Real Housewives of Atlanta: Getting ‘hood’ in Hollywood

By Sandy M. Tyler

Welcome back viewers. It was nice to take a break last week for Hollywood’s biggest night, and it looks like the town was able to recover from a recent Atlanta Housewife invasion. Luckily, it didn’t look like any of the Oscar nominees were influenced by our housewives’ fashion sense, though Joan Rivers might disagree.

This week’s episode begins with Nene and Gregg planning a fancy dinner party in their Hollywood Hills home to welcome their housewife friends to Los Angeles the next evening. They’ve even hired a bartender, called the caterer and set the table for the big event. When Cynthia, packing in Atlanta, calls Nene to check in, Nene tells her that she’s got, “a little splash of crazy and a whole lotta bitch in me,” so she’s hoping the ladies can behave themselves during their visit and not fight with each other too much.

The housewives arrive in LA the next day as scheduled, though without Phaedra who missed her flight and had to take a later one. Unfortunately, their long trip becomes even longer when their Hummer limo driver tells them the road is just too winding, and she can’t drive them the rest of the way. The driver suggests that the ladies walk, but given the kind of shoes the ladies regularly wear and their aversion to carrying their own luggage, they have to call Nene for a ride up the hill to the house where they’ll be staying during their visit.

After settling them in, Nene tells the ladies that she’ll be throwing them a dinner party at 9 pm that night, and given the three-hour time change between LA and Atlanta and the long trip they’ve just had, this seems like the last thing the ladies want to do. Yet somehow, the ladies wind up back in the Hummer limo (?!) and hours behind schedule, arriving at Nene’s front door nearly three hours later than they were expected.

Their angry hostess turns the ladies away in the driveway telling them that they’ve got a lot of nerve showing up for a dinner at almost midnight, and they should keep it moving. Kandi asks for a to-go plate, but Nene is having none of it. The visiting housewives think Nene’s behavior is “crunk,” but I think it’s one of the more normal behaviors I’ve seen on this show. Obviously, all six housewives make being late a regular habit, but arriving three hours late for a dinner being given for you is the crunkest. Gregg obliges by bringing the housewives some drinks and a cheese plate to eat in the limo, but they have to make a late-night stop at Fat Burger for dinner because at Nene’s house, the buffet is closed.

The next morning, determined to keep the other women on schedule, Kenya wakes up early to workout and make the ladies a big Southern breakfast. Given the falling out between them, Phaedra’s hoping Kenya didn’t poison her portion. I just think Kenya’s trying to load Phaedra up with carbs before her Donkey Booty Work-Out video shoot. Kenya’s a professional troublemaker after all. Poisoning Phaedra might just make her thinner! Meanwhile, Porsha struggles with the coffeemaker, nearly brewing a container of creamer in the process.

After breakfast, the ladies go to The Groundlings for a tour and a private workshop, which begins with their instructor asking them to discuss their previous acting experience. While no one mentions time on their “reality” show, they do have a number of other acting credits between them, though nothing I was able to immediately bring to mind. Their instructor leads them through a series of exercises that include mimicking each other acting “silly” and then putting each housewife in the spotlight while the other ladies throw rapid-fire compliments at them. Given this crew, this was perhaps the best bit of improv ever done on The Groundlings stage.

Nene arrives late, of course, so the other ladies freeze her out and end the session as a little payback for the night before, which Nene accepts rather gracefully.  Then Nene, her crack, and her pink thong take the visiting housewives to the Paramount lot for a tour of her new workplace including a drive past the Glee set and a visit to her trailer at The New Normal. The other housewives can’t help but be proud of Nene and her accomplishments even forgiving her for the somewhat scary ride around the lot.

Later, the housewives all gather for dinner at Crustacean in Beverly Hills, leading me to wonder if the tables at Lisa Vanderpump’s SUR were all booked up or if the cast of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills running into the cast of the Real Housewives of Atlanta would cause a tear in the fabric of the universe. Or, maybe this is something that Andy Cohen is saving for sweeps.

The ladies arrive late, but seemingly more on time than the night before, since Nene agrees to eat with them and promptly orders off-menu as if she owns the place. Porsha refuses any alcohol, leading the other housewives to speculate that she may be pregnant, with Phaedra admitting in her confessional interview that she was trying to get pregnant at the time herself.

Things then get tense when the ladies begin to ask Phaedra and Kenya about the production of their competing booty workout videos with Kenya set to shoot her video later in the week. Since the discussion of the competing workouts isn’t successful in creating enough drama, the ladies turn the discussion to the men in their lives, and the ladies bring up Kenya’s recent break-up with Walter.

Cynthia apologizes to Kenya in advance for an upcoming event she and Peter are having that Walter has probably already been invited to. And then Kandi mentions Walter’s recent invite to Kordell’s birthday party. A party Kenya was purposely left out of. Porsha is sure to dig the insult in further by talking about what a good time Walter seemed to have while there. At this point, Kenya has had enough and leaves the table. It’s a far classier move than turning the table over, don’t y’all think?

While Nene follows Kenya downstairs to try to talk her into coming back to the dinner, the other ladies sit and gossip about Walter, his break-up with Kenya and even whom else he has dated in Atlanta. Phaedra even works in a comment about the size of his . . . crustacean. Imagine what kind of class will follow in Las Vegas on next week’s episode! I kind of can’t wait.