Real Housewives of Atlanta recap: Season 9, Episode 17

Hello my RHO-ATLiens — Jodi Walker here. It’s been a while since I walked the mean Atlanta Housewives streets at EW (the trashcans are overflowing with discarded statement-sleeve blouses, the rats wear tiki hut wigs, and pages of printed-out text message litter the ground), but I’ve dipped back in just in time to talk about… the Kenya and Apollo texting scandal of 2K14? Did I never leave? Is this some sort of 13 Going on 30 situation where I thought I had been living my life for the last two years, but I’m about to drop back into the closet of my old apartment covered in wishing dust and realize that no time has passed, I’m just in love with Mark Ruffalo now?

Let’s face it: We have been blessed by the Bravo gods with this fight between Kandi and Porsha. Not only was it off-the-noggin’ bonkers, and featured more utterances and sporadic bleepings of “she said she wanted to eat my p—y ’til I came” than one could have ever imagined possible, but there was also one arguer so clearly in the wrong, and one in the mostly-right. In the Housewives world there is no greater rarity/gift than getting to understand an argument between two women enough to decipher who is in the right and who is in the with wrong with absolute certainty.

The more typical situation, as with the central argument tonight, is that everyone is very, very wrong for very different reasons, because this is a show about a beautiful, modern-day monsters. Kenya should not be throwing divorce parties for people who don’t want divorce parties. And Phaedra should not be bringing up nonsense from two years ago that her awful husband already admitted he lied about and that she has organized a number of prayer circles and convertible rides to move past. But let’s just stay focused on the positive for now: This episode featured an entire segment where people just made fun of Uncle Peter. Real question: Have I died and gone to heaven?

No, it surely was not heaven, because in heaven I know that I can despise Peter with abandon — the clip of him sniffing some hostess’ neck plays on a loop and I just get to laugh and laugh, and all the Hemsworth brothers are there, even the Westworld one. This can’t be heaven because throughout this episode, Peter behaves with an uncharacteristic dignity, especially with regard to being respectful to his soon to be ex-wife. Because just like Porsha’s poison of choice has switched from violent rage to pathological lying, the tides of despicable men on RHOA have also shifted…

And we’ll get to Bob. Oh, we’ll get to Bob.

First, though, let’s pick back up in Maui where last week left off. Apparently, all of these women can think of no better birthday treat for the men in their lives than to drag them to a contractually obligated trip where they will spend the majority of the time screaming at their co-workers. The rest of the time will be divided between various nautical vessels and the tennis courts, where Phaedra and Kenya will shore up their budding friendship just in time to let producers convince them to burn it to the ground.

For Peter’s birthday, Cynthia has arrived at his door bearing room service, and y’all, I just knew we were about to have to experience another awful sexual scenario, like that time Uncle Peter came downstairs in his knee-length boxers so Cynthia could give him a — shudder — sensual massage. But thank Andy Cohen on high, wrapped up in the gift box “to remember [her] by” is not a naked photo (I can’t be the only one who thought it was going in that direction), but a blinged-out Bible…which is somehow even weirder.

Peter and Cynthia talk about how uncomfortable it is to not know how to treat each other as they transition out of being husband and wife. Peter wonders if he was a bad husband (all that hostess sniffing wasn’t great, Pete!), and Cynthia says she knows she was never cut out to be a good wife. They both take accountability for their actions and tell each other they can always call if they need to, and it’s all very civil. There’s only one thing that can right these unbalanced Housewives scales then…

NEXT: Roasted your rice

Group dinner! Li’l Todd has arranged for Peter’s birthday dinner to feature both a pig roast and an Uncle Peter roast. Phaedra says, “I can’t wait to roast Uncle Ben and put him on a plate with a side of his own special rice,” which I love in theory, but all she really ends up saying is that she always wants to bury him because he… dresses… so… fresh?

Everyone goes a little tame, but the gist is, Peter is old, but still took all of Cynthia’s money, and that is a roasting I can get behind. Of course, the sickest burn is when Porsha attempts to be funny (???) in her roast by saying about Cynthia, “You gonna hit it tonight,” and Peter fires back, “If you don’t get there first.” I thought Big Todd was about to lose his damn mind from laughing at his own girlfriend. Cynthia’s attempt at being funny, I kid you not: “You definitely brush your teeth like no other, for sure. Get all around the tongue, the back of the tongue…”

Now wasn’t that a nice time? Wouldn’t it be fun if we ruined it with a painful fight between exes on a boat, followed by a weird-ass party and a rehashing of events from two years ago? The Burruss-Tuckers plan a catamaran ride at sunset for everyone; in true RHOA fashion, on the upper deck, everyone works to capture their best selfie lighting, while below deck, a Tennessee Williams play unfolds. I was so proud of Sheree — not an emotion often visited in the world of a Housewives viewer — last week when she said she was done with Bob after he made light of the fact that he had not only abused her in the past, but never apologized for it, and it was my only hope for her going into tonight’s conversation that she could hold onto that strength.

