saying that Chris picks fights with her around her birthday in season three, because the focus isn't on him. Still true, it seems, in season five. If she did have that affair, I can't say I blame her.

I feel like Lisa Rinna brought her soap opera training of having a storyline go on and on to this show and it's suffered ever since. I really think it would be so much better if they got rid of her. Yes, she drives story, and I'm sure the producers like that, but when it's the same story over and over again, it's incredibly tedious. (And next week we get her obnoxious children again. Great!) Get rid of Erika and Teddi, too, because they don't add anything.

This is the third week I found myself bored and wandering off, after liking the first four episodes a lot. Actually, the eighth episode has already aired now, but I've been catching up much more slowly lately so I just got to this one. Not only do they need to lose the musical numbers (who in the demographic watching this was dying to hear so many songs from Kiss of the Spider Woman?), but they have to get rid of the completely charisma-free Cabots. Every time either of them are on screen, I am so incredibly bored. (And I always loved their characters in the comic books!) I could also take less Jorge. Katy was right that he is very self-centered. Yes, that makes sense for the character (I have known many theater kid types just like him), but it's kind of a lot to take when we haven't gotten much of a chance to know him otherwise. I'm never bored when Katy is at Lacy's. They should keep the focus there as much as possible.

Yes, yes, yes to all of this! If you want to be a working actor and you've booked a national tour, you don't leave it because you want to stay in New York! This would have been his big break. And many of the cities that get touring productions in the Midwest (like Minneapolis, where I live) have sizable gay populations with gay bars and even (gasp) regular drag shows! He would not need to go back in the closet. I'm liking this show, but I hated everything about how this storyline played out. I get that New York is the center of this show and you want to keep your characters there, but let's not act like it's the center of the universe.

No, you're right--it was her face. I just found an article on Bravo's website about it featuring Shannon and Dr. Brian. That's what I was thinking of, and the body sculpting must have been separate and off camera. I don't begrudge her that new body either, however she got it. Sometimes when you lose weight naturally, you'll still have extra skin that you can't get rid of through exercise. If body sculpting takes care of that, then by all means, do it! Especially if you're going to be on TV half the year. I wish Kelly wouldn't have gone there with Shannon. She lost me with the "no extensions after fifty" thing too. I actually really like Kelly and Shannon as friends and hope they can get past this. Taking Tamra out of the mix seems like the best way to do it.

Wasn't it established, on the show, at the start of the season that she had gotten this procedure done through Brian? I remember her being at his office for a follow-up appointment and thinking "Really, Kelly's boyfriend is doing plastic surgery on Shannon? That's weird." But maybe it was just Botox and I'm remembering wrong. In any case, it would be hard to prove Shannon didn't tell Kelly about it herself. I'm disappointed that Tamra seemingly skated through the segment about her manipulations. Nothing about her making fun of Shannon's head injury behind her back? Really?

She was a model for many years who also dabbled in acting. If you go to her IMDB page, she has a good number of credits. Most are from 2000 on, but in season 1, we saw some of her modeling photos from the '80s and '90s. Remember that she met Tiffany at a photo shoot back in those days. I think it was mostly catalogue work, but still, she seems to have held legitimate modeling and acting jobs most of her life. Per IMDB, she also produced two reality shows pre-Housewives. No surprise then, that she's been so good at figuring out what the RHOD producers have wanted in past seasons. She became the star of the show by using her past as a "carny kid" and her anger issues to carry a lot of the storylines. But because she became a quieter, gentler LeeAnne in season three (at least, storyline-wise) she knows she can't really lash out this season, especially when she's supposed to be playing the happy newlywed. So instead she's tried crying a lot, pivoting into victim mode to see if that works. But the other women can see that it's calculated and have either stopped reacting to her or have actually called her out on how fake they think it is. That's why she's freaking out if you ask me. She thought she'd easily be the star again this season with her wedding and her D'Andra feud but she realized, by the Thailand trip, that it wasn't really working. So she became frustrated that the focus wasn't on her and decided to take her frustrations out in the worst way possible, through her terrible ranting about Kary and trying to passive-aggressively manipulate her one true ally, Kameron. Instead of turning things around, she's now rightly lost all of the goodwill she'd built up with the rest of the cast and the audience I trust that she'll find some way to bounce back from this, because she's a very crafty woman. But she's totally lost me.

Boy, if you'd told me at the beginning of the season that I'd end up liking Brandi and dread seeing LeeAnne on screen, I never would have believed you. But that's where I am! It's not fun to travel with someone who's a huge buzzkill all the time and it's not fun to watch either. I don't really like D'Andra or Kary, but I appreciated the way they sincerely apologized for the dress thing so it didn't carry on all episode. It was nice to see everyone get along, even if it was brief.

I can't figure out what the show is building to, and I say that as a person who's read the book. It's been so weirdly paced. I think they needed ten episodes, or twelve, instead of seven. I feel like Brendan's story went somewhere this episode, at least, but Eve's is still kind of meandering. I actually wanted her to kiss Julian or go into the massage parlor just to give her some kind of narrative momentum.

Kelly Bensimon also wore a Playboy Bunny costume, back in season 2 of RHONY. I cackled when Brandi made that comment, thinking of both her and Kyle. Though, honestly, all three looked great.

Madison has been Patricia's hairdresser for years. That's why she's around (and why the producers could find the clip of her from four years ago).

What's sad is that I see Michael being a checked-out, and eventually entirely absent, dad for that kid, much like Ashley's own dad was to her.

I think this is the first episode of the show that I completely hated. None of the drug stuff was funny, I'm tired of Josh and the contrivances to get him in Liza's orbit, and the Mercury storyline makes absolutely no sense. Just garbage all the way around. I didn't even like seeing Sutton Foster dance because I was so annoyed about how the show got there.

This felt like an update of the movie Kids. Pretty bleak to watch on a week-to-week basis, though I might give it a shot because I found Jules interesting. I kind of wish she had gone through with stabbing the jock, though. He is tedious.