The Real Housewives of New York City Recap: Roach Motel

The Real Housewives of New York City
Loveless Island
Season 16 Episode 7
Editor’s Rating ★★★
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It’s another morning on Moskito Island, and Daisy Toye wakes up to find Sabrina, the dutiful housekeeper, awake to make her coffee so that she doesn’t have the mental strain of trying to figure out where to put a K-Cup first thing in the morning on a private island. She’s going to need all of the caffeine she can get, though, because she’s in her room playing “La Cucaracha” so loud that the Mexican Embassy calls and convicts her of a hate crime. Yes, there was a roach in Daisy’s room, to which I say, so the fuck what? You are on a remote island in the Caribbean. You think there aren’t going to be bugs? This is basically the jungle. She’s lucky that some spider didn’t crawl down from the ceiling and lay eggs in her eyebrows while she was sleeping. Don’t ever let Daisy go to Australia, where there are bats in the middle of the city. I mean, what is one bug? Didn’t she grow up in the city? She probably had a teenage rat as a classmate at P.S. 20, and she’s worried about one little roach?

When the ladies gather in the morning after a night of arguing and dancing wearing knock-off Elton John sunglasses, they all have concerns. Erika is concerned that Daisy won’t stop complaining about her free vacation. Carole is concerned that Sai brought up the Epstein files. Erin is concerned about the spectacle that happened at dinner the night before. No, not Erika getting her rented J.Lo knockoff dress caught on a cactus and nearly dying of outdated fashion references. She’s mad about the fight between her, Sai, and Jessel. 

When Erin arrives at dinner with a hot-pink bandana wrapped around her trunk like a go-go boy would tie it around one leg to cover his junk (if you ever went to the Urge in the aughts, you know what I mean), she is upset that Sai may have told Jessel about a rumor she repeated about Pavit three years ago. Erin asks Sai what the rumor is, but Sai says she won’t repeat it because it’s so “despicable.” Um, didn’t she already tell Jessel and, by extension, us, so she might as well just say it? The two call each other despicable a few times like they’re in a Daffy Duck lisp-alike contest, and then Erin says she doesn’t want to talk about it with them, even though she is the one who started this conversation in the first place.

The best part about this fight, however, is that we learn that everyone has already heard the rumor about Pavit being gay, including Carole, who just joined the reboot this year. She says she heard it from Mason, her shopper at the RealReal store. Yes, that same Mason from the premiere who Ge-Z stared Daisy into giving up a leather trench coat. Wait. Why is Mason not a friend of? Wait. Why is there not a show about the staff of the RealReal store in Manhattan? Should Ava Dash get a job there next season of Next Gen NYC now that her father is bankrupt?

Erin is upset that Sai brought up this rumor because she says she told Sai in confidence. I’m sorry, but that is not how rumors or being told something in confidence works. Now, if Erin were to tell Sai something about her own life that she did not want shared, say, a cancer diagnosis, and then Sai went and shared that with other people, then Erin could rightfully be pissed. (We had this exact thing play out between Guerdy Abraira and Larsa Pippen on The Real Housewives of Miami.) However, a rumor isn’t something you can tell in confidence because it has nothing to do with Erin’s life and, by the very nature of a rumor, is already out there. A rumor is the mortal enemy of confidence. A rumor would tiptoe into confidence’s room at night and murder its teddy bear. That is just how rumors work, and Erin can’t have the protection of confidence when this story already has less confidence than a five-foot-three man on a first date.

But it’s the morning, and we’re not talking about this fight except that we totally are. Well, not Hailey. She’s worried that someone is drinking out of the cup she peed in while trying not to disturb Sai in the middle of the night by using the bathroom in her room. Sai was more disturbed by her conversation with Carole about the Epstein files, and while the two sit on the beach together, they rehash that conversation. Carole says that she thought that Sai’s questions were kind of “shitty” and that she felt like she was being accused of something she didn’t do. Sai relents and admits that she judged Carole for her relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell before she knew any of the particulars from Carole. 

What’s funny is that Carole asks Sai about her relationship to this guy, Daddy Warbucks, that she wrote about on her Substack. They were close enough that he paid her $10,000 to hang out with her and offered to buy her a house. When Carole asks what happened to the guy, Sai says that he was wrapped up in a Ponzi scheme and she had no idea, which just proves that you never know what people are up to. Exactly! That was exactly Carole’s point! No matter how well you know someone, they’re not going to put their worst behavior front and center. Well. I would. Just buy one cup of coffee (I don’t drink coffee) and I’ll tell you about every VIP section I’ve broken into, every person I’ve talked shit about, and how much I hate almost all of Erika’s wardrobe, including the giant seashell earrings that look like she got them for 80 percent off at the worst store in Palm Beach.

