The Real Housewives of Atlanta recap: Miami Spice

Oh lawd. There is nothing worse in the RHOA world than having to defend Kenya Moore, but let me be upfront: defending Kenya Moore is exactly what’s going to be happening here.

One of the most frustrating things about Kenya as a character — no, not how she keeps trying to make twirl happen; and no, not the clips of Life Twirls On that we get to see, those are actually too few and far between — is that she seems like she could be a pretty intelligent and logical person outside of this show. But within the show she just wants to hold onto that peach so badly that she will literally stir any pot of s— that the producers ask her to (included but not limited to actual human feces, I’m sure).

So color me frustrated that when the most sensible cast member in the bunch decides to take up her “Kenya is a troublemaker” mantle, it’s on the occasion that Kenya was rightfully concerned about an unstable situation with a man that eventually got violent. Ugh. Ugh. JUST ALL THE UGHS. What happened?!

Now, that’s not to say that his episode was bad — it was actually one of the more structurally entertaining and unpredictable episodes in a while. There were — I swear to you — real, live human laughs that didn’t sound like they originated in a dusty tin can, found video footage that was genuinely spooky, and a dude almost eating it on a Baja shelf while trying to get at Porsha in a pool. That’s entertainment! Unfortunately the inciting incident for all of this mayhem was GlenGate, which went so much more off the rails than I ever imagined it would.

As we saw last week, on the boat from the Miami club back to the ladies’ house, everyone is hammered and bringing dudes back to the house. Never has anything good ever come from someone saying, “Let’s play Never Have I Ever!” The bad that comes out of this particular round is that I found out the subject of my future nightmares: Sheree and Porsha drinking to the fact that they’ve both taken part in a “golden shower.” The slightly less bad thing is that Kenya tries to get Glen’s attention by snapping at him and he mutters “damn sure you ain’t snap at me.” I thought from last week that this is where everything would start going south, but Kenya doesn’t take offense, and keeps it pretty light.

Glen’s little comments keep coming once everyone is at the house though, and we see him try to cop an attitude with Kandi, a pregnant woman, when she doesn’t give him exactly the kind of attention that he wants. Hm, Glen, perhaps that’s because you are a strange young man who has entered the home of this sleepy pregnant woman without any of her friends thinking to tell her in advance? Kim and Kandi look onto the scene of their totally lit friends (or totally “niiiice” friends, as Kim thinks the kids say) like your two favorite gossiping aunties, and agree that Glen is acting odd. About the time he starts calling everyone “bitch asses” in the hot tub, Kenya decides it’s time to take some action. She thinks he’s being weird and aggressive and pulls Tammy aside to tell her she thinks her nephew needs to leave. Unfortunately, TamTam is ka-slammered beyond recognition, but she still says that’s no problem and kind of tells Glen and friend it’s time to go.

Now this is where things go way downhill, way too fast, and apparently where a few of the women thought Kenya mishandled herself. On the way out, Glen asks Kenya what’s up and she tells him that he was making the women uncomfortable. Now, it probably would have been in the better interest of self-preservation if she had just told him everyone was ready to go to bed, but it’s not like she just walked up and started pointing fingers at him like we’ve seen her do eight other times this season. It’s definitely not like she did anything to warrant what came next: Glen starts charging toward Kenya calling her a “little bitch” over and over, Tammy tries to get in front of him and calm him down as security runs over, and then he straight-up knocks Tammy to the ground — HIS AUNT. I actually gasped. That image of Tammy and her Miley Cyrus face looking completely knocked out was awful.

NEXT: Kandi dabbles in iPhone cinematography…

The aftermath was just as chaotic. Security restrained Glen and an ambulance had to come to take Tammy to the hospital. We saw what it’s like for Kenya and Cynthia to get in actual non-scripted fight, which is mostly just them tensely telling each other to “turn down” over and over, and is actually kind of hilarious. Kim decides to pack up her stuff and head to a hotel because she feels unsafe (probably regretting that living room now). And after the ambulance leaves, Kenya tries to explain what happened since everyone is confused how Glen went from just being generally un-fun in the hot tub, to pushing his auntie to the floor over by the veranda.

I was very glad to hear Kandi nip any of that “he didn’t seem that bad” business in the bud by telling them that Glen was trying to hype on a pregnant lady. Most agree that seems reason enough to ask him to leave, but that doesn’t stop Phaedra and Sheree from having a conversation about civil activism, Mike Brown, and misplaced fear of black men that is not exactly relevant to the current situation. I get where they’re coming from: we do need to protect black men. But we also need to protect black women, and a woman was physically assaulted last night, and Kenya was not the one who assaulted her. Let’s not excuse a man’s violence on the actions of a woman, shall we?

Man, this is dark, and especially in an episode that actually had a lot unusually entertaining moments. For example, this episode’s edition of Recappin’ in Kitchens actually featured a recap of an event we didn’t get to see, therefore making it not entirely useless. Apparently, after Kenya and Cynthia went to sleep, Tammy, Glen and his friend came back to the house, hospital socks and all. How do I know this? Because Kandi has a video on her phone of the moment everyone was sitting around comparing Tammy to Carrie (okay, that’s not really cool, the woman was recently sent to the hospital by her nephew), when Tammy showed up at the door looking like … well, she did not look good, and had apparently come straight from the hospital and maybe hopped the fence to get back in.

She goes to a hotel for the night, and when Cynthia calls to check on her the next day, she says she’s fine and doesn’t mention that her life seems to have gone to hell in a handbasket since she came into contact with this group. They invite her to dinner at the house that night, but even though they slice up a whole bunch of cucumbers and set out a Corona for her, Tammy doesn’t show. Oliver takes Porsha on a date, and she comes back at 1 a.m. to find everyone asleep … so she just wakes them all up to tell them about her date. Now, that is a kind of friendship that I cannot understand. If I’m asleep, you let me sleep.

The women head back to their lives in Atlanta, as evidenced by a weird montage of Kenya telling her contractor that she works 16-hour days on her films (can I get some names on those “films,” Kenya?”) so his crew should be able to, and Phaedra poking at a Keurig like it might give her some cash. But the time back in Atlanta all boils down to Kim putting on her finest zigzag pants and continuing to take part in a show that she is so obviously not cut out for by arranging a lunch with Kenya. They’re all smiles at first laughing about how their restaurant of choice doesn’t have a liquor license (hardly a laughing matter), until it’s time to talk about how Kim thought Kenya was “manufacturing some drama” with the Glen situation.

Kim felt like Kenya provoked Glen by accusing him of being aggressive, and she doesn’t want to take part in that. Kenya tells her that’s not what happened and the editors roll a helpful reel of Glen repeatedly calling everyone bitches. She says his actions were getting more and more aggressive and she didn’t want to provoke anyone getting hurt, but she did feel threatened with him being there. They decide that they can be grown women and agree to disagree, but I don’t think that friendship is long for this world. Kim says, “I’m honestly not sure what Kenya’s goals are when she does these things, but she holds fast to what her truths are so … those are truths.”

So, what do you think Kenya’s truths are? Was she intentionally provoking drama in Miami, or was she trying to protect her friends? Did you find the events with Glen as shocking as I did? More importantly, does anyone have eyes on Tammy right now? Sound off in the comments! Next week: Ayden is going to kindergarten and I’m already an emotional wreck.