The wives’ attempts to broker peace between Kelsey and Rosie ends in failure, but also inspires an exchange that is sure to be an instant classic.
Photo: Bravo
Depending on where you’re from, you might have ended this week’s episode of the Real Housewives of Rhode Island wondering: what is a “slam pig”? It’s a term that Rosie uses this week, said with such confident fervor that suggests we should all be familiar. And if you have enough enemies in New England, you might already be! As it turns out, it’s a regional insult that Rosie says is “just like a mean thing that you say about someone.” Urban Dictionary gets a little more specific, tying the term to promiscuity (perhaps it’s a distant relative of Kim Richards’ “slut pig” insult). And who said reality television wasn’t educational? Thanks to Bravo, we are citizens of the world — or at least the corners of the world that have their own Real Housewives cast.
But there’s a whole episode to get into before we arrive at Rosie’s vocabulary lesson. First things first, Alicia is determined to get over — or at least work on — her fear of driving, because her daughter has dance classes five days a week that she needs to be able to drive her to. “That bridge is, like, crazy,” she says of the most daunting part of the route, but when we ultimately reached the bridge, I laughed out loud. She spoke about it like it was a Looney Tunes-esque rinky-dink rope bridge, but lo and behold, it’s barely an overpass. I love her, and was thrilled to see her conquer that tiny bridge.
As for what the rest of the cast is up to, fresh off the heels of their cast trip? Kelsey is moving into her new apartment with the help of her mom and sister, both of whom are rocked by the news that her sugar daddy is still paying just about all of her bills. Meanwhile, Ashley is the only Real Housewife in history to want her husband to be on Instagram more, since it would make more money for Jared than their coffee shop does. Why he insists on working in the service industry when he could just be posting thirst traps for a living, I’ll never understand. And speaking of working, Liz and Dolores head off to the weed edible factory for a little stoner Lucy and Ethel moment.
Meanwhile, after digging deeper into her traumatic childhood with Alicia last week, Jo-Ellen sits down with her mom to finally talk about the pain she put her through as a kid. While her mother does apologize “if” she hurt Jo-Ellen, saying she didn’t do it intentionally, it doesn’t necessarily seem like the severity of the situation completely clicks with her. She also blames it on how she herself was raised, saying that her own mother didn’t show love, and tells a story of bleeding and her mother being more worried about the carpet. She let that cycle continue, but Jo-Ellen says she was determined to break it. It seems like Jo-Ellen’s sister, Jen, is the key to bridging this relationship. She’s present for the conversation, but in a way that shows support for each side, and almost has to act as the translator to get them both to understand where the other is coming from. Thankfully, Jen is excellent at that unenviable job, and Jo-Ellen and her mom are able to end the conversation on a positive note that points toward forgiveness.
In even better news for Jo-Ellen, she doesn’t have to be the one to confront Rulla with that new video evidence of her husband’s affair. That being said, I still don’t fully understand why that mission has been assigned to Alicia of all people, but here we are. She somehow pulled the short straw, and despite having no desire to do so whatsoever, Alicia has to break the news. But she wants to get a temperature check on the current state of their relationship before she does so, so she and Billy get dinner with Rulla and Brian. And would you believe that Rulla didn’t even call out sick! Thankfully, she has recovered from the mysterious ailment that kept her from the Newport trip, but we do get a great photo of her in leopard print pajamas in a hospital bed, with her face dramatically covered in a very Vicki Gunvalson-like fashion.
Most of the conversation at dinner is about Brian’s work as a doctor, specifically how they’re able to benefit from cosmetic procedures. “Here I am getting fat off the pizza restaurants, at least you get Botox,” Alicia says, before Brian goes on an in-depth digression about using all of these different products and medicines on himself for cosmetic reasons. “This is incredible information,” an awestruck Alicia says, and you can almost see her taking mental notes of everything Brian’s rattling off. Meanwhile, I thought he was a foot doctor?
In any case, he’s an odd duck. When his phone chimes, he asks Rulla for permission to use the bathroom, but when he comes back, he says he had a work call. Nothing gets past Alicia, though, who notes the discrepancy in her confessional. Then, he takes it upon himself to tell the story of how he and Rulla first met, which isn’t nearly as charming as he seems to think it is. He explains that when he was ordering them drinks, he was telling the bartender to give her doubles. “It worked out pretty well,” he said, grossly. It’s a story for a prosecutor, not for television. Then, to wrap it up, he starts explaining that he eats his steaks medium-well because of how much they remind him of foot surgery. All in all, he’s such a little weirdo, and the dinner is so bizarre that Alicia is too thrown to even try to bring up the video situation — so that’s a story for another day.
But in addition to that video, the cast’s Newport trip also brought about the hope of peace between Kelsey and Rosie. In fact, they seem so ready to move forward and give their friendship another shot that Rosie is going to have Kelsey do her hair again — but this time with a tag on Instagram. Is it the smartest move to kick off this new chapter by doing the very thing that led to the feud in the first place? Perhaps not, but they’re both hopeful, and both intend to make light of their silly drama. For Rosie’s part, she leaves out the blueprints to her house, along with a tape measure, so Kelsey can check out the square footage for herself.
As for Kelsey, she decides to poke fun at the situation by pulling up to Rosie’s house with her car’s siren blaring and broadcasting that the “house police” has arrived. Both bits seem cute and just self-depricating enough to finally put this to bed. But before she even gets out of the car, it’s clear that this didn’t play the way she had intended it to. The joke only confused Rosie, who is instantly annoyed and says, “I live in a very nice community with a no siren ordinance.” But here’s what I’m stuck on: why the hell does Kelsey’s car have a siren in the first place? Call me crazy, but I would have imagined that it’s fully illegal for civilian cars to be equipped with sirens, right? Then again, they’ve got Alicia running stop signs and hitting pedestrians, so maybe an illegal siren is the least of Rhode Island’s worries.
Because that attempt to bust balls and make light of the situation awkwardly didn’t land, shit hits the fan almost immediately. They each interpret one another’s jokes as outright digs, which instantly reignites the fight within seconds. Rosie calls Kelsey out for obsessing over her square footage despite not even having a house of her own, and wonders what she ever did to be the recipient of so much ire. “I’m sorry I called you a fucking polygamist at a picnic,” Rosie exclaims, crafting one of the most beautifully rich sentences I’ve ever heard. Soon enough, it’s a full-on screaming match, a gorgeous cacophony of anger and insult. “Sucking dick is not a fucking career bitch,” Rosie tells Kelsey, before adding that the only thing she has accomplished — her pageant title — was bought for her by her sugar daddy bribing the judges.
Before Kelsey can even unpack her blowdryer, Rosie takes hold of her bag and kicks her out of the house — pushing her out the door and slamming it on her until a producer steps in to control what has quickly become a physical altercation. Then Kelsey performs one of my absolute favorite moves in the Housewives book: she re-enters a home she’s just been kicked out of. But in fairness, she has an important clarification to make, and shouts up to Rosie that she won her pageant fair and square. It’s then that we get what is sure to be an instant classic in the Housewives lexicon: Rosie shouting down the stairs to Kelsey that she’s a “slam pig.” The hope of peace was gone as quickly as it arrived, and I think it goes without saying that these two will only be friends when slam pigs fly.
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