The Real Housewives of London Recap: Country Bumpkins

The Real Housewives of London
Baggage Claim
Season 1 Episode 3
Editor’s Rating ★★★
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Since this week’s episode starts with Amanda meeting Panthea Parker in the park(-er) to discuss her abominable performance at Karen’s dinner party last episode, let us also just start where we left off and continue bashing Panthea, who is so full of shit that she is just like the London sewer, complete with her own indestructible fatberg. The purpose of the meeting is so that Amanda can disabuse Panthea of her notions about her, and once again Panthea ends up embodying the thing she says she hates. She talks about how the “toxic London scene” is always gossiping and saying things about Amanda and then says all of those things right there to Amanda’s smooth, smooth face. She is the toxic London scene! She says, “People are horrible, they say, ‘Amanda Cronin says she has the longest legs in London, but it’s the widest legs.’”

She said that! Right to her face! And blamed other people! Like we didn’t know that she is the one who said it. They both acknowledge that people gossip, but she doesn’t have to share that gossip. She just basically told Amanda to her face that everyone thinks she’s a slut. But not Panthea. No! Never Panthea. It’s like when Karen shows up at her house, and Panthea says that she loves her color contacts and is thinking about getting some of her own, and Karen says there are no contacts. This is how Panthea rolls. She would say, “Oh, but I said I liked them!” but that she pointed them out and made a big show of it proves that she didn’t really like them, that they were something worth commenting on and needed to be plastered over. Ugh, she’s terrible.

To end their conversation, Panthea says to Amanda, “It doesn’t matter who you were then, it matters who you are now.” Oh, so she thinks that Amanda was a slut but isn’t now? Oh. Okay. Great. The one thing I can agree with Panthea on is that Amanda is talking bollocks (that’s British for “balls”) when she says she got no money from her ex-husband. Come on. None of us believe that. Amanda says that she owned 10 percent of her husband’s company and that’s the money she got, but even then she still got money off of him. That seems like a semantic difference that no one is really making.

Then in confessional, Panthea says, “She uses men as a stepping stone, and if it weren’t for her good settlement with her ex-husband she wouldn’t be able to create this lifestyle.” This is where Panthea goes wrong. She thinks so poorly of Amanda that she believes she plotted this marriage and divorce so she could go further in life. Like on her wedding day, she was just counting his money and didn’t care about him at all. I think the fact that she’s still close with his children betrays that fact. Sorry, Panthea. Like the remote in a dark room, you have lost me once again. 

There are a couple of cute scenes with the ladies alone. Karen goes to Brixton, which is a “working class” neighborhood in South London where a large concentration of the Jamaican population lives. (It is also the birthplace of Naomi Campbell and home to one of the best concert venues in London.) Then we see Juliet getting back to her annoying roots as the most annoying kind of actor. The only thing worse than watching her with her vocal coach talking about the treacly lyrics of her new song would be if she made us go to her improv-class graduation show. By the time her vocal teacher makes a sound like a cat throwing up and says it was an “emotional contraction,” I wanted to sign them both up for Scientology so they could be around their own kind and whisked away from the rest of humanity. 

Panthea invites her friend Affe, Karen, Amanda, and Amanda’s friend Gena to an Iranian New Year’s event at a Persian restaurant. She wants to show everyone her Persian roots but at the same time says that she hasn’t celebrated Iranian New Year since her father moved back to Iran when she was seven. Is this the same Panthea who hates anyone fake or putting things on? I’m all about connecting with one’s culture, but it didn’t seem that Panthea cared that much until the cameras were clambering up to the mezzanine of a restaurant. 

Aside from a very awkward belly-dancing performance that was not supposed to be interactive, the only other thing to happen at dinner was that Karen called Panthea a “narcissist” because Panthea invited her over and then talked at her incessantly and didn’t ask Karen even one question. Panthea, the least self-realized person we have ever seen, says that there is no way she is a narcissist. This is sort of like when you tell a drunk person that they are drunk, the first thing they will slur is, “I am not a drunk. Can we order pizza?” Then Panthea goes home and tells her housekeeper that she is going to throw all the clothes that she wants on the floor and for her to pack them in her Louis Vuitton–branded trunks. Ugh, whatever, Panthea. 

She’s packing for a trip to the Cotswolds, which is like the Hudson Valley of London. Or maybe it’s like the Santa Barbara of London. I don’t know. It’s where posh English people go to spend the weekend and gossip about each other with more greenery, pheasant hunts, and Sunday roasts at pubs all called the Queen’s Head. Personally, I hate the country. Walking around in the mud and glowering at the neighbors is not my idea of a good time. Also, the Grindr is all guys either dressed up for pup play or wearing ladies’ panties, which is also not my idea of a good time, but slightly better than getting your foot stuck in a wet, mossy hole. 

Nessie sends a helicopter to pick everyone up, and the ladies meet at the heliport where Amanda tells them that she took the helicopter back and forth from Monaco all the time. Sorry, but my assistant — you may have heard of him; his name is Claude, and he’s from San Francisco — says that is not possible, that you need to take a private jet from London and then you can helicopter the last bit right into Monaco. Claude should know. He’s worth billions. Anyway, Karen will not ride the helicopter because she only rides in them with her whole family so that if it goes down they all die together, which is hilarious, touching, tragic, and insane all at the same time and made me fall a little bit in love with Karen. 

Upon arrival, we learn that Nessie’s house is not the enormous estate she purported it to be but a part of a larger estate (and she is maybe renting her house, question mark). She is also putting them up in a nearby hotel because some of her rooms are being renovated. Okay. Why are we doing this now? Couldn’t we wait for the renovations to be finished? This all seems poorly timed. When they arrive, Nessie introduces them to Sir Henry Elwes, who owns the property and is the great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather of The Princess Bride star Cary Elwes. Okay, I made that last part up, but he is the former Lord Lieutenant of Gloucestershire, which is the part of England where the Cotswolds are, and a combination of letters that should not exist in nature.

Upon arrival, the women play country games, like chasing a cheese down a hill (which was featured on an episode of Netflix’s We Are the Champions and is worth a watch) and whanging their wellies. This is very different than what Panthea heard, which is “wanking” their wellies, which would mean jerking off their boots, which is something that a man in panties once offered to do for me on Cotswolds Grindr. Juliet does all of this wearing a pair of high heels, though she did take them off to climb a tree barefoot. You can take the girl out of Australia, but you can’t take the Austraila out of the Sheila.

A big fight occurs while all the ladies, in matching red dresses, are coming to Nessie’s house on a bus to arrive at an elaborate dinner she has planned. Sir Henry is waiting at the front door to receive them, and Nessie is playing classical music on the piano so that they can arrive, walk in, and find her deep in Debussy and be like, “Oh, I didn’t see you there,” like the start of a hacky Instagram Reel. In the bus, Karen and Panthea start fighting, and Panthea says that she is a lady but that Karen is not. Then she says, well, Karen might be a lady now, and a groan comes out of the car that stopped the frogs jumping in the hollow, the pheasants roosting in the bush, the wellies whanging over fence posts, the cheese from rolling down the hill, but not Nellie at her piano. No, she played through, her eyes crooked to see out the front window into the bus, wondering what act of nature might ruin an evening so perfect.