For many Bravo shows, Slam Pig Sunday would be a season-long centerpiece. In Rhode Island, we barely get a second to breathe before the real heart of the season, a battle of the alphas between Liz, Alicia, and (of course) Jo-Ellen.
7. Rulla
There aren’t many new ways to say that Rulla’s refusal to film will always land her in last place.
6. Rosie
How the mighty have fallen. After a gorgeous performance as World’s Meanest Girl, Rosie spends these next two episodes being a humorless bore. Not only does she try to get Kelsey disinvited from trivia at Audrey’s, she can’t pull the cannoli out of her ass for a single second to laugh at the “Miss Slam Pig” sash. Instead, she continues to demand an apology, which might have been a reasonable request before she called Kelsey a dick-sucking nobody slam pig.
I don’t have a problem with cruelty on these shows. But Rosie embodies one of my greatest Housewives frustrations: She starts shit that she doesn’t have the stomach to finish. She came in planning to be messy, but now that the fallout isn’t going her way, all she can do is sulk and pout and try to exclude her nemesis from events (another cardinal sin). Her interminable solo footage is no help, either. The only laugh she got out of me was the reveal that she thinks Capo Boston is some sort of classy establishment, rather than a very tacky, very sticky, very dirty haunt for Boston’s most basic and blacked-out twentysomethings to fondle each other in between bouts of projectile vomiting.
And Rosie’s utter isolation from the group isn’t the result of cliqueishness, it’s the result of her own failure to build connections with the cast. Ashley’s position — low on the totem pole, but with nobody coming after her — proof of that. If she’s this bent out of shape about some run-of-the-mill Housewives rumormongering and Kelsey’s petty stunts, I’m not sure she has what it takes to play at this level.
5. Ashley
Like Rosie, Ashley’s conniption about the group’s commitment to drama and screaming suggests that she may be a better fit for the nominally prim-and-proper Bachelor Nation than the rough-and-tumble Bravoverse. But I give her credit for sticking to her guns and inviting Kelsey to trivia rather than kowtow to Rosie.
Her solo footage with Jared remains riveting. The Audrey’s lease is up for renewal soon, and Ashley clearly wants Jared to give up this useless side project so he can live the much more lucrative and much more relaxed, influencer life with her. But Jared would rather make macchiatos and lattes than spend one more second with his wife and children than he has to. I hope they stick it out on RHORI so we can see what exactly is going on in their marriage, overshadowed as it is right now by bigger, brighter stars.
4. Liz
Liz is not in fourth place because she has revealed herself to be a petrifying psychopath who vacillates between a blind rage or a ghastly, dead-eyed smirk as she mocks you. Compelling as she is, a true joy to watch, Liz is fourth place because she is getting badly outplayed.
Her first blunder comes when she won’t drop the issue of Alicia’s homelessness. She’s clearly camera-conscious, dead-set on defending Alicia’s family’s honor, even as they all affirm Alicia — more on that later. Even so, I’m perplexed by her umbrage over Alicia’s story, which Liz is treating as a personal slight to the very essence of her character, and the way she digs in her heels when her friend is just trying to express her hurt is unkind no matter how you slice it. (The irony of Liz picking a fight over semantics with a woman who doesn’t have even an elementary grasp of the English language is incredible, by the way.)
This fight spins off into a conflict with Jo-Ellen. Still in a rage blackout, Liz shakes Jo-Ellen’s chair, tugs her hair, and sticks her finger in her face, culminating in a whispered remark that sends Jo-Ellen running from Capo, bad enough that even Bravo didn’t air it.
Liz’s beef is that she believes neither Jo-Ellen or Alicia are being authentic. This may be true, but Liz has somehow wound up with no allies. She’s reduced to filming with Kelsey, her only loyal foot soldier, and Dolores and Rulla, two women who have probably had less than 20 minutes of screen time this season between them. Even Kelsey admits to Jo-Ellen that she just wants to avoid another blowout with the scariest woman in Rhode Island. I have every confidence Liz will be able to recover through sheer force of will, but for now, she’s on the downswing.
