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Basketball Wives Recap: “Do You Need To Be Smacked In Your F—ing Face?”

Every week, our patently undramatic friend Sarah has bravely agreed to recap Basketball Wives, quite possibly the most dramatic human drama of our time. Her previous recaps can be found here.

This week’s episode was all about the softer side of the basketball wives, and it was quiet. Well, 45 minutes were quiet, and the last 15 were hilarious. Let’s do this.

Royce Is In Love

Royce Reed is dating Dezmon Briscoe, a 22-year-old wide receiver for the Tampa Bay Rays, making her the second Basketball Wife to look outside of the NBA for a partner. Royce is definitely over 30, and clearly hoping that sweet, young Dezmon will be interested in marriage soon. They have dinner and Dezmon opines “We are deeply in love, obviously.” They go on a second date later in the episode, and it looks like they have an outdoor meal at a marina. It’s a very The Bachelor set-up.

“I can see you being my wife for the rest of my life,” Dezmon tells Royce.

“Shut up,” she replies. Then I think they have sex on the dock. Well, it’s implied.

A 10 Minute Ad For “Think Like A Man”

Did you know that there’s a new movie out based on Steve Harvey’s book, Act Like A Lady, Think Like A Man? Jennifer Williams happens to know one of the actors, and he invites her and the rest of the Basketball Wives to go to a screening. What follows is a ten minute commercial for the film and it’s attendant moral code, which assumes that everyone in relationships is constantly playing “mind games” and that no man can respect/fall in love with a woman who doesn’t make him wait 90 days to sleep with her. All very good advice from Harvey, or, as he ought to be known from now on, The Greatest Anthropologist Of Our Time. The Basketball Wives all think that this advice makes sense, with the exception of Suzie, the self-described “pervert dirtbag,” who thinks that the 90 day rule is “bullshit.”

A Fight At The Racetrack

Jennifer Williams and Evelyn Lozada still hate each other, and while Kenya Bell was off in an ashram somewhere/cryogenically frozen/getting Jennifer’s face tattooed on her face this week, there was an opportunity to reignite their feud. First, Evelyn meets her friend/employee Nia at a bar for a drink, to talk about how much they both hate Jennifer now. As it turns out, Nia and Jennifer used to be very close, and Jennifer even had a key to her apartment, which she has yet to give back. This offends Nia and Evelyn, who is now committed to a beat down for Nia’s sake. What a good boss!

Meanwhile, Jennifer is hanging out with her friend Al, who never removes his sunglasses, being primed for a fight on her own. He recommends that the two of them either hit each other, or emotionally abuse each other until they can be friends again. Jennifer absorbs all of this sound advice. It’s a good thing all of the Basketball Wives are going to be locked in a suite together at the racetrack by the episode’s end.

When race day comes and the group gathers in the Presidential Suite, it doesn’t take long for the tension level to get ratcheted up to 11. Nia, who is wearing sunglasses for this entire encounter, starts to scream at Jennifer about getting new friends and changing her personality. It’s that reality star/Basketball Wife preoccupation with “realness” again — a real friendship ruiner.

Jennifer, to her credit, sits calmly absorbing Nia’s diatribe, until Nia starts yelling “You need to fucking wake up. What do you need, do you need to be smacked in your fucking face for you to wake up?”

“I wish you would,” Jennifer says.

Oh, dear. Nia gets up, takes a hilarious amount of time to walk around to the other side of the giant dining table, and smacks Jennifer in the fucking face, as promised. Jennifer leaps up and the two of them start grappling, until a few crew members step in. Evelyn, previously content to outsource this week’s fighting to her employee, clambers over the table and leaps into the fray. Aaaaand the episode ends there, before we find out if anyone lived or died. Until next week — and in the meantime, you can see a clip of the melee below: