The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip Recap: This Is the Countess Speaking

The Real Housewives: Ultimate Girls Trip
Mic Drop, Please
Season 5 Episode 8
Editor’s Rating ★★★★
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It’s still Halloween in New York, and we’ve got unfinished business to circle back to. I was horrified by Jessel shading Dorinda’s costume last week, not just because it was disrespectful to a legend, but because it felt like she was trying to embarrass her. Nobody should be allowed to embarrass Dorinda except herself, so I’m glad that Chanel Ayan told Jessel that she was rude, prompting her to apologize and tell Dorinda she looks amazing. “Well, it’s not about that; it was in one of the most iconic scenes in Housewives forever,” Dorinda says, schooling this new kid on the block, who pretends like she doesn’t remember and says she’ll have to rewatch.

Ultimately, this is like watching theater. I’m so fascinated by the unspoken power struggle between old and new that’s going on here. It’s like watching All About Eve. And I just know if Dorinda had two more martinis, she would have railed into Jessel about how nobody likes the new RHONY. Maybe we’ll get to that in the Berkshires. Then again, Bravo would never let that air because they like to pretend like the reboot was a success. And maybe one day it will be, but at the time this was filmed, new RHONY didn’t have any iconic moments to reference.

The evening kicks off with some magic — and since Adrienne Maloof apparently wasn’t available, they settle for some kind of hypnotist. He does a trick on Kyle where she feels like she’s being tapped but isn’t being tapped, and they couldn’t have chosen a better person to do this to. My favorite character on RHOBH is Kyle Richards’s anxiety, so I knew as soon as this guy walked in that we’d be watching her internally panic through the whole thing. I can tell from the look in her eyes that she’s worried that Carlton Gebbia sent him, and the second she gets home, she’s checking to make sure another hex wasn’t placed on her computer.

Then Teresa gets brought up onstage by the mentalist, who asks her to think of someone meaningful in her life from before the cameras, who nobody in the room would know the name of. The question somehow stumps Tre, so much so that she asks the mentalist for ideas of who to think of. She either didn’t understand the premise of the game or — and I think this second option is more likely — she has been on television for so long and aired out so much of her life that she genuinely couldn’t think of someone from pre-Housewives.

Since Teresa was a dud, Chanel Ayan volunteers instead, confident that this guy won’t be able to guess someone from her village. But sure enough, he does, prompting Chanel to say, “That’s a devil. That man would be burning in my village.” And if you didn’t think that then, you certainly did by the time he made Luann levitate — a feat that usually takes her three more tequilas. 

And speaking of Luann being drunk, after the magic, the speech begins. It begins … but never ends. Because Luann’s microphone has seemingly been surgically attached to her body, her toast goes on for over 35 minutes. I can’t even wrap my head around how that’s possible. How does one fill that much time? In fact, I would like Bravo to release the full, uncut speech as a bonus episode on Peacock, just out of morbid curiosity. Though based on how the other women are responding to this speech, I know we’re being spared. Gizelle, who Luann somehow skipped completely over in her toast, even FaceTimes a very late Porsha to tell her not to come. But it’s too late. Porsha is already hoofing it down the snowy street after getting stuck behind an ambulance and arrives just in time for … more speech. 

Tired of Luann’s antics already, Porsha chats with the other women during it, and Luann doesn’t just yell at her from the stage but walks into the crowd to scold her face-to-face into the microphone. The entire fight is playing out into the microphone, for the audience to spectate like it’s a WWE fight. Luann is acting so beautifully, entertainingly strange, even for Luann, that I’m starting to think that the hypnotist might have done something and she’s just waiting on someone to snap their fingers. 

But Lu isn’t the only New York legend in the room, despite what she may think. When this party began last week, and we just got a brief moment with Alex McCord in her Kylie Minogue costume, I was worried that the show wasn’t treating her return with the gravitas and attention it deserves. Everyone else just had to hop on the train or a domestic flight, but Alex is in Australia … trying to survive in this economy. Thankfully, my worries turned out to be unfounded, because the talent show in this episode turns out to be her time to shine. 

The judges are Luann; the constantly-fired Jill Zarin; and the biggest star in the building, Dorinda’s real-estate agent, Laurie Cooper. That’s how phenomenal OG RHONY is, that someone’s real-estate agent can become an iconic figure. Our cup really used to runneth over. As for the talent, we get Teresa playing the saxophone, Lisa Barlow performing an original rap (“I grew up in New York, who doesn’t know how to rap?”), and then Alex brings it home by breakdancing. No, this isn’t a nod to Luann’s son Noel’s after-school activity, but rather a reference to the Australian competitive breakdancer Raygun. Sure, why not. And best of all, she does this wildly lengthy, intricate dance number while wearing her iconic Herman Munster shoes on her hands. Don’t question it, just let the magic wash over you.

Afterward, when the women go to take a group photo, a drunken Luann pushes her way to the front, and Gizelle finally confronts her. It turns out this has become a pattern, so much so that we get a supercut of her positioning herself front and center at every stop along the trip. Nonetheless, she denies it, saying, “I do not want to be the center of attention,” which is a truly hilarious sentence to say after giving a 35-minute speech. 

This exchange turns into Luann fully spiraling out, screaming about Porsha being two hours late to anybody who would listen. “I LEVITATED FOR GOD’S SAKE. PORSHA MISSED ME LEVITATING,” she shouts, after explaining her bad behavior to Kyle by simply saying, “I’m a showgirl.” Getting to watch a drunken Luann is a privilege I don’t take lightly. It feels like home. This is why the television was invented. It’s beautiful to behold. She’s just lucky there wasn’t a bush to fall into or a cop to threaten. 

I think that surely in the light of day, she’ll calm down or feel differently, but alas. The next morning, wearing a fedora and sunglasses in her hotel room, she FaceTimes Dorinda to debrief everything that happened after she left. “This really is upsetting to me, the way I was treated in my own town,” she bellows. And while Dorinda tries to get a word in to talk her down, it’s simply impossible. Luann isn’t calling to have a conversation; she’s calling to have an audience to deliver this wonderful monologue to. 

When she joins the women in the Sprinter van, all of this gets rehashed. “You think you’re in a cabaret all day, every day, and you’re not,” Vicki tells her. Lu and Porsha go toe-to-toe, and then the photo situation gets brought up again, but this time she brought evidence. Luann pulls out several of the photos they all took in which she isn’t in the center, and we even get a flashback of her moving other women to the center spot to back it up. “You sat on me in Miami,” Vicki protests, as evidence of Lu’s recurring lack of self-awareness, and we then get some of the most incredible footage to ever cross my desk. Luann sits on her for a photo, prompting Vicki to start screaming from underneath her, “Next to me! Not on me! I don’t want you sitting on me! I don’t want you sitting on me!” Luann is unfazed and unmoving, cigar in hand, fedora on her head, posing for the camera despite the woman wailing from beneath her ass. And that’s what Housewives is all about.