The Real Housewives of New York City Recap: Pump Up the Jam

The Real Housewives of New York City
Gloves Off at the Gala
Season 16 Episode 4
Editor’s Rating ★★★
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Two scenes in this episode made me feel like I was right back in the New York of my dreams, where at any moment I could run into Parker Posey on East 9th Street, order a dollar slice, or see a rat that had just become a father to a family of six and was having the best day of his life. The first is when Carole walks along the sidewalk with her emotional-support homosexual, Eric. (You know it has to be Eric with a c because K doesn’t last a second around him.) She’s wearing an effortlessly chic outfit and carrying far too many boxes for any human. She calls Erika to see if she’s going to attend the gala that she’s hosting next week, and Erika says she can’t because “I’m going to The Devil Wears Prada 2 premiere.” Carole asks if she can’t just skip it, and Erika says, “Annie invited my husband and me.” Oh, Annie! You mean Annie Annie? That Annie? Not “The sun will come out tomorrow” Annie, but “It came true” Annie? Oh, got it. Okay. You’re allowed.

The second scene I loved is when Martha Stewart, the East Coast Kathy Hilton, is sitting on the patio at Serafina with her publicist and best friend Sue Magrino and a child walks by that Martha thinks looks thirstier than Jessel Taank on a red carpet. Martha offers the little girl a glass of ice water. Oh, it’s not a girl, the child’s mother says. His name is David. Martha says, “Oh, I’m sorry, Steven. I hope you enjoy your water, Steven. Do you know how to fold a fitted sheet, Steven?” When Daisy sits down for her meeting with the two, the first thing Martha (or was it Sue?) says is “Don’t drink out of that filthy glass a grubby ragamuffin just sipped from it.” Martha tells her that Daisy’s new friend Erika’s husband just gave her two tickets to the World Cup Final that cost between $40,000 and $60,000 and, no, she can’t get more tickets for Daisy and her child whose name is probably Steven. (And if it’s not, that is what Martha will call him anyway.) Daisy asks how, with tickets that expensive, “normal” people are supposed to attend. “They’re not,” Martha says with a pan so dead that it’s buried in Grant’s Tomb.

This is the New York I love. This is the New York I want to be a part of and was for several decades until a man that I love dearly dragged me to England to melt in the rain and eat muffins covered in strawberry jam. (You know what they call English muffins in England? Muffins.) It’s so effortless and chic and downtown and cool. It’s full of people with great but indescribable jobs who are always doing hip things and getting great invitations, and you could be one of them at any moment. The dried leaves whip off the curb in a little breeze and bam, you’re in a tuxedo shaking Chloë Sevigny’s hand and saying something embarrassing. It is also a New York filled with status anxiety, where everyone is working hard to afford a popcorn ceiling over their heads, and no matter what absolutely fabulous thing you’re doing, there are hundreds of people within a mile radius doing something even more fabulous that you’ll never know about. 

I’m really enjoying this view back into the city and back into these women’s lives. Even the scene with Sai and her aunt Sufia where they sit on the water (I assume in Fidi) was something new. Some of the information is old. We heard in previous seasons that Sai’s mother was living with them and got too drunk around the kids and had to move out. We didn’t get all the gory details about how she let the dog soil the house, that she painted all over the walls like Kim Richards with a set of markers, that she was so wasted that the house was an absolute shambles. We didn’t know that her mother moved into a shelter after that or that she died three months later. We didn’t know that she didn’t feel like her husband, David, supported her through all of this or really showed her any affection or love at all. We didn’t know that he took her out for an expensive dinner and then put it on her credit card. (Yes, that had to sting, but if it was a joint debt because of their marriage, wasn’t it their credit card to start with? Is any of his money really his own if she was earning all of it?) Anyway, what is new is how cinematic the season is with Sai and Sufia blinking into the bleaching sun as if they’re in a Sundance movie about divorce that uses reality television as a framing device to show how artificial all of our lives really are.

For all of this novelty, plenty of the episode is business as usual. It starts with Hailey and Erin getting into a fight about Jon Gosselin and his disappointed bride Kate Plus Eight. Hailey, of course, gets upset that Erin is so cavalier about this thing that nearly ruined her life and weaponized it against her because Hailey likened her to jam and called her boring. As Hailey explains how hard it is for her, Erin says, “How are you the victim here? You came for me.” This is Erin Mew Mew Lichy to a T. Calling her boring and saying she’s like jam is not the same as dredging up Hailey’s past trauma and giving it the least generous read imaginable. Erin says that it’s in the public domain, that Hailey made a TikTok about it, so it should be fair game. (“What?” Hailey asks. “A TipTop?”) 

It’s not the information; it’s the intention. As Carole points out, these two things are not synonymous. It’s like Hailey dampened Erin with one of those little squirt guns you get at the Duane Reade, and Erin retaliated by burning down Hailey’s apartment building with all of the families still inside. I would tell Erin to learn a sense of proportion, but she can’t even figure out how to untuck her hair from her shirt collar, so I don’t think that’s going to happen. As Hailey storms out and Daisy gets upset because of how much she spends on food, Sai greets her in the driveway and uses her best Rosie Perez accent (it only comes out when she is in a part of Brooklyn without subway access) to get her back inside. 

