The Real Housewives of New York City Recap: Bit by Bitcoin

The Real Housewives of New York City
You Can Run But You Can’t Ride
Season 15 Episode 2
Editor’s Rating ★★★
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Hello and welcome to Things We Hate About Erin Mew Mew Lichy. I am your host, Dame Brian Moylan, and this week we will not only be focusing on the things we hate about Erin Mew Mew Lichy, but we also have a special guest, Becky Minkoff. We’ve found a few things to hate about her, too.

This episode really focuses on Erin and what she’s going through. Did you know her mother has cancer? I am not going to make fun of a woman with cancer and I’m sure that it’s been very devastating for Erin, but she brings it up like Angie K brings up being Greek. Is she going to start dressing only in pink ribbons to draw attention to herself? I mean draw attention to the cause. No, I mean herself. 

She goes shopping for wigs for her mom with Ubah and it is actually a very cute scene, and her mother gets an excellent hair system from Bits and Pieces, which looks like it probably sells more to drag queens than it does to women with cancer. While they’re there, Ubah asks Erin what is going on with her and Abe. “I needed him to be there for me this time with everything going on with my mom and he just piled on all this shit I didn’t know about,” she tells Ubah. 

Erin referred to something similar last episode when she wouldn’t let Abe joke about mushrooms. Abe also said there were some bad things going on in their marriage. Damn, this must be really bad if they won’t even mention it out loud. What could it be? Was he cheating? Did he open an Ashley Madison account? Did she find him on Grindr? Did he quit his job and start working as a rodeo clown? Did he secretly mortgage their Hamptons home and now it’s up for foreclosure? Did he book a table at Catch? It has to be terrible if it made Erin so upset that she cried (without tears or moving her brow) in public. Right?

We find out what happened later at a dinner scene with Erin and Abe. Hahahahah. Oh, man. You know it’s coming. You know the reason is coming and it’s even dumber than you thought. Hahahahah. Oh, I can’t wait to tell you. This is so funny. Erin is mad because … hahahaha. Sorry. Sorry. Erin is mad because (tee-hee) her husband sold their bitcoin without telling her. Hahahahahahahahah. Yes. That is it. That is the reason. It is a crypto-related argument because of course it is. What are we going to learn next, that Erin is mad because Abe didn’t rent a good enough RV for their three-week trip to Burning Man? That Erin is mad because she had the idea for Goop but Abe let the URL lapse? That she wants credit for making a Hamptons store’s chicken salad famous and when she showed up at the store no one recognized her? Oh wait, that’s someone else.

To be fair to Erin, if my husband sold an asset years ago that I thought was appreciating in a bank account somewhere, I would be pissed at him. I think her anger and sense of betrayal are completely natural. I get that. But crypto?! You should not be buying that in the first place. It’s like being mad at Abe for throwing away a losing lottery ticket. It’s a stupid gamble and millions of people lose millions of dollars messing around with it, and Erin is mad that her bitcoin didn’t make her a big enough fortune. Come on. That shit is more volatile than a case of TNT with a Shake Weight on top of it being carried by Sean Penn as he’s greeted by a paparazzo. Abe did you both a fucking favor.

But why did Abe sell the bitcoin? Hahahaha. You know why, right? You know why and it’s the most Erin Mew Mew Lichy answer of all time. Abe sold the bitcoin — hahahahahaha. Sorry. Abe sold the bitcoin to pay off the debt from (hahahahaha) Erin’s failed handbag line!!!!!! Hahahahahahaha. It was called FrameworK with a capital K at the end. Check out this bag she’s using in this article. Of course this shit failed. The only thing more obvious than Erin having a failed handbag line is Racquel’s girlfriend Mel lavishing money and attention on her pets. A lesbian that is a little too into her dogs is like florals for spring. Groundbreaking.

Erin thought she could launch a line of handbags because whenever she’s carrying a bag people say, “God, I love your bag,” and if Erin can buy good handbags, then Erin can certainly design good handbags. Sorry, sister, but that is not the way things work. Just because I have eaten a hundred tons of Oreos does not mean I can successfully bake one. The only thing more obvious than Erin having a handbag line is Erin launching a handbag line that failed and put the couple into debt so they had to sell their bitcoin to make up for it. Oh my God. This is so obvious, so astonishingly, disgustingly basic that of course it is what happened to Erin Mew Mew Lichy. I will never get over this. I will never let it end.

In other Erin-related news, she goes over to Brynn’s house to talk about their fight in the premiere, and Brynn not only serves Erin tap water and makes her walk up the stairs because the “elevator” is “broken,” but then she ignores Erin for the first five minutes they’re together to scroll through her phone. Eventually they apologize to each other for, I don’t know, what are they mad about? Brynn told Jenna that Erin said she was poor but Brynn was just mad that Erin went on Jeff Lewis’s radio show and said absolutely nothing. This argument is dumber than the capital K at the end of FrameworK. I told you this is never going to end.

There are still some fights a-brewing with the ladies, though. Ubah is mad that Brynn twisted what Erin said about Jenna being poor, but she also blames Erin a little bit for even talking to Brynn and giving her something that could be taken out of context. Now, we all know that Brynn spins things to suit how she’s feeling, but I don’t think that can mean no one ever talks to Brynn. Everyone in the group just has to be cautious about picking up any bones that Brynn carries to them. 

Sai is also pissed at Brynn because she got all worked up at Brynn’s kickoff party and yelled at her. I don’t see how that is entirely Brynn’s fault, but I think Sai has a good point about how she threatens people and picks fights to their faces and Brynn does it off-camera. She brings up a text Brynn sent the group about how she’s like carbon monoxide: colorless and odorless and you won’t even notice her as she chokes the life out of you. That’s funny because I would say that Brynn is more like a silent but deadly fart: You don’t know what rotted colon the stench came out of, but if you had to guess, it was probably Brynn. 

I did like the scene between Sai and Jenna where Jenna effing Lyons of all people told Sai she needs to be softer and more vulnerable when talking to Brynn. To be fair, Jenna is a lot more open this season than last, and just as I was surprised to see her possibly future mother-in-law last episode, I was surprised to see her son this episode. Jenna takes him, her assistant, and her friend Heather rock climbing and opens up about her fears of heights and her son leaving home and never returning to New York. It seems like Jenna is taking her own advice. When rock climbing is done, she picks up her new $214,000 burgundy Bentley that she named Jeeves. (She did not; I made that up, but it seems fitting.) The real question is whether she ordered this car before or after the whole “Jenna is poor” rumor started. 

The rest of the episode is about a Blade flight to the Hamptons that Brynn takes with Jessel and Becky Minkoff. Brynn may not be getting financial support from a sugar daddy, but is she getting it from Blade? Not only did we see tons of logos this episode, she was also wearing a Blade hat during her conversation with Erin. We love a bit of brand integration, even if most of it is about how much the women are afraid of helicopters. 

On the helicopter ride, Brynn mentions that she’s starting to get questions from press and from friends about Becky’s alleged involvement with Scientology. “When people ask us about this Scientology shit, what should we say?” Brynn asks. 

“No comment,” is Becky’s short response. Brynn points out that both she and Jessel are publicists and they know “no comment” isn’t going to cut it. In confessional, Becky says, “If you’re curious, read a book.” Okay, I have read a book, I have seen a documentary, and I have watched a reality show starring Leah Remini and I can tell you that Scientology seems like a dangerous cult and I don’t really feel comfortable with this show giving it a platform. I know all about the accusations of slave labor and human trafficking. I know it’s allegedly the reason two of Nicole Kidman’s kids won’t talk to her and that is probably why she makes 52 movies and 147 television shows a year. If anything, we need her to talk to those kids just so we can get a break from her litany of wigs.

I’m not a huge proponent of religion in general, but this one seems to be especially insidious. (This is the part where I am obligated to inform you that the Church of Scientology has denied all of the above-referenced accusations against them.) I also don’t like that this show has basically become about what everyone won’t talk about onscreen. Rebecca was in the New York Times as recently as 2021 espousing the “religion,” but now she expects to answer no questions about it? Please. I also hate that her castmates aren’t willing to take it there. Jenna says that there are extreme parts of all religions. Yes, but Scientology is not a regular religion. Brynn jokes she wants to know if Xenu is single, which is the only thing pointing at how weird this whole thing is. Erin brings up John Travolta and then says she can’t talk about it on-camera, so it seems like the only thing that Erin is willing to discuss on-camera this season is her mother’s cancer, and that seems really fucked up.

Rebecca, in confessional, tells us that it is a recognized world religion, which is false because many countries do not recognize it as such. She also says there is nothing hidden or weird about it. Okay, if that is the case, then where is Shelly Miscavige? Hmmm? Becky? Yes, I am asking you, a woman on a reality show about her life where she won’t share one of the major aspects of her life.

Becky is not taking questions at this time. She says she is willing to have the conversation but not on a helicopter because it’s too loud. “I want to talk about it when there’s a general interest and it’s not just, ‘Tell me about the movie.’ Do you want your friend to tell you about the whole movie or just go see the movie?” This makes about as much sense as the capital K at the end of FrameworK. She wants her friends to have a real interest, but she doesn’t want to tell them about it; so, what, she wants them to see for themselves by going to get audited at the Church of Scientology? That does not sound like any movie I want to watch. I want this cult on my television as much as I want to carry a FrameworK bag, and I can only pray to the Catholic Jesus (who is only slightly less stupid than Xenu but at least he actually existed) that Scientology soon goes the way of Erin’s (hahahahahah) failed handbag line.