This week on our favorite show, Rich Women Doing Things at a Home in Augusta, Georgia, the rich women did things in a home in Augusta, Georgia. They let their assistants be tortured by their mothers, who yelled at them for drying out the grits, then yelled at them for serving the wrong ice, and then yelled at them for having a knife on the counter in case someone wanted a slice of one of the several cakes that were placed for consumption under little glass domes. They listened to their friend have an intimate conversation with her mother, and then when it was over, they scattered like cockroaches when the light came on, only to be caught by their friend who saw right through their terrible acting. Back home in Beverly Hills, they spent money on paint stripes for their hallway because they felt like the public would never let them spend money ever again, but here they are doing it anyway!
No matter what the rich women are doing, I know what the fans are going to be talking about, and that is whether Sutton’s mom, Reba, is racist. Okay, how can I put this delicately? We’re all a product of a racist society, so we all have prejudices and white supremacy baked into us in ways that most of us don’t even realize. A woman born in 1943 in the Deep South will definitely have more of those things than some other people, and she will not have been in a world where she was forced to grapple with those things as much as someone who was born later. So, has Reba ever made a hood out of a bedsheet? I would be shocked if she had. Does she exhibit some behavior that might have racial implications that she’s not aware of? Why yes.
We see it in how she greeted Kyle and Garcelle in the last episode. She immediately thinks Kyle is pretty and is nice to her. Garcelle presents her with a scarf, and she’s immediately skeptical and awkward. She questions Garcelle’s motives even though she eventually gets to a place where she accepts the gift. There’s another such display when Kyle comes back from a run, and Reba greets her at the house, talking about the route she took, offering advice on when to run, and fully engaging in conversation. Maybe that’s because Kyle started by badmouthing Sutton, which is clearly Reba’s love language. Garcelle comes down for a chat, and Reba can’t even look her in the eye because she’s too busy asking assistant Avi questions. Was she being rude to Garcelle on purpose? I don’t think so. Was she treating her differently than Sutton’s white friend? Definitely.
Their biggest altercation is when Garcelle sits down to chat with Reba about Sutton. We’ve seen the big clip in the preview for weeks, when Garcelle says to Reba, “Sutton’s so proud of how far she’s come, and she’d just like to hear that you’re proud of her and you love her too.”
Reba immediately responds with, “I don’t think that’s any of your business. I don’t want to insult you. I don’t think you have a clue.” Was Reba saying this because Garcelle is Black? No, I don’t think so. Does she find it a bit easier to insult a Black woman than she would a white woman? It’s quite possible. But I honestly don’t think the response was racially tinged on a conscious level. I think what Reba was trying to say is that Garcelle can’t possibly grasp the complicated dynamic between the two of them, and she shouldn’t be getting involved in another family’s business. I get that. Honestly, I do. However, wouldn’t a mother want to hear what her daughter needs from any source, even one that might be outside of her family? Garcelle may be overstepping, but she’s delivering valuable information and Reba would be smart to listen to it. They end the conversation on a lighter note, and Reba seems to be joking with Garcelle and enjoying her company. I think that shows how charming Garcelle can be, but also that she has a lot of experience making old white people comfortable, a burden she shouldn’t have to shoulder but undoubtedly does every day.
Would this conversation have gone differently if Kyle was the one to say it rather than Garcelle? I don’t think so because Reba was always going to see this conversation as overstepping, something that Kyle clocked in the last episode. But the reason Garcelle is a great Housewife is because she’s not afraid to broach these subjects, to ask difficult questions, and to use her charm to get to the heart of thorny issues. Kyle is never going to do that. She’s on a different path, cozying up to Reba after her run, giving her compliments, trying to be that friend who always says, “Moms love me!” In the most Kyle interaction of the whole episode, Kyle is getting her makeup done and telling Sutton just how great her mom is, knowing that the two have a troubled and complicated relationship. Way to stick up for your friend, Kyle.
As the episode goes on, we see not only how complicated Sutton and Reba’s relationship is but also how they’re basically the same exact person. Just like Avi can’t do anything right for Reba, he also knows to wait for Sutton to consult before he sets the table because she’s going to have ideas. Or what about how she makes her crab cakes, tossing out ingredients and telling Avi how he’s done everything wrong? That seems like a play straight out of Reba’s handbook.
But the most telling details are when Sutton goes to visit the house where she grew up and where her father committed suicide more than 20 years ago. (Thank the Catholic Jesus that Sutton’s friend set up this visit because I would have died from secondhand embarrassment if they just rang the doorbell like Meghan King Edmonds hoping to randomly meet a relative at a town in Ireland.) Reba didn’t want to go because it was too painful. I don’t know. I couldn’t have stayed away if only to show up and make fun of the new owner’s furniture plans. “Did you see they put an enormous bocce court in the front yard that takes up the whole lawn? The audacity!”
Revisiting was painful for Sutton, being in the spaces that remind her of her father, that reminds her that she didn’t do enough to break through his haze of pills and booze the last time she saw him, that remind her of the enormous grief she and her mother had to endure in that house in the aftermath, with Sutton burning the Christmas crab cakes one room over from where her father just shot himself in the head. Also unbearable must be her resentment at her mother, still upset that Reba knew this suicidal man was on sleeping pills, Xanax, and booze and that there was a loaded gun in the house.
However, this is the catharsis we need. This is what the show can do for these women, putting them in positions where they have to face not just their present but the reality of their past, just how they got to this point in their lives where they’ll do just about anything for fame, attention, and a little bitty Bravo paycheck. Sutton isn’t here wallowing, she’s here working through it.
That’s why the conversation with her mother while Sutton was making dinner is so important. Sutton wants her mother to see her as a woman who can do things, run a business, and launch a clothing line. I always thought it was odd that Sutton wanted recognition for that, but it makes more sense now that we know her mother was a psychiatrist and wanted Sutton to be a working mother, too. Sutton doesn’t want to be seen as a fashion genius, she just wants to be seen as someone with a job that her mother can be proud of. Even Reba lets out a delicious cackle when she realizes that Sutton turned out to be the aspiring career woman that Reba was, that Sutton had, like so many of us, turned out to be exactly the same as her mother.
I think Garcelle teed Reba up perfectly for this conversation when Sutton tells her mother that she’s not sure Reba knows what she does for a living or is proud of her. Reba doesn’t know why she needs to say it; she feels like it’s trite and overused, like saying, “I love you.” Just like Boz says when talking about how she and her BF, Keeley, have never said the three magic words, Boz doesn’t want to kick it off because then she feels like it’s not earned, it’s not real. We feel that when Sutton says she does need her mother to say she’s proud of her, Reba offers up an “I’m so proud of you,” so limp that it could even defeat a whole bottle full of Cialis.
After this conversation, however, I do think Sutton gets something close to what she needs. No, her mother is never going to be effusive with praise and may not be the fountain of emotion that Sutton wishes she was. She does, however, agree to come to Sutton’s fashion show even though she hates traveling, she hates staying in Sutton’s son Phillip’s room, and she hates that damn aquarium with the bubbles and the fishes and the flakey food. (Damn, how would she feel about Dorinda Medley’s Fish Room?) She’s going to prove by action that she wants to be involved in her daughter’s life, that she is proud of her, and she’ll show up, as imperfect as she ever was, when her daughter wants her to show up. Sutton never got the “I’m proud of you” that she was looking for, but she got four words that are just as important, that should hit her heart in just the same way, that should prove to her that the healing these two have procrastinated ever since her father’s death can be well underway: “We can do better.”
