Stephanie’s entire game seems to be trying to buy her way into power and sending the other wives scrambling for her favor.
Photo: Bravo
Of all the ridiculous things that we have seen the Housewives engage in over the years — Tinsley Mortimer sobbing at the circus, Dana Pam’s game night in a haunted house — we have never seen anyone pimp out their dog like Adriana de Moura. This is why even when she’s at her most annoying, I still love Adriana: She finds the dumbest, funniest, most outlandish things to do and commits to them like Anna Nicole Smith to a barely sputtering oil tycoon. She decides that before she gets her constantly humping poodle, Basquiat, neutered, she wants him to have one “trip to paradise” with a female dog. I don’t know, I think that might be animal cruelty. It’s one thing to cut off a virgin’s balls; it’s another to let them have a solitary sexual experience before cutting them off forever. It’s like, what is worse, never having gotten to eat a McRib or to have only one before they disappear for another decade?
What’s even crazier is that she took a pooch for his one roll around the astroturf of a doggy day care yet decked him out in an entire outfit. If Adriana was going to have sex, would she put on even more clothes than usual? Here is this dog trying to fuck, and he’s not only wearing a shirt and a bandana but an entire Poochie Prada backpack. Isn’t that going to throw off his center of gravity? Will he even be able to mount his mate, a cute lady named Honey, with all of that couture weighing down his small frame? It seems it didn’t get in his way, and thank the Catholic Jesus for that, because now, without the pursuit of sex in his life, the only comfort he will have against the existential dread of modern existence is the sweet, sweet embrace of capitalism and its attendant global luxury brands.
There has been a whole dog motif this season, starting with Stephanie and the dogs she rescued during the hurricane pooping all over one of the newly built condo units and going all the way through to this episode, where we are once again arguing about dogs. Oh, and this reminds me. By the power vested in me by the Eileen Davidson Accords, it is now within our power to judge Stephanie Shojaee. Ladies and (homosexual) gentlemen, I have to admit, I am skeptical of Stephanie. I do think that she’s good for the group and good for the dynamic. The way that she is the only one who isn’t afraid to take on Alexia, Lisa, Larsa, or any of the older cast members is just the kind of shakeup we needed to freshen up this already excellent cast. However, her tactic’s doing so, well, I’m not entirely sure.
It started for me in the aforementioned scene, where she visits one of her new properties and discovers that the dogs have pooped everywhere. Even before she gets upstairs, she walks into the building with her husband, Masoud, and the concierge greets them in such a stiff and rehearsed way that my eyes rolled until they were dizzy. This whole thing seems staged, planned, finagled, massaged, bamboozled, lollygagged, and all sorts of other long, silly-sounding words that may not necessarily apply to this situation. There is something about Stephanie that feels a bit put on. It’s like in this episode when she is talking about her fight with Alexia and how she barks. In her confessional, Stephanie pulls out a stuffed dog, calls it Alexia, and tells it to bark. Girl, that joke is whack, and it did not land. You are working way too hard.
There is a certain kind of showiness with Stephanie that I just don’t buy. When she gave Larsa a tour of her home renovation last episode, she showed her what will be the enormous closet and says, “This wall will be all Birkins.” Jesus. Enough with the Birkins already. Yes, they can be cool. Yes, I’m sure they’re functional. Yes, they communicate a certain type of status. But they are so incredibly played now that it doesn’t say that a person has taste or style, it just says they have money. That Stephanie dedicates herself to a collection of them and a wall devoted to them shows that she doesn’t care about how she looks as long as she looks rich. Sorry, I’m bored. Kiki Barth has never once carried a Birkin (that I can remember), but every single one of her outfits slaps. You don’t need the money, you don’t need the status. And if Stephanie not only relies on Birkins but crows about them, it shows something that we learned a long time ago from a much more superior Housewife: Money can’t buy you class.
The most interesting thing I’ve seen Stephanie wear all season is her head-to-toe Thom Browne outfit for Marysol’s preppy party, complete with the $3,600 dog-shaped bag that has become her signature. There are no labels on it, no logos, no double F’s or double C’s, but those with taste and an interest in fashion know what it is, know that it is expensive, and know that it whispers. More of this from Stephanie, please.
