The end of this episode felt like the climax of a Scooby-Doo cartoon. Everyone is gathered around to hear the evidence that will tell us there wasn’t a ghost at all, nor a demon haunting these proceedings. It was really a person in a disguise. As they rip off the mask to see who has been causing trouble all season long, it’s Adriana de Moura! Well, maybe when they ripped off the mask, they found a demon after all.
Adriana has had a good season, ducking most of the drama and staying out of fights so that she can pout at events about how her friend Julia has betrayed her for Alexia and Marysol. Okay, there was that one episode with the dueling boats where she screamed at Marysol about her old knees, but even that was kind of cute and quaint, and it seemed like Marysol deserved it somehow. But now the old Adriana is back, the one who exasperated me for three years during the show’s first incarnation as someone who can’t be reasoned with, who takes things out of context, and has little loyalty for any of her friends when they aren’t giving her a fawning level of devotion. Yes, she was exasperating, but that also made her a perfect Housewife.
This all starts when Adriana shows up at her mortal enemy, Marysol’s, house because Marysol is hosting a gifting suite that also doubles as a holiday party. Strangely enough, the one thing Marysol and Alexia don’t talk about is which day they were both going to have their Christmas parties, and they end up at the exact same time. Adriana, Guerdy, Larsa, and Stephanie visit Marysol’s, where they’re given free pajamas, IV drips, jewelry, and a variety of other gifts. They also get to rub shoulders with our favorite undercover spy, Jill Zarin, who has been plotting her revenge against Andy Cohen from her lair in Boca Raton for years. Meanwhile, Julia, Lisa, and Kiki all pull the short straw and go to Alexia and Frankie’s Beauty Bar for free manicures, half-stale prosecco, and warm sushi passed around by waitstaff that aren’t even hot. Also, there is no Santa, but Alexia’s gay Jonny is there to trash-talk Todd once more before flying home to Spain.
At Marysol’s party, Adriana is already telling Guerdy that Julia is not a good friend because of what happened between them at her art party in the last episode. She feels that Julia is using her and that she has been her covert enemy this whole time. She also says that Kiki is a problem for making a joke about her age in a mean-spirited way. Stephanie is worried that Adriana and Kiki, the two “friends of” who are the lynchpins of her own holiday party, aren’t getting along. Adriana says that she will make sure that everything goes smoothly.
Between these competing parties and Stephanie’s big Christmas blowout, Julia has an event that is both for opera and foster care. It is not a fundraiser, mind you. It’s not a concert either. I’m not sure what it is. It seems like a promotional event for Carmen at the Florida Grand Opera, which Julia costarred in, but Julia tried to wrap it up like a charity gala. At the event, she introduces the opera and the foster-care case worker she used to adopt her new children so that they can possibly work together in the future. This event could have been an email.
Julia’s new besties, Alexia and Marysol, attend, as does Kiki, and they’re all talking about why Adriana didn’t come. Adriana says later that it’s because she had to rehearse with her 12-person band and couldn’t reschedule with all of them. In the conversation about this event and who is attending and why, there are many people who are correct. Julia says that it shows how Adriana feels about her and her children that she’s not there, and she’s right. Adriana says that Julia texted her the day before, didn’t tell her she was going to sing, and she couldn’t skip her rehearsal, and she’s right. Alexia says that Adriana wants Julia down in the darkness, hating everyone “in the group,” and now that Julia is starting to make friends and see the light, Adriana wants to punish her, and she is right.
They’re all right, and they’re all also wrong. Julia should have understood that the short notice and Adriana’s performance didn’t allow her to come. Adriana should have understood that this was important to Julia and at least texted her after rehearsal to see how the event went. Alexia should have understood … well, actually, I think she has known Adriana long enough to fully understand what was going on, and she wasn’t wrong at all, perhaps for the first time in her entire tenure. Someone give Alexia a gold star and a raise.
This conversation naturally continues at Stephanie’s big party, which her husband, Masoud, doesn’t even attend because he has a business dinner. He couldn’t reschedule? Marysol’s husband, Steve, makes it. Lisa’s boyfriend, Jody, isn’t going to come because she told him it was December and there wouldn’t be any A/C, but then she told him that there would be plenty of snow, and his eyes bulged out of his head and he shouted, “I’m there!” while grinding his jaw an inordinate amount.
Keeping her word, Adriana is initially on her best behavior, especially with Kiki, who pulls Adriana to apologize for putting a math equation on her birthday cake that gave away her age. Adriana accepts her apology immediately, and she apologizes for the nonsense she pulled in the last episode, where she got her Black friend Carol to tell Kiki that she’s not racist. They hug and make up, and it is the only good thing that Adriana does for the rest of the episode.
