The Real Housewives of Miami
Not So New Beginnings Season 5 Episode 1 Editor’s Rating «Previous Next» « Previous Episode Next Episode The Real Housewives of Miami
Not So New Beginnings Season 5 Episode 1 Editor’s Rating «Previous Next» « Previous Episode Next EpisodeWe all go to Miami on vacation, right? We jaunt down when things get too cold or boring or contentious in our lives back home. When you want to relax, look at beautiful people, and shut off your brain, that’s when you book it to Miami. I feel like, as Housewives fans, we also vacation in Miami. These days in the Bravo universe, things are cold (Atlanta) or boring (Orange County) or contentious (Potomac; New Jersey; Beverly Hills; the RHONY reboot, RHONY: Glue Factory, which hasn’t even been announced yet) and we just want to escape to Miami, where the centerpiece is a crazy fight about whether or not Lisa made fun of Larsa’s new building. This is the kind of low-stakes, petty drama that is going to get us through a winter of our discontent. Just like Miami!
The episode kicks off and we catch up with our favorite ladies. Larsa is in her new $3 million penthouse on the 50th floor arguing with two of the kids about who is going to walk the dog. Julia is going to the Miami Open with Dr. Nicole and Adriana to watch someone play tennis, I guess? Naomi Osaka? Never heard of her. (Duh! Of course I have.) Lisa is in her backyard telling her kid that he can’t dress himself and giving the same notes to her husband. Marysol shows up at Alexia’s salon for a free pedicure. This is it. This is all I wanted. No one is being investigated. There are no lawyers. There is no trauma that a non-licensed healer is dredging up, just nice, normal Housewives bullshit that is so regular you can set your watch and your dumps to it.
There are “major” fights this week, and they are so dumb that they didn’t even get Julia Fox right on the “Which Famous People Are on the New York Magazine Cover?” quiz. Dumber gets to go first, so Guerdy and Alexia are at odds because … I don’t even know. After her mother died on what was supposed to be her wedding day, Alexia and her husband, Gringo the Kidd, eloped and had a private ceremony. Now she wants to throw a wedding party, and when she reaches out to Guerdy, who was supposed to be her friend and plan her wedding, Guerdy has a staff member write her back and tell her who all the vendors were for her wedding. Guerdy says she had another event the day Alexia had her party, so she can’t help her. I get that, but the brush-off seemed a little brusque.
Guerdy’s mad at Alexia because she says she only calls her when she needs something. I get it, sister. We all got that friend. But Alexia is also a client, so cash those checks. And even if you don’t want to do the event and make up an excuse to get out of it, at least email her back yourself. What Guerdy is mad about is that Alexia, in some forum that is not mentioned, compared Guerdy’s fundraiser that she threw for her dead brother’s charity with the party she threw for Alexia’s bachelorette party at the Versace Mansion. But why is she comparing? What is this conversation? Was Alexia saying, “Her fundraiser was way better than the party she threw for me; I want a party like that”? I assume that’s what happened, but I don’t know. We are not being well informed about this fight, and you know what? I don’t care!
There is no resolution to this fight. We don’t need one. We will dine all season off this non-beefy beef like an all-you-can-eat Impossible Burger buffet. We also don’t get much resolution to the fight between Larsa and Juliandra, which is the Ramonja name for Julia and Adriana, who have fused into one person like some kind of Cronenbergian nightmare. Julia is mad at Larsa for calling her a weirdo, and Adriana is mad at Larsa for calling her an old man. How delightfully low stakes is this? How wonderfully petty?
You want it even pettier? Don’t worry, girl — I got you. She called them these things in a comment on Instagram. Not even her own comment — in response to someone else’s comment. They show weirdo onscreen, and it is preceded by like eight different names; that’s how far down the chain Julia had to read. At first, I thought she was getting angry about nothing. I feel like Larsa calling her a “weirdo” was such a weird, one-off insult that you couldn’t possibly be mad about it. But then Larsa called her a weirdo again, so, yeah, that’s what she really thinks of her. Then Julia is at Larsa’s party telling some unknown dude that she milks goats. Come on! That’s weird. She is a weirdo. That is, like, the lowest-grade insult one could possibly lob.
Larsa doesn’t invite Juliandra to the pre-party because she doesn’t want them in her home. I would be pissed if I were them — not because I wasn’t invited but because even Alexia’s gay Jonny was there. If Jonny is getting tapped and I am left at home, there will be a lot of clouds under the LGBTQIA+ rainbow. Adriana does bring Larsa flowers complete with an actual olive branch, though, which is sweet.
