Photo-Illustration: Bravo
I can’t say enough how much I love that both of this show’s cast trips were within Rhode Island itself, a state that’s only 1,034 square miles. In fact, the only time they even bothered to cross state lines was to go to South Boston, of all places — and yet I don’t feel shortchanged out of a big, extravagant trip whatsoever. In fact, I don’t need these women to ever leave Rhode Island, at least not until we’ve gotten to see every single one of those magical square miles (which I estimate will take about a season and a half more to complete). Plus, who can complain when the gorgeous Block Island — which, unlike Rhode Island, is actually an island — is described as New England’s Caribbean?
There’s a lot of repairing and resolution that needs to happen in this final episode, but luckily things start strong with Liz and Jo-Ellen pulling each other aside to talk things through on the beach. Both agree that there’s a genuine friendship there, though trust was broken on both ends, so now they just have to figure out how to come back from this. Jo-Ellen says she doesn’t want to rebuild from scratch and instead wants to just go back to how things were before. Though somewhat surprising given how poorly their last attempt went, they agree to call the fight water under the bridge and seal the deal with a hug and some light dry humping. There must be something magical about Block Island after all, but only time will tell if that magic will extend to Jo-Ellen and Rulla, who still doubts that Jo-Ellen’s proof was well-meaning.
As peace talks play out across the island, Alicia is doing what she does best — making me laugh. “He thinks he’s Baywatch coming out of the water right now. He’s got a big ass, all of his pants always fall off and his crack is always hanging out,” she says as she watches Billy come out of the ocean. And later, when they’re telling Jo-Ellen about Rulla and Brian’s reaction to the video at her party, Alicia says, “I thought he was gonna blow his load.” Gasket, fuse, or lid, sure. But even Jo-Ellen couldn’t help but point out to Alicia that that means cum.
Speaking of Alicia and Billy, despite the problems that they may have (her name needs to be on that house, for example), I do love them as a couple, especially when I clocked that she really makes him laugh. So I was especially thrilled to see Billy take it upon himself to stage a re-do of their proposal from nine years ago, which Alicia tells us was anything but romantic. So this time around he does it right, with roses, candles, and getting down on one knee, all of which is awkwardly sweet and clearly means a lot to Alicia. “Billy, I feel like we’re destined to be together. I wouldn’t have stuck around for this long, ‘cause obviously you know, like, a lot of guys like me, let’s be honest. You know this,” she tells him. It’s an engagement renewal, the first of its kind, and might mean that we get a big wedding next season? Let’s hope.
On the other end of the marriage spectrum, Jo-Ellen goes to have a private conversation with Rulla about the video of Brian cheating in the hopes of finally putting it to bed and moving on. She tells Rulla that she’s not trying to overstep, but rather deliver the proof that she explicitly asked for. For her part, Rulla actually doesn’t want to see it after all, saying she doesn’t want headache and heartache over something that could be faked. “Anybody can fake a timestamp,” she says, but here’s the thing: that’s not true. Not everybody can do that, and in fact it’s far more likely that it’s a real timestamp, but she simply refuses to see what’s in front of her, so c’est la vie. She also thinks Jo-Ellen went about it the wrong way, “When I was on my deathbed, when everybody was at the castle.” On her deathbed with a full face of glam… sure. Ultimately, Jo-Ellen gets to say her piece, and now that it’s all out there, she promises to move on and vows never to bring it up again.
But while that conversation was happening upstairs, Brian was downstairs making a fool of her yet again. Gary pulled him aside to tell him to stop calling his wife a liar, and you could see him turn into a little wimp, shaking in his boots. He folds right away when confronted by Gary, who physically looms over him, and he admits that Jo-Ellen isn’t a liar, and he admits to everything that she’s accusing him of. Afterwards, when Gary tells Jo-Ellen this, she’s gobsmacked, as is the rest of the group. She’s been working on this story for a year, and now, finally, he just blurts it out, all the while Rulla is upstairs defending him to the death.
As we settle into the final dinner of the season and Alicia tells them all about her re-proposal (“I deserved it”), you can already guess what’s in store… a game. Kelsey passes around a bowl of clam shells with questions written on them as Liz gnaws on a corn on the cob. The game, designed to instigate (as all Housewives games are wont to do), has a slow start when Jared reveals something that nobody knows about him: “I love Rhode Island.” A hilariously boring nothing burger that Liz openly and fairly mocks him for.
But the game takes a turn when Rulla pulls a question about the most embarrassing thing your partner has ever done in public. “That’s God,” Alicia says, but naturally Rulla passes it off to someone else, and instead is asked a question about who at the table is most likely to smile in her face while stabbing her in the back. While she would have said Jo-Ellen at the beginning of the summer, she now feels like she’s in a good place with the whole table. But as she talks about the ups and downs, she starts to get emotional, and Alicia takes it upon herself to butt in and try to broker peace between her and Jo-Ellen, not realizing that they already did so upstairs. Jo-Ellen gets visibly annoyed with Alicia for strong-arming a redundant truce, and before you know it suddenly the whole table is openly talking about the situation. Rosie chimes in to tell Jo-Ellen that she did nothing wrong and that “the problem is sitting next to me.” I’m obsessed with how none of the women have any trepidation about dragging Brian through the mud directly to his face. Finally, Alicia puts the whole conversation to bed by saying it’s “done, done, done, put it in the ocean and it’s drowned.” How can you argue with that? Especially from a woman who’s apparently about to launch a crackah empire!
As those final title cards start to roll with updates on how everybody’s doing now, I realize something. There’s this magical thing that happens on Bravo, when a finale episode is wrapping up but you realize that there’s still ten minutes left in the episode. That’s right — it’s epilogue time. It’s what happens when something went down post-filming and production had to pick up the cameras yet again. In this instance, one month after filming wrapped, Rulla’s husband Brian was arrested for putting a tracking device on her car. With him facing a domestic violence charge and Rulla filing a no-contact order against him, we have a lot to catch up on, so the ladies all reconvene — though in two different groups.
Rosie, Kelsey, and Alicia rush to Rulla’s to get her side of the story. Ashley’s there too, looking like she won some sort of fan contest. In true Rulla fashion, she downplays it. She says that based on a few comments Brian had made, she started to suspect that she was being tracked, so she went to BMW for them to check her car. They instead sent her to the police, who then arrested Brian. As for why he did it, she still hasn’t gotten clarity on that because he dances around the question, so she had him go seek treatment to get to the bottom of his bizarre behavior as of late. When Kelsey bravely asks if there’s any part of her that’s now thankful for Jo-Ellen given this new development, Rulla maintains that Jo-Ellen went about it the wrong way. No matter what happens, she’s never going to admit Jo-Ellen was right. Even though she very much was.
Speaking of, while the other ladies are all with Rulla, Jo-Ellen meets up with Liz to talk about the situation, arriving with pie and chocolate like it’s a national holiday. She’s absolutely beaming and can’t hide her unabashed giddiness. And you know what, she earned the right to be giddy after facing attacks from that dweeb all season. On top of that, she reveals that, apparently, The Mistress was the one who picked Brian up from jail. Not since Big Papa have I been so fascinated with a character who never appears on screen, but this mistress seems to be a special kind of crazy that I’m inherently compelled by.
That being said, we know that as we sit here today, Rulla and Brian are still together — and thankfully, both will be at the reunion, where they’re going to have a lot of questions to answer. Perhaps Rulla hoped her nose job would be enough of a distraction, but no such luck; we’re still going to need her to answer for everything that went down during this insane and beautiful gift of a season.
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