Mimosas and Mayhem
Season 1
Episode 3
Editor’s Rating
3 stars
***
Kenny needs to learn how to stop putting his foot in his mouth in front of other cast members if he wants to survive the season.
Photo: Bravo
There is something in this episode that we’ve never seen before. (No, not that they ate pizza at absolutely every meal.) There seems to be a glitch in the Matrix. Amanda is talking about her friendships with Ciara and West in confessional when the background suddenly starts to wobble, the lights flicker, and her outfit changes. We aren’t pretending there’s a chic loft backdrop anymore. Amanda is in front of a green screen in early May, about five weeks after she announced that she and West were exploring their connection. “We need to talk about this from now,” a producer tells her about the scene that we’re currently watching unfold in the fall.
In that scene, Amanda greets Ciara and West, who arrive together as if he just spent the night at her house, which we know he did several times after the summer thanks to their revelations in the Summer House reunion. When they arrive, Amanda says, “I was checking your location,” and Ciara responds, “I always forget you have my location.” Oh, we haven’t forgotten. That’s how Ciara found out that Amanda was spending so much time at West’s house while ignoring her calls. Amanda says, in her first confessional, that Ciara is her best friend and that she and West got really close because he helped her through a lot of Kyle stuff this summer. She says that recently West and Ciara became “best friends” again and this is “my little trio.” Um, that wouldn’t last that long, would it?
Based on what we know now, this scene reads crazier than a woman locked in an attic in a Victorian novel. “Look at us,” Amanda says, offering one of her hands to each of them. “This makes me so happy right now … This is my dream.” Um, does she mean nightmare because this thing is about to twist like Chubby Checker on Adderall? This is when the producer asks Amanda to reevaluate the situation based on everything that happened. “I know exactly what people are going to think when they watch this scene,” she says. “It’s bizarre, but, in this moment, these are my friends. These are two very important people to me who helped me get through this very weird time in my life and my relationship with Kyle. I am so happy right now.”
The Matrix glitch is a stroke of genius, trying to show us how all of these things change, how this is real life happening in front of us, that it is messy, that we can revisit events in our recent past, and, based on an incursion of events, they take on a whole different meaning. I wanted it to go one step further, though. I want to know how she feels now that the relationship is broken. I want her to address how it changed or how this moment helped it change. I want her to talk about how she could go from loving Ciara so much to turning on her in the sickest possible way. The Matrix be glitchin’; let that motherfucker glitch even more!
Amanda shows them where her new apartment is going to be, but it looks like a hole in the ground. How fast is this thing going to get built? At the end of the episode, Amanda tells Kyle that finding a furnished one-bedroom that is month-to-month and pet-friendly and has a doorman was harder than she thought. No, duh, Amanda. Like the limit in Mean Girls, that apartment does not exist. Also, if that’s what she is looking for, why not get an Airbnb? Why not get a corporate apartment? There are options other than going to a Realtor. If Amanda was hunting for an apartment like that, it’s no wonder she found a place she wants with a one-year lease.
Kyle hears this news moments before going on a podcast where they’re going to talk about their relationship (!!!). He says this sounds more permanent because, of course, it is. What is the exit clause for this? If they do get back together, how does she move back in with Kyle? Or do they just keep paying two rents for an entire year? This plan only sort of made sense before, and now that she’s signing up for 12 months, it doesn’t make sense at all. Amanda is breadcrumbing divorce.
Enough about Kymanda because this show is starting to get some other story lines and I am fully here for it. Lindsay goes out on a date with Kelly Dodd’s sloppy seconds, Frank the Milk Man, and she thinks that he’s boring but hot and wants to [insert sexy milk pun here] with him. Yvonne and Georgina go to the park, where Georgina tries to convince her friend that having one kid is no big deal while one of hers runs around with a poopy diaper hanging to his knees and the other one gnaws on something she found on the ground. Kenny helps his girlfriend, Whitney, move in while giving her only the faintest of jabs, which causes her to cry.
Oh, Kenny and Whitney. These two were excellent finds. We learn that Kenny grew up with his mother and half-brother in a one-room shack where they all shared a bed, so it’s amazing that he wound up in this gorgeous Manhattan apartment. Speaking of which, Whitney and her lifestyle are not equipped for this apartment. She moves in with three crates of beauty supplies, at least three massage rollers, and three decorative wooden balls. This is some Los Angeles–type shit. People in L.A. live in houses or large apartments. People in Manhattan live in lockers that sometimes have a toilet. That is the difference. If you live in Manhattan and have a decorative wooden ball, it is such a flex, such a status symbol, that everyone on your co-op board thinks you are flaunting your wealth. Who has the space for decorations that don’t hang on the wall? Jeffrey Epstein is the only person who comes to mind, and look at what happened with him. The rent is too damn high.
