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After this week, The Real Housewives of Potomac has just one episode left in the season. With the end looming, though, viewers can rest assured: Charisse gets her groove back.
Charisse spent much of the season failing to boil crabs and moping about her terrible basketball coach husband. This week, though, she’s planning a 50th birthday party that doubles as her coming-out party as a quasi-single woman—and funding all $80,000 of it with her estranged husband’s money.
While Charisse’s life is on the upswing, though, our other housewives are stuck in their same patterns. Robyn is still living with ex-husband Juan and unable to decide whether to ditch him for good.
Katie still pretends her podunk foundation is the Clinton Global Initiative and moons about marrying her cold-footed boyfriend (“He’s been playing a lot of golf, and married men play golf all the time,” she says hopefully).
At least Karen has decided to ditch the Ms. Havisham act and become a sex pot. Karen reminds husband Ray that the lovebirds just had morning sex. Karen also reveals that, like Jim Carrey in The Mask, she has a more vivacious alter ego: Shaka.
“Shaka will slap the shit out of you,” Karen assures viewers.
Karen gets close to unleashing Shaka when she discovers, ahead of the graduation party for daughter Rayvin, that Ray hasn’t picked up the balloons. Worse, the extremely-chilled out Ray reveals that he knew he was supposed to get the balloons—he just didn’t care enough to do it.
Worse, Ray’s possibly even chiller brother Bob has arrived, followed closely by a bartender. But wait, Karen didn’t remember hiring a bartender. Suddenly, she remembers: voodoo juice!
“Did you hire a bartender for you and Bob?” Karen asks her husband.
Bob knows the answer:
“Let’s not sweat the small stuff, honey,” Ray says, for the 10,000th time in his marriage.
After an energetic photoshoot with Katie, Charisse emerges from her chrysalias to try out still another persona: R. Lee Ermey.
And then we’re off to Charisse’s party at the Carnegie Library. The Carnegie Library! This venue usually hosts events for whole organizations. Tonight, though, it belongs to Charisse Will Live Forever Inc.
The party starts well, with Gizelle arriving with hair-dresser/devoted retainer Kal.
The event is nearly ruined, though, by this hideous shirt worn by Katie’s beau:
Who would accept a ring from this man after that? Spend a little of those greens fees on a stylist instead.
But no matter. With friend and SEC investigation target Brynee as her hypewoman, new butterfly Charisse launches into a rap we’re told she wrote when she was 16.
“5 foot 4 is my ultimate height, but I’m bad enough to make you feel all right,” Charisse raps.
Charisse’s rap about how good she is at sex delights her father:
The good vibes fail to quash the beef between Ashley and Karen. They finally get into it about a fight that is, ultimately if subtextually, about whose husband is richer (and thus who gets to boss everyone else around.)
“It’s crystal clear that she does not fit into this world,” Karen says. “She should be touring a zoo, petting cuddly animals. Bye, Ashley girl, go pet a panda.”
Why does Karen think petting a panda is a punishment? Why does she hate zoos so much? It’s not explained.
After Ashley’s real estate magnate husband White Ray, er, Michael grabs Katie’s boyfriend’s butt, a real intense conversation about who is or is not biracial ensues. I’ll leave this one to the experts.
After playing it cool in front of the girls, Ashley seems much more concerned about her husband’s gropey tendencies. She finds Michael in conversation with a strange man, telling the guy he looks like he works out. Hm!
Despite the initial unhappiness, their fight soon becomes #thiscouldbeusbutyouplaying:
This man controls the fate of the District, folks! I, for one, couldn’t be happier about it.