What Viewers Missed During Monique and Candiace's Epic Fight on Real Housewives of Potomac

Collectively, everyone’s jaw dropped at just how intense the fight became—possibly the worst physical altercation in housewives history.

Viewers are still reeling from Sunday night’s episode of The Real Housewives of Potomac. There was Ray’s confession that he’s uncertain about his love for Karen, Ashley requesting a post-nup after Michael’s latest indiscretion was revealed, and Gizelle’s dad getting caught on a hot mic dragging her ex-husband for allegedly having “six, seven baby mommas.” In any normal episode, that would be enough but this was also the episode Bravo finally aired the fight between castmates Monique Samuels and Candiace Dillard, an altercation that’s been teased for months.

Collectively, everyone’s jaw dropped at just how intense the fight became—possibly the worst physical altercation in housewives history. Lines continue to be drawn on Twitter, with fans declaring their loyalty to #teammonique or #teamcandiace. The confrontation happened so fast, it’s hard to grasp exactly what went down, but thankfully no one appeared seriously injured.

One person who walked away completely unscathed is former cast member Charrisse Jordan. Without even filming, Jordan managed to make this storyline about her and is probably sitting in a champagne room with her wig secured and all of her wine glasses intact.

In the video above, we slow down and deconstruct several points throughout the fight, giving viewers a better idea of how things unfolded. Details are based entirely on my expertise of watching Housewives fights for nearly 14 years.

Maybe Y'all Hate Candiace Dillard Bassett Because She's Not Struggling

Your favorite housewife is back with a new house, new music, and her signature “smart ass mouth.” Candiace Dillard Bassett is certainly one of the most talked-about castmates on The Real Housewives of Potomac, but it’s harder to pinpoint why she is the most polarizing—a topic she told Jezebel that she recently discussed with a friend.

“I don’t know that this is completely true, but I feel like there is this idea that black women—if we’re not struggling, we’re not real,” Bassett said. “If a black woman doesn’t have an up-from-nothing story, a bootstraps story—which is an incredible journey and I have immense respect for black women who come from those environments—but it should also be OK for black women to come from financial privilege.”

She is also labeled angrier and messier than the other ladies, who she feels benefit from light-skinned privilege—especially her on-screen nemesis, Ashley “the-only-thing-messier-than-two-boys-is-me” Darby, who Bassett simply refers to as “that thing.”

“We’ve all taken turns, having not so glamorous moments,” says Bassett. “But for some reason, the way that I emote, or interact, or react is deemed darker and worse.”

Bassett describes this season’s drama as “in your face” but also “intimate” and it sure sounds like the newest housewife, Mia Thornton, shows up doing the most—I mean, she’s already throwing salad in the trailer. Bassett had nice things to say about her, though. “What I love about Mia is that she is unapologetically who she is, even if it’s a little trifling at times,” she says. “In the beginning, though, it was intense because she kind of gets into it with everybody.”

In the video above, Bassett digs deeper into light-skinned privilege, shares the status of her relationship with Ashley, and explains why her relationship with Karen will never, ever be the same.

It’s Time to Discuss Light-Skinned Privilege In The Real Housewives of Potomac

The premiere episode of The Real Housewives of Potomac reunion gave. Everyone was dressed in Potomac’s version of The Pinkprint to hash out a season “as lit as a three-wick candle.” Andy Cohen came for Gizelle Bryant’s fashion, Twitter came for Candiace Dillard Bassett’s bob, and viewers came for Mia Thornton’s flip-flopping. However, there is one conversation from the night worth revisiting.

During a discussion on Bassett’s issues with Thornton this season, Cohen asked Bassett, “Honestly, how is the way that you respond to people working for you? You almost were physically attacked last year.” The almost hits hard, considering most of America saw Monique Samuels and Bassett’s altercation in season five.

“So that’s my fault that I was physically attacked?” Bassett replies to Cohen, who pushes back by calling her the “common denominator.” The ladies take a moment to rehash the food fight between Thornton and Bassett—a messy melee launched by a “yo momma” dig. Bryant adds “If, by chance, after I saw what I saw, Mia clocked you, I’d been like...” she says with a shrug.

The back-and-forth implies that words are now a justifiable reason for Bravolebrities to get physical. It’s also perplexing to see Cohen nitpick Bassett’s behavior on the heels of Erika Girardi calling Sutton Stracke a “bitchy fucking cunt” during The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills reunion episode that aired merely days before. “Everyone up here has a mouth, has said nasty, disrespectful, bottom of the gutter things to one another,” said Bassett during the reunion. Bassett’s not incorrect and the narrative that she deserves to be physically attacked because of anything she’s said as a reality tv cast member crosses a line.

Housewives trade in insults, drink tossing, glass breaking, and traveling the low road—it’s one of the reasons viewers tune in. Though, the framing of this discussion highlights a broader issue of how darker-skinned cast-mates like Bassett and Wendy Osefo are labeled, browbeat, and stage-managed for the same actions everyone in this cast participates in. In the video included, we’ve rounded up a few examples:

Read for Filth 

There was uproar this season when Bassett referred to Ashley Darby’s husband as an “overseer,” a label Bassett found fitting because “he drives his slaves” i.e. Ashley. There is more than one creative mouth in the cast, though. In season one, Karen Huger told Darby, who was practicing the pull-out method, to let her husband “ejaculate,” “procreate,” and keep her daughter’s name out of her mouth. This season, Huger even told Bryant she couldn’t keep a man because she had a “hot box” between her legs and was a “broken whore from Hampton University.”

Hood Rats and Trick Trash

Viewers were outraged when Bassett referred to Monique Samuels as a “hood rat” immediately following their season five altercation at a winery. But fans must have forgotten Gizelle Bryant’s season two comments about Samuels. “When you think of language barriers, you think I speak English, you speak French,” said Bryant. “Not I speak English and you speak hood trash, you speak trick trash. That’s what you speak, trick trash,” she added.

Body Shaming

This season, Bassett referred to Darby, who recently gave birth to her second child, as a “filthy milkmaid,” who brought her “wide-bodied ass,” on the cast trip to spread lies. Bassett says, the “wide-bodied” comment was aimed squarely at Darby’s forehead—which she insists is 2-inches bigger than her own and spent most of the season criticizing.

Darby isn’t innocent of launching her own body-shaming attacks, though. In the season three trailer, she told former cast-mate Charrisse Jordan, a woman nearly twice her age, to “get her saggy titties up and get out of her face” and also referred to Ray Huger’s penis, a man in his 70s, as “old and dried up.”

“Ferocious” Fights

In season 5, Ashley Darby labeled Osefo “ferocious” during their dust up at Monique’s lake house—an argument that was relativity tame for Potomac standards. Most of the disagreement stems from the green-eyed bandits launching a debate on whether Osefo, was a “new mother” or just a mother to a newborn—there goes the labeling again. Though, no one labeled Dixon “ferocious” when she completely lost her cool when speaking with Darby during a lunch Bryant organized or when she ambushed Darby at her business, told her to stay “the fuck out of her business,” and put her fingers in Darby’s face.

Mia Thornton similarly encroached on Osefo’s personal space this season, then asked Osefo “what she was gonna do about it?” Funny, I thought this type of taunting got Bassett “dragged” last year. Would this have given Osefo license to drag Thornton? I can only assume that, too, is a privilege Osefo wouldn’t have.

The Political, Unglamorous Legacy of The Real Housewives of D.C., 10 Years Later

What started as a single show about five rich women in California exploded into one of the biggest reality TV franchises of our generation. In some ways, the Real Housewives recipe is simple: affluent older women, cordial but sometimes fractured friendships, and cast members who technically don’t even need a husband. But in Housewives’ 14-year history, the model has been tweaked ever so slightly, with varying degrees of success. You could say this was the case with the fifth franchise in the series, The Real Housewives of D.C.

Premiering the summer of 2010, the series didn’t bring the vapid cattiness of The Real Housewives of Orange County or the table-flipping tension of The Real Housewives of New Jersey. It was political—dare I say earnest—and measurably less glitzy than its successor The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. “I think that D.C. was supposed to be more serious,” says former cast member Lynda Erkiletian, founder of T•H•E Artist Agency and Executive Director of the James and Paula Coburn Foundation.

“They cut out all of our designer stuff,” Erkiletian told Jezebel. “I knew based on that they were not interested in having us be glamorous.” Erkiletian added, “They wanted the industry, but they didn’t want the housewives to come off vacuous.”

Viewers would get only 11 episodes of the show before Bravo pulled the plug on a second season, following an alleged security breach at President Obama’s very first state dinner involving castmates Michaele Salahai, her then-husband Tareq, and of course Bravo cameras. To this day, they’re still dubbed the “White House crashers.”

What started as a single show about five rich women in California exploded into one of the biggest reality TV franchises of our generation. In some ways, the Real Housewives recipe is simple: affluent older women, cordial but sometimes fractured friendships, and cast members who technically don’t even need a husband. But in Housewives’ 14-year history, the model has been tweaked ever so slightly, with varying degrees of success. You could say this was the case with the fifth franchise in the series, The Real Housewives of D.C.

Premiering the summer of 2010, the series didn’t bring the vapid cattiness of The Real Housewives of Orange County or the table-flipping tension of The Real Housewives of New Jersey. It was political—dare I say earnest—and measurably less glitzy than its successor The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. “I think that D.C. was supposed to be more serious,” says former cast member Lynda Erkiletian, founder of T•H•E Artist Agency and Executive Director of the James and Paula Coburn Foundation.

“They cut out all of our designer stuff,” Erkiletian told Jezebel. “I knew based on that they were not interested in having us be glamorous.” Erkiletian added, “They wanted the industry, but they didn’t want the housewives to come off vacuous.”

Viewers would get only 11 episodes of the show before Bravo pulled the plug on a second season, following an alleged security breach at President Obama’s very first state dinner involving castmates Michaele Salahai, her then-husband Tareq, and of course Bravo cameras. To this day, they’re still dubbed the “White House crashers.”

“I love The Real Housewives Family very much, always!

I am thankful to God every day, every moment for my husband, Neal Schon and our love and life together! I am thankful for all of you and love you very much!

The Real Housewives Show, and my life back then, over a decade ago, wow, I would never want to go through that TV drama, again, but it DID give me the strength within myself to follow my dreams, and dreams really do come true!! Believe & Faith.”

Love & Light!

— Michaele Schon

“God Bless and Congratulations to Andy Cohen and his beautiful child!”

In the video above, we speak with Amons and Erkiletian about their experience filming and life post-reality television ahead of the show’s 10-year anniversary.

Would Y'all Let Dr. Wendy Live, Damn

It’s interesting to see which Real Housewives of Potomac cast members get the most criticism on Twitter each week. After her altercation with Monique, Candiace received a fair amount of jabs and Gizelle is consistently called out for stirring the pot in everyone else’s relationship except her own. But even though Sunday’s episode gave us court cases, witness statements, and backstabbing disguised as sisterly support, viewers still couldn’t miss an opportunity to drag Wendy and her degrees.

Per Bravo’s shady montage scenes, RHOP’s newest cast member Dr. Wendy Osefo has brought up her education a fair degree, pun intended. But what is it about Osefo’s four degrees that gets under everyone’s skin—and what does it say about acceptable housewife behavior?

“This show is predicated on women coming on, talking about how many cars they have, how many houses they have,” Osefo told Jezebel. “A few episodes ago we had one of my cast members saying ‘I’m married to a millionaire.’ No one said anything. To me that’s boastful.”

“But I come on this platform and I say—you know what—there’s financial wealth, but there’s also something called educational wealth and I possess that and I’m proud of it,” Osefo added.

(Personally, If I’m tired of hearing about anything on this show it’s Karen and Ray’s sex life and Michael’s first, second, and seven hundredth “indiscretion,” but I digress.)

In the video above, Osefo talks about her transition from political commentator to housewife, the new politics of reality TV, and why people are more mad about her degrees than the dragging Monique gave Candiace.