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    Aftershocks

    It's official: Only Houston could save Real Housewives from itsfranchise-killing Miami mess

    Joseph Campana
    Theodore Bale
    Mar 30, 2011 | 11:17 am
    • Adrianna's strip tease wasn't exactly a high note for the "Real Housewives"franchise.
    • When you miss Danielle Staub's drama, you know it's been a rough season.
    • Andy Cohen might want to rethink his stance on Houston. Especially if he wantsto keep this cash-cow franchise alive.

    Don’t look for flipped tables or yanked extensions in Miami.

    You know you’re in Real Housewives trouble if your franchise is replaced by a show called Pregnant in Heels. That’s right. After a surprisingly short season, the five saucy spitfires of Florida find themselves displaced by a nanny concierge.

    We can’t really tell you what a nanny concierge is, but here are six reasons why it’s twilight of The Real Housewives, at least in Miami.

    Your most exciting character is a woman who describes herself as “nearly 99 ½ .” Marysol’s mystifying mom did it again for us. As she looks over Marysol’s gorgeous wedding photos, she can’t get enough of her daughter, who looks like “royalty” while her new son-in-law looks like “a bodyguard protecting your mink.” We suspect she’ll warm to Philippe and she certainly held court at Marysol’s misguided cooking lesson party. This brings us to our next reason.

    Your brand new French husband, the one with a sexy Rugby player’s build, is hawking frozen fish at your “elegant” dinner party. When it’s her turn to impress the gals at yet another cooking ‘n’ cocktails soirée, the best Marysol can do is invite Philippe to introduce his new line of healthy pre-packaged foods. At least Marysol has gone to the trouble of providing each guest with a monogrammed chef jacket.

    “You can dress like a chef and it will taste like a chef [sic]” chimes Philippe as he cuts through a plastic bag he’s just pulled from a pot of boiling water.

    The other women watch as if it were some kind of failed joke. “I feel like I’m on an infomercial,” Alexia exclaims, and we know just what she means.

    When Philippe finishes his presentation of flaked, pre-cooked salmon with a few diced tomatoes, we wondered if he would place the plate on the floor for his over-privileged and hungry house cat.

    Your show keeps staging the same failed dinner party (with psychic) as if it’s Groundhog Day and even Bill Murray couldn’t save you. We knew from the first terrible party at Lea Black’s house that no good could come from these “cooking lessons.”

    No one learned to cook, but the girls were great with knives. Elsa shows up in stylish sunglasses and what looks a like a Roberto Cavalli frock, and there wasn’t enough wine in Philippe’s well-stocked refrigerator to dull the shrill voice of Larsa Pippen.

    When Adriana asks for one of Elsa’s famous readings, Elsa plays coy, saying, “I’m very expensive, darling!” Larsa shrieks that she doesn’t believe in psychics, but then goads Elsa into reading her vibes.

    “I like you very much,” Elsa says, “but you’re emotionally immature.” Worse still, “you’re worried about a man, your man.” She doles out kinder words for Lea, Adrianna, and Alexia before telling Cristy that her split from NBA star Glenn Rice was her own fault.

    In a video diary Larsa shrieks, “I’m the most stable person here” before attacking the other wives for their many divorces and children. Elsa must be the problem, she concludes: “My mom always gave me a pat on the back and told me I was fabulous, so I grew up thinking everything I did was great.”

    Well, a girl can dream. Elsa says it best later. “Stupid and redundant,” she calls them, and, “a bunch of people who probably didn’t even go to high school. I don’t remember anything intelligent or even funny they said. They are Miss Nobodies.”

    We couldn’t have said it any better. Come on, Bravo, give Elsa her own show. We’re sure she can reverse the Miami ratings slide.

    You need a Canyon Ranch vacation and newly-learned stripper moves to get a man to marry you. Adrianna and Frederic spirit themselves away for an erotic mud bath to discuss future plans. Within seconds Frederic agrees to marry her, adopt her son and tell-off her ex-husband. All of this happens before she performs the strip tease she’s been practicing with a coach.

    We’d hoped to be spared an unseemly display. But when she whips off a gold lame dress to reveal a chintzy red negligee and stutters “I work in a strip club” in some pale imitation of longing, we found ourselves missing Danielle “Garbage” Staub of New Jersey Housewives fame.

    Your son aspires to a modeling career, which excites you more than it excites him. Alexia is full of girlish anticipation when she brings her 17-year-old son Peter to meet Ron, a high-powered Miami modeling agent.

    “He came out in Ocean Drive Magazine!” she says of his one and only gig. Surely, it’s just a small step up to the cover of GQ!

    Alexia is practically drooling when Peter has to take off his shirt for the photographer, and her voice-over reminds us that he’s beautiful and he has a beautiful body. Perhaps, but he doesn’t look like high-fashion material to us, and once the photographer leaves, he’s quick to yell at Mom for not preventing him from stuffing himself before the shoot.

    “Of course I’m gonna show a little belly after that,” he retorts. “You’re ready to model for Calvin Klein!” she insists. Haven’t we seen this unfortunate dialogue played out before, in New Jersey and Orange County?

