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The Real Housewives of Atlanta Recap: Fibroids and Fighting

The Real Housewives of Atlanta

Girl Code Breakers
Season 6 Episode 2
Editor’s Rating 4 stars

The Real Housewives of Atlanta

Girl Code Breakers
Season 6 Episode 2
Editor’s Rating 4 stars
Photo: Bravo

My goodwill toward Porsha lasted an entire week. Where’s my medal? Any of you could make one for me — it would just be a GIF of rolling eyes attached to the top of a rigid little pillar of poop.

Before we launch into the tale of Our Sister of Perpetual Idiocy, Kenya won the court case against her landlord, who last week tried to have her evicted. Kenya could live in a converted Volkswagen Eurovan with the dog she neglects and the clothes she oozes out of each day slung across a makeshift clothesline for all I care — the greatest part of this scene was the way she plucked up like a starlet and treated the three-person paparazzi team like they were there to interview the Queen of England! She flashed her lashes and composed herself long enough to tell them how the experience has ruined her trust in everyone, but she’s happy to be leaving of her own accord. Her bright-eyed assistant Brandon looked on like the sycophantic purse holder he is and declared the day was a win while her attorney, seeing a chance to escape, smashed her phone on the ground and dove into a clump of bushes.

Speaking of moving and houses and rent, Princess Porsha is at her mom Tina Knowles’s house, anxiously waiting for her spousal support check. Somehow Kordell can afford to send her $5,000 a month to sit around in workout clothes and tell everyone within earshot how he WRONGED her (seriously, are retired football players on some sort of hyper-pension?), but don’t worry — she “doesn’t want to spend it on her own place,” even though the money is technically supposed to keep her from “sleeping on the street.” Porsha and Tina Knowles twist their faces around and complain that Kordell didn’t give her any spending money the entire time they were married even though he promised shopping trips to New York. I imagine divorce sucks, and the experience of relocating is jarring, but $5,000 a month will buy you a lot of sequined Victoria Secret loungewear and a bunch of closets to put them in, even if you’ll never be able to figure out how to pay a mortgage because you can’t count higher than twelve. For $5,000 a month, you can hire someone to count for you! She still has to go back to the house to get her stuff, and Mama Knowles wants the police there with her. I want the police HERE to keep me from getting on a plane, mugging Porsha, and using her money to set myself up in a little house in Druid Hills.

NeNe thinks it’s a good idea to meet with Kenya the morning after the ear-grabbing party events of last week, where she fluctuated between calling Kenya a fool and asserting that even though they have problems they’ll get on the phone and be friends within the hour. This is a tired dismissal trotted out by most of the housewife franchises — “Ooooh, I hate your guts, you low-level, two-timing, bitch-faced troll … but you know I love you and we’re friends forever LYLAS!” The last time a friend snatched my head and told me to “rot in hell” was NEVER AGO, because once you physically assault me you are officially off my knitting-club list. When NeNe says, “You know we’ll always be cool,” she means, “You know I have to answer your phone calls as long as we’re on this show because I signed a contract.” They bickered about Walter being at NeNe’s wedding again, prompting me to fall into a coma and dream about Idris Elba showing up at my house like Jake Ryan from Sixteen Candles, only instead of flowers he had a cauldron full of pumpkin soup, and I woke up when NeNe said she wouldn’t hesitate to have a room full of her exes, because “that’s when you really twirl, honey!” They switched to the topic of Kenya texting Apollo, and NeNe decided that it was time for Kenya to get together with all of the crew to talk about her texts with Apollo, saying, “All this dick in Atlanta and you have to text someone else’s man?” At least that’s what I think happened — I was distracted by the intense nose contouring happening on their faces and wondering if the makeup person Bravo hired for this show knows that no amount of contouring will somehow mask the fact that these women are black.

Nose contouring officially at threat-level orange, we move on to Cynthia, who is constipated. She has apparently been suffering from fibroids, and is concerned that recent images of her bloated and distended belly are causing people to ask about her baby bump. Please get a pen and mark the occasion, because I am officially adding Peter to the Douche Bag Wall of Fame with the title “Worst Husband on Any Real Housewives Franchise, Including Alleged Homophobe Joe Guidice and Alleged Cheater Mario Singer.” As Cynthia was crying about her intense periods, how this has affected her career, and how her overall self-esteem is in the toilet, Peter laughed. He laughed, and told her she just needs to workout to lose weight, and he thought she didn’t want to model anymore because she’s been eating so much to fuel the MASSIVE BLOOD LOSS she’s been suffering every twenty days. To say Peter is unsympathetic is like saying Idi Amin was a little bit of a control freak. Comparing Peter a genocidal maniac doesn’t even cover how monstrous I think he is. Cynthia says her life feels like one big fibroid, and hello, we can all see why.

