VivaSync

Sharpen those knives because I am coming for Erin Mew Mew Lichy. And make sure they’re sharp because you’re probably going to be coming for me when you hear what I have to say about this episode, the best so far of the RHONY reboot. (Maybe I liked it so much because they all dog-piled on Erin, but you tell me.)

The episode starts right where we left off, with Erin starting something that there is no way on Earth she was ready to finish. I know, I know, you’re all going to say Ubah started it when she snatched the glasses off of Erin’s face. You’re not wrong. But if you rewind to the previous episode, you’ll see that Ubah was talking about Erin — who already felt “threatened” that Ubah was icing her out — and Erin rushed up to her with, “Don’t use my name.” Erin is the one who started the aggression, thinking she could win a verbal war of words without realizing that Ubah is a ninja, a black belt, a reigning MMA fighting champion, and the legal heir to the WWE Million Dollar Belt.

Then Ubah snatches the glasses. If I’m being honest, I would have been just as upset as Erin. However, I don’t start fights I can’t finish, and well, if Ubah did that to me I wouldn’t whine and pout about how things weren’t going my way. Erin says, “This is the worst conflict I’ve ever had in my life.” Really? In your whole life? She never got in a barn burner with one of her four siblings? Have you ever seen sisters fight? It’s worse than this. What about her and Abe? They’ve never had a knockdown drag out over someone not wiping up their kid’s pee from the hardwood floor? This is my problem with Erin; she is such a spoiled brat (Ubah is right about that) that she has led a friction-free existence. The moment she comes up against an obstacle she folds into tears.

Jenna asks Ubah to have Erin’s glasses back, and she refuses, saying that she set a timer for 45 minutes so she’ll hold her glasses for the same amount of time that Erin held her phone. Also, I’m with Brynn, those glasses probably cost more than Ubah’s phone, and there is no way Erin wears anything from Canal Street. Why would she even bother when it’s so much easier to just walk into Loewe and pay full price? Jenna says this is horrendously petty, and she is correct — that is what I love about it.

What is weird about this cast of Housewives is they don’t want to see each other engage in the fights. As Ubah and Erin are getting into it, Sai steps in and tells them to cool it off so they can have a good day. When Ubah and Erin are fighting later at the house, all the other women run and hide from it with Jenna going so far as to start taking Zoom calls in her bedroom. Any other cast of women would all be up in there, adding their screams to the cacophony, just waiting for a tussle so that they could drag out their accusations on others in the cast. Not these ladies. They’re like, “Can you believe people would shout in a restaurant?” YES! Because we have been weened on umpteen million hours of Bravo, which is literally just people yelling at each other in restaurants.

When they get to Elvis Beach Bar, Sai tries to break the tension by serving as a bartender for the whole group. At first, I thought it was cringe she would get behind the bar, but Elvis himself said it was okay. (Didn’t you know? Elvis is alive and making the best rum punches in Anguilla.) It was kind of cute to see her showing off her old skills. Meanwhile, Jenna Lyons is a little cold from the rain so she orders one of Elvis’s long-sleeved T-shirts, and she is still the chicest woman on the whole island wearing a sundress with an ugly merch tee on top of it. I love her for this (and I hate her because I could never pull this off).

As the fight continues at the bar, Ubah tells Erin that she abuses Brynn, too, and calls her a social climber. Brynn is a little miffed, but kind of gets over it. What’s crazy about all of this is that Erin never apologizes, not once, not for any of this. Not, “Sorry I called you a social climber; that was months ago before I knew you better.” Instead, she’s like, “You knew that!” As it escalates Erin does the same as when she was confronted at the wreath-making party; she checks out and leaves to the other side of the bar with Jenna.

This is what I really can’t stand about Erin. (Well, it is one among a million things.) She has led such a Teflon life that when people disagree with her and try to call her on her shit, she has to get up and leave. Basically, when Erin is not in charge, she bolts. Sai wants all the drama to end, and it could if Erin says, “It was a prank. I’m sorry. I didn’t think you would get upset about it, but you did, and I did not mean to upset you.” There. Done. Beef squashed.

Yes, Ubah is relentless, as both Jenna and Erin point out, but the reason she is not relenting is because Erin won’t accept her part in the argument. She sees it as Ubah has wronged her, and continues to wrong her, and she can’t see how she might be the one who is actually wrong. Even as she separates from the group, she says she can’t believe no one is coming to check on her.

Here is where we need to talk about a touchy subject that has to do with the racial component of this fight and tone policing. (God, why couldn’t Andy Cohen just cast another group of all-white women so I wouldn’t have to talk about these complicated matters? It would make my life so much easier.) Ubah is right. When Black women show any kind of anger, passion, or upset, they are painted as aggressive and angry Black women. Sai realizes what she says is true but doesn’t think it applies to this specific situation. I think it absolutely would if Ubah had not taken the glasses off Erin’s face; that is going a little bit too far.

It’s interesting to hear what Brynn says. She’s half-Black, and she seems to internalize the idea that as she says, “You’re right, and you have a valid point, but then when you yell, you lose.” Why shouldn’t Ubah and Brynn be allowed to yell? Erin gets to yell and cry and pout and no one talks about how she is behaving. Why is it a problem with Ubah now? I’m not saying this all has to do with race. I’m not saying that anyone at that table is a racist or that their fight had racial components. I’m just saying that we are all products of a racist society and have internalized biases that most of us aren’t even aware of. These biases have a habit of coming out in moments of stress like this. All I’m saying is, let’s take this argument as an opportunity to reflect on why we feel the way we do about it and see if any of those feelings might reflect some of our biases.

