Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Bravo/Getty
In the Great Real Housewives of New York Prank War of 2023, the battle lines were drawn in the Anguilla sand. What was already an emotionally volatile trip to the Caribbean has erupted into an all-out international conflict, with Ubah and Erin as the opposing powers. Erin maintains that she did nothing wrong when she hid Ubah’s phone, which was her retaliation against Ubah pushing her into the pool the night before. Ubah, however, is irate about having her phone taken from her while traveling, which led to her spending an hour hunting around their enormous villa in a panic looking for it.
If you, like me, chose sides at the end of last week’s episode, you might’ve found that Episode 11 made it much more difficult to maintain those allegiances. I still believe Ubah was in the right to be upset about Erin’s “prank,” but the lengths the cast goes to when ganging up on Erin in response—however annoying she may be—seem a bit extreme and mean-spirited. While a certain level of that might be warranted for Erin’s crude remark that Ubah was “a dumbass,” this is merely a practical joke gone too far; both women could apologize and squash their beef, but we’re learning how they operate in intense conflict, and it’s not great. Well, it’s not good for them, but for us viewers, this tension is precisely the kind of thrill that we seek from Housewives at their most repulsive. Bring on the schadenfreude!
After Ubah snatched the sunglasses from Erin’s face at the end of the last episode, Erin is reduced to tears. She’s clearly both upset about her friend yelling at her and a little bit scared of how far Ubah might take this. But it’s time for those tears to be wiped away, because there’s a rum party to get to, and the group is driving two separate buggy cars to get there (which just means more time to split up and talk shit). In a last-ditch effort to shield Erin’s eyes from the sun while driving, Jenna asks Ubah for Erin’s sunglasses. Ubah refuses, saying that she’ll hold onto them for 45 minutes, because that’s about how long she was looking for her phone the night before. “Siri, set a timer for 45 minutes,” Ubah tells her robot assistant, echoing what I say every time I put a load of laundry in the dryer.