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    Real Housewives Recap Episode 9

    The Real Housewives of Dallas are naughty yachties in Mexico

    Kaitlin Steinberg
    Oct 9, 2017 | 10:25 pm
    D'Andra, Brandi, and Stephanie in Mexico, Real Housewives
    D'Andra, Brandi, and Stephanie on a boat trip in Mexico.
    D'Andra Simmons/Instagram

    This week’s episode of The Real Housewives of Dallas picks up right where last week left off: with a catfight in a bat cave in Mexico. Brandi is accusing Cary of putting down other doctors, while Cary is upset that Brandi didn’t defend her against LeeAnne’s threats on her life.

    Let’s be clear about those threats, though. While disturbing (as LeeAnne is wont to be), the remarks weren’t actually clear threats on Cary’s life. The whole thing has been blown wildly out of proportion and somehow morphed from a vague, drug-fueled rant into “LeeAnne wants to strangle me with her bare hands.” Is that something LeeAnne could feasibly do? Absolutely. But she never actually said that.

    Less clear is what, exactly, Cary said about Brandi’s doctor. Brandi remembers Cary warning her that he “killed people on the operating table,” but Cary swears this never happened. As dinner ends, the argument remains unresolved, and the group splits up for a night of fun in Mexico.

    Fun is pretty subjective in this case, though. While Brandi, Stephanie, D’Andra, and LeeAnne indulge in still more tequila and dance the night away on top of a bar, Cary and Kameron put on face masks, snuggle into their jammies, and go to sleep.

    The next morning, Cary and Kameron are bright-eyed and well-rested, while Brandi and Stephanie struggle to get their bearings in the midst of what have to be massive, earth-shattering hangovers. Kameron lectures Cary about what poor friends Brandi and Stephanie have been, clearly plotting to finally gain her own “ride or die” buddy in this gang.

    Meanwhile, Brandi and Stephanie plot to reclaim “Sexual Chocolate,” the large, brown dildo Brandi brought on the trip, as he seems to have gone missing in the chaos of chasing Kameron around the beach, wiener in hand. As viewers, we didn’t see what happened to ol’ Sexual Chocolate after LeeAnne confiscated him and buried him in the sand, but Stephanie swears she saw LeeAnne dig him back up and bring him to her room. She is determined to save him.

    Anyway, before the great dildo hunt begins, D’Andra has taken a page out of Mommy Dearest’s book and planned some team-building exercises for the disjointed group. She pairs the ladies off, joining LeeAnne with Cary and Kameron with Brandi. D’Andra will be with Stephanie, which is all well and good, but if everyone in those other pairings survives this day of “fun on the beach,” I will be shocked.

    To test the ladies’ patience, a trio of Mexican cabana boys has set up the lamest obstacle course ever. They have to spin around a pole a few times, shimmy under a volleyball net, dig up a ball and throw said ball into a bucket, then return to the start where they will tag their partners, and the whole thing will go down again. Brandi dubs her team with Kameron “Team Sesame Street,” because Kameron is Big Bird and Brandi is Elmo. It’s not clear if Kameron is aware of this designation, but Brandi’s impression of Big Bird Kameron is spot on.

    Big Bird reveals that she had her chromosomes tested, and she is endowed with a “professional athlete gene,” which she puts to use, easily winning the obstacle course. LeeAnne gives up, citing her recent breast surgery, while D’Andra can’t find her balls, which feels very much like a metaphor for her relationship with her mother.

    The second part of the team-building is a game of volleyball, and somehow (Hint: It’s because she was captain of her high school volleyball team, and she knows she can win), LeeAnne’s boobs heal in time to crush her opponents.

    After the game, at a relaxed beachside lunch, Brandi can’t seem to let her newfound peace with Kameron endure, choosing instead to poke the Big Bird by quipping about how unsophisticated she, Brandi, is. Then, when Cary comments that she has to go “wash the sand out of her vagina,” Brandi points at Kameron, challenging her to lash out at the impropriety of the statement.

    “She legitly has a medical condition,” Kameron replies. “Legitly.” She’s a smart blonde, y’all.

    Later, Brandi and Stephanie take advantage of LeeAnne and D’Andra being out of their suite to sneak in and reclaim Sexual Chocolate. They dress up as LeeAnne and D’Andra — Brandi in a glittery bodysuit and too much makeup and Stephanie in a gold headband that I swear D’Andra is actually wearing later in the episode. They convince the front desk manager that they are LeeAnne (“I’ve been in a lot of movies … Miss Congeniality … I’m a really big deal.”) and D’Andra (“LeeAnne, stop it!”).

    Once in the suite, the girls manage to find Sexual Chocolate hidden beneath LeeAnne’s pillow. Do you have a lot of questions? I have a lot of questions.

    That evening, the group reconvenes for a relaxing jaunt on a yacht. As LeeAnne, Stephanie and Brandi pose for a photo before the sunset, Kameron starts whispering to Cary about how fake that trio is. To her credit, though, she doesn’t keep these thoughts to herself. She comes right out and asks Brandi and Stephanie why they’re being buddy-buddy with LeeAnne after making fun of her and her crazy boob doctor when they first arrived in Mexico. Then she asks why they didn’t have Cary’s back in her dust-up with LeeAnne the previous night.

    Before either can respond, D’Andra calls out Cary for making fun of LeeAnne’s fiancé, Rich. Cary admits to “joking” that Rich is in possession of “the world’s smallest penis,” which LeeAnne quickly refutes by zooming in on a photo of Rich’s crotch on her phone. And ... well ... good for you, LeeAnne.

    Cary apologizes, then (rightfully) throws Brandi under the bus for continuing to gossip about everyone around her. Brandi freaks out about constantly being put “in the middle,” and proceeds to (rightfully) throw LeeAnne under the bus for claiming that Cary’s husband, Mark, “gets his dick sucked at the Round Up.”

    Cary immediately transforms into the lady who doth protest too much, swearing that Mark is doing no such thing and harping on how hurtful LeeAnne’s claims are to her family.

    And then, as if Mother Nature wants in on the argument, the winds pick up, the waves grow choppy, and the serene yacht ride becomes the water roller coaster from hell. Two hours after the swells start, Stephanie is literally hitting the deck, unable to walk from a mixture of drunkenness and seasickness. Cary, Kameron, and Brandi seem to have bonded over laughing at Stephanie, until Stephanie vomits over the side of the boat and Cary commences her sympathy retching.

    Once the boat finally docks, the argument between LeeAnne and Cary reignites, with LeeAnne claiming Cary gets away with saying whatever she wants, while she, LeeAnne, is always the bad guy. They end up apologizing to each other (let’s see how long that truce lasts), and Stephanie breaks the tension by asking to see LeeAnne’s newly doctored boobs. LeeAnne refuses and threatens to chase Stephanie around with “that big, black dick,” which is the perfect segue for Brandi to reintroduce Sexual Chocolate to the gang. Yes, he’s been on the boat the entire time.

    Because she learned nothing from Kameron’s earlier freak out, Brandi starts to poke at her with the dildo again. Kameron absolutely cannot deal with being in the same ZIP code as a dildo, so she storms off the boat, calling Brandi and Stephanie “trashy” in about 15 different ways. She’s not entirely wrong.

    When Cary and D’Andra implore Kameron to go back on the boat, she delivers the best line of the night, saying that if Brandi won’t apologize to her, “she can suck it.” The most amazing part of that outburst is that Kameron didn’t even realize she made a joke until D’Andra and Cary started laughing hysterically.

    Oh, Big Bird. Never, never change.

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    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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