Whitney is making a huge deal about how she needs a closet, and there’s not enough room for her clothes. Kenny is going through her things and counts 26 black T-shirts. Whitney says she is not an outfit repeater. I find this so annoying. It’s one thing not to repeat an outfit, but why do you need 26 different black T-shirts? If she is only wearing each of them once, then she needs to get rid of them as soon as she wears them, so they don’t accumulate. But if she’s keeping them to wear in different combinations, why does she need 26 of them? There are not 26 different fits, cuts, lengths, and sizes of black T-shirts. Ten, maybe. Fifteen at the most. But 26? Again, this is L.A.-type bullshit. She is not going to get Manhattan closets to bend to her behavior; her behavior is going to have to bend to Manhattan closets, and the sooner she realizes this, the happier she and Kenny will be.
Their happiness, though, is what is coming into question. Andrea’s wife, Lexi, has coffee with Whitney and Georgina in the park. (Lexi is gorgeous, sweet, kind, and attentive. Listening to her talk is like trying to crack jokes with first-generation Claude.) Lexi tells her new bestie, Whitney, that Andrea told her that Kyle told him that Kenny told him that he didn’t feel a spark between the two of them. Whitney doesn’t believe it, but rewind the footage, and there it is. Kenny is saying he doesn’t know if they have the spark that she is the woman he should marry. The conversation wasn’t that bad; it wasn’t misconstrued, but the phrasing that he chose is enough to send a former Bachelor contestant to an early grave. He also said that their future was “murky.” Oh, dude. This is something that a guy would think is innocuous, but any woman would gather up all of her friends and go to war over.
We only see Whitney bring these things up at the very end of the episode, so it’s unclear how he’ll react, but the impression I’m getting from Kenny is that he is quickly realizing he’s bitten off more than he can chew. He seems like someone who thought that he was better than reality TV, that he was successful in every aspect of his life and would be successful in this. How hard could it be? It’s not a skill. It’s just showing up as yourself. Wrong!
Kenny keeps getting stuck in the same situation. He makes a remark to Kyle about a “spark,” and now Whitney is crying on a park bench. He makes a comment to the boys about Lindsay’s “minions,” and now she’s standing over him at brunch, clapping her hands at him. Kenny does not know how wrong he is, how badly he’s coming across, and how everyone on this show is eating him for breakfast like he’s a Frosted Mini-Wheat.
His tiff with Lindsay is a prime example. After Lindsay and Danielle make up over croissants (you know this is going to lead to another bust-up, so talking about the reconciliation isn’t worth wasting our collective breaths), they show up at the group brunch. The conversation, naturally, is about Lindsay and Danielle making up, and then Kyle wants Danielle to apologize to Amanda for having recently treated her badly. Somehow, this makes Kenny think he can confidently say that the problem is if you have a problem with Lindsay, then you have a problem with five other girls. I mean, have you met girls? Have you met gays? This is nothing new, nor is it a Linsday thing. If a friend tells me that a girl cut her in line once, I will go home, make a voodoo doll out of her hair, put a hex on her, call her boss, have her fired, get the IRS to start an audit, cancel her gym membership, and then make sure that her roommate kicks her out of her house. Lindsay is right: That is called having friends.
Gavin is at the other end of the table and shouts, “Don’t you mean her minions?” Yvonne doesn’t know what a Minion is, and she should count herself lucky, and the show should count itself lucky that Bravo and Universal Pictures are owned by the same corporate overlords so they can afford two seconds of footage from one of their cursed movies in this here reality show. But then Kenny calls it “mean girl” behavior, but what have any of them done to him? It’s not like they all ganged up and iced out Whitney. They’ve all been nice and welcoming to her. It’s not like they all ganged up on him and told him collectively they have a problem. He is taking a woman with loyal friends and trying to turn it into something that is negative because he doesn’t like that Lindsay has more power than he does in this situation, and, frankly, she’s better at this job.
When Lindsay starts to get heated about this, he asks her, “Are you on glue?” which is objectively funny, I will admit. Then he accuses her of being activated, and she says she is because he’s “dumb.” Yes, she is right. He is dumb. This attack is dumb. Thinking reality TV is dumb is dumb. Being dumb on reality TV is so dumb that not even Dumb and Dumberer, the sequel to Dumb and Dumber, thinks that it is not dumb while sucking on Dum Dum and while singing the Tums jingle, but instead it’s “Dumb-de-dumb-dumb-DUUUUMMMMMBBBBB.” The dumbest thing, though, is that Kenny isn’t smart enough to know just how dumb he looks. But wait until he watches this back.
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