Gizelle Bryant gave a recent interview where she reflected on her ten-year tenure as a core cast member on reality television. “I think the misconception was that I really cared,” she laughs. “I don’t give a damn. I just don’t.” Seasoned watchers of Potomac will know this to be a half-truth. Gizelle certainly doesn’t care about being viewed as a mean girl or as a villain. She has accepted that as the Faustian bargain she agreed to in exchange for visibility and financial independence. But she does have her soft spots, namely around her inner circle and romantic life. Given her humiliating marriage and public relationship with Sheldon, it’s not a surprise that she never wants to let a man embarrass her again.
When it comes to Gizelle being one of the show’s anchors, it’s her relationships with Stacey and Monique, respectively, that highlight what makes her so dynamic and frustrating. Gizelle’s banter with Monique is the simmering tension of two women who fundamentally do not get along but have an implicit understanding of what the other is going through, which is a dynamic that gets under each other’s skin. In Monique’s original run on Potomac, she had Gizelle dead to rights as a miserable, messy meddler who thrived in stoking chaos in the relationships around her for no other reason than her entertainment and satisfaction. Gizelle, on the other hand, was well attuned to spotting a woman trapped in a dying marriage that she felt the need to defend at all costs. In part, it is what made her insistence on holding Monique accountable impossible to defend: No one knows better than Gizelle what it feels like to have to fend off local gossip that can devastate a family.
Unfortunately, any moral high ground Monique had was forfeited the moment she turned that barn house into the WWE ThunderDome, effectively allowing all the women to punt on acknowledging their roles in creating the hostility in the group. And yet, in their long-overdue one-on-one sit-down, it is clear that both of them have reflected enough on that season that cooler heads can prevail and find nuance. Monique freely admits she was on guard with all the women and primed like a powder keg to go off, regardless of whether Candiace was involved. Gizelle, to her nominal credit, offers an apology for antagonizing Monique during such a sensitive time. Now, are either of these women planning a long-term friendship anytime soon? Absolutely not, but it is nice to finally put this sordid chapter of Potomac history behind us, even though Candiace is no longer involved.
Stacey Rusch, however, is a conflict that Gizelle is still very much negotiating in the present day, and the Detroit Diva’s aloof and irreverent nature agitates all of Gizelle’s worst traits. She has yet to recognize that once you stop taking Stacey seriously, she loses all her power, and instead is broadly rebuffing her for refusing to follow the informal social rules around being hazed into this group, ultimately just looking more miserable than ever for refusing to adjust her tactics.
Listen, calling Stacey’s two gummies a weed business is kind of like when I used to call myself a campaign marketing coordinator when I was posted up on the streets getting people to sign up for recurring Greenpeace donations. I’m sure it is impressive that Stacey Rusch may be the first Black woman in Virginia to sell two gummies distributed under another company’s label on Juneteenth, but at the end of the day, her big launch is the equivalent of Dorit designing the Capri Room at Buca di Beppo. That said, if Stacey can continue to show up as GNA invents new reasons to exist every season, the women could have shown up to the company break-room party that Stacey called a grand opening. They could at least have had a moment on the step-and-repeat!
Ultimately, only Ashley, Tia, and Jassi make their way to the event, with Ashley upholding her traditional duty of carrying Gizelle’s beef in absentia. Ashley continues to embarrass herself by trying to find ways to legitimize her sustained issue with Stacey on-camera. It only continues to get cringier to watch Ashley scramble to invent faux pas that Stacey has committed, but she finally comes right out and admits that the women view hazing as a rite of passage for this show. She tries to hide it by using doublespeak like “authenticity” and “accountability,” but this show stopped being about authenticity sometime around when Ashley’s ex-husband was serially groping members of the cast and crew and yet continuing to film among them all. Ashley knows, just like everyone else, that this show is simply about who can sell the best narrative, but they’re all frustrated that Stacey seems to be able to do that without having to defer to the existing hierarchies.
If the women didn’t linger so hard on this perceived slight, they would have long been able to knock Stacey down a couple of pegs, and this week’s confrontation at the grand opening is a perfect example of this. Stacey insisting that she is hiding trade secrets from Wendy, who doesn’t even run a weed business herself, is bunk; she doesn’t trust her because of how Wendy and Eddie aired her out at the reunion, which is fair, despite Wendy being the only real ally she has on the show at the moment (unless you count Jassi, which I don’t). That itself would be proof of how Stacey tries to play all angles at once, especially when Tia had her dead to rights on misrepresenting what she called her out for lying about. Tia is right; she did lie to both women about Temu to try to play them against each other and even told Wendy that she felt closest to her, despite Stacey now spinning a half-truth about being guarded. But because Tia had no one by her to back her up, Stacey was able to pivot off her misstep, devolve into dramatics, and demand that Tia leave. The remaining women trying and failing to ice Stacey out by boycotting her event only denied themselves a prime opportunity to actually hold Stacey dead to rights for how she manipulates relationships. Instead, Tia got sent her walking papers. Next week, Angel gets evicted, and Wendy seems to be laughing a little too loudly at her misery. See you all next week!
Cherry Blossoms
• I get that TV shows need to pay back their production costs one way or another, but the three-minute-long ad for the new Mercedes G-Wagon was really pushing it on the brand placement. Did we need both the dealership visit and the test drive? I feel like we could have gotten away with just one scene.
• Who among us is surprised that Ashley doesn’t think she can have a long-term future with a man under 50? Daddy issues aside, Ashley has been consistent and clear about her desire for financial security. The man who is offering her weekend trips to Pittsburgh is not meeting that bar.
• I can’t lie, a small part of me cringed when I heard Wendy say she always uses credit. My dear, that seems to be the problem here.
• I get that Tia wants us to know she actually has a job, but as someone who has been in a managerial position before, I find it highly unlikely that anyone would be blithely discussing business-expansion plans on-camera like this.
• Are we genuinely supposed to believe that Keiarna’s boyfriend, Greg, a divorced single father who runs a nonprofit for children, can afford to both buy a condo and put down six figures for an engagement ring? Assuming this scene wasn’t staged, this just feels like another couple getting themselves tied up in white-collar high jinks they will only regret later.
• Watching Gizelle and Wendy openly clamor for Karen’s return is amusing, considering how Wendy left things with her, but if I were a betting person, I would guess that they are both frustrated with how Angel and Keiarna continue to come up short and lament that Karen would have helped whip them into shape.
