The Real Housewives of Atlanta recap: 'Friend or Faux'

Last week, I was feeling pretty low on the Atlanta incarnation of the Real Housewives franchise… like, Gregg without access to linen pants or short-sleeve dress shirts kind of low. I’m clear on the fact that all of us indulging in the Bravo network have made an unspoken agreement that we’re fine with watching mostly fabricated stories played out by novice actors masquerading as Real people in the name of entertainment. RHOA is kind of like a student film, where everything is set in the students’ personal McMansions and they’re paid in eyelash extensions and contracts for their very own line of weaves. Modern Family or The Big Bang Theory just don’t offer the kind of texting-and-evite related drama I’m interested in, so I come here, to The Real Housewives of Atlanta.

Imagine my disappointment then, when the first four episodes of this seventh season of this show were basically a series of business meetings where coworkers talked smack about each other while drinking fruity cocktails and talking about how they’re “just really focusing on positive energy right now.” Relatable? Sure. Interesting? Not a bit.

But tonight. Tonight! Tonight, we saw some movement. A little breeze of fresh air in the stagnant, stank atmosphere that Apollo and scepters and “blogs” built. Tonight, we finally got around to the Group Dinner I’ve been dreading like Todd dreads a Mama Joyce visit, and unlike every Mama Joyce visit ever, it wasn’t actually that bad. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but we might be preparing for a season where people will actually attempt to have a good time again, and not just Kandi nervously laughing all the time. I’ve seen the previews for next week, and by the grace of Andy Cohen, not a single person said “fellatio.”

Claudia gets her very first opening scene tonight, and she handles it by having Kenya over to her newly rented and not yet furnished apartment. They call the apartment sexy a lot, which is really unnerving, because the only thing in the apartment is what is clearly a purple rug from Limited Too. Claudia pours up some moscato in red Solo cups, I have a quick sophomore year flashback, dry heave, and when I tune back in, Claudia is laying on her bed with her cat saying, “You’re not afraid of a little pussy, are you?” Oh, this new silly new girl and her cat-related vagina humor! What fun we have. For real though, Kenya not liking cats is the first and last time I will ever relate to Kenya. This whole scene is mostly an excuse for Kenya to recap to Claudia that Kandi told her the other girls thought Apollo was lying about lying, as if we haven’t all been seeing Kenya weeping in a single stall bathroom in our nightmares for the past seven days.

Kandi and Todd go to visit her old house that they’ll be selling now that Kandi is buying her mother another house, and the inside kind of looks like a Hoarders house after all the dead squirrels and Gatorade bottles of urine have been taken out. Apparently, before Mama Joyce decided she couldn’t possibly live there, her boyfriend had been doing some renovations, which just means that he had taken everything in the house connected to a wire or a pipe, torn it six inches out of its original position, and then left it hanging there. Kandi is rightfully angry, and Todd asks when is enough going to be enough for her with her mother? She goes straight to her favorite I’m-never-going-to-cut-her-off line, as though saying, “Hey mom, when I buy you stuff, could you not shit all over it, and then give it back to me?” is the same as cutting her off completely.

But instead of doing that, she just goes to let off some steam with her two crazy aunts (“the old lady gang”). They are hilarious though, so I will take it. As the scene opens, one aunt is actively searching out the word “fried” on the menu, and I’ve never felt more spiritually connected to a person on a reality television program in my life. I swear, the restaurant is called a “tearoom,” but when Kandi arrives, her aunt informs her she’ll be ordering fried green tomatoes, creamed corn, and fried chicken… England must be so proud of us. The aunts tell her if Todd had done the things that Mama Joyce’s boyfriend did to that house, “his butt woulda been gone,” and they all laugh and laugh about their sister/mother being a hypocritical monster.

But Kandi’s real contractually obligated mission for the week isn’t to have a good time with her aunts and make us feel like we’re actually watching something that could only happen in this place (Georgia) with these people (Old Lady Gang); it’s to bring together a bunch of women who can’t stand each other to have a meal together in a public place so that not only do they all have a terrible night, but countless Atlanta children go home asking their parents, “Mommy what’s a ‘whore,’ and why did that lady with the Lego hair keep yelling it at all those other ladies in the restaurant?”

NEXT: Is a lie really a lie, if it’s told by a lying liar?

Kandi starts by heading to Phaedra’s house. The first thing that must be noted is that Phaedra looks fabulous. She’s wearing “reputation dragged through the mud” quite well. She also gave me my new aspirational tagline for when I’m finally cast on The Real Millennials of NYC: “Girl, I am the Queen of Green—money and guacamole.” This is the most relatable episode of RHOA in ages… y’know, if your husband is going to jail and decided to tell all your friends right before he goes that he’s been lying to you and everyone else for the past two years about your coworker trying to sex him up. Kandi tries to tell Phaedra that she should make things right with Kenya through a series of grunts and eye-bulges, but Phaedra clearly states that Kenya’s history with Walter and her African “boyfriend” leads her to believe that she probably just paid Apollo to Apollo-gize.

That is some serious conspiracy theory stuff, but Kandi thinks “it’s easier to believe that than to believe her husband has been lying to her for two years.” I don’t know, though—I’d think after the mail fraud, and the bank fraud, and the fact that she met him after he had already been in jail, in addition to the fact that her husband is a notorious liar, it might be pretty easy to believe that Apollo’s been telling her this one (relatively) small lie for two years. Nevertheless, Kandi is relentless in her group dinner mission to iron everything out, and Phaedra finally agrees, but with no intention of apologizing to Kenya.

In between Kandi running around like a Bravo chicken with her contract cut off, Claudia and Kenya go to the gym to discuss some deep-rooted issues. While Claudia attempts to get a bigger booty like Kenya, she informs her friend of the past 10 years that her mother is Italian and her father is black, and because she’s biracial, she’s always been teased about things like having a smaller derriere. It’s all basically to say, don’t forget that Claudia is a cast member who exists as the show’s plot continues to center around things that happened two years ago, while Claudia was still opening briefcases for Howie Mandel in Los Angeles.

Finally, put on your passive aggressive boxing gloves, fasten the complicated straps on your “sundress,” and put your seats in the shadiest position, because it’s time for the Group Dinner.

Kandi somehow ropes everyone into coming to this dinner, I assume through promising a combination of mozzarella sticks and an eighth season. Phaedra arrives first, suggesting to Kandi that they have “a word of prayer before these heifers get here.” Kandi laughs and laughs instead of saying, “Hey bestie, maybe lay off the heifer stuff if you ever want to move on with this storyline.” When Cynthia arrives, Phaedra tells her that Ayden and Dylan are loving the puzzles she gave them and Cynthia saying, “No matter what’s going on, I am always going to make sure I’m in very good standing with the Prince and the President,” almost makes me forget that she spent an entire scene earlier talking about Nene while saying how tired she was of talking about Nene.

Kenya and Porsha arrive, bringing with them the first truly awkward hellos, and then it’s time for the most dramatic arrival; I can almost feel the editors physically restraining themselves from playing the Jaws themes as Nene slinks up to the table in all white. Once everyone is seated and nice and uncomfortable, Kandi lays out her mission statement: “I just wanted us all to smooth things over so that we can move forward, and ya know, think about continuing to do things together in the future.” Decoded: Listen up suckers, no more free trips to Anguilla if at least some of y’all don’t do some making up.

NEXT: If it looks like an apology, and sounds like an apology, then it didn’t happen here…

Kenya speaks up first (color me shocked): She says that Apollo apologized to her for lying, and so she would appreciate it if they would all just give her the benefit of the doubt about it, which is actually as civil and understated as we could have possibly hoped she’d be. Nene informs her that she never called her a whore, Porsha says if people want to apologize, she understands that, and Phaedra says, “I’ll say that honestly, I called you a whore, and I called you a slut because if it look like a duck, and it act like a duck, and it’s yellow, then it’s probably a duck.”

So, no apologies then, I guess. Kenya and Phaedra start to get into it about who is lying about what, but my hand to Andy Cohen, Kandi actually big-girls up and interrupts to say something productive: “At the end of the day, if he’s ‘cleared her name’ or whatever, let’s not try to keep reading more into that story, because we’re just breathing life into that story.” Kenya asks that they stop persecuting her, Phaedra puts it on the record that she will stop persecuting her, and it’s all a very non-apologetic way of saying, “I hate your stinking guts, but I’ll stand next to you at a photo shoot if called upon.” Everyone feels better, the waiter brings them some stale crackers, they bond over how terrible his service is, and then Kandi, the worst party planner in the world, brings up the next point of order: “Nene, have you and Cynthia had a chance to speak lately?”

What follows is a lesson in what happens when you try to be something that you’re not. Phaedra might say, if it doesn’t look like a duck, and it doesn’t quack like a duck, then Cynthia, don’t try to act like you can go head-to-head with Nene on going “all the way in.” Nene has the lung capacity of Michaels Phelps, the volume control of Jacob Silj; this is a duck that is going to systematically disassemble the New Cynthia. As they loudly tiptoe around whether they’re going to have this discussion about the dissolution of their friendship in front of a group of people they both agree it has nothing to do with, Cynthia decides she’ll make a bold move. It goes a little something like this:

Cynthia: You want me to go all into it?

Nene: I don’t have anything to hide.

Cynthia: Well—

Nene:

Cynthia:

Nene: I get really heated with you trying to act like you’re SOME INNOCENT ASS PERSON here, when you know you DEAD ASS WRONG, Cynthia.

Cynthia:

Nene: I WISH YOU NOTHING BUT THE BEST, CYNTHIA.

Cynthia: Thank you.

Listen, I’m not saying Nene is in the right for screaming over Cynthia for two full minutes, but I am saying the woman has a passion for the subject matter, and has clearly been working with a monologue coach. That seemed like an actual emotional response, not just a mission to humiliate someone in public. Nene knows how to craft a solid closing statement: “I had your back when nobody else had your back, recall that. And I loved you like a f–king sister.”

I don’t know if Nene is as good of a friend as she insists to Cynthia that she is, but I do agree with her that most of the out-of-character things that Cynthia does—such as act like she’ll be able to stop being friends with Nene—are as a direct result of instruction by her husband. And from the previews for next week, it looks like, out from under his watchful eye, and under the persuasive screams of Nene Leakes, these two might just be able to reconnect. Deep down, Cynthia is just a sensitive spirit, and Nene has already left about 100 ex-best-friends in her wake, so call me a softy, but I want these two to work it out.

Are you rooting for Cynthia to get back under the comforting shadow of Nene? Can this season be saved by one dinner of ice water and stale crackers? Will this tentative squashing really last between Phaedra and Kenya? And what’s the countdown until all six of these ladies are boarding a tense party bus to Mexico?