Maybe Kenya Moore was the wrong person to host an all girls’ trip to a South Carolina beach this season.
Kenya has been under a lot of stress. She is preparing a divorce with her MIA New York-based husband, Marc Daly. She doesn’t have family in Atlanta to help her take care of her young daughter Brooklyn and hasn’t found a nanny she trusts to leave her daughter with overnight.
As a result, she has made many questionable moves this trip, and the morning of day three, Kandi Burruss is fed up and decides to confront Kenya.
Her gripes include:
- Not telling most of the ladies about taking a private plane in advance while they took a bus.
- Bringing her daughter without offering the same option to the others.
- Purposely sticking Marlo Hampton in the worst room in the beach home out of spite.
- Not informing the others about lunch options while getting her own crab cake sandwich delivered for herself.
- Arguing with Marlo about Marlo’s crappy room in front of everybody.
- Disappearing with no explanation on night two.
Kandi, only semi-jokingly, was most peeved by the crab cake sandwich because Kandi takes her food seriously.
But she feels that Kenya, as host, has certain responsibilities to properly communicate with the ladies in a way she has not.
Kenya, when confronted, questions Kandi having her back. Kandi is, like, really? Kandi has tried her darndest to support — or at least tolerate — Kenya through her shenanigans over the years.
“I feel like I’m not keeping it together,” Kenya says, tearfully. “There are so many things coming at me at the same time.”
Kandi: “I really like Marc, but you can’t have him laying down the law from New York.”
“He’s using [Brooklyn] as the last bit of control over me,” Kenya says.
Kenya is basically a single mom with limited options. Even with money, it’s not easy without family nearby to help her out.
She asks Kandi and her other friend LaToya Ali to take over hosting duties on day three.
“I am very annoyed with Kenya, but I know she’s very emotional, and she’s going through a lot, so I’m going to give her a pass for now,” Kandi says. “For now.”
After the talk, Kenya apologizes to the group for not having lunch for them the day before and turning in early the night before. She then cackles way too loudly when she expresses how good her crab cake po’boy was. (And to evoke evil, the producers play the classic Toccata and Fugue in D minor riff you hear whenever you see a haunted house in a movie.)
“Kenya reminds me of a Disney villain,” notes Porsha, who probably hates Kenya more than anybody else in the group. “One of those evil princesses. Maleficent. That [expletive] is maleficent!”
***
While the other ladies work out, a still injured Drew Sidora sits it out with Porsha Williams. Drew gets to air out her own personal grievances about not being able to be with her children while her husband Ralph moves without her. (She thought the moving would happen later that month.)
She is unhappy by all the negativity on the trip. “My whole energy is [expletive] up!”
Drew who is still new to the “Housewives” vibe, is confused by how everyone got so upset with Kenya the day before, but most everyone is all chipper the next day. It’s emotional whiplash for her, and she feels there is a lack of authenticity. Porsha confides that she and Kenya will never be friends. “Our relationship don’t matter,” she says.
***
All the ladies then watch the live results of the grand jury indicting a former Louisville detective involved in the raid that killed Brianna Taylor on a charge of for wanton endangerment of neighbors whose apartment was hit when he fired without a clear line of sight into the sliding glass patio door and window of Taylor’s apartment. That cop pleaded not guilty and no charges were announced against the other two officers who fired shots. In the end, nobody was charged for causing Taylor’s death. The cops did lose their jobs.
Porsha, who spent time in Louisville protesting Taylor’s death and was arrested twice, starts crying over the lack of accountability. “I feel like I’m living on borrowed time if something were to happen to me and nothing could be done,” she says.
***
That evening, Drew decides to “clear the air” by bringing up her earlier issues with Porsha about people getting all heated up one night, then acting all nice the next day.
Drew tries to couch this conversation in a way to avoid anyone getting defensive. But Kenya’s go-to place is defensiveness when Drew brings her up as an example.
