Not So Fair Ladies
Season 4
Episode 6
Editor’s Rating
3 stars
***
Photo: Bravo
Since this episode didn’t start off with a lesson about English culture I thought I’d offer you one of my own. When Myka goes to Emma’s London residence to drop off a care package for the 10k she’s about to run in Africa to support Tusk (Fleetwood Mac’s second-best album) we see a brief shot of the top of Emma’s window, at what looks like a vine growing in there. I feel like the editors want us to think that maybe her house is falling apart, like the outside is trying to come inside or that vines are growing through the crumbling infrastructure. That is not what is going on at all and I recognized this phenomenon immediately because it happens in my house.
Here in the U.K. nearly no one has air conditioning. Even when you go to the movies in the summer, there is no icy hum of chilly air that Americans of all stripes are familiar with. It’s not really a big deal because there’s usually only two weeks of the summer where you’d use it. It does get warm and to combat the heat everyone keeps their windows open practically all summer. Given this, it is utterly baffling that no building in this country has screen windows either, not even the little ones you can buy all over New York City where they expand to fit your window and you just close the casing over them. The only place in England where I’ve ever seen screen windows is Buckingham Palace and this is why we need to destroy gatekeeping.
Because of the open windows and lack of screens, from June until September every house is buzzing with flies, insects landing on the TV screen when we’re trying to binge Love Island, and beset by any old thing from the outside, including the vines that are on the outside of many buildings. My house has a gorgeous wisteria that grows up the front, and its tendrils often come right in the open windows and then, if I have occasion to shut the window (like the frequent rains) then it ends up trapping the vines inside so it looks like I’m living in some kind of unkempt treehouse. Emma is dealing with enough — a run in the heat, a cyst on her pituitary gland, Myka showing up with thoughtful presents — that we don’t need to make fun of her interior gardening.
While no one but me is fascinated by indoor vines (or how I’m going to become a billionaire selling screen windows from Cornwall to Coventry), I think we were all endlessly fascinated when Margo invites a pet psychic over to Martha’s to talk to her pet magpie Hecate. When Shannon Beador had a pet psychic talk to Archie (who we all love) I thought it was stupid, but to have a pet psychic talk to a bird? Oh, this is Pinky and the Brain-level genius. Jackie, the “animal communicator” comes over and says that Hecate thinks that she is the boss and owns Martha, which sounds entirely accurate from everyone’s external assessment of the situation. Hecate says that she wants the world to know that magpies just want to eat and play and that they’re not malicious or bad luck. We don’t get any confirmation if Hecate is Martha’s mother reincarnated (the evidence is that they love booze, love men, and are drama queens – honestly, same sis) but Hecate does make peace with Margo, who doubts her intentions, by giving her a chip and resting her warm talons on Margo’s soft arm.
Before the big party, there’s not much drama. Myka launches her manners YouTube thingy, Lottie goes to see her son’s willie on the ultrasound, and Missé shows up to meet Margo’s teenage stepsons with her considerable bosom fully out. I mean, those bubbies are shaking and rocking in the wind. Missé comes over, gives the boys hugs, compliments their chains, and then watches them walk away with a stack of books covering their groins like they’re in middle school. Wait. They are in middle school. Now that Missé and Kimi have made up, her whole storyline this episode is that she can’t keep her boobs in their clothing. Isn’t gratuitous nudity usually Margo’s bag? At the park, Missé tells Margo that she made up with Kimi and that she’s going to let things rest, but she does add that Mark has been talking shit about Mago’s clothes and her demeanor behind her back. She shares that she heard that Mark is always sucking up to Emma because his parents disowned him. Yawn.
