The Real Housewives of Potomac Recap: Woe is Mia

I am a person who loves an agenda, plan, or template – something that gives a clear picture of where we are at present, where we need to go, and our plan to get there. Give me a goal and a map to study, and then we can work spontaneity into our journey toward that goal. It’s a big part of what resonates for me about reality TV: while the show is technically unscripted, there is a formula to the storytelling, and the magic is found in the organic moments in between those coordinated points. Despite every cast member’s carefully laid plans, there is always a moment when their curated mask falls and we get an unexpected raw insight into their real emotions, motivations, or frustrations.

That said, as we begin our descent into the back half of this season of Potomac – one that, despite its failings, is still a significant improvement over the months-long humiliation ritual that was season 8 — I find myself a little lost in the weeds of the women’s stories. Some things are completely out of production’s control: They could not have possibly predicted that Karen’s DUI would go to a jury trial as the season was airing, rendering her storyline effectively moot and increasingly embarrassing with each passing episode. But even beyond Karen’s massive humbling (I keep looking at her in that crimped blonde wig in Panama and wondering if it’s the same unit that was fried and laid to the side in that bodycam footage), there are some glaring gaps in the women’s arcs that are making this season feel choppy, unfinished, and a bit incoherent.

The most blatant example of this is Keiarna, who has been transitioned into a pivotal part of the cast after production sent Jassi upstairs into the ether like Judy Winslow on Family Matters. Keiarna is an undeniably stunning woman who seems to be doing quite fine for herself, but we are 13 episodes into the season and only just now finding out that her and Greg started dating only a month after his divorce was finalized and are building a house together; she is also suing Deborah, which we knew because the Bravo bloggers covered it in real time. This information is all well and good, but none of this has been fleshed out in a way that makes me curious to see more of Keiarna’s life. She runs a spa, helps out her man at work, and is waiting for a ring; you can find 30 women in the exact same circumstances at a U Street happy hour in DC. For now, her story in its totality seems less than the sum of its parts, and I am struggling to understand why she was upgraded from friend of; perhaps they thought we would care more about the fallout of the Keiarna-Deborah conflict, but Deborah was clearly in the wrong so there is simply not much to discuss.

While the lack of connective tissue in Keiarna’s story is hard to ignore, she’s far from an anomaly in this cast. Gizelle hasn’t talked about much beyond sending her kids to college and grieving her father, all in passing; Ashley is out of ways to talk about a separation that is taking as long as Brad and Angelina’s split; Wendy has invented so many new ways to remind us that it’s her 40th birthday that Party City shut down in protest. They can’t pay me enough to care about Stacey Facetiming TJ with his shirt off, and Jassi seems to be perfectly fine accepting her new future as a stepmother so there is simply nothing to discuss.

None of the women seem to be willing to share enough of themselves for production to meaningfully tell a story about their lives, which not only has a negative impact on entertainment value, it also leaves a massive storyline-shaped hole that has been consumed by Mia and Jacqueline, the corporeal manifestation of the twin Mia absorbed while still in the womb. Where the other women have been frustratingly reserved in sharing their current trials and tribulations, Mia is freely bringing us into her tornado, and absent further developments from the rest of the ensemble, both the cast and viewers have no choice but to participate. As a result, Potomac is regressing into a weekly episode of Maury Povich, which is clearly wearing the women’s patience thin, but not so much that they are ready to do something about it.

Entirely too much airtime this week was dedicated to navigating the ins and outs of Mia’s tumultuous family life. We start the episode in the morning, with Mia frantically trying to understand what Gordon did with her children. I can certainly empathize with the panic of trying to understand why your estranged husband (whom she has seemingly since reconciled with and left Inc behind in the New Year) took your children across state lines without your consent or knowledge, but so much of the decision-making left me confused. Mia’s children have phones, or at the very least iPads, which we have all seen on screen – were her children not responding to her messages? Did she not have location services on their devices so she could at least confirm they were likely around her former nanny? Why would Gordon think you are on vacation with Inc when filming trips require call times from production that can easily be corroborated via email? For such a concerning situation, basic facts around how it was being handled simply did not add up – and while I would normally chalk that up to the recklessness that can be born out of stress-induced panic, nothing Mia ever does inspires me to offer her the benefit of the doubt.