For lunch, Erika takes them to a beach that Daisy finally likes. Everyone is so shocked they pass out in the sand and wait for the tides to drag their lifeless bodies over to Dickie Branson’s island to ruin his shores for a change. Carole tells a crazy story about a watch she owned that ended up cursing Kim Kardashian. She told a much better version of this tale on The Moth and wrote about it on her Substack. The real victim at lunch, however, is Hailey Glassman, the vaping queen of Hell’s Kitchen. Everyone wants to know where her money comes from and, honestly, same. I like Hailey. She seems like a blast and, like Sting once said, every little thing she does is magic. Other than her association with Jon Gosselin and her narcissistic mother, we know nothing about her. This seems like a very good place to start.

Hailey says she thinks it’s gross to talk about money and she’s kind of right, but I will talk about money as quickly and as often as gay fitness influencers talk about Bulgarian split squats. No one is asking how much she has in her bank account. (Well, maybe Erin is because she might need help buying all new furniture for the Hamptons house.) They just want to know something about her. They ask if she has a trust fund; they ask how rich her parents are; they ask if they’re helping out; Hailey doesn’t really answer anything. They ask about her husband’s business, and she says he owns Vineyard Time, a fancy watch store in Martha’s Vineyard. Okay, that sounds nice, but not two houses in Manhattan, owning an Audi, and not thinking Gucci is expensive nice. They ask what she does for a living. She says she’s a publicist, but she can’t even say how many clients she has? And if she were even a medium-size publicist, wouldn’t Jessel, who is a legit fashion publicist, know some of the same people and could vouch for her? I know Hailey has been burned in the public eye before, but she has to give the audience something, and she really needs to give these women something if she wants to maintain relationships with them.

At dinner, everyone is in a gown except for Carole, who is wearing a vintage T-shirt and a pair of jeans. Carole is right that this is what you should wear for a low-key dinner at a friend’s house on a private island. You want to be comfortable, and who is going to see you, right? Well, except for the cameras and all of us at home and Dickie B across the bay staring into their windows with his high-powered telescope. (Just kidding. Kate Winslet destroyed his last high-powered telescope on her last visit.) It’s funny that Carole doesn’t know this. I don’t remember her dressing like someone’s hippie grandmother the last time she was on the show. Didn’t she turn looks when chilling at Blue Stone Manor? How is this so much different? 

Finally, Daisy gives a toast to this beautiful island, this beautiful trip, and how nice the accommodations are, except for their Pier One furniture. This woman can’t help herself, can she? I think she’s just a complainer. I think that Daisy is just never happy with what is in front of her, whether that is a private island, her husband, or all the nude lipsticks in the world, so she needs to blend 16 of them together to get the perfect shade for Martha. Oh, Martha Stewart. Have you heard of her? She’s Daisy’s client, and she would think this place is a dump. Erika responds by showing us her hidden talent, which is being able to burp whole words and phrases, and that made me love Erika so much more. She’s a little staid, but she’s a good time and seems to stay true to her roots, whether that is body-based humor or thinking that Gucci is expensive when she could have the whole collection each year delivered to her doorstep. (I love Erika’s excess frugality and I wouldn’t change it, but her complete lack of style is a problem she can easily buy her way out of. She should just hire a stylist and let them rent the clothes for her.) 

Erin takes Sai out by the firepit for a dramatically lit discussion that would make Ariana Madix proud but also a little sad that no one got dumped from the island this evening. As much as I hate to agree with Sai, in this conversation she has Erin “Mew Mew” Lichy pegged like Pavit in the Equinox stream room. Sai says that Erin talks shit about everyone. We know this is true because we have eyes, and we also saw her tell everyone on Ultimate Girls Trip about how much she hates Jessel. Erin says that they all talk about each other, and she’s right. Erin’s problem is that when it happens, she denies it, pretends she’s better than doing that, and turns herself into the victim. If she just took a dose of Lisa Rinna’s brand of Own It! chewable vitamins, I don’t think Erin would have a problem. Sai says that it was one thing for Erin to repeat the rumor about Pavit, but when she did it in front of Sai’s makeup dude, she knew that Erin wasn’t discreet and would do it to her one day. And she’s right. The only reason I can handle Sai being right is that it means Erin is wrong.

Trying to exonerate herself, Erin lays out this confusing defense about how her makeup guy heard about Sai’s divorce at a beauty event. Is he the one who supposedly told Jenna about Sai’s divorce? Erin seems to think she’s innocent, but she’s not addressing the real crime, which isn’t telling Jenna, since Jenna said she found out indirectly through Erin. Even if Erin is innocent of this crime specifically, she is definitely guilty of the larger pattern in a way that Sai would, of course, believe that Erin was talking about her because she does it about everyone else. But as the shadows flicker over her face, as the breeze blows the embers into the wind like tiny critters about to be extinguished by the heel of Daisy’s boot, Erin still can’t see through the darkness, and she wants to howl at a moon that may not exist, but she knows, for sure, is out there somewhere.