It seems that everyone has had it with Tamra’s usual pattern of offending, apologizing, and repeating, and they aren’t letting her get away without suffering a little.
Photo: Bravo
There is nothing more obvious than Ryan Boyajian — “entrepreneur,” friend of money launderers, terrible jacket enthusiast, and connoisseur of “tits on a stick” (according to Tamra) — owning a Cybertruck. Of course, this man owns a Cybertruck. Of course. You can tell just by looking at him, just like you can tell by looking at Heather Dubrow, that she would probably order an ugly, logo-emblazoned Fendi bucket hat to wear to Coachella, where she would call the paparazzi as she sits in the Sugar Bear Hair pavilion drinking a branded cocktail. Of course, he has a Cybertruck and is washing it in his driveway, of fucking course.
Luckily, we don’t need to see much of Ryan this episode, but there’s not much to see. (I am not above making short jokes about Elon supporters.) It is funny to compare him to Heather because she seems to be signaling the exact opposite of Ryan. We see her record a podcast with Dylan Mulvaney, the trans actress who did a sponsored post with Bud Light, which sent all the Cybertruck owners into a hell of a tizzy. Heather talks about how she wants to use her platform to give a voice to the voiceless. Um, Dylan has two million followers on Instagram and 9.1 million on TikTok. Heather has 1.8 million on Insta and 346,000 on “TikToks dot com” (as Terry calls it). I think that Dylan is doing her a favor just by showing up. It seems like we’re teeing up a storyline where Heather gets upset with Gretchen about her stance on trans issues that fans have been gossiping about.
That doesn’t mean Heather doesn’t invite Gretchen to her Beverly Hills penthouse for an overly ornate sleepover. There’s even a very handsome private butler named Nate, who is duking it out for the Hottie of the Episode Award with J.R., the volunteer coordinator at the animal shelter where Emily and Jenn clean up poop and play with some very good boys. No, not Nate and J.R. I mean the rescue dogs. Sheesh.
Heather only invites Emily and Gretchen for this sleepover, where they stay in canopy beds in her second (and larger) living room, because Tamra invites Shannon, Gina, and Jenn on her own trip to Temecula, which comes from the Aztec word for “far too inland.” This is Tamra’s great apology tour and she’s trying to get deeper with Jenn and Shannon and wants Gina there as a moderator. In response, Heather is having Emily and Gretchen come north with bottles of Fireball in their purses and an afternoon of shopping and dining at a place called Crustacean. I can’t think of a grosser name for a restaurant. It’s like a bakery named Moist or a car dealership named Tesla.
Strangely missing from both trips is Katie, presumably because no one wanted to film with her. What’s worse for Katie is that she’s not getting paid for this episode because she didn’t appear in it. I get that editors didn’t want to bring the specter of her story back into the episode. Still, a hint of explanation, a little home scene with her and Matt, would have gone a long way to explain her absence rather than just pretending that she has been the linchpin to many of the season’s storylines so far. Also, it would qualify her for her episodic paycheck.
While Gretchen and Emily clearly get the better deal in terms of trips, only two notable things happen during the sleepover. While walking down Rodeo Drive, they run into a paparazzo, Shaene, a collection of letters I did not know could make phonetic sense. She tells the crew that there’s no way that Heather called the paparazzi as many (including myself!) have speculated. Shaene claims this was just a random shot. Alright, Rodeo Drive is a likely place for a paparazzo to be, and yes, they might have some insider knowledge about the industry in general or these pictures specifically that we don’t. But Heather still called the damn paps. I’m sorry. I will die on this particular meaningless hill. This run-in all seems too pat, too staged, too likely. Also, how are we even going to believe someone named Shaene, who was raised by parents who don’t even know how to spell a human name?
The other topic of conversation is whether Heather is scared of Tamra, which Emily clearly thinks and seems to have convinced Jenn and Gretchen. Heather says that she’s not and makes the excellent point that she is the only one who told Tamra to her face that her behavior in New Orleans was out of pocket. (Not out of Polly Pocket, which is what Gretchen’s stylist claimed to be after all of Gretchen’s confessional looks this season.) If Heather is so afraid, why didn’t anyone else have the guts to confront her?
I do think that Heather has Tamra’s ear and has worked with her long enough to know what is going to set her off. Fancy Pants always wants a bit of decorum, and I think what they mistake for fear is also her managing Tamra and trying to appease her so that she doesn’t try to get anyone naked wasted again. Also, unlike the other women, Heather has the least to fear about losing this gig. What? She’s going to run afoul of Tamra, lose her post on the show, and then be forced to sit in her penthouse overlooking her multiple properties while she opens her Fendi boxes unrecorded? Yeah, rough life. Talk to Jenn, who won’t be able to make rent if she loses this as her only source of income.
