Real Housewives of Miami: No One's Benefit
[There was a video here]
The Real Birdturds of Miami screeched in unison last night as they all attended Lea Black's Black Tie Extravaganza at Black House Manor. But one of the ladies was not welcome and there will be vicious hell to pay.
First up, aren't these Miami housewives a little bit boring? They don't have the simmering unhappiness of the Beverly Hills clan, the intricate social tension of the New York ladies, or the explosive personalities of Atlanta's cast. They just have that sort of bland awfulness of the D.C. crew—that other failed experiment in party crashing. Even the big moments of tension in Miami have the excitement of deflating a balloon.
The episode starts off with Adriana talking to her French lover Frederic outside of their home. They're sitting at a table by the pool with the ocean in the background and talking about some really mundane shit, like some fashion show that Adriana went to or the new wallpaper they're going to hang in the foyer. Frederic, with his foreign accent, stringy hair, and enormous pinky ring is totally like a villain in an episode of Miami Vice. That makes Adriana the dispensable girl in the scene. Crocket and Mr. Tibbs will show up at any moment and walk onto the patio by the pool and Frederic will say, "Honey, go get me some more champagne," to get rid of her and the detectives will ask him a bunch of questions about the drug trade but they won't arrest him or anything they'll just smack him around a bunch and walk out as his body is lying next to the breakfast table. Then Adriana will scamper back onto the patio, her heels chattering like a million cicadas, the champagne flute in her hand, and she'll spout nonsense in Portuguese and cradle his head in her lap. The problem is, Adriana thinks she's the star, that all the action should be about her, but she's really just the set dressing in someone else's drama.
The same is true for Lea Black's Black and White Ball for Black History Month, or whatever stupid gala it is that she's arranging. Adriana is all, "I help her plan this whole party," but meanwhile Lea has a "team" of people helping her and Adriana shows up, hat in hand like, "I"m ready to help," and Lea says, "Oh, be a dear and put stamps on these invitations. We decided the task was too menial for the intern," and now Adriana thinks that she's like second in command.
Contrary to popular belief, Marysol is not a very bad beekeeper who keeps getting stung in the face. No, she is a PR girl. No, she's not Puerto Rican. She's a Pubic Restoration expert, and she makes all the pubes into beautiful little bushes so that people will love them. Right now, she's working on Lea's pubes, and she's getting paid big money for it. She keeps going on and on and telling us how exclusive and fabulous and amazing Lea's pubes are. Well, of course you are, Marysol, it's your job to praise her pubes.
Marysol and Lea are far too busy whacking at their respective bushes to possibly attend a lunch that Christy is throwing in the middle of the day. She has enlisted someone named Chef Pippin to come and cook for her and her friends and show them how to make real Cuban food. Christy is a Cube, so she knows all about eating square meals from Cuba. She loves Cuba, as her too small wife-beater will tell you. Anyway, Chef Pippin had his life turned into a famous Broadway musical in the '70s, but ever since then he's fallen out of favor. That's how he wound up scraping dimes together cooking meals for spoiled divorcees in Miami. He's never going to find his corner of the sky now, because he's putting on silly shows where he pours the ingredients from several canisters into a crock pot. "What is it?" the Birdturds all ask. "I like to call it Raccoon Boyo!" At least that's what we think he said. I didn't know they had raccoons in Miami.
The real drama happened at lunch when Adriana's son's school called to tell her that school got out early and she was the only mother that didn't come pick up her kid. Apparently going to meet the inspiration for her second favorite musical (she still likes Aspects of Love more) so he could make her some canned food Cuban casserole was more important to her than picking her kid up from school. So she calls Frederic to get him to pick up the kid, but he's in the middle of being beaten by some Miami vice squad operatives. While he's huddled on the ground, doubled over from getting several kicks right to the gut, he answers the phone and grunts, "Yeah, I'll get him. Bye." And hangs up. This pisses Adriana off, so she keeps calling and calling, but his phone is left there in the dust by the dock and he can't answer it because he is currently being stomped on.
There is nothing worse than someone else's phone drama at a sit-down meal. You have to listen to one side of it, but you don't really know the whole story, but you heard it so then you have to ask about it and the person is upset and they want to talk about it, so then everyone has to address the problem and it takes over the whole meal. It's like when someone spills a bottle of poppers at an orgy—it just ruins it for everyone and you might as well pack it in and go home, because no one is going to be able to get wood again that night.