For instance, when Erin says to Ubah, “Talk to me like a normal friend.” I think Ubah has been talking to her like that this entire time, but Erin is only seeing a threat, she’s only seeing aggression, she’s only seeing a Black woman accusing her of being wrong and her not liking that feeling. When they go to a restaurant for lunch, Erin says she wants to “get off the rollercoaster” (thank God she never got on the Ramona coaster) and go home. There is a very easy way to get off the rollercoaster, and that is to say she’s sorry and her prank was bad. But she can’t do that. No accountability for Erin. Only Sauvignon Blanc and a husband who (of course!) loves the Grateful Dead.

Erin really missed out on lunch though because we finally found out that Brynn has a job. We’ve seen every woman on the show at work so far and have a grasp of who they are and how they earn their money — except Brynn. We’re 11 episodes into this season, and we just now hear Brynn talking about her job in PR. She says she specializes in something and has a niche that is very lucrative where she only works ten hours a week. What is that niche, exactly? Still unclear.

When the ladies get back home, it really kicks off. Erin has been crying on the phone with her father and telling us about how she was bullied in 7th grade because she had a long jaw, and one boy always called her “Long Jaw Silver,” which, honestly, is great work. What probably upset Erin was being likened to a fast-food joint rather than the jaw comment. (This is not the Suffering Olympics, but can we compare that to being called the F-slur every day of high school or being called the N-word even once and see how that compares to the struggles of Long Jaw Silver, the world’s most spoiled pirate?)

When the women return, Erin sees Ubah. She opens the door to the kitchen, and she says, she literally, literally, literally says, “Ubah. Come,” like she is talking to a fucking dog. Okay, I have met more than a few Israelis, and they are, in my experience, very direct people. Maybe this is why Erin is talking to Ubah like this. Maybe. But also she has lived in America long enough to know not to talk to people like that. I love that Ubah talks to Erin like a child and makes her ask her to talk with her nicely.

This is when you see the tone policing very clearly. As they discuss the disagreement, Erin tells Ubah, “Don’t talk to me in a condescending way.” Um, you literally just ordered her to your side like she’s a dog. Then Ubah tells Erin she wants to explain why she feels this way, and Erin says, “Why?” with so much condescension dripping off it creates a bigger puddle than her kid’s pee. Erin is not willing to give others the courtesy that she demands of them. I find that appalling.

The fight breaks down when Ubah can’t find her phone. (Again? Again!) Erin climbs in the hot tub with all the other women, including Sai who, for the first time in Housewives history, has literal actual popcorn to eat while the drama unfolds. This is when all of the women gang up on Erin and realize that she is the center of all the shit talk, about Jenna not flying coach, about Brynn being a spoiled brat, about Jessel being annoying, about Sai … well, she seems to have known better than to mess with Sai. Maybe that’s because Sai has her number, telling us in confessional that, yeah, Erin seems to be the common denominator in all of the drama so far this season.

We must briefly mention Jessel’s list against Erin, which is the best thing I have ever seen. Yeah, many Housewives keep a mental accounting of how their castmates have wronged them, but our Jessel, searching for extra credit, has an actual list of her grievances with Erin on her phone. It seems like in her household with her aggressively nerdy husband, Jessel celebrates Festivus along with his famous airing of grievances. Why this is an Al Capone list, I have no idea, but I am glad that we have Jessel, a girl who was so nerdy and overlooked in high school that she has to keep lists of how the cool, pretty girls have wronged her even to this day.

Everyone in the hot tub agrees that Erin can’t take accountability for her actions while yelling at everyone else to own them. Yes, it’s hard being in the hot seat, and it must be very difficult to have all the women coming at you like they did to Erin. But, again, I think Erin needed this. I think she needed to see that she doesn’t come across to people as she thinks she does. But instead of trying to learn, instead of trying to be more open like Jenna did when they all accused her of not wanting to fly coach, Erin lashes out. When Ubah tries to make another point, she shouts, “Shut up! Shut your mouth. You are such a bitch.” Ugh. Erin.

This is how Erin gets it to stop, with her soft, subtle white-woman tears. Yes, Erin lost her temper, just like Ubah did, but no one is telling her she’s being aggressive. No one is saying she went too far by calling her a bitch. Now Ubah, the one Erin has once again shouted at and called names, has to take Erin to the side and make her feel better. Ubah apologizes for calling Erin a liar and tells her that was bullshit all along, and she was just saying it to get a reaction. She tells Erin, “You do talk a lot of shit.” Erin again denies it until, finally, admitting that she talks shit. She offers Ubah a generalized apology but not one for anything specific. Meanwhile, Ubah has apologized to the other women, to the staff, to the driver, and everyone about blowing up at Erin earlier. No such consideration from Little Miss Ralph Lauren Home.

Now, with everyone smiling and in their dinner outfits, they can finally relax for a nice final dinner, and somehow, no one makes fun of Jessel’s outfit, which is a green-and-blue bikini top with a matching Scarlett O’Hara dress, a scarf in the same material, and some giant green feathery earrings that look like cat toys. Jenna Fucking Lyons tells her it is the best outfit of the trip and somehow that is the most violent thing that happened all day.

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