The Real Housewives of New York City Recap: For the Birds

I am still so mad about the prank that Becky Minkoff and Erin Mew Mew Lichy started in the last episode that I can’t even talk about it yet. “Do something else. Do my eyebrows,” as Madonna once said. Okay, okay. Let’s talk about all the personal stories, and then we’ll get back to it at the end.

Jessel and Pavit have a meeting with their tele-therapist, Joel, who lives in Mexico City. Pavit decides to celebrate by eating chips and salsa while they’re in the middle of having a serious conversation about their relationship and whether or not to have a third child. Oh, hell no! I would have divorced that man right there. I would have been like, “Take your fucking Hint of Lime Tostitos and get the fuck out of this house and never come back.” That would have been me. Luckily, Joel also has tact and told Pavit that in future sessions, maybe he should skip the food.

The other revelation is that he is only 99 percent sure he doesn’t want a third kid. But why doesn’t he want on? Because it’s too hard to find five tickets on points or miles together for trips. I mean, really? Come on. I was worried about all of the ladies leaning too heavily into their season-one schtick, and everyone has seemingly avoided the trap except Pavit. I appreciate his dedication to the brand and to bringing some fun to the show, but I’m with Jessel; we need to give peaks and valleys; we need to give shades of grey; he’s just giving us the same peak, the same blinding whiteness. Let us see your juicy insides, Pavit. Let us see you cry, and then you’ll really have made it as a Housewife.

Speaking of people who want to get pregnant, Brynn is also on her own fertility journey, and I have so many questions. The first is why did she freezer her eggs in London? Do they not have cold enough fridges right there in Manhattan? If it was too expensive to do it in New York City, then New Jersey is right there, and you can take the PATH. That costs, what, like 75 cents? They can’t charge more than that, right? I mean, you end up in New Jersey.

She tells her ex-fiancé, Gideon, the real-life Hugh Grant, that she’s going to have a wine-tasting party with a “som” (barf) so that he’ll come to the apartment that she affords with a job that we have never seen and all find mysterious. When he arrives, she’s there with a two-year-old that she borrowed from a friend of hers. Why? What is this kid doing here? She says it’s so they can practice co-parenting, but they’re in the kitchen drinking champagne out of coupes, and the kid is in Brynn’s living room playing with trucks. Did he need to be there? And will he be scarred by an afternoon of being ignored by a reality star?

Brynn has Gideon over because she wants him to donate some sperm so that she can turn a few of her frozen eggs into embryos in case she doesn’t meet a partner, and then he will co-parent with her. This is where I have most of my questions, the biggest being, if she wants a baby so bad, then get a sperm donor and be a single mother by choice. I have at least three female friends who have done it, and considering I’m a gay separatist, there must be thousands and thousands of women doing the same thing.

The next biggest question is if she thinks that Gideon is such a great guy, wants to raise children with him, wants him in her life forever, why doesn’t she just, I don’t know, marry him? Like, what is wrong that it broke up their relationship? Is it just that he doesn’t live in New York? She seems to be spending a lot of time in London (which is getting its own show) how hard could that be? They let absolute trash into that country and never kick them out. How do I know? I am that trash!

The last personal story we get, other than Jenna’s admirable shiner from getting beaned by Brynn during dodgeball, is Mel and Racquel going to a sex store in an office building, which sounds like the start of a Stefan sketch. They say it’s for their engagement party, which is themed after vogueing balls, but why are they buying collars and whips? I don’t know. All I know is that I would like to be brought back as a hot lesbian so that I could have sex with Racq-Mel, which is the couple’s portmanteau I just made up for them.

Ugh, now we have to talk about this stupid “Becky Minkoff is pregnant by another man” prank, and I just don’t want to. The episode starts revealing that, yes, it is a prank, but it’s even more complicated than we thought it was. Erin told Racq-Mel on their double date that it was a prank, so she always knew. Brynn tells everyone that after lunch with Jessel, she and Erin had a drink, and Erin told her the part about Becky not knowing the dad was a prank. Brynn says that is why she was telling everyone at dodgeball about it and hyping up the fact that Becky and her husband have a freak number higher than Kandi Burruss’s, which is higher than Woody Harrelson’s at a Cypress Hill concert.

What to make of all this. I don’t know. Like Andy Cohen said in last week’s WWHL, I don’t like pranks, and this one played out really badly. Jessel and Sai didn’t think it was funny at all, nor did Racquel who thinks that this is what straight women do and she doesn’t get it at all. The real damage comes when Becky tells the group at dodgeball that they have learned a lesson, and that lesson is not to trust either Jessel or Brynn.

There are so many reasons I want to tell Becky with the meh hair to take a seat — the Scientology, the fake storylines, the boredom at the very center of her being — but I think this might be the biggest one. First of all, Erin was the one sharing the information about the pregnancy, so if Jessel and Brynn heard it at lunch on camera, why wouldn’t they think they could spread it? It’s only six months before the whole fucking world would know. And Jessel didn’t even share any info, so painting her with the same brush as Brynn is pretty messed up. Also, Erin never told Becky — or anyone! — that Brynn knew, and then when asked if Brynn was in on it, she tried to either deny it or downplay it.

Erin says in confessional that she didn’t think Brynn was spreading the info to be malicious, just that she thinks Brynn likes sharing rumors. Exactly! So do I! And if you gave me the rumor that my new co-worker got knocked up by another man because she’s a swinger, I would be telling everyone in my contacts that information by the end of the day. Heck, I would even post it as a blind item on my Insta story and then tell everyone who it is when they DM. That is a really good rumor.

What is galling all of the women, especially Brynn and Jessel, is that they say it was a prank, but then they say it was a test to find out who the “leaky pigeon” is, and the call is coming from inside the house where there is no food. That would be Erin’s house because she doesn’t cook and she is as leaky as a faulty Depend adult diaper. Sai, in her gorgeous new confessional look that is like a brothel couch come to life, says that Erin failed her own test. Exactly! Erin is the one who is always talking, she’s the one who is always leaking. But the difference between Erin and Brynn is that Brynn will own being a shit-stirrer. She won’t own the exaggerations, but at least she’ll own that she likes to cause drama. Erin, the forever innocent victim, will never see how what she did was wrong. “Guys! It was a joke!” she’ll shout at them, never thinking she should apologize or understand why people might be upset.

Now we have two problems on either side of this debate. There is Brynn, who we know makes shit up, or if she doesn’t make shit up, at least twists it so that it will be the most dramatic version of what it could possibly be. On the other side we have Erin, who seems to forget what she tells people, as Brynn points out, or leaves out major pieces of evidence in her case. Brynn is someone who adds on too much and Erin is someone who takes out too much. Who do we believe? Whose side are we on? Who is the leaky pigeon? I don’t know, but as I expected from last week’s episode, this whole prank storyline is for the birds.