No, I take that back. Adriana does a good thing when she performs her new hit single, “I Love My Dog.” Of all the Housewives songs we’ve heard over the years — “Tardy for the Party,” “Money Can’t Buy You Class,” Danielle Staub’s lesbian anthem “Real Close” — none has been more relatable, more honest, more catchy than “I Love My Dog.” It is literally just a song about how much she loves her dog. Been there, sister. Everyone has. Dogs are great. It’s like the “Smelly Cat” of the Real Housewives’ discography.
But before she can perform it, she is outside holding up the performance with her diva behavior, demanding that it be dark and people move away from her piano, and that everything be exactly right. Sure, being an artist is about having and preserving a vision. But it is also about being on time and pleasing an audience. I hate to break it to Adriana, this isn’t Carnegie Hall. This is an office Christmas party in a food court. You want to be professional and prepared, but let’s acknowledge the limitations of the venue.
After she sings, Julia sits her down and asks why she didn’t go to her event. Adriana says that Julia doesn’t appreciate “her craft.” Um, no one does. She sings two Auto-Tuned dance tracks and one novelty song about pets. She also said Julia expects her to “give up her dream” to attend her event. Sure, this is a stepping stone, but is this her dream? When Julia points out that she also performs, Adriana says that she has only been doing it for a year, whereas Adriana has been doing it for 14 years. So the longevity of her dream somehow supersedes Julia’s dream?
As the fight escalates, there is an exchange that perfectly encapsulates Adriana. She shouts at Julia about whether she knew that her band had 12 people in it. Julia, getting exasperated, asks if Adriana has checked in on her children, which is probably a much bigger thing than Adriana’s languishing music career. Adriana asks, “Am I their godmother?” This is how Adriana thinks. They’re only worth checking on if she is the prime person in their life, if they are somehow a reflection of her. She will only put in the effort if Julia does things the way she wants them done.
Adriana then accuses Julia of being a loser whom she found in some grubby home and got her on the show. I don’t know, this feels like it might be the other way around. After all, Julia has been main cast and she’s a friend of. Doesn’t it seem like maybe they only kept Adriana around to get to Julia, a former beauty queen who is married to a tennis legend? But Adriana accuses Julia of that because that is the way Adriana works. Adriana knows she was using Julia, so she assumes Julia was using her back.
Then Julia says something very revelatory, which explains everything she’s said about Adriana and how she’s acted all season. “What people don’t know, in front of everyone, she was acting like my best friend,” Julia says in a confessional. “But behind closed doors, she was guilt-tripping me for things, she was controlling me, she was yelling at me, and making me feel smaller than this all the time. I just can’t take it anymore. It’s four years of mental and psychological abuse.” I’m not saying that Julia is blameless or exemplary all the time (especially this season). But this all makes sense and tracks with what we know about Adriana. I can see how she holds every minute detail hostage and recounts it on the trip home, putting Julia through a litany of loyalty tests.
After Stephanie reads her speech like she’s Alexis Bellino auditioning to do the news, we have our big Scooby-Doo moment. All of the women are standing in a circle, and Marysol tells them that she is the one who coached Adriana in her fight with Kiki. Marysol says that both she and Adriana know she said “ratchet,” but that Marysol told Adriana to say she said “wretched.” The cost? Adriana just had to leave Marysol alone for two years. What’s funny about these two is that I think they are the shadow puppets of everything that happens on the show. They hate each other so much and are both so manipulative that they’ve been Keyser Söze–ing this shit since the jump.
Marysol is smart to take advantage of this and makes Adriana look terrible in front of the group. She also gets a good dig in when Adriana, still wearing her red bejeweled costume, says that Marysol looks like she’s going to a funeral, and Marysol tells her she looks like she’s going to an ice rink. I also take Adriana’s point that she was talking to Marysol, and she just came up with this plan. It’s not like Adriana asked her. They’re both to blame in this; there is blood on all of their hands. These two friends are just dragging us all to the bottom, and I couldn’t be happier to be gasping for air. The only thing that could break up the fight? Gifts! From Anastasia of Beverly Hills! This show is just swag all the way down.
Then we get the wrap ups for the season: Stephanie is now talking to one of her sisters, Julia is talking to one of her daughters, Guerdy is talking to everyone in her family, especially her hot husband, Larsa has a new boyfriend, who, in a shocking turn of events, is an NBA player, and, most importantly, Todd and Alexia are officially broken up … for now. But we never know. The wind may shift, the weather may change, there may be Amazon trucks to escape from a deadly party in or not. Everything is a variable. But these women, their gripes and offenses, their relationships with each other, men, money, walls of Birkins, private planes, and ex-husbands are always steady, will always keep going, like the surf on Miami Beach, pulverizing away night after night, drawing us all to its majesty, and drowning those who get too close.