My goodness, I am relieved but exhausted. I would be happy if we never saw or heard from Bob again, save for some Kandi Coated reenactment of “Cell Block Tango,” perhaps. Bob starts off by saying that he wants to apologize for what happened at the jewelry store: “What I thought would be a good time didn’t turn out so good.” Then he dares to ask Sheree what he did in the store to make her walk away from him. Hmm, I dunno, Bob, could it have been the sociopathic laughing when Sheree confronted you about not taking your past indiscretions seriously?

Sheree once again tells Bob that he doesn’t take anything seriously, and that they’ve never really discussed all the different ways he did her wrong, including but not limited to walking out on her and their two small children without so much as a phone call for six months. Also, not paying mortgages, cutting off credit cards, and all those times he’s talked about wanting to unbuckle her seat belt and slam on the brakes so that she would fly through a car windshield: “It’s abuse, it’s mental abuse, and for you to make a joke of it… it’s been like that the entire time.”

Bob yells that he takes the blame for all of that, but that’s not him anymore. Sheree says she’s not really feeling any true remorse for his past actions, and Bob says he doesn’t know what to do: “If you don’t know what to do as a grown-ass man, then I don’t know — I can’t teach you.” Bob screams, “WHAT THE F—! You want me to bleed myself right here? Slit my wrists so you know I’m serious about it?” You know what Sheree wants, Bob? “I WANT YOU TO HAVE SOME REMORSE FOR WHAT THE F— YOU DID! THAT’S WHAT I WANT YOU TO HAVE!” Y’all: They on some Tennessee. Williams. S—.

Upstairs, Cynthia gets her weave caught in a fan that plugs into her iPhone.

NEXT: I do, I did, I’m done with TextGate2K14…

It’s clear Bob takes no accountability for all the wrong he’s done to his ex-wife and, worse for Sheree, his children. Sheree says that he left these small kids, and then he came back and they never talked about it; he never tried to heal what he had broken. And speaking of breaking: my heart, as Sheree weeps, “Even with building the Chateau, it’s something I have to do for myself, I have to do for my kids. Because I don’t want to ever depend on a man. Because the one man I was supposed to be able to trust… you left. And you didn’t give a f—, Bob.”

It’s time for Sheree to get her groove back Stella-style, it’s time for Bob to get the hell off my television, and according to Kenya, it’s time for her to give all the women a surprise when they get back to the hotel. Whatever could she be planning?

Why it’s a divorce party for Cynthia and Phaedra, the former of whom nearly starts crying when she walks in and sees the banner that reads, “I do, I did, I’m done,” and the latter of whom looks like she just swallowed a bar of the Four Seasons’ finest hand soap when she walks in and realizes Kenya is trying to make her celebrate the divorce that she stayed completely mum on via pin-the-penis-on-the-naked-man games and dick-shaped lipsticks. The other guests, though down to pin a few penises in the name of good fun, seem just as uncomfortable. Sheree says she threw her own divorce party but you have to be at a certain level mentally: “Neither of them are divorced yet, so throwing them a divorce party may be… a lot premature.”

Cynthia is willing to entertain Kenya with her own personal trauma, but Phaedra says she’s feeling ill and leaves the party in search of a ginger ale. If Phaedra had stopped there, everything would have been fine, and Thelma and Louise could have continued to explore non-team sports together. But in between ginger ale burps in her hotel room, Phaedra sends Porsha a text message: “I’m… appalled that they would think the break-up of a family is a cause for celebration, and with the host being the trifling woman who was texting my husband. Disgusting and disgraceful.” Naturally, Porsha reads the message aloud, and naturally Kenya can’t believe that Phaedra didn’t want to have a little fun at the party she didn’t ask for. But mostly…

It’s that text message crack. Kenya goes to Phaedra’s hotel room, and for a while they keep it civil. But then Phaedra brings up that Kenya played a rather contentious role in her marriage, and Kenya says she has to stop her right there, because she called her trifling and she is not trifling. “That was trifling what you did,” says Phaedra. I believe the trifling allegations are twofold: both that Kenya threw a divorce party for Phaedra, who has been very private about her divorce, and, per Phaedra, that when she was married, “Kenya continually flirted with my husband.” Kenya says she’s not the reason for Phaedra’s marriage ending. Phaedra says Kenya was disrespectful to her marriage in the past and then tried to throw her a divorce party. The clock reads 2:03 a.m.

What say you, friends? Is there a right and a wrong in this divorce party fight? Would you also like to leave Bob behind in Maui, preferably on that speed boat from last week with a brick on the gas pedal? And like Cynthia, did you think you “put the balls in his butt or something”? Can’t wait to mix it up with you once more in the comments!

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