Aftershocks
A Real Housewives wedding and the hottest eye candy yet: Meet the Cuban BradPitt
Who wouldn't want to photograph the Cuban Brad Pitt?
Marysol found snowy wedding bliss on the Real Housewives. Until the Frenchhusband moves in with the tacky wine fridge.
Memories. Thanks, or no thanks?
This week on The Real Housewives of Miami it was a mixed bag of bitter recollections, uncomfortable reminders and utter fabrications. Where does this show take place, Miami or the land of myth?
If there’s a character making some authentic memories in this show, certainly it is tender Marysol. She and French beau Philippe are alone in Aspen for the spontaneous wedding of their dreams, and they have just that right mix of nerves and confidence as they wait for the Silver Queen Gondola to take them to the mountain top.
A sensitive piano melody plays in the background, and Marysol ruminates only briefly that the cables could snap and they could plummet to their death before completing the ceremony.
What a transformation! When last we left our blushing bride, it seemed the snowy Rockies were giving her cold feet. Philippe must have warmed her right up. The two trudge up a mountain to exchange rings.
At the peak, Marysol is stunning in her white gown, strolling hand-in-hand with Philippe through the snow drifts. There are no witnesses to the union but the camera crew as an elderly Justice of the Peace, his hands shaking, reads the vows they’ve written to each other.
“I’m feeling like I am walking in a dream,” Marysol has written for Philippe. “I have loved you more each day than the day before,” the Justice reads from Philippe’s vows.
The magic lasts at least until the pair returns to Miami and have their first quarrel over Philippe’s tacky wine refrigerator. He’s moved it to Marysol’s apartment without first asking. “That comes with the French husband,” he says, as if it shouldn’t be a surprise to her.
While Marysol’s marital bliss could cause glaciers to melt, Alexia clearly hasn’t got much heat with hubby Herman. No wonder she resorts to telling herself self-aggrandizing stories to distract her from the seven-year-itch she’s feeling.
Alexia claims to have discovered the “Cuban Brad Pitt,” William Levy, who has to be the hottest thing to show up on any branch of the The Real Housewives family tree. Levy appeared on the cover of Venue earlier in his career, and this week she’s doing him again.
Photographing him again, that is. Clearly Levy’s not only hot but a real sweetheart. How much fake flirting is one man expected to perform? How many of Alexia’s jokes about underwear left on her bedroom floor can he take? It’s hard being beautiful.
Alexia may be the most boring blonde ever to grace the Housewives, Even her car wreck this week was a snooze. But she has no lack of ambition.
“My long term objective,” she announces, is that, “I want Venue to be everywhere.” Since the March/April issue of Venue features The Real Housewives of Miami on the cover, we suppose Alexia just wants to see herself everywhere.
The crass Lea Black doesn’t seem to have any viable memories of her own, so she’s off to the decidedly low-brow Everglades Camp to create some memories for teenage girls moving out of foster care. She’s chosen a lovely outfit for her motivational speech to the troubled gals: light blue leopard-print trench coat and a pair of tight slacks.
The girls stare her down with utter contempt, some of them chewing gum. One is wearing a T-shirt that says “I’m Kind of a Big Deal.” Lea admits that she’s prepared cheat notes, even if she’s been doing motivational speaking for years. She begins by saying, “Your thoughts actually create things in the universe that create things in your life.” How motivational!
Without warning, Lea’s speech veers into tough-love territory. “I’m not Tinkerbell, you’re not going to wake up tomorrow with a great life,” she says. She imagines out loud what she clearly assumes they’re thinking, chanting “I’ve got acne, I’m overweight, I don’t have any friends,” and the girls look like they’re planning to corner her in the classroom and stone her to death. They have already explained their aspirations to become surgeons and cosmetologists.
Here our memories turned to the pretentious LuAnn de Lesseps, a New York Real Housewife who made a brief trip downtown one episode to give interviewing tips to recovering addicts out of work. Why do so many Real Housewives, who married in order to avoid their own careers, think they are such a resource for those less fortunate?
“We’re on a tight schedule,” she tells the girls suddenly. “I’d love to hang out, but I gotta run.” No you woudn’t, Lea. You can’t wait to get out of the crappy Everglade Camp and get a glass of Grigio.
In reality, Lea’s off to yet another installment of the Miami wives’ tedious, if sometimes memorable, cooking parties. Who thought it was a good idea to have that many knives around? Larsa makes it clear she’s out to outdo her castmates.
“Cooking parties aren’t supposed to be competitive,” she says, “but everything should be competitive. Otherwise, what’s the point?” It’s as if it was she, and not husband Scottie Pippen, who won all those championships and got himself admitted to the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Larsa picks marinara meathead Steve Martorano to whip the girls into shape. He looks more like he’s from the WWF than the Cordon Bleu, but he does manage to get them all to work. By the time Leah arrives, the girls are squeezing mozzarella and discussing the finer points of balls. Cristy arrives late, as usual, and as the girls finally eat and toast Marysol’s nuptials, we could already sense a fight looming on the horizon like a Florida hurricane.
Leah grandstands by thanking everyone elaborately for contributing to her charity, in that way that people thank you so as to remind you of how great they are. The girls got the message and Adriana picked up her cue in what seems the most obviously arranged fight in Housewife history. Adriana turns to Cristy and says, “I hear you weren’t happy about paying for your tickets.”
It quickly becomes one of those interminable “she said, she said, she pretends she never said” kind of events. Couldn’t someone flip a table, yank off a wig or tear an extension from someone’s head? We’re not suggesting any actual choking, like in Atlanta, and besides, NeNe Leakes must be busy enough fighting with Star Jones on Celebrity Apprentice.
Still, no one talks trash like that rapid-fire spitfire Cristy. After the luncheon, she and Larsa chat by their cars. “Who is Adriana anyway?” Cristy Rice demands. “She has to kiss Leah’s ass because she introduces her to men with money, and all she cares about is men with money.”
Cristy roars off in her red Porsche, and we’re left briefly to wonder if the shame of Ticket-gate will force her into a fiery Butterfield 8-style cataclysm.
Cristy? Never. But watch out Adriana, she just might be rolling up behind you.
