Riley’s drunken night out reveals a fascinating dynamic among the cast.
Photo: Bravo
If you can even believe it, there’s still more drama left to play out at this girls’ night from hell that began in the last episode. Emira bizarrely tells Georgia that she should team up with Charlie and Omar since they’re stealing her club idea, which she understandably pushes back on because it makes zero sense whatsoever. They don’t let the back-and-forth get too carried away, but the conversation does turn to Emira feeling like Georgia was hitting on her boyfriend last year. Georgia admits that, in addition to the gay grapevine, she heard about that claim via Charlie — and Emira is shocked that he’d betray her trust like that! Really, girl? Rowan isn’t following any of this, and quite frankly, I envy her.
As we established last week, Riley is very drunk. The silver lining of that is Georgia feels like that’s when she gets along with Riley best. But she jinxed it — because as soon as she offers up that olive branch, Riley swats it away. She orders her to go get her a drink and then when Georgia offers up her own drink, Riley makes a face and says, “You probably have some ketamine in that thing.” What is wrong with her? Georgia doesn’t know where this is coming from because, as she says, she’s never been on drugs around Riley in her life (I appreciate the qualifier there). Next thing you know, Riley is berating Georgia to “shut the fuck up.”
And what I truly couldn’t believe was that it only got worse. Ariana was so desperate to get Riley to sober up that she tried to get the whole table to make a toast with water, at which point Riley looked to Georgia and said, “I know you’re not a part of this ‘cheers’ because you can’t afford a Birkin.” Oh, I’d jump across the table. Rowan was disgusted, and Gia had to jump into producing mode (to her credit, it’s what she does best) and whispered to Riley to backtrack immediately. Instead, Riley tells Georgia to “relax before I slap this piece of pizza on your face” and then picks up an empty glass and winds up as if she’s about to throw it across the table at Georgia’s head. Something is seriously wrong here — this is not the Riley we’ve come to know. This is a spoiled, privileged, rich girl who should be on MTV’s My Super Sweet 16 instead of Bravo.
Sure enough, the public fight made headlines — so the next day, Riley gets a FaceTime call from her mother, Kandi. There’s not much actually said about what happened, presumably because Riley doesn’t remember, but she does express the difficulty of growing up and making mistakes under the spotlight like this. She also goes on to text Georgia a message that is technically not an apology, though she does use the words “take accountability” and says that she was never going to get physical. Everything she’s saying about that night feels like it was pulled right from the blog headlines as opposed to her own recollection, but she clearly knows something went down that shouldn’t have. Georgia graciously gives her a complete free pass, saying that she knows it was the alcohol’s fault. I bet the producers were banking on getting a season-long story line out of this, but Georgia is just too benevolent to drag it out!
Then we’ve got the budding flirtation between Ariana and Liam to deal with. He does, as promised, show up at her apartment to build her wardrobe — all of which is strictly performative because she has a Taskrabbit on call for immediately after in case he fucks it up. But it’s a flirty moment, and she even makes pumpkin-banana bread in return, and he invites her to meet his parents. Sure, that might seem like things are moving fast (I’m talking about the banana bread), but in Liam’s defense, the parents thing is sort of a technicality because it’s really just a birthday gathering.
In any case, this of course won’t go over well with Hudson, but at least he doesn’t know. Well, that is, until Shai takes it upon himself to uphold the bro code and tells him later in the episode. But in Shai’s defense, he was corrupted into doing so by Charlie, who we know is evil. Hudson doesn’t necessarily take the news well but pretends not to be stressed over it by saying, “I don’t think Ariana is gonna go from me to dating some guy who rides horses for a living.” Well, at least he does something for a living.
Meanwhile, Rowan, whom I’ve instantly grown fond of, invites the whole group out to House of Yes for a Rocky Horror Picture Show night. The problem is that this group is mostly comprised of uncultured idiots, so Shai and Georgia are the only people who know what Rocky Horror is. My blood boils at the ignorance. Listen, it’s not a crime to not know something, and blind spots are very normal — but what I especially take umbrage with is their lack of shame. It’s almost like they take pride in the fact that they don’t know things. Also — did they not watch Glee??? There’s a whole Rocky Horror episode! The stage show is on Broadway as we speak! There’s really no excuse.
But as they get ready for said evening, the episode ends with a truly perplexing interaction between Ariana and Riley, who feels that Ariana wasn’t supporting her during her crashout at girls’ night. I think it’s incredibly bold for Riley to take such a hard stance on this, because there’s very little indication that she actually remembers much of what went on that night. She tells Ariana that her other friends never would have let that happen, but Ariana pushes back, saying that she was fighting for her life to try to sober Riley up and remove her from the situation. But apparently, at least according to Riley, it was Ariana’s job to get in the middle and stop Georgia from antagonizing her. The thing is Georgia wasn’t antagonizing her (and Ariana tells her as much). Riley is gaslighting so hard that even I start to question what I saw with my own two eyes.
One of the most fascinating parts of this show, which we’re finally getting to see materialize, is the class politics at play. We’ve seen the impacts of their privileged upbringings time and time again, when they look down upon taking the subway or living in certain neighborhoods — but now we’re seeing the way they can weaponize class against one another. In this episode alone, we have Hudson alluding to Liam’s status being beneath him and Riley ordering her friends around and making fun of Georgia for coming from a poorer background and not being able to afford certain things. In each case, they lack the awareness (or are too drunk) to realize the optics of what they’re saying. It’s disgusting behavior, but thank goodness disgusting behavior makes for great television.