“I feel like you’re attacking me,” Kenya says.
“I’m not attacking you,” Drew says, with a sigh.
In other words, Kenya’s triggers are very, very easy to set off.
“I have been nothing but nice to Drew, and this is how she returns the favor?” Kenya says to the Bravo cameras later with just the right level of indignation. “You’re coming at me so hard. Like what is your problem with me, girl?”
Kenya, in prime defensiveness mode, says she retreated to her room the night before to watch over her child. She says it’s “shameful” for people to judge her for that. (Naturally, the cameras shoot to Kandi’s peeved look.)
Drew says Kenya should have offered that explanation the night before when it happened.
Tanya says the women don’t feel like Kenya as host is sincerely wanting to hang out with the ladies.
Kenya starts back on how she has spent every day of her daughter’s life with her and then gets annoyed because Marlo glances at her phone as if she’s the teacher and Marlo is the inattentive student. Marlo says she’s crazy. “Don’t call me crazy,” Kenya says.
Marlo: “Something is wrong with you.”
Then Porsha gets on her phone but tells Kenya to “go ahead.”
Kenya calls this “passive-aggressive behavior.”
Porsha, in a passive-aggressive way, says: “Go ahead and give them your little sob story.”
Kenya: “You are disrespectful for saying that. What is your problem Porsha?.. Don’t judge me as a mother.”
Kenya is acting as if the “cloak of motherhood” should shield her from all criticism.
“If you want to be my support, then be my {expletive] village then. Step up and be my village!”
Kandi’s theory on Kenya’s behavior: “She doesn’t seem to care what anybody else is going through.”
Cynthia, trying her best to be reasonable, says Kenya should have given the other ladies the option to bring their children since she brought hers.
Kenya is unrelenting: “I don’t have to give them the option.”
Kandi: “You’ve been doing double standards all trip.”
When Drew tells her not to be defensive, Kenya — seriously defensive — says “you’re constantly coming at me. I’m just trying to live my {expletive] life. You don’t know the challenges that I have.”
Drew to the Bravo cameras: “She’s not even hearing what I’m saying.”
Drew says to Kenya that her lack of communication is what hurt her friends.
Kenya does finally give in a bit and apologizes in a modestly sincere way.
This all does beg the question: if Kenya’s life is so hard, why did she even bother hosting this trip?
***
The opening of the episode concludes a “cliffhanger” from two weeks ago. (”Real Housewives” took a week off for the Super Bowl.)
In a classic case of misleading editing, Marlo Hampton at the end of the last episode appeared to leave an argument with Kenya Moore. But we now learn that Marlo was just getting ice. She is not like NeNe Leakes, who frequently used to bolt when the heat got too high.
Porsha notes that Marlo seems to have a strange need to be liked by Kenya: “I hate to see her hurt because Kenya doesn’t give a [expletive] about her.”
Kenya had given Marlo a crappy room because Marlo had warned Kenya’s new bestie, LaToya Ali, about Kenya. LaToya told Kenya about this warning. Kenya did not appreciate the behind-your-back nastiness as well as some of the unflattering things Marlo has said to her face in the past.
“You don’t know how to talk to me,” Kenya says. “You don’t know how to respect me. You attack me at every turn.”
“I’m done with Marlo,” Kenya says. “I’ve been done with Marlo. Every time I see Marlo, she keeps coming for me.”
Marlo claims that Kenya insults her back with plenty of ferocity.
Kenya: “You always [expletive] with me for no reason.”
Cynthia, ever the peacemaker, said she just wants the two ladies to treat each other with respect with no expectation they will be buds.
Marlo says she’s just tired of the back and forth.
Tanya Sams: “I’m exhausted for both of you.”
NEXT WEEK, BASED ON THE TRAILER
A super-sized episode featuring the surprise Cynthia Bailey bachelorette party, which will be wild and very “dungeon” like.
About the Author
