It is not uncommon for a few scenes of any tourism ad to be shot in a nondescript location while the rest of the film is accumulated B-roll footage. Now, far be it from me to defend all of La Dame’s shenanigans, but I felt like Bravo’s production team was putting a little too much dramatization on this plotline.
In the B block, Karen fulfills her ambassadorial duties by filming her video for the Surry County Tourism board, and production has a ball with the lower third chyron, pointing out that she was filming in Potomac and not in Surry County. Standing in your mess means ceding the higher ground, which applies to multiple women on this show. As Ashley mentioned, this schtick is old and tired either grow or don’t, but you don’t get to have it both ways. She gives a feeble rebuttal, and an even feebler apology, because Candiace, as we all know, has a very serious issue with holding accountability for her behavior, and according to Askale, she was the one to get to Candiace to apologize, although it was unaired. I get that Ashley is far from a sympathetic figure to many, but she truly has Candiace’s number, and I think the unspoken issue is that Candiace won’t ever forgive her for the character statement she gave Monique. Regardless, the Desperate Housewives conclude Robyn’s birthday dinner, where Ashley astutely points out that Candiace was quick to defend Wendy over remarks made about her body but immediately went to jabs about Ashley’s to cut her down.
Gizelle makes no bones about emphasizing that Karen and Ray will be six feet under before they ever receive another apology from her, which I find a little bit overboard, but reality TV is pretty much a telenovela with real-life consequences at this point, so make of that what you will. This episode certainly doesn’t start on that tone, however. What I got instead, however, was campy sparring between the duo, which gave me an inkling as to the direction of the season: Karen and Gizelle may frequently be at odds, but they always end up coming to some sort of peace accord. On the fifth episode, the Grand Dame Karen Huger made an iconic appearance, and I tuned in, fully prepared for a Battle Royale between the two titans of Potomac. For two weeks while Andy Cohen was running around with poppers on Fire Island, Bravo put Watch What Happens Live on hiatus and gave Bravo’s Chat Room - a show where Porsha Williams and Gizelle Bryant get drunk and judge other people - a limited second-season run, with a solid queue of powerhouse guests.