3. Kelsey
I’ll be honest: I wasn’t sure if Kelsey could recover from getting dragged within an inch of her life. But recover she has. She may not be as verbally adept as Rosie, but she can freely laugh at herself, a trait that will take her much farther than her rectally challenged colleague.
More importantly, she serves up engrossing personal dysfunction. Her new boyfriend is visibly uncomfortable with her ex paying her way, but Kelsey is unmoved. If Bill would like to take on her expenses, that’s one thing, she tells him — but until he does, he doesn’t get a say. And if their relationship were to get more serious, her ex will turn the spigot off.
Kelsey’s biggest strength is that she’ll own basically all the jabs people may throw at her. How can you slut-shame someone who proudly wears a “Miss Slam Pig” sash? How can you expose them for getting their bills paid by their ex when they freely admit to it themselves? How can you shame them for never having a job when they’ve re open about needing to build themselves up from nothing? The answer is that you can’t.
2. Jo-Ellen
Since her efforts to expose Brian’s affair have gone nowhere, Jo-Ellen has taken a backseat in the group dynamic. Going after Liz, the single most formidable woman on this cast, is an inspired choice, and the clash between their personality disorders should keep us eating well for seasons to come.
Liz is correct that Jo-Ellen’s goal does not seem to be peace. Pushing a clearly deranged woman to calm down instead of simple disengaging is not a smart choice, nor is chasing her up and down the halls of Capo. We can’t take either woman’s characterization of the closeness (or lack thereof) of their friendship at face value — Bravolebrities have always played the extent of their relationships down or up depending on what better serves their narrative. Jo-Ellen was introduced to us as an instigator and delights in drama, and I’ve seen little to convince me she has suddenly changed.
But that’s her job. Liz has lost the run of herself, grinning at Jo-Ellen like an insane jack-o-lantern and denying that she never once touched Jo-Ellen despite all the footage that shows she did. So Jo-Ellen wins this round by virtue of the fact that she is the only sane person present.
One has to wonder whether, having realized that Rulla is simply never going to give her the reaction she wants, Jo-Ellen has aimed her scope at a far more flammable target. Is she this devious (compliment)? Certainly. Is that what’s going on here? We need more data to say for sure.
1. Alicia
Alicia is doing it all. She delivers real emotion and real stakes in every scene she films, shapes group dynamics, and for the first time ever, has shown that she is also capable of playing the Housewives game.
First, we get to see Alicia pitch Billy for her slice of Pizza Mamma. Underneath her ramblings are some good ideas, and Billy promises her 10% of his unrevealed percentage of any future Pizza Mamma location on the condition that she actually works. This doesn’t seem like a great deal. It’s better than nothing, but doesn’t reflect any of her contributions to the existing business. Even so, Alicia is thrilled.
More intriguing is their discussion about finances. Billy reassures Alicia that he has an estate plan and a money manager because she gets intimidated by finances and gets defensive, which she responds to by immediately getting defensive. Billy’s proposed prenup was unconscionable, but he might not be wrong about Alicia’s inability to take care of herself, and it’s clear that there’s a lot more to unpack about their dynamic.
Then, Alicia shows a streak of cunning I didn’t know she possessed. After her disastrous discussion with Liz, she marshals her mother and all six of her aunts to film at a family event where they unilaterally back her up, effectively taking Liz’s legs out from under her. They tell her that Liz is just jealous of Alicia’s perfect life, and speculate that Liz is just paranoid from all the “medication,” a.k.a. weed.
Not only is Alicia incredibly compelling on her own, she also has the majority of the cast behind her. Unless she kills someone’s cat onscreen, it’s hard to see how she and her pizza chips won’t come out of the reunion the clear winner. She’s truly doing it all.
Love your commentary!!