That’s not to say that Mark isn’t annoying. He does this kind of witty, quippy, can’t-be-taken-seriously Oscar Wilde thing where everything has to be a withering remark and nothing can be even remotely sincere. (He apparently lives in Wilde’s old townhouse and may be possessed by his ghost.) I find it amusing to watch on television, but it must make for a very tedious friend. For instance, he goes to Martha’s My Fair Lady party in a park and says he finds themes “tedious” and that Martha can set one, but he is “not obliged to comply.” Instead, he shows up in a bright yellow safari jacket looking less like the Man in the Yellow Hat from Curious George, which is how Margo describes him, and more like Colonel Mustard on his first trip to Provincetown.
Everything with Kimi, Margo, Mark, and Martha comes to a head at this party. Margo got the memo and is wearing a white dress, a giant feathered jacket that is actually quite fetching, and a pair of white cowboy boots that Kimi would like to set on fire. When Margo comes to greet Mark he says, “The bird has landed!” and tells her she looks great. In his confessional he says that he always compliments everyone and he doesn’t really mean it. This is what I’m talking about. If you don’t stand for something you stand for nothing and Mark, well, I don’t think he even stands to take off his undies. When Margo tries to confront him about the things he said, like picking on her clothes, he doesn’t deny it but says, “There was momentary talk about a crushed velvet jumpsuit.”
It gets worse when Kimi, who Margo was previously avoiding, comes over in a tiny top hat with a veil that makes her look like a villain in a Dickens novel. Amy Sherman-Pallidino would spend a year of Gilmore Girls residuals to acquire it. Mark says he previously told everyone that Margo was embracing a moment of being an actress, which she thinks means that she’s fake. Kimi burst in and clarifies he didn’t say that, he called her fake. I’m sure Mark is just giddy over that assist. Mark then goes on the attack against Margo, saying that she had to have a bit of venom about her to wear these birds, that she looked like Cruella de Vil, and that, “At least these birds didn’t die in vain.”
Margo calls this a “posh putdown,” an insult that is not meant to look like an insult. I think it’s something worse. There is a decidedly teasing nature to British humor, one that Lisa Vanderpump couldn’t explain to her American counterparts when she wielded it against them. However, there is a difference between teasing someone and insulting them to their face, then laughing to pretend it’s a joke. Mark is doing the latter and Kimi is backing him up. Margo doesn’t know how to fight it and just walks away. There is only one way to stop someone like that and it is to insult them right back to their face and then laugh. Margo already wasted her line about the Man in the Yellow Hat.
Kimi tries to take Margo aside for a chat, but it ends before it begins with Kimi screaming about how Margo is a fraud, a terrible friend, and that Martha is going to hate her when she finds out how fake she is. Oh, and she hates her boots. Take that. Oh, and she’s fake and from L.A. Take that, too! Finally, Margo fights back and makes fun of Kimi’s put-on English accent and says she sounds like the man from the Monopoly board. That’s Mr. Monopoly to you, Margo.
Kimi then goes to yell at Martha about why she’s not defending her to Margo. Martha’s answer is as wonderful as it is honest, “Because you’re a psychotic bitch. I love you for it, but you are.” She then says her behavior to Missé in the car was unacceptable and stands her ground, putting her friend firmly in her place. This is the most we’ve seen Martha stand up to anyone and, honestly, it’s turning me on a little bit.
After Kimi huffs off to join the rest of the group sitting on a bench under a tree, Martha tells her to stop attacking everyone and tries to comfort her. Kimi tells Martha how much she loves her, how she only attended the party to be close to her, and that she sees her as a sister. She even starts crying a little bit and Missé pops her boobs out in excitement that Kimi is finally showing some emotion. Martha says she loves Kimi back, but she is a psychotic bitch. Kimi says, “I know I am, but I can’t help it.” And over their heads, high in the tree, a creature sits, taking it in, wondering what she can do, how she can curse these particular women (and Mark) or feed them or play with them. She wants to do something, to speak, to draw their energies together and unify them. But she can’t. Hecate’s medium is not there. Instead she takes off with a caw, flapping back to Martha’s house and shitting on the picnic table on her way out.
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