Cynthia packed up her super-absorbent maxi pads and trucked over to Kandi’s house, disappointed by the fruit-and-cheese plate that was set out. They talked about how their families hate their spouses, and then Porsha came over in a new, shorter wig. Or a haircut. But probably a wig. She was being very coy about it for some reason. Phaedra showed up, and her only comment was that Porsha had a “small head, and a small head means a small brain.” I love that motherhood has exhausted Phaedra so much she doesn’t even couch her insults in Southern euphemisms anymore — she just calls what she sees and falls asleep with her eyes open. She related to the crew that Kenya had sent Apollo a text offering to “Monica Lewinsky” him, and I quickly flipped through the Book of References to make sure we were still referring to blow jobs in the parlance of 1995 news events. We’re not, but Phaedra is exhausted, so I’ll give her a pass.

Phaedra has bigger problems, because she officially lives inside Marjory, the Fraggle Rock trash heap. Kids are hell, but her house looks like it was damaged by Hurricane Sandy and then dragged back to Atlanta on the back of a flatbed truck. Ayden distracted us from the mayhem for a moment by saying “Hello, Mr. President” to his baby brother, and then Apollo and Phaedra became the passive-aggressive couple who fights in front of their friends. Apollo was mad because Phaedra was “acting like he didn’t have taste,” and Phaedra is mad that she married the type of man-child who would put a pool table in her stately living room. I’m pretty sure they’re wealthy enough to have hired someone to at least make the house livable for a while before they hired someone ELSE to renovate it, but maybe her Embalming Lawyer™ businesses aren’t quite taking off as planned. Apollo strapped on a backpack and Charlie Browned it out of the house, and I only felt a little bit sorry for laughing so hard.

Cynthia went to a doctor to confirm that her fibroids were operable without having to get a hysterectomy, but mostly to confirm to Peter that she wasn’t crazy. The entire thing made me so angry I power-chomped through half a jar of Nutella and two sleeves of crackers. Peter had the nerve to say he wasn’t selfish when the doctor mentioned how Cynthia’s intense bleeding and moodiness must be affecting their sex life, and I could hear the neck of every viewer snap toward their TV the second those words left his lips. Peter is a long list of things, and selfish is at the tippy-top, followed by delusional. I sincerely hope her daughter will fly Leon in to help take care of her.

Everyone met to confront Kenya, but she was already mixing metaphors about walking into a lion’s den with lions eating their own cubs before she walked in the door, abject confusion being her greatest weapon. Kandi didn’t like the fact that she texted Apollo because “if she did it to Phaedra, she would do it to us,” an argument I found weak. Kenya tried to change her story several times, but the quick-thinking editors inserted clips of her at the reunion last year saying everything she was presently denying. There was no definitive outcome, but everyone agreed they could at least be in Kenya’s presence, so good for them.

Porsha took over the master bedroom at her mother’s house, and her mother agreed to it. I’m not a parent, but that tells me pretty much everything I need to know about how Porsha was raised and how I would send a child to MILITARY SCHOOL before I ever let them displace me from my own room. She gets a case of the sads when her lawyer texts to tell her Kordell is packing up her stuff and shipping it over tomorrow and declares “Karma’s name is bitch,” which is news to me.

Finally, we got to watch Kandi’s mother lose her damn mind. We know by now that she doesn’t like Todd for undisclosed reasons, but couches it in the “I want you to be happy” excuse. Kandi accurately thinks her mom doesn’t like anyone she dates, and a flashback to five years ago proves this to be true. Mama Joyce yells and screams about the man needing to be the provider, and she’s worried a prenup could be “sliced and diced.” I was happy that Kandi stuck up for herself, reminding her mom that she doesn’t know HOW the money is handled in their house, Todd pays his fair share, and she doesn’t actually need him to provide for her, but Mama Joyce goes to low-blow territory by insinuating that Riley doesn’t like him, and Kandi’s engagement ring is gross. The best part of the argument? Mama Joyce was ragging on Kandi about her fiancé in THE FREE HOUSE KANDI JUST GAVE HER. Mama Joyce didn’t just bite the hand that feeds her — she snatched it off at the elbow and started thrashing the arm nub on the ground through gnashed teeth. 

I feel bad for Kandi, because her mom is a freeloading shithead and she can’t even see it. Everything she’s saying under the guise of protecting Kandi is really about protecting herself, which slips out when she says that she wouldn’t want Kandi to choke on a chicken bone and then Todd takes the house away from her. When her mom suggests she meet a millionaire who is at least on her level, Kandi reminds her that she’s dated millionaires, and they were all cheaters who had enough money to bounce from girlfriend to girlfriend, and she wanted something more sincere. Kandi ends the only way she really could, which was to say, “I’m not like you, let me have what I like,” and her mom said something flip and walked away, and I have never wanted to smack someone’s grandma so hard in my entire life.


What should Kandi do? What do you think Kordell does to Porsha’s wedding dress next week? And is it really Kenya’s landlord who calls the cops, or the state of Georgia officially getting ready to escort her out of the city? See you next week!

The Real Housewives of Atlanta Recap: Fibroids