

If there's one thing the Atlanta Housewives are good for, it's drama, which is why last night proved they're good for nothing. After a season of tense interactions between Marlo and Nene (Marlo's current boyfriend, footballer Charles Grant, was rumored to have dated Nene), the two met for lunch at a mall. The two ungentle giants came clean: "I don't want any drama." Whenever people say this, it means they thrive on drama the way a baby survives on breast milk. Marlo confessed that she had been arrested 7 times, one reportedly for slashing a girl's face in a club, or an "altercation with a young lady" as she put it. The two decided to be friends, best friends, friends in love that will share shoes because they both have humongous feet with bunions on them. Twinsies! Cynthia has been Nene's lackey up to this point. Do you think she'll be replaced by Marlo as new bestie? Cynthia, please stay away—your face is too beautiful for a slashing.

“God gave you a hole to get your money from.” Ohh, to do that. Kim is of course referring to Marlo Hampton, the non-Housewife socialite dating the former fling of Nene Leakes. Last week, Kandi Burruss had Marlo on her hit show "Kandi Koated Nights" (voted number one by crackheads with an Internet connection at 3 am) and asked Marlo where she got her money from. The answer: gold-digging. But Marlo immediately pulled the Beyonce Knowles approach and answered, "God."
The scene: Cynthia Bailey's Modeling Agency opening, aptly titled the Bailey Agency. Kandi is rehashing what Marlo said on her show, and Marlo is dropping "Big Poppa" as a pseudonym for "Sugar Daddy" left and right. Of course Big Poppa was Kim's previous sugar daddy before current baby daddy and Falcons professional athlete Kroy Biermann. "I've heard Marlo sleeps with wealthy men and they give her money or buy her nice things," Kim tells the camera. "Who does that?” Kim wasn't having any of it, so she and Kroy left the party. Speaking of which, Kim moved into Kroy's Roswell McMansion this episode. The producers cut to a maudlin flashback of Kim's Duluth townhouse and all the memories shared in that warm, Herpes-ridden hearth. Kim had her visitors sign their name to a small wall to remember their entrance a la Chez Kim. (Her daughter wrote "Moose" over Nene's signature. Ha!) Of course Kim moved her wigs personally with her in the car, each one more precious than the last with stripperific names like Farrah, Sierra, Dolly, Candy and Ridickulous. By the way, as decreed by Sir Andy Cohen, from this day forward, all sugar daddies shall hence be known as Big Poppas.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Rumor has it that Nene and Charles dated while Nene was still with her husband Gregg. Charles claims they went on one date but he couldn't take her ego. What does Marlo say? Nothing yet, but producers are dangling her like a carrot in front of Nene's airbrushed face. Marlo has a dogged determination, a strategy veiled beneath a fake smile. Like her athlete boyfriend, she's on the proverbial bench now, but Marlo's ready to replace a Housewife if, say, one of them spins off a show about a shotgun marriage.

With the flames of Nene's agitation in need of fanning, it's time to focus on Kandi planning a shindig. She goes to see the Midtown Renaissance Hotel. Okay, done planning! Now time for the party. Kandi invites all the "girls"—don't you love calling grown women girls?—except a very pregnant Kim, but the party is divided. In Europe, we have Nene and Cynthia. In America, we have Sheree (who is building a new house despite allegedly having no money) and Phaedra. I would think the territories would be reversed honestly. What, you didn't know America and Europe were at war? Kandi's in the middle of the political hotbed, unbeknownst that her mother Joyce is a ploying China!
Phaedra loves strippers, almost as much as she loves funeral parlors and burial ceremonies with doves. She's always bringing up strippers—a woman after our own heart. Her favorite stripper and client? Ridickulous. Dick, as I call him, comes from the land of Stankonia, where he pursued a degree of seduction at Stripper U. with a minor in penile-lassoing. He comes with high marks, as Phaedra will tell you, but I'll let you guess why Ridickulous's dick is so ridick. Phaedra rolls out a big red box and in her best sultry tone, introduces her man friend who promptly jumps on the table. He swings his Ridickulousness. He puts his Ridickulousness in Kandi's drink. It was all very ... reasonable when you consider the stripping profession.

