“The Real Housewives of Atlanta” Season 3, Episode 14: “Flamingo Roadblock” recap
As the delightful diversion from Snowpocalypse melt off coverage opens, Kandi and Kim are on a tour bus together en route to Orlando, making a series of stops to promote Kandi’s new album and Kim’s continued crimes against the world’s microphones and amplification systems.
In short order we learn two things: Kim’s ridiculously dedicated (and possibly brain injured) assistant Sweetie has programmed “Tardy for the Party” as her cellphone ringtone. Oh, and and Kim is travelling with a “wig stylist.” Between revelations, Kim routinely bellows for Sweetie to bring her cigarettes, wine, phone, vibrator, etc.
NeNe, meanwhile, is fretting over her, um, less than illuminating 11 Alive interview with music producer Jermaine Dupri (Here’s a brief snippet of the Q&A: NeNe: “Do you play an instrument?” Dupri: “No” NeNe: Don’t you have a radio show?” Dupri: “No.”)
Explains NeNe: “Pulling together my Jermaine Dupri piece was like pulling teeth. But I had to go into the editing room and make magic happen.”
Well, technically, NeNe’s videographer, her producer, her producer’s therapist and an independently contracted psychic clutching a crystal ball find the 13 seconds of airable footage and make the magic happen.
During the aired piece, NeNe asks Dupri if it’s easier to find a future pop star when they’re young or “when they’re Kim’s age, say, 30-something.” Oh, snap.
Naturally, Kim and company are watching the piece on the bus and the bewigged warbler begins a slow burn underneath her synthetic blond rat’s nest. The bus rolls up to the legendary Ga. Pig Real Pit BBQ for lunch. Kim, the vegetarian, isn’t amused.
“Are they serving pork in there?” Kim inquires. “Is that why there are all these pig signs? I just want a soda and a glass of wine. There’s an ashtray. It’s good enough.”
Head in hands, Kandi asks to no one in particular: How many hours until Orlando?”
Peter, meanwhile, has some bad news for his model fiance Cynthia: He’s had to shutter their Atlanta business The Uptown Supper Club. All the money he and Cynthia invested has gone bust along with the business.
Cynthia holds out her fingers, kicks off her Manolos and quickly adds two plus two: “Then it hit me,” she says in voiceover. “The money we needed to make this wedding happen was going to come from. . .” “The Uptown Supper Club,” finishes Peter.
Just ten days away from her ceremony among the fossilized remains of prehistoric dinosaurs at Fernbank, Cyn is naturally upset. So the ever-nurturing Peter immediately sets out to comfort his bride-to-be: “I don’t want to talk about it! Why the [expletive] do you keep asking me why?! Are you going to cry?! Don’t do that again. I’m never ever telling you anything again!”
Earth to Cynthia: Don’t focus on how you’re going to pay for this wedding. The question is why would you marry such a verbally abusive smacked ass in the first place.
Back on the bus, Kim takes a phone call from her distraught eight-year-old daughter who’s missing her mother. Sighs Kim: “With my new music career, it’s difficult being away from them for so long.” Um, Kim, it’s day two of your tour. Atlantans were away from their children longer during last week’s ice storm.
Sheree, meanwhile, is packing up the kids to ship them off to her ex, Bob Whitfield‘s west coast home for the weekend so she can meet Cynthia and the ladies in Miami for Cynthia’s bachelorette party. Sheree asks her 10-year-old Kaleigh if she’s going to miss her mother. Two hours and one electroshock treatment later, Kaleigh replies: “Yes.”
Over at Phaedra and Apollo‘s, the new mother and attorney is shaking off the effects of all those 3 a.m. feedings. Apollo’s theory on fatherhood? “If I had breasts, I would get up and help out. Since I don’t, I just lay there and chill.” Kids, that’s spelled: K-E-E-P-E-R.
Inexplicably, NeNe agrees to join Kim and Kandi on the bus, leading the Grammy winner to muse: “This is my tour, my bus and my fans. So why is it starting to feel like the Kim and NeNe show?”
After a performance and too much wine at a tour stop in Orlando, NeNe starts mocking Kim’s performance. Kim then retorts: “Well, you’re an intern at 11 Alive.”
NeNe then goes completely off the rails and screams: “You shut up! You think you can talk to a sistah like that?!” NeNe then pulls out the race card, dusts it off, enlarges it to 8 by 10, laminates it and Scotch tapes it to the window while accusing Kim of treating Sweetie like a slave.
Kandi and tour manager Don Juan (who, incidentally, gets this episode’s MVP award just for enduring all these foolishness in the name of a paycheck) pull NeNe off of Kim and separate them for the rest of the drive through the Everglades.
Kim orders the bus driver to pull over. He patiently explains that he can’t because of, well, the alligators (We could have sworn we then saw Don Juan slip the driver a $50).
Says Kim in voiceover: “As soon as NeNe got up out of that seat, our friendship was done. Finished.” Blessedly, the season isn’t.
Coming next week: Cyn’s bachelorette party in Miami! Everyone’s drunk and no one’s happy. NeNe and Kim are waging all out war, after a disturbing phone call, Cynthia bursts into tears again and Sheree calls someone an “ungrateful bitch.”
In other words, business as usual.
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