Which Real Housewife Stuck a Popsicle Up Her Vagina?

It’s another week, and another indication that Bravo’s next generation of Housewives has found its guiding light in the rebooted Real Housewives of New York. Unlike Real Housewives of Orange County, where the drama is juicy, but ultimately repetitive, and Real Housewives of Potomac, which fell into the trappings of manufactured fights and falsely fractured friendships, RHONY is unimpeded by the conventions of the other cities in this franchise. These women want nothing more than to hang out with each other and revel in all of the goofy theatrics that come with that. Drama be damned, this is how watching Housewives should always feel.

Episode 3 of Season 14 finds the cast on their second day of a three-day girl's trip to the Hamptons. It’s a brisk November morning, made even more nippy by the fact that the heat in Erin’s guest rooms has stopped working. This is either just an unfortunate occurrence or an ingenious form of psychological torture, implemented by Erin to keep everyone on their toes. As it turns out, Jenna fled the house in the middle of the night before Erin’s wicked machinations turned her home into an igloo, avoiding both the loss of sleep and the loss of a toe due to frostbite.

While everyone else was partying the night away, Jenna tried to covertly slip out without anyone noticing, citing a 6:30 am business call that she had to be rested for. Call me a buzzkill, but I see nothing wrong with leaving in the middle of the night to get some sleep, going to your own Hamptons home that’s 10 minutes away, and coming back first thing in the morning. These women are all working professionals! If anything, that’s the best-case scenario of work/life balance. The only thing Jenna missed out on was some drunken dancing, which she couldn’t partake in any way since she doesn’t drink, and again, she had a call! The world of hyper-realistic false eyelash implants rests for no one.

But despite that rationale, everyone is upset with Jenna. Jessel suspects that Jenna wanted to wake up to her own house’s ocean views; Ubah is aggravated because Jenna wouldn’t participate in their fun; and Erin considers it a slap in the face to have a guest flee in the night. (I’d sympathize with Erin, if Erin had bothered to pick up any snacks for these poor women—I wouldn’t want to stay in a house with no munchies either.) Jenna’s departure has put a bit of a pall on the festivities, and now all of the other women are in a complaintive mood. Jessel, in particular, is not feeling it, hurling grievances about not being able to connect to Erin’s WiFi. How you’re rich enough to be on RHONY but not rich enough to afford unlimited data is a question I’d love to chat with Jessel about. “Jessel is too aloof to realize that her delivery is a bit abrasive sometimes,” Sai says in her confessional, referencing last week’s great Christmas Tree Nightgown incident.

Jenna returns promptly in the morning before the coffee has even finished brewing, as promised. But that doesn’t stop everyone from grimacing at her gorgeous, slender frame waltzing into Erin’s kitchen. Erin was desperate to make shakshuka that morning, before they all worked out with her trainer, but put those plans on ice—inside her icy home—when Jenna protested the day before. Jenna, once again, was correct; the last thing I would want to eat before working out is poached eggs in a sauce of tomatoes and spices. “We’re all adults, if you wanted shakshuka, you could’ve had shakshuka!” Jenna says. At this point, my hands are getting tired from marking all of the times Jenna has scored with her reasoning, and the episode hasn’t even gotten 10 minutes into itself.

But my scorekeeping isn’t over yet. Erin walks off in a haughty, faux ambivalence. “I’m leaving, because clearly you don’t like my house at all,” she says. “Oh yeah, that’s it,” Jenna retorts sarcastically, before getting in one last dig when Erin is out of the room: “Oh my god, my glasses are going to fog up from the cold.” I adore this level of trivial arguing from the RHONY cast, because on any other franchise currently airing, this fight would’ve stretched out the entire season. Here, the women get in a couple of jabs, and go back to square one. They all just need to feel like they’re right, and once they do, they can move forward.

Bynn, who was sick on the first day of the trip, rolls up to Erin’s house in a full fur coat. “[South Hampton] is kind of where it’s at, but this is good too,” Brynn says. Erin hasn’t been able to catch a single break since this trip started, and it has been glorious to watch. This getaway’s delicious dynamic only gets more fun when Brynn arrives, flirting the second she walks through the door and sees Erin’s gorgeous trainer, David. Brynn can light up a room as fast as she can break a heart, and it’s electrifying to watch as she does everything but tell David plainly that she wants to get it on. Furthermore, I have major respect for her calling her castmates “upper-middle-class bitches,” finally admitting to the tax bracket that most Housewives are actually a part of, as opposed to the wealth that they position themselves to have (Jenna excluded).

A good portion of this episode revolves around guest etiquette, which is a fascinating subject that I am obsessed with. That’s not sarcasm, either. As I said last week, guests should be allowed to bring their own two-ply without objection. In Episode 3, Jenna’s witching hour exodus is in hot contention now that Brynn has arrived, as Brynn finds it to be a double standard. “I got my ass chewed out for choosing a place over people,” Brynn reminds us, referring to her not wanting to go to [BLEEP] restaurant from the season premiere. “So if that is the law of the land, it’s got to apply to everybody.”

Brynn has a point, given how mad Erin was at Brynn over that unnamed restaurant, and how quickly Erin made that morning’s disagreement with Jenna water under the bridge. However, I stand by my assertion that Jenna was not in the wrong to leave for a few hours. But Brynn suspects there’s something else to it, claiming that she thinks Erin is quicker to forgive Jenna because Jenna Lyons, fashion powerhouse extraordinaire, has more cultural cache than Brynn. And…Brynn isn’t wrong about that! That’s one of the reasons Brynn is a great addition to Housewives: she can play the dopey flirt while secretly sizing up everyone’s motivations.

Despite this episode being all about etiquette, it’s never as simulated as when Luann de Lesseps was wearing her Countess Crown back in RHONY’s early days. A fun, sexy game of Two Truths, One Lie to round out the episode proves that well: These women can care about their own versions of good and bad behavior, and then drop all of that to talk about the time they stuck a popsicle in their vagina. Jessel continues to fascinate me when I least expect it; one moment, she’ll be putting an ice-cold treat in one hole, and the next, she’ll be vomiting out another. Jenna might be our current MVP, but I’d say Jessel is our woman to watch.

That kind of candor is what makes this season such a rewarding watch so far. The vibes are immaculate. Erin’s house looks cozy (I run hot, so I’ll take those frigid temps any day), everyone’s dressed to the nines just to go to lunch, and there’s a real intimacy between this cast. No one’s needlessly guarded—at least not yet. Best of all, we don’t have to sit through dud drama at the top of the episode, and there’s no unnecessary “To Be Continued…” to cap things off. These women may not be relatable, but they are real, whatever that means to them.

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