Hey Trash Crabs. We gotta have a talk. We gotta do something about this god awful plague. It’s slowly eating us alive. It’s breeding with our women and poisoning the minds of our children. I know you all say it: it’ll never happen in our town. It can’t. It won’t. Our place is too normal. Our people too boring. Our housewives… too nice.
But they’re not. It will happen to you, and suddenly, in a flash, everything about who you thought you were, where you thought you came from, will be nothing but a whispered, elusive dream. How do I know? Because it happened to me, friends. It happened to me.
I started watching them just like the rest of you, laughing with them, crying with them. Judging them carelessly from the comfort of my couch, from the bottle of my Zinfandel, knowing that never in a million years would Andy Cohen, god of all beasts, emperor of all hells, sink his white hot talons in the tender meat of my sweet shire: Potomac, Maryland.
When the Real Housewives of Potomac was announced I think I laughed, cried, and vomited all at the same time. As some of you TrashTalkers may know, the only reputable, impressionable contributions I’ve offered as an adult are the insurmountable knowledge I’ve accrued about reality television and the horrifyingly crass recaps I’ve produced for this site (most of which centered on terrible women starring on Bravo). So it seems only kismet that the next Real Housewife franchise – which no one asked for – would rape and pillage my hometown – a place no one had heard of.
So of course, I had to beg Ronnie for this assignment, bawling over my laptop and typing out the true story of how I moved to lush, green Potomac when I was five and grew up there, doing nothing of note except learning how to do alcohol and hide the crystal stemware in the microwave so no one in the house knows you did alcohol because tomorrow is your high school graduation for chrissakes.
I’ll be alternating this assignment with our fellow TrashTalk family member and Potomac resident Danator, who, ying to my yang, is the New Potomac to my Old. In her words:
Danator: moved to Potomac 3 years ago with no advanced knowledge of the ‘status’ of the area (it had a good school district. That’s literally all I knew, and I got that info from Zillow.) I live in a tiny cute old house between 2 massive McMansions and am still slightly dazed every time I see a lady wearing fur walking her dog. That said, the vast majority of my neighborhood is reasonably normal people so I’m dying to see a bunch of crazies try to tell us about the exclusive secret society of my so-called elite zip code…
Now that we’ve made our introductions, let’s let our players make theirs.
Here’s Danator’s first impression of the opening:
“If you don’t behave yourself in Potomac, you may be asked to leave” – isn’t that just like… the rules of being in public? Behave yourself, it’s a social construct.
WHERE ARE THESE LADIES WEARNG THE GOWNS IN THE INTRODUCTION? Seriously, 3 years in Potomac and I have not needed a gown once. Hell, I spent $70 at Macy’s to get a dress for the White House Correspondents Dinner – and managed to be a lady without any of the taffeta or tulle these grown ass women are parading around in. Is there an explosion of adult Quinceañeras I was not informed of? I cannot fathom an event where I would need that much glitter.
Onto our Wives…
Babylegs: Katie hasn’t gotten the memo that Bravo started letting people of color on the network, and is determined to foil the producers into believing she’s a 23-year-old white pageant queen from the Valley. She wakes up every morning and rubs Vaseline on her perfectly bleached teeth lest she forget to keep grimacing like a maniac smiling. She loves the white boys and the Jewish boys, so she loves Andrew, her “hooooopeful husband” (you know Katie the word boyfriend would also do just fine here).
She has three “kedds” with her ex-husband, whom she left when she was four months pregnant for an as yet undisclosed cause. Katie is a socialite and a philanthropist – both things she considers full-time professions even though her parents do all the hard work – and her hobbies include brushing her hair away from her face with her fingertips and lifting small objects as if they weigh 49 pounds. The only thing she doesn’t like about Andrew is that he doesn’t take her professional obligations, which she giddily refers to as “prom on crack,” seriously. She has an unforgivable case of vocal fry, which makes her sound bored and thus makes her think she herself is interesting.
Katie is not interesting.
Danator: Really, Mix Bar and Grille? Ugh that place is weirdly over pretentious for what it is. (It’s in a strip mall, next to a Five Guys and a grocery store – the space would be better used as a sports bar, but as a fine dining experience it’s weird. The tables are on top of each other like you’re in a 5-star restaurant in DC, but it seems silly since it has never been crowded any of the times I’ve been in there. That said, the food was tasty, sorry, that is all I can add to this scene because Katie is about as exciting as dried toast, so I’m reduced to reminiscing over meals I’ve had at the table over her right shoulder) Babylegs: that strip mall is Potomac Village, which Bravo tried to pass off in the intro as a fancy secret garden. I mean it is – there’s a tack shop there and everything is old – but it’s literally where we went to in high school for 5-minute chicken caesar wraps.
Danator: “Being a socialite is a full-time job”. No it’s not Katie. You know what’s a job? An actual job. It’s your hobby, you want me to take it seriously, I do not.
Babylegs: Robyn is a PR executive that is for the most part unremarkable, aside from her pleasant personality and lovely face. She married her high school sweetheart from Baltimore, Juan Dixon, a talented basketball player that lead Maryland to their first NCAA championship and spent six years in the NBA. She and Juan divorced a while ago but strangely still both live under the same roof with their two boys (and share a bed). In Robyn’s introductory scene, Juan walks in on her chilling on the couch in her half-open wedding dress. I’m guessing what makes this arrangement work is a good sense of humor, nine minutes of comforting but routine sex twice a week, and lots of good weed. I am loving Robyn so far.
Danator: Why are you interviewing in a sparkly t-shirt for your 1-on-1 with the camera. WHERE ARE YOU EVEN GOING IN THAT? I take that back, 90% sure I’ve seen her in it at the grocery store. (She does seem like the type to do her own grocery shopping, there’s an element of her being ‘real’ that the others don’t have).
I appreciate watching Robyn and Gizelle interact – Gizelle has a face FULL of makeup and a really weird outfit on (bedazzled ripped jeans? That’s a thing? Is her stylist Six from Blossom?). Robyn has no makeup and a flannel shirt, and starts her day by doing some sort of skype work call. Ok, thus far she is the only one of these bitches I don’t want to hurl out a window.
Danator: Charrrisse seems… like a non entity. Will she have a single plot? Other than showing up late she seems pretty boring.
Babylegs: Charrisse is a bit of a dimwit who decided that her shtick on this show was being obsessed with manners. Her full name is Charrisse Jackson Jordan, which leads me to believe that she’s a write-off character from 30 Rock. She is (or isn’t) married to NBA player-turned-coach Eddie Jordan, who has lived in a different state than she for the past three years. What commitment!
Charrisse enjoys putting on a fancy monocle and pretending to be the most EHHHHHHH-luhguhnt Lady in AWWWWWWL of New YOOOOOOOHHHHK, which is why she hired a makeup crew and a valet for a fucking crab boil in her backyard. By the way, the valet was stationed at the bottom of Charrisse’s 50-yard driveway, which guests were then obligated to totter up in 7-inch hooker shoes. When she first moved to Potomac, people thought Cherrisse was Section 8, which was the excuse she used to get out of lunch plans, which is the only note I will take from the Book of Charrisse on account of it being AWESOME.