It’s fitting that even the conversation on the other trip is about Tamra, who dominates this episode in Katie’s unexplained absence. I knew there would be trouble as soon as Shannon received the invitation. Instead of saying she didn’t want to go, she shows up with two monogrammed suitcases, including one filled with loose pasta, platters, muffin tins, a crock pot, three dented cans of SpaghettiOs, some tomatoes her neighbors left on her doorstep, and a chef’s hat. What was she going to do, make Uncrustables from scratch?
Shannon is having a blast on the ride inland, showing off her missing tooth and waxing about how her father wanted to buy an avocado mountain and develop it into homes. This is all to avoid the tension with Tamra. We know from her struggling to forgive Vicki in the wake of the Brooks Ayers fiasco that Shannon takes much longer to forgive than most Housewives. That’s because I don’t think Shannon is entirely playing the game as much as the other women, to her credit. She can work behind the scenes as much as anyone, but it seems like this is all real to Shannon; it isn’t a show, but her actual life, so she plays by life rules rather than show rules. I think that is part of what makes her a great character, but I can see how other castmates, who know things need to be neatly contained so the storyline can move on, get frustrated with it.
Before the big dinner, which is the climax of the episode, there is a lot of talk about Tamra showing everyone the Phatty Photo, which had been lost for the last few weeks due to the events surrounding Gretchen and Katie. At dinner, Tamra brings it up, and Jenn basically asks her why she did it. Tamra says it was to illustrate how much she’s changed. She says that Heather made it out to be something that it wasn’t, about how Tamra shamed her for being fat. In fairness to Jenn, it’s a terrible photo, full stop. Everything about it is horrible and cursed by the devil. It should be forced to ride in the Cybertruck with Ryan as punishment.
Jenn agrees with Tamra, that she has changed, but she thinks it is for the better. If Jenn were a shy, insecure lady with some extra pounds beforehand, I’m glad that she’s changed into someone who is a bit more confident, more secure, and more conventionally attractive based on the skewed beauty standards of California’s most Republican county. Jenn says that Tamra showed the photo because Tamra is the one who feels insecure and needs to feel better about herself. I love it when Housewives (and also fans and also idiot recappers) try to find these great philosophical reasons why Tamra did it. She did it to be a bitch. She did it to be a bitch and hurt Jenn, whom she was mad at and didn’t like. It doesn’t take even a day in a psychology class to figure that one out.
Tamra apologizes and says it was a shitty thing to do, but what has changed in this scene, with both Jenn and Shannon, is that no one is accepting Tamra’s apologies. Her usual pattern — offend, apologize, repeat — isn’t working. She’s hurt too many people too deeply that they don’t want to do it. As Jenn starts to challenge Tamra’s apology, you can see her get more and more frustrated. When she asks Jenn what she wants, Jenn says, “I want you to mature.” That’s exactly it. That’s what everyone wants: off the rollercoaster. They don’t want to be stuck in the same, never-ending pattern. Yes, we all fuck up and do shitty things to our friends, and we apologize and move on. Sure, but Tamra keeps doing the same shit and with all the lip service about how she’s changed she hasn’t changed at all.
That’s when Tamra finally snaps. “I apologized. What else do you want from me? Blood?” Yes! Yes, they do. If not literal, then at least figurative. They want her to pay some price for everything she’s done; they want to see some suffering to go along with the atonement. They want her to kneel on the hard floor of a cathedral and say 150 million Hail Marys. Honestly, they deserve it. Tamra’s not getting off so easy this time and she hates it.
It’s even worse with Shannon, who inevitably turns the conversation toward her own grievances. Shannon accurately says that Tamra goes lower than anyone else in the group, and they’re all supposed to take it. Shannon isn’t just being obstinate with Tamra, it’s like the women have banded together and decided that she needs to do some penance for her misdeeds. When Shannon starts to question the things that Tamra said about her last season, Tamra doubles down, saying she’s just as mean behind everyone’s backs and that she gets drunk and says terrible things about the other ladies. Yes, that is not a way to clear herself from the problem of very publicly calling Shannon a drunk. To make it even worse, she then throws Gina under the Cybertruck and says she’s worried about Shannon’s drinking too. That’s when all the air went right out of the barn, sucking up all of their words and all of their conflict. It blew out the candles on the table and the chandelier above them. It went out onto the dusty flats of the vineyard. It created a sort of cyclone, whirling around and around, just like Tamra’s behavior, getting worse and worse, compounding itself until it was a storm that would flatten a village or fall apart with one well-placed sigh.
Sign up for the Housewives Institute Bulletin
Dame Brian Moylan breaks down all the gossip and drama, on- and off-screen, for dedicated students of the Reality Television Arts and Sciences.
Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice