Basketball Wives Season 4: Oh, I Call Everybody a B***

Early last season, I wrote about how Twitter was to blame for a good portion of the conflict on Basketball Wives. Take a group of strong personalities, coop ’em up together for a few months of filming, and give them an unfiltered platform to express themselves, and you’re bound to have at least a few good screaming matches. But tonight’s episode confirmed another problem that exacerbates things.

Alcohol.

I know, shock and surprise, liquor makes people act stupid/reckless. But look at that hot mess of a fight between Jennifer and Evelyn tonight, taking center stage at Shaunie’s birthday dinner. Granted, they’d likely have exchanged words had they been sober, but it wouldn’t have gotten nearly as loud and nasty as it did if Evelyn, Evelyn’s armpit necklace, and Jennifer hadn’t been pounding shots before Shaunie even got there. For one, Evelyn apparently doesn’t listen to herself because while she threw shade at Jennifer’s speech, hers was like reading a series of (very) thinly veiled subtweets, aggravating an already tense situation. Combine that aggravation with alcohol and Evelyn’s penchant for showing her ass in public, swirl it in your mouth for a minute, swallow hard, and you have…whatever this was.

You have to wonder why nobody monitored how much she was drinking. Evelyn may be a grown lady, chronologically, but she even warned us earlier on that multiple drinks would make her act out. Tami may have ignored it due to her desire for carnage (and having to smack down drunk ass Suzie, herself acting a fool), but Shaunie needed to check this before it got too far.

Not in need of any checking was Kesha, who took Royce and sober ass Suzie down to her family farm in Drexel, North Carolina. I’ve enjoyed Kesha from day one and tonight solidified how much I appreciate her presence on the show, as she’s very chill and seems like a girl that you’d have one conversation with and become instant best friends. Getting to see where people come from can really shine a light on where they are now and make you understand why they act the way they do; Tami had this when she went to therapy and now Kesha gets to be the one to open up. And she has a pretty compelling story that doesn’t get told on television much, so hearing about racial identity and struggling to really find yourself is something actually important to bring up. Fortunately, it seemed to touch Royce and SAS, proving just how wrong Tami was in how she’s acted toward Kesha these past two weeks. If you don’t know somebody that well, you can’t definitively judge their character, particularly if you haven’t seen where they started from.

Your past doesn’t excuse your behavior, but it helps to explain it and color inside the lines a bit. In Kesha’s case, her past (and charming family) made her a more fully realized presence on the show and a person as beautiful inside as she is out.

It was intriguing to see the “inner circle” scrambling to make a truce between Jennifer and Evelyn happen, particularly when they think Jennifer is the problem in this whole thing. She’s obviously not helping matters at all, but Evelyn can’t stop herself from flying off the handle every time they’re in the same room together. I mean, the little punk ass shot she took at Jen with her purse? C’mon now, that’s not only extremely weak from somebody that walks around like she’s Laila Ali, it’s a sign that Evelyn’s the aggressor, the bully in this situation. She makes everything physical, so I don’t know how Jennifer is all of a sudden the one that needs to be talked to. Particularly when it comes to ol’ hypocrite Tami, who is hellbent on bringing them back together yet writes Kesha off after a really minor “infraction”. It’s been fairly obvious that Tami and Shaunie are very firmly on Team Evelyn, so them trying to remain “impartial” is a little fake to me; their impartiality is in word only, not action.

Take away the alcohol, the social networking, and the constant rehashing of events and the Basketball Wives may actually be remotely human. And in all honesty, they may make for better TV, because as good as their fights can be, sometimes it’s time to act like a grown-up.

Thoughts, Quotes, & Observations:
-“I want to ride on the tire!”
-“Oh my god, they’re chickens.”
-“Oh, I call everybody a B.”
-“You was Jenny from the Block.”
-As someone born and raised in the south, Jennifer and Suzie can kiss all of my ass for their comments about Kesha’s family. Jennifer’d rather be bougie than country, but I’d rather be country than have a pole shoved up my behind like she does.
-Want to live chat with Royce? You can, at 3:00 Tuesday.
–Tami and Royce posted blogs following last week’s episode, if you didn’t already check ’em out.
-A look at Evelyn’s style.
-Stevie TV parodied Basketball Wives and did a pretty good job.
-Kenya’s husband officially filed for divorce.
-Evelyn and Ocho, meanwhile, got a spin-off.
-Next week on Basketball Wives: Everything goes to hell and Kesha spills the T on Kenya talking bad about the other girls.