The Real Housewives of Atlanta recap: 'Read School Is in Session'

It’s our third week in Jamaica with the women of Atlanta, and finally — some fun! And, I kid you not, in between grinding on local dancers with fire in their pants and Gregg running wind sprints toward the jerk chicken buffet,
the Housewives were spitting some occasional capital-T Truth.

I tried not to miss NeNe when she was gone because her shtick last season with the group therapy and the Brot-way, and the tiki hut hair was nearly intolerable. But damn have I been glad to have her back. To quote every single one of these women at any given second during any one of their confessionals: She was giving me LIFE this episode. Both with her very special version of counseling and her very special facial expressions — oh, the facial expressions! That’s why I’ll be broadening the recapping horizons for this particular episode with a few more, uh, visuals.

I’m also glad to have Sheree back, even if she does have “Producer Plant” stamped on her perfectly contoured forehead. This episode picks up right where last week left off with Sheree getting fed up with the other women going on and on about how much they like Chris when just the night before they’d been yucking it up, questioning his sexual orientation. So, in the name of keeping it real (and keeping those paychecks signed, sealed, and delivered by Andy Cohen), Sheree brings the conversation to a screeching halt when she tells Kim that the others had been talking about Chris “being fruity or gay” the night before.


She repeatedly uses the phrasing “fruity or gay,” as though “fruity” is a word that anyone but seventh-grade boys use. Also, it doesn’t soften the blow that people were talking about you and your family behind your back. But no time to dwell on that, because Kenya never minds a good face-to-face word vomit of nonsense trash, telling Kim that people in The Industry do call her husband Chrissy but, “I don’t think we care if your husband is gay or whether you guys are having tax problems.”


You know what, I have a lot to say about that messy-ass comment, but I think Kim really said it best: “This isn’t even instigation or information — this is bat-s— crazy right here.” And apparently, bat-s— crazy is not something Kim Fields is trying to mess with because while half of these women are telling her they Googled her husband but feel bad about it and the other half are acting like they’re concerned about the way these kinds of accusations can affect a family, Kim just pulls what is now becoming known as a Classic Kim Fields: She says she’s tired and promptly exits the premises. I imagine she then went up to her room, screamed into a pillow for a few hours, read 800 Bible verses, and stabbed a few bobby pins into a conspicuously Kenya-shaped towel.

Phaedra says she feels bad because she thought they were just being goofy the other night but “now Kenya is taking it to a whole new level of mean,” which might be the first time in eight seasons I’ve ever heard one of these women call another something as simple as “mean.” She’s not keeping it real, she’s not throwing shade, she’s not reading — Kenya is just flat-out being mean to Kim. And Kim knows it, too. The next morning at brunch she tells NeNe and Phaedra that she feels targeted by Kenya. So NeNe, a true practitioner of Housewife principles, tells Kim that she has to address the issue directly, even though it’s clear that Kim would rather continue doing it her way, which is to say…


Making this face while Kenya talks crazy, saying “okay” a few hundred times, and calmly walking away. To convince her that a full confrontation in front of a group of 12 or so people will be a much more fulfilling route, NeNe and Phaedra do a roleplay, and it is, well…the very best thing. Phaedra plays Kenya as a sort of Valley girl and is for some reason dressed as a patriotic version of post-makeover Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.


And NeNe is playing Kim as Kimyoncé, which looks a little something like this:
They give Kim a quick lesson in the “School of Reads” which Kim will 100 percent never use, but it does make her feel more supported by the other women and probably gives her the confidence to ultimately say something to Kenya.

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