    Even a celebrity chef and fresh organic produce can’t save your disastrous luncheon.The crass Lea Black, in a white ruffled collar that reminds us of a paint-by-number clown portrait, decides to surprise the other housewives with a two-hour SUV limousine drive out of Miami. When they arrive at Paradise Farms to enjoy a meal cooked by none other than Michelle Bernstein, all the women can do is complain about the heat and the bugs.

    And on top of it, they have to harvest their own vegetables! Even a sampling of some fresh clitoria flowers (“it tastes just like honeysuckle!” farm owner Gabriele Marewski exults) doesn’t lift the mood.

    Marysol looks like a goth chicken in her black-feathered hat. When Larsa pipes up with, “My mom is even a bigger bitch than your Mom,” Marysol just goes silent. That remark would have flipped a table in New Jersey. Here it just dampens the already humid crowd. Cristy pines for a cheeseburger, and Larsa wonders if the multiple stray dogs have been pissing on the produce.

    The wise Chef Bernstein busies herself softening some rhubarb and mostly ignores them. “To make Michelle Bernstein and us drive all the way there to pick some weeds and put them in a bowl was a waste of time,” complains Alexia, and we couldn’t agree more.

    It seems there’s no better place to jump the shark than in Miami. The beaches are great, but we hate to see this flop of a franchise stealing all the best bits from the other Housewives only to ruin them.

    Bravo, get your act together. Find us more terrifyingly frivolous hausfraus with rude psychic sidekicks, slick stripper poles, indifferent children, weekly charity events and drunken cat fights.

    Are you sure you won’t try Houston?

    unspecified
    news/entertainment

    Movie Review

    Star TV producer James L. Brooks stumbles with meandering movie Ella McCay

    Alex Bentley
    Dec 12, 2025 | 2:30 pm
    Emma Mackey in Ella McCay
    Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios
    Emma Mackey in Ella McCay.

    The impact that writer/director/producer James L. Brooks has made on Hollywood cannot be understated. The 85-year-old created The Mary Tyler Moore Show, personally won three Oscars for Terms of Endearment, and was one of the driving forces behind The Simpsons, among many other credits. Now, 15 years after his last movie, he’s back in the directing chair with Ella McCay.

    The similarly-named Emma Mackey plays Ella, a 34-year-old lieutenant governor of an unnamed state in 2008 who’s on the verge of becoming governor when Governor Bill (Albert Brooks) gets picked to be a member of the president’s Cabinet. What should be a happy time is sullied by her needy husband, Ryan (Jack Lowden), her agoraphobic brother, Casey (Spike Fearn), and her perpetually-cheating father, Eddie (Woody Harrelson).

    Despite the trio of men competing to bring her down, Ella remains an unapologetic optimist, an attitude bolstered by her aunt Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis), her assistant Estelle (Julie Kavner), and her police escort, Trooper Nash (Kumail Nanjiani). The film follows her over a few days as she navigates the perils of governing, the distractions her family brings, and the expectations being thrust upon her by many different people.

    Brooks, who wrote and directed the film, is all over the place with his storytelling. What at first seems to be a straightforward story about Ella and her various issues soon starts meandering into areas that, while related to Ella, don’t make the film better. Prime among them are her brother and father, who are given a relatively small amount of screentime in comparison to the importance they have in her life. This is compounded by a confounding subplot in which Casey tries to win back his girlfriend, Susan (Ayo Edebiri).

    Then there’s the whole political side of the story, which never finds its focus and is stuck in the past. Though it’s never stated explicitly, Ella and Governor Bill appear to be Democrats, especially given a signature program Ella pushes to help mothers in need. But if Brooks was trying to provide an antidote to the current real world politics, he doesn’t succeed, as Ella’s full goals are never clear. He also inexplicably shows her boring her fellow lawmakers to tears, a strange trait to give the person for whom the audience is supposed to be rooting.

    What saves the movie from being an all-out train wreck is the performances of Mackey and Curtis. Mackey, best known for the Netflix show Sex Education, has an assured confidence to her that keeps the character interesting and likable even when the story goes downhill. Curtis, who has tended to go over-the-top with her roles in recent years, tones it down, offering a warm place of comfort for Ella to turn to when she needs it. The two complement each other very well and are the best parts of the movie by far.

    Brooks puts much more effort into his female actors, including Kavner, who, even though she serves as an unnecessary narrator, gets most of the best laugh lines in the film. Harrelson is capable of playing a great cad, but his character here isn’t fleshed out enough. Fearn is super annoying in his role, and Lowden isn’t much better, although that could be mostly due to what his character is called to do. Were it not for the always-great Brooks and Nanjiani, the movie might be devoid of good male performances.

    Brooks has made many great TV shows and movies in his 60+ year career, but Ella McCay is a far cry from his best. The only positive that comes out of it is the boosting of Mackey, who proves herself capable of not only leading a film, but also elevating one that would otherwise be a slog to get through.

    ---

    Ella McCay opens in theaters on December 12.

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