All the other girls think Frederic is wrong to be mean to Adriana, but Alexia tells that that they should stop being such bitches. The man was trying to help and answered the phone while getting beaten by the police, so good for him. That's all I really have to say about Alexia because she seems pretty normal and down to earth and a little boring—maybe because she is named after a sleeping pill.
After the lunch, Larsa goes home to her closet. It is a magical place that is about the size of two New York City apartments or a three car garage in a Houston suburb. It is fucking gigantic. Not only that, it is tricked out with all sorts of bars and levers and pulleys so that she can organize her collection of short shorts, bikinis, and blinged-out blouses. Larsa's closet is a technological marvel. She just upgraded it to be powered by telepathy, so that when she thinks about an outfit, it just magically comes off the shelves. Larsa, we think, spends a lot of time in her closet.
While in the closet, Larsa talks to her mother about firing the nanny. Larsa needs help raising her kids, but she always hates the nannies and names them after slow animals like "Snail" and "Turtle." Then, when she can't handle it anymore, she fires them—or has her mother fire them. That's so chicken, like breaking up with someone by text message. Firing nannies is Larsa's deep psychological problem. She wants to be glamorous and have a wonderful life so she needs a nanny, but she thinks that she's the best mother in the world, so she has to feel superior to the nanny. Nothing is ever really the nanny's fault, it's Larsa's. Maybe she should get a therapist and hold on to one of the nannies?
Finally it's time to get ready to go to Lea's Black Thai Benefit for Black Beans in Thailand. Marysol is working the red carpet as the Pubic Restorer, so she has to go get her hair did. Her mother, Elsa, is there. Elsa is a psychic frog who is closely related to Paul the psychic octopus. When she see's Marysol all done up with a strand of sea weed stuck in her hair she croaks, "Dis evenink go-nna end ba-ly, Mary-sol. A witch will arives uninvited. She say her chariot ees missing wheel, but ees no missing wheel. She liar. She put a hex on you, Mary-sol. Beware the flat-haired witch!" Marysol ignores her and goes to the event.
There Lea Black is wearing all black and a necklace that looks like body armor constructed out of a disco ball. She wore it once when she was Leona Helmsley's bridesmaid (she was a client of Lea's husband) and now she's re-purposing it for the event. Speaking of Roy Black's famous clients, Joe Francis, the douche of the decade, is there because he owes his freedom to Roy. Well, thanks a lot, Roy. All of Roy's other clients were there as well, including OJ Simpson, Julian Assange, L Ron Hubbard, Vlad the Impaler, Sirhan Sirhan, Squeaky Fromm.
After all the security is gone by the front door, Christy shows up with two of her friends and just waltzes in with two of her friends. If we were handing out trophies for The Worst, Christy would be like Susan Lucci except she won every single time she was nominated. Christy is just awful. Christy is a machine fueled by regret and mojitos, just wandering around looking for another way to bolster this image she has of herself. She was that girl in high school who hung out with all the popular, pretty, rich girls, but she wasn't rich. She would go skiing with Janelle and on cruises with Marci, but she couldn't afford those things on her own. Thanks to her good connections, though, she thought she deserved them, and thought people expected her to be able to afford them, so she would devise elaborate schemes to seem just as rich as all the other pretty, popular girls. She would find a way to just crash the party in a dress with the tags still on so that everyone thought she was rich and fabulous. No, Christy, you're just poor and awful, and we all know it. You're not fooling anyone—espeically with that lame "We got a flat tire on the way here," story.
Lea finds out that Christy crashed her party and is pissed off she didn't buy a $500 ticket. So, what's she going to do? How is she going to handle the situation? Oh, she's not going to confront her, god forbid. That might make for some exciting television. No, she's going to invoice her for the tickets. Yes, she is going to go home and pull up Excel from the dock of her Mac and she is going to click that track pad with all her might and invoice Christy so hard for showing up to Lea Blacks Dog Days Are Over Black Tie Black Black. Yes, that is drama. That is real life. That is the vengeance we all dream about. That is something that is really going to make Christy examine her ways and reform as a human being. An invoice. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is exciting television.
PS: Richard Lawson will be back on the Househarpies beat once American Idol is no longer running on Tuesdays. How appropriate that we're time-sharing this Miami condo.