Well, we’re off to a wonderfully messy start in the Ocean State. Apparently, Rhode Island is so small that everybody knows everybody, everybody has dated everybody, and everybody has an opinion about everybody else’s relationship. Basically, a tiny state with an enormous gossip budget.
We begin with Alicia Carmody at home with her fiancé, Billy, and their nine-year-old daughter, Celina. Alicia runs Pizza Mamma with Billy, but today the main attraction is her enormous Italian family. Six aunts are coming over, and apparently a 15-minute drive from Cranston to Providence is an expedition worthy of a travel documentary.
The family wastes approximately no time getting into Billy’s business. Alicia and Billy have been engaged since she was seven months pregnant with Celina, who is now nine. The aunts would like to know when this wedding is happening, thank you very much.
One aunt announces that she’s aging, while another helpfully suggests that Billy needs to get his swagger back and should bang Alicia against a wall. Billy would apparently prefer to eat his food in peace.
Alicia’s family is loving, loud, and completely uninterested in boundaries. We’re off to a very Rhode Island start.
Next up is Liz McGraw, who is introduced as something of a local queen. Alicia has known her forever and describes her as intimidating, which is apparently a polite way of saying Liz can bite your head off.
Liz lives in a gorgeous waterfront mansion, drinks from a silver goblet, and walks her cat on a leash. Because naturally, the cat needs to experience the finer things in life too.
Liz and her husband Gerry own Slater Mill Dispensary. Gerry is the King of Cannabis, which makes Liz the Queen of Weed. She’s not interested in a demotion.
Then comes the little marital surprise: Liz explains that she and Gerry discovered through ancestry DNA testing that they’re related somewhere down the line. They were already married when they found out.
Well, that’s one way to keep things interesting at family reunions.
Liz is close with Kelsey Swanson, the youngest of the group and a former Miss Rhode Island. The two meet for lunch, and Kelsey gives us a glimpse into her rather unusual romantic situation.
Kelsey describes herself as a lady of leisure. Her home has four kitchens and 79 televisions. SEVENTY-NINE. I don’t know how many people live in this house, but apparently every room needs its own programming department.
The catch is that Kelsey’s boyfriend dates other women. He’s in Miami for the first half of the year, where he is with somebody else. Kelsey says his family is one of the most prominent in Rhode Island, and she has been living this arrangement for years.
But at 30, she’s starting to want a committed relationship. She’s not sure whether she can accept the situation or whether she needs to walk away. She gets emotional talking to Liz, admitting she doesn’t know what to do.
So, four kitchens, 79 televisions, and absolutely no clarity about the boyfriend. Priorities are complicated.
Now we meet Jo-Ellen Tiberi, who arrives at Matunuck Oyster Bar with her husband, Gary. They’ve known each other since high school, when he was a hot senior and she was a freshman. Jo-Ellen even shows us the yearbook photo with a heart drawn around his picture.
She says her sister Jen liked Gary too, but Jo-Ellen wanted to marry him, so she chased him until she got him. Subtlety was apparently never part of the courtship.
Jo-Ellen admits she can be a bitch, but insists she’s not actually a bitch once people get to know her. That’s a reassuring introduction.
Unfortunately, one person who hasn’t warmed to her is Rosie DiMare, a former local television news reporter who now hosts an online show called Rhode Trippin’.
Jo-Ellen is not impressed. She looks at Rosie’s show on her phone and announces that it has 215 views. Not 200. Not approximately 200. Two hundred and fifteen. She has apparently conducted a full ratings investigation.
Rosie, meanwhile, worries that Jo-Ellen won’t be nice to her at an upcoming picnic. She also mentions that Jo-Ellen has said nasty things about her behind her back. The women even discuss rumors that Jo-Ellen and Gary are swingers.
Nothing says a promising new friendship like investigating someone’s sex life before the picnic invitations go out.
Rosie hosts a beach picnic and arrives in a Barbie-pink Jeep. Ashley Iaconetti, the group’s newcomer and the only woman who isn’t originally from Rhode Island, brings a bright orange bucket of Dunkin’ Munchkins.
Ashley knows her audience. Dunkin’ is apparently the fastest way to win over a Rhode Island crowd.
Ashley is married to Jared Haibon, whom she met on Bachelor in Paradise. They now run Audrey’s Coffee House and Lounge together. Later, Ashley admits she’d like Jared to work fewer hours because the business isn’t bringing in the money they expected. Romance, entrepreneurship, and a little financial stress. Welcome to marriage.
At the picnic, the ladies play Never Have I Ever. Rosie decides to make things interesting by saying, “Never have I ever been a polygamist… I thought Kelsey was that.”
Kelsey isn’t even there.
Jo-Ellen immediately jumps in, accusing Rosie of constantly talking shit. Rosie explains that she’s a nosy person and calls herself Nosy Rosie. She used to be a reporter, after all. Apparently, the investigative instincts are still very much alive.
The argument escalates quickly. Rosie is furious that Jo-Ellen has come to her picnic and complains about spending $1,000 on Jo-Ellen’s gift bag. Jo-Ellen tells her to shut up and asks whether she’s out of her mind.
Rosie starts crying.
It’s a lovely afternoon by the water, if your idea of a lovely afternoon involves a public argument over a gift bag and a missing guest’s romantic arrangements.
Jo-Ellen eventually offers an olive branch by inviting everyone, including Rosie, to her Fourth of July party. Nothing says reconciliation like another opportunity to get everybody in the same room.
Jo-Ellen and Gary rent a gorgeous waterfront house in Portsmouth for their Fourth of July celebration. Jo-Ellen says the holiday is huge in Rhode Island, although she admits she doesn’t actually know what the Fourth of July is about.
History teachers everywhere just felt a disturbance in the force.
Liz arrives with a familiar face: Dolores Catania from The Real Housewives of New Jersey. The two met at a cannabis convention, which is a perfectly reasonable way for these two to become friends.
Meanwhile, Kelsey tells us that she’s known Jo-Ellen since high school. She remembers Jo-Ellen working at a tanning salon and getting involved with the salon’s owner and his wife. Kelsey describes her as ballsy. We are beginning to understand that Jo-Ellen’s romantic history may be a subject of its own season.
Jo-Ellen fills Kelsey in on Rosie’s polygamy comment at the picnic. Kelsey believes Rosie is asking questions because she has something calculated going on in her head.
Kelsey then confronts Rosie about the comment. Rosie downplays it, but Kelsey isn’t buying the explanation. She feels that people in this group can’t be trusted, and she isn’t sure who’s telling the truth and who’s stabbing her in the back.
And there it is. We’ve got a relationship that may or may not be a throuple, a woman who may or may not be a swinger, a reporter who cannot stop asking questions, and a group of women who have apparently been collecting one another’s secrets since high school.
Rhode Island may be the smallest state, but these women have managed to make it feel like there’s nowhere to hide.
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