Shockingly, Larsa says something smart about the literal olive branch. She says that Adriana did this so that Larsa would forget everything that Adriana ever said to her. That is like every Housewives apology. Like, a woman says she’s sorry and all of her past misdeeds are supposed to vanish. It doesn’t work like that. It’s not bankruptcy (just ask Teresa Giudice). So Larsa is taking a minute with these two ladies, and I think they might actually be ready to go on a healing (or, as Whitney Rose says, a “hilling”) journey.
I bet the person with whom Larsa had no idea she would fight is Lisa Hochstein. The two haven’t spoken since “New York,” which in Housewives means “the reunion,” which in real-people English means since “last season.” When she’s hanging out with Kiki and Marysol, the co-winners of the Tanya Sam Most Valuable Friend of Trophy, Lisa tells them that this Instagram account she follows that makes fun of Miami said that the people who live in Larsa’s new building are “hookers, drug dealers, pimps, and OnlyFans people.”
After the hang, Lisa realizes it wasn’t Larsa’s building this account was talking about but another one. So now she not only has to tell Larsa that she was talking shit about her, but she also has to tell Larsa that she already knows she is wrong about talking shit about her. I think this might be the first time in Housewives history that the liar knew about the lie before the lie-ee. Lisa’s problem is she takes too long to get into two dozen bows that are in search of a dress and arrives last at the party. Kiki and Marysol have already told Larsa what she said, though they did an awful job of imparting exactly what Lisa was saying about the house. At least Marysol is smart enough to try to deflect, telling Larsa she has to go get a cocktail. She tells us in confessional that she can’t think without a cocktail, that it is like her vitamins. Know someone else who had the same problem? Betty Ford.
When Lisa arrives, Larsa says, “Welcome to the hood.” This is where this dumb fight all starts. Lisa never said that her place was “hood” or gross. What she was insinuating was that it was full of rich people who got their money by undesirable means. Lisa was also (maliciously) repeating a joke that someone else made so she could say that she disagreed with that joke, but she was sharing with the ladies the reputation of the building.
Larsa, though, is deeply offended. She keeps talking about how Lisa insulted “my building” like she is the developer, architect, glazer, concierge, mason, and general contractor all at the same time. Lady, you just bought the penthouse. Don’t get too wrapped up. (Or do. I live for this shit.) My problem with Larsa, though, is how she fights. Larsa then tells Lisa that she has to rent her house out every weekend to pay her mortgage. When Lisa tells her that what she said was a joke (which it was, though she didn’t explain how), Larsa says that her insult is a joke, too. The problem is it’s not. She means it. And she keeps dragging Lisa for it. What’s even dirtier is that the editors show us Lisa’s denial and then all of the other women talking about how they know people rent her house out, including a lawsuit with reggaeton singer Nicky Jam that is still ongoing. This is on the public record. There is no denying this.
It really goes left when Larsa says, “I earned my shit — unlike you.” Larsa, who got half of Scottie Pippen’s fortune in the divorce, is now trying to play like Lisa is a gold digger? I’m sorry, but if this is the rubric we’re using, her money is just as tainted as Lisa’s. Yes, she might have made her own money since the divorce, but it was Scottie’s money that set her up. It was Scottie’s money that allowed her to be hanging with the Kardashians. Her friendship with Kim got her a huge social-media platform. And it was all of that that allowed her to make her own money. So Larsa is the last person who should be wearing a School of Hard Knocks jersey around the house (as if Larsa wears anything while alone in her house).
After a brief cameo from Jill Zarin, who was definitely doing some spy-ass shit at this party, we finally leave and go back to Lisa’s house to watch her have a stupid fight about her wine room with her husband, Lenny. He keeps texting instead of paying attention to her, which is such a regular, everyday occurrence to anyone in a long-term relationship that you can’t even get mad about it. Earlier in the episode, we saw Lisa telling Kiki and Marysol that Lenny has never looked better. She says he is working out with a trainer, eating right, and getting fit. “He better be doing that for me and not someone else,” she tells them. Sorry — we have seen your future, and we know how this ends. I hope we can enjoy our light bowl of borscht, because when Lenny and Lisa get real, I think our Miami vacation is about to be over.
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Dame Brian Moylan breaks down all the gossip and drama, on- and off-screen, for dedicated students of the Reality Television Arts and Sciences This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy NoticeThe Real Housewives of Miami Season-Premiere RecapncG1vNJzZmivp6x7t8HLrayrnV6YvK57wKuropucmny1tMRmqZ6ZnGK1sMHSnq6irpWoerCyjKagmqWZYsCmrdKopWZtXaW%2FprnInqmeZaKasKK8jaGrpqQ%3D