At the table once again, Hailey stares at Erin as if her eyes shoot needles and she’s slowly boring them through the squishiest parts of Erin’s face but doesn’t say much else. Instead, Carole brings up how hurt she is by Jessel’s comments about Carolyn Bessette and says that she can’t be boiled down to some clothes and an aesthetic. Carole calls them “dingbat” comments, which, as she points out in her confessional, is the kindest way she could put such rude and idiotic things. While Jessel does not like this classification, it seems like it’s squashed. 

Then the conversation turns to Daisy and her popcorn ceiling (a term I thought was used to talk about the restrictions on women’s careers at movie theaters). Daisy reveals that she pays “like $300 a month” in rent. Okay, okay, okay, okay. Is her rent “like $300,” or is her rent $300? Is she saying “like $300” as in some unspecified paltry amount, or is she saying “like $300” in that it’s $376.87 a month because it goes up half a percent a year and now the rent is around $300 but some unspecified number she is unsure of? I need all of these questions answered; it is very important. What is strange, though, is how Sai says she wishes she had such an apartment, and Daisy says she could never live in one because it doesn’t have enough amenities and then just lobs a grenade about how she thinks that Sai spends too much money on rent because she needs to be fancy. Sai gets very upset about this, and I am befuddled by her reaction, as Jessel is by the meat content of a matzo ball. 

Hailey and Erin’s fight comes up again at the gala that Carole invites everyone to. I want to think this is a fun gala because Jennifer Tilly is there with her tits so high and proud that Hailey tries to pound them like Uncle Jesse playing the bongo drums in the “Kokomo” music video. However, these galas are terrible. The cocktail hour can be fun but then you sit around eating terrible food, listening to boring speeches, yawning through an auction that takes way longer than it should, and, worst of all, the dessert is always disappointing. 

As soon as Hailey arrives, she doesn’t say anything to Erin, probably because she’s stoned and has no idea where she is. Erin immediately asks her, “You just walked in and didn’t say ‘hello.’ What is happening? I don’t get it.” What do you mean you don’t get it? You were insufferably rude to her the last time she saw you, and she thinks that you are not only boring but also an asshole. And she’s possibly so stoned she wants to spread you on a muffin, English or otherwise, and eat you because she thinks you’re strawberry jam. How is Erin shocked about any of this?

Of course, production sat the two next to each other at dinner, and during the boring auction the two start talking about their issues. Erin is sort of apologizing and says, “I didn’t know it was going to get you that upset, or else I wouldn’t have brought it up.” Really, sister? You expect us to believe that? If she didn’t bring it up to upset Hailey, why did she bring it up? There is no good motive here. If it wasn’t to upset her, it was to embarrass her or humiliate her or get Kate Plus Eight back in the Zeitgeist so that she can be on Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test. (No, wait. That already happened.) Of all the things wrong with Erin, her lack of genuineness (genuinity? Are any of these words?) may be the worst. We don’t really get to hear what she and Hailey are whispering to each other because Carole, Jessel, Eric the emotional-support gay, and someone definitely named Karen at the next table are all trying to shut them up while this interminable auction is happening. Just let the girls fight already.

I must say I don’t really get Hailey. I’m liking her so far, but it just seems like the elevator isn’t going all the way up to the penthouse. We see her at her parents’ house (though we don’t know where they are), and Hailey pops up with her binoculars and then her mother, Lauren, pops up with hers, then the two of them pop up together like this is a scene out of a Rugrats cartoon. They’re birdwatching together, which Hailey’s they/them therapist told her she should do with a group of queers. But no, here she is, doing it with her mother — a hobby she may not even enjoy, but she inherited it from Lauren.

This conversation, though not in New York, is as new and fascinating as some of this episode’s other scenes. Hailey says she dated Jon because her mother was friends with him and insinuated her mother set it up. Then when the tabloid fallout happened, her mother wasn’t there to help her because her mother was too upset by the magazines talking about her, not at all concerned about what this was doing to her daughter. Hailey says, “She’s incapable of realizing it happened to me, orchestrated by her.” I can’t work Hailey out. I can’t work these two out. Just when it seemed like it might make sense, we see the pair spot an eagle hovering over the trees. They follow it with their binoculars, both silent but moving in tandem, as if this has happened a million times. The eagle swoops down, grasping something in its talons and swooping back up in the sky, looking for its aerie. They plod along a bit, following the eagle back to its home. There are several eaglets in the nest. They can’t hear it, but they can see the chicks crying, calling out for some food, for their mother to bring them something back. That’s when the eagle takes the dead mouse in its talon and puts the whole thing in its mouth in one bite. The eagle looks down at the chicks, and Hailey thinks that she’s going to chew it up and spew some back out into each of the eager maws. Just as she thinks she can hear them wailing, hear their calls, she sees their mother swallow that mouse and fly away, gulping in midair.