What makes country queens so appealing? We need not look any further than the Jesus-freakin', country music-singing, serial-dating men on "GWLBWLB." The first season of the program was a series of loosely strung vignettes: couples of friends in Manhattan and Brooklyn disconnected from each other, living their lives with nothing for viewers to glean. There were no theories on why girls and gay men got along so well, just that they do. This current season takes much more inspiration from the Bravo TV show model with drama and overlapping storylines. In fact, this show could be better than the "A List" because the dynamic characters naturally interact in small-town Nashville instead of being thrown together by TV producers. The usually high-brow Sundance Channel still isn't revealing anything new about the gay-girl friendship, but at least this time the show is more fun.


It's amazing Kim landed Kroy. Not just because he's 25-years-old and a professional football player, but because she's more "book smart" while he's more into hunting and nature. He revealed after his football career, he wants to move to Montana and consult on guns at hunting lodges. A go-getter too! Opposites really do attract. Kim tells Sheree earlier in the episode that she and Kroy took their dating slow, despite being eight months pregnant. Kroy plots with Kim's abused assistant Sweetie (who's still convinced that she's Kim's friend) to have a little suprise party for the birthday girl. Kroy takes Kim out to an early bird dinner special before arriving back at Kim's suburban townhouse. Waiting there are Kim's hairdresser Derek, Kandi, Phaedra and Sheree! Her best friends in the whole world! Even Kim and Kandi's kids have forced TV bonding time together. While getting a massage, Kim listens in on the girls gossip:

Don't these Housewives know it's ill-mannered to talk about money among friends? The Atlanta Housewives have always been obsessed with money, but usually it was in the form of alimony payments from their hulking athlete ex-husbands or under-the-table income from their partner’s shady real estate deal. This season, though, the ladies are doing it for themselves by trying their press-on nails at new careers, but their tit-for-tat money grubbing makes Nene’s former job as a stripper named Silk look honorable. With a wide array of funereal services and luxury dildos coming soon with a Housewives' face stickered to it, let's take a look at what to buy from that dusty Dollar Store clearance shelf near you.

The show centers around five man-hos in Las Vegas as they please lonely women (and couples, many men simply watch while their wife gets screwed). Vin is the new guy who's half black and half Latino (as he pointed out to me on Twitter). The group was missing out on "black guys," said Nick, so they needed to hire Vin. He's got an odd-shaped head, but he's personable and found himself prostituting because he loves women. "I'm a feminist," he quips in the series opener. Steven is the male hooker with the heart of gold. He has a son from an estranged marriage, so everything he does, including gang bangs and other fetish scenarios, is all for his son. There's something disturbingly off about Steven, his nervous habits and his slightly effeminate mannerisms. His self-hatred for being a gigolo is palpable. The thought of him having sex is mildly uncomfortable, as I believe he might be gay.
All-American Jimmy looks like James Van Der Beek of "Dawson's Creek" fame, and like Steven, acknowledges he is escorting as a means of "survival." Meanwhile, Jimmy's roommate Nick is the affected douche of the century. Out of all the guys, he really has no moral conflict about what he's doing. Sleaze oozes from his pores and out of his giant green spilled-spaghetti tattoo encompassing his entire right side of his body. I'm not sure Nick has a soul at all, just a fuckable vessel body. But most tragic of all is Brace—and not just because his name is Brace.

After his radio interview a few weeks ago that publicly aired out the couple's dirty laundry, Nene just couldn't take anymore of Gregg's lies. She had trusted him with her deepest secrets for years, and he flushed it away. "I don't need him," Nene thought aloud as she packed her Coach suitcases, "I'm moving out!" She had found a spacious condo with south-facing windows in Buckhead that had gone into foreclosure. It held for her the new freedom of post-Gregg life—she had to have it. The marble lobby and doorman made her feel established and safe, and the ceramic statuettes evoked the kind of class she always sought. But after decades of living with her husband and kids, she wasn't quite ready to live alone. So she put out an ad for a roommate:
Single Black Female seeks former New York model who has a thing for older men for two-bedroom cookie cutter condo.