I don’t think I anticipated just how involved everybody’s parents would be on this show, to the point where I’m starting to wonder if they’re collecting a check or if this is all just pro bono. While there’s a part of me that was initially worried that their helicopter cameo-ing could impede upon the show’s growth and ability to stand on its own, I quickly remembered that they’re cameo-ing on their kids’ show the same way their parents cameo-d on theirs. This is a long, storied family tradition going back to the likes of Mama Joyce and Nonno, and who am I to question tradition? Especially when these parents are supplying us with some of the show’s best moments.
Take Seth Marks, for example, who was born to ham it up for the cameras and joins Brooks for a day at the driving range (if RHOSLC taught us anything, it’s that the Marks family takes a Zip Code as a light suggestion — they are residents of the world). So he’s in New York catching up with his son, which is how we find out that Brooks has a boyfriend named Kade, who similarly leads a geographically diverse life. As we saw in the trailers, Seth asks his son about his sex life, which Brooks naturally recoils at, though he does admit it’s something he talks about with his mom — a tier of closeness Seth wants to be promoted to. “I want to be a mother,” he says — to Bravo viewers everywhere, he is.
Speaking of mothers, our next parental check-in brings us back home to a place where I grew up but feared I would never be again: Teresa Giudice’s kitchen island. Ah, the memories I have here. Gia is planning a pool party in Jersey to bus her city friends out to, but all of that planning (and Gia’s misunderstanding of state taxes) is overshadowed by Teresa’s recap of getting her butthole lasered. This is television!
Similarly, when Charlie gets lunch with his artsy mother and her long-haired, British boyfriend named Ivor, I’m instantly enthralled by these new characters on the scene. While we’ve already met Charlie’s cold, distant father, this side of the family gives us even more context as to why Charlie is the way he is. He tells us that he lived with his mother until he was 10, at which point she was “not feeling up to the task,” so his father took custody. He adds that she doesn’t “alienate” the kids like his father does; she’s just “busier.” After a brief digression reminiscing about how she used to date Jean-Michel Basquiat, his mother then shows him pictures Charlie drew as a child of his father getting shot and stabbed in the head. “That’s funny as fuck,” he laughs before bringing up how much he relates to Succession. This is quite simply too much for me to unpack, but I hope one day he makes a brilliant family psychologist a very rich person.
Over at Brooks’s, Shai comes over and teaches him how to use his new sewing machine, which is a fascinating dynamic because Shai is an agent’s assistant while Brooks is a clothing designer. But Shai, we find out, also loves sewing in his free time (an affliction known as Craig Conover Syndrome to Bravo fans) and even made himself a pair of pants out of his curtains like he’s a twinky Maria Von Trapp.
They then recap the previous night for us, an art event at which Georgia produced and drank seven glasses of red wine, where peace was thankfully brokered between Charlie and Ariana. But if there’s one thing we can count on with this show already, it’s that Charlie doesn’t stay out of trouble for long, and by the end of the night, he has a new beef with Riley after ditching her for some random girls.
But before we get into that new conflict, we’re not quite done dealing with the disrespectful comments he made after his date with Chloe. Despite Brooks insisting he could handle it, Seth randomly has taken it upon himself to have a one-on-one meeting with Charlie (a boy he seemingly has never met before?) to address it. But make no mistake: He’s not there to scold him for disrespecting his daughter; he’s there to bro out with him because he’s worried that Charlie doesn’t have a paternal figure to look up to. This is all so incredibly bizarre that we can only hope this was entirely set up by production. It’s a lot of familial intervention for just one date, Charlie says.
Some of his discomfort is surely assuaged by Seth’s overall goofy, nonthreatening vibe, but still — what exactly are we doing here? It’s almost worth it when they start just shooting the shit and Charlie tells him about his roommate Dylan, who he says is either bisexual or pan, a concept that Seth is obsessed with. Honestly, they should just make Seth part of the main cast at this point.
Rather than get to Gia’s pool party by way of Port Authority, the cast travels as all reality TV casts are accustomed to: Sprinter van. Actually, I guess this one might technically be a party bus, given the size. In any case, everybody hops aboard to cross the border (Ariana with her laundry in tow to take advantage of the Giudices’ washer and dryer). It’s on this ride that Riley and Charlie get into it over him ditching them for some random girls the other night, and things get rough.
As we see in a flashback, when Riley went up to say hi to the girl Charlie was talking to, she didn’t pay Riley much mind nor ask what Riley’s name was, which she then (rightfully and tamely) called her out on. In Charlie’s retelling of this, Riley was “mad,” and he mimics Riley’s “attitude” in this exchange, doing a finger wag and rolling his neck. It’s a quick microaggression, but Riley of course clocks it and starts to cry.
“I try not to make it a thing, but I hate when you guys try to play this, like, I’m scary or like I’m scaring random white girls. It’s just so annoying, especially because it’s a real thing I have to go through every day,” she explains to them. “I’m so fucking nice to everybody, and then it’s always everyone trying to come off … whenever I talk to some white girl, that I’m trying to scare them.” Even still, Riley has to spell it out further for everybody to understand the racial element of this at play, with Ava jumping in to support her in the conversation. It’s a really difficult conversation that Riley handles beautifully, and with it happening so early in the show’s run, I hope it proves to be enlightening to her castmates and result in a more positive experience for Riley on the show. That being said, it doesn’t seem to be clicking with Charlie. He apologizes, but this isn’t the end of it.
“There’s a bartender, there’s gonna be homemade mozzarella, the psychic is waiting,” Gia says upon her friends’ arrival in New Jersey, and it’s so clear that this is a girl who grew up in the shadow of a Real Housewife and knows how to throw a cast party. Not just a party, a cast party — and that’s exactly what this is. But this is also the exact level of grandeur she has to offer to trick people into crossing the Hudson (the river, not Ariana’s boyfriend). She even FaceTimes Teresa into the festivities, who for some reason is deeply concerned that they’re not gonna cook the pizza they’re making.
When the party is in full swing and Ariana is busy doing her laundry, Riley calls her mom, who gives her a supportive pep talk about the incident on the bus. After this, she sits down with Charlie yet again, who apologizes and says he “genuinely” understands. The problem is that the second that conversation is over, he tells Georgia that he’s not really sorry and was just saying that to appease her. Georgia’s roommate Cooper (perhaps a production plant) then goes and tells Ava, who’s furious and, in turn, tells Riley. They waste no time confronting Charlie about it, who somehow doesn’t understand what the problem is — and instead decides to flee. Even the psychic, who for some reason is drawn to this boy’s energy and is determined to help him, can’t stop him, and he hops the doggy gate to escape.
The parents check in and help where they can, but Seth Marks is here to hang out.