Despite my skepticism, Jacqueline spares no time in starting to let the other women know the seriousness of the situation that Mia was dealing with this morning. Mia was having a panic attack and fearful of what Gordon could do to the kids, she earnestly tells them while shopping, and further reinforces in the Sprinter. In a cast full of mothers, the women are naturally sympathetic, triggered by the idea that something that frightening could happen to them too – only to be a little flummoxed at the full picture as more details started to come out. If Gordon is such a risk with the children, why is she so reluctant to take control of the custody? How were the kids able to send photos if they were out of reach the entire morning? Most befuddlingly, if Gordon’s antics had Mia so stressed, which everyone can understand, why is her plan to go from Panama to visiting Inc in Atlanta, and not straight to your children to make sure that they are safe? As Ashley points out, she would have simply left the trip if there was this much uncertainty involving the location and safety of her children. Mia’s impulsive choices, and the consequences of those decisions, are now the rollercoaster that is driving the season, and no one is enjoying this. As Gizelle openly stated, being Mia’s friend is exhausting — but they’re getting paid for that privilege, so they will have to make do.

While the women are clearly over entertaining this crazy train, absent anything to compete with this story, they are forced to humor it, and Mia remains unflappable, secure in the fact that she is sharing all parts of her life. Mia wields the word “authentic” as a weapon; it is a warning shot to the rest of the cast that none of them are ready to spill their dirty secrets the way that she is, whether out of self-dignity or self-preservation. None of them are willing to admit to potentially sharing her husband with their childhood best friend – or his best friend, or whatever actually happened that I don’t care enough to get to the root of. Jacqueline continues to feebly endorse her best friend’s antics, only to find herself getting ridiculed by either Mia or the rest of the women under the slightest bit of pressure, where she ends up trying to fill the time by uncomfortably letting us know that she has “a WAP,” a term she thinks she’s using to sound cool and hip but only ends up feeling pathetic and desperate.

We have rapidly found ourselves in an untenable situation, where the women clearly feel that they are being held hostage by Mia’s antics yet are unwilling to offer up enough of their own lives to mitigate the damage being caused by the Thorntons’ penchant for dramatics. Left between a rock and a hard place, Ashley and Gizelle slowly begin to mount their defensive strike against Mia, starting with Ashley pressing Mia about how she spoke about Gizelle’s daughters while shopping, a confrontation Mia immediately rebuffed. Unbowed, Ashley resumes the conflict at dinner, expressing her frustrations with Mia’s behavior. Wendy points out that, if the events she has been relaying are all true, then her children aren’t in safe hands and she should be pursuing custody, an action that Mia seems unnaturally resistant to. Gizelle, however, is clearly the most irritated with Mia, no longer buying into her shenanigans and taking the moment to let the audience know that Mia privately apologized for her remarks about Gizelle’s daughters off camera while she presents herself as doubling and tripling down for the audience. While Gizelle may claim that the root of her frustration is purely about how Mia came for her children, it feels like there’s another strain of this resentment emerging. Gizelle is usually able to weaponize the tools of pride and dignity to manipulate the cast via lingering rumors and secrets; that is an impossible tactic to employ with Mia, whose signature trait as a reality star, for better or worse, is her shamelessness. While it is clear that a takedown is starting to heat up, I need this standoff to get to a boil sooner rather than later.

Next week, the sapphic duo of Jacqueline and Mia becomes a triangle once Ashley decides to get in the mix. See you all then!

Cherry Blossoms

• It was amusing to watch Wendy mock “613 blondes” (and even more amusing that Stacey had no idea what that was) over dinner at Panama, only to end up rocking a 613 bob in her confessional this week. As a person who is quite familiar with the box dye aisle at the beauty shop, I think she could have toned the color a bit more to match her complexion, but she looks stunning either way.

• While I remain frustrated at watching Karen mishandle this season in every way possible, her sense of humor hasn’t gone anywhere. When she freely admitted that she has kept her mouth in retirement while demanding that Ray withdraw from his oral pension fund to “travel to the village,” she had me in stitches.

• Gizelle Bryant is truly the Kyle Richards of this franchise in every way. Not only is she the self-appointed ghost producer of this ensemble, but she cannot help but use the same catchphrases over and over (her “word on the street” is Kyle’s “in this town”). Now, they both have repeatedly traumatized us with their ghastly taste in hats. Wendy’s face when Gizelle handed her that Pepto Bismol disaster with a matching hat for her daughter (which wasn’t even the same shade) was the exact level of bemused disgust that I had watching the screen.

• Why did the girls have to change for the club at the restaurant bathroom? Is their resort so far from the city center that it would have been inconvenient to double back and get out at a reasonable time? I keep trying to square it away in my head and come back dumbfounded each and every time.