Also fake-seeming is this whole cooked-up plot about her flying private to Seville for the cast trip. She’s taking her jet and invites Julia, who is planning the trip along with Marysol, to get Alexia away from Todd. (This is a fool’s errand. What is the saying? You can lead a horse away from a garbage dump, but you can’t make it take off its cat-eye glasses. Something like that.) She also invited Larsa to the PJ and offered the last spot to Marysol. Marysol turns it down so that she can be with Alexia, so what does Stephanie do? She offers the last season to Alexia, even though Marysol already stated she wants to be with her. So, what is she trying to do? Create a wedge between them when Alexia says she’ll go on the jet, but Marysol says she’d stay home?
Then at the Preppy dinner, Stephanie announces to the group that there is one more seat on the plane and is basically asking for all the women to fight for a seat with her. Kiki does the right thing and gives up her chance so that Adriana can go with Julia. This creates the kind of drama that it seems like Stephanie was hoping for when Adriana says that her “supposed” best friend, Julia, should have fought for her to fly private in the first place. Yes, Adriana is exhausting, but she’s right that Julia is expecting Adriana to have her back in the Guerdy fight while Julie never has Adriana’s back against Alexia and the bony-kneed (mean but funny!) Marysol.
This whole thing with Stephanie and the plane bugged me. First of all, I may not know how private planes work, but why can she fly the whole cast from Seville to Marbella, but she can only fly four people from Miami to Seville? If it’s big enough for a short flight, can’t it be big enough for the entire flight? Also, this is the kind of game Stephanie wants to play. She doesn’t want to fit into the group; she wants to set herself above it with her money and make everyone else scramble to be her friend. She even says, explicitly, that if shit hits the fan in Marbella, then the other women should book a bus because she won’t be flying them back. Stephanie doesn’t use her wealth like a shoehorn, trying to fit herself into a situation like Sutton Stracke does. She uses it like a cudgel, brow-beating everyone around her into submission.
What I love about Stephanie is that she is not afraid to stand up to the other women, and maybe her wealth allows her to have those kinds of balls that Adriana just cut off her poodle. I relished when she told Lisa she needs to show up on time to shit. I also loved when, after Guerdy blasted Julia’s texts to the universe, that she told Alexia not to tell her she was kissing Guerdy’s ass when she was just trying to get both sides of the story.
I do not love that she is trying to make this Alexia dog fight into a thing. To recap the fight from the last episode, Stephanie told Alexia that she is always barking. Alexia said that Stephanie barks like a Chihuahua, but that she’s a Rottweiler. Then, when Stephanie called Alexia a Rottweiler again, Alexia got mad about it. When they talk at the Preppy Party, Stephanie says that she feels like Alexia is always trying to make everyone feel smaller than her, like she is the alpha, and that is why she didn’t like being called a Chihuahua. I agree with Stephanie’s point, but the only reason Alexia did that was because Stephanie first accused her of barking all the time. Stephanie blames everything that happened subsequently on Alexia belittling her, but Alexia only belittled her because Stephanie had made fun of her.
Stephanie is right: Alexia always wants to be the center of the group and will enforce her position as such, but this dogfight is not the clear win she thinks it is. What these two really need to discuss is who will lead this particular pack. Alexia has done it the right way, by putting in her time, forging bonds with all the women, and bringing more storylines than a decade’s worth of telenovelas. Alexia, no matter what you think of her, is one of the best to play the game, and she has earned the love and respect of both her cast and the fans.
Stephanie, on the other hand, is trying to buy that same position. She’s showing up with her wall of Birkins, her plane, and her temper and trying to purchase everyone into submission. I’m sorry, but it doesn’t work that way. If she wants to be an alpha, she can be, but it’s not like slapping up a new condo development. Her status in the group is just like a new condo block: the faster she tries to build it up, the shoddier it will be, and she’ll spend the rest of her days trying to fill in the cracks with money. I’m sorry, but no one wants to buy a house like that, even if it’s a doghouse.
VULTURE NEWSLETTER
Keep up with all the drama of your favorite shows!
Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice