Natalie is just trying to have fun with the girls on the trip, saying “Whatever happened between Renee and I stays between Renee and I’m not going to ruin anyone else’s vacation and throw a tantrum.” But Renee has not taken the no-tantrum vow. She calls Ang, Drita, and Alicia “two-faced,” and wonders how her friends can cavort with the enemy at the racetrack when their loyalty should be with her. Since no one throws the word “loyalty” around lightly on this show, you should know what a big deal this is. Ang sure does, and she gets angry that Renee questions her. “She wants to question my f—ing loyalty? I don’t think so. Now you’re crossing the f—ing line.”
It’s not about loyalty, Alicia explains. “It’s a question of right or wrong, and Renee’s clearly wrong.” Renee wonders why everyone went from criticizing Natalie and not liking her to all of a sudden being on her side. “Why, because I put her in a f—ing headlock? Now you feel bad for the bitch? Oh no, that’s not the way this motherf—er works.”
That night, Alicia, Ang and Drita separate themselves from the drama for a nice girls-night-out, just the three of them. While they get their makeup done, Drita tells the girls how much money she lost at the blackjack table over the course of their trip. (“You lost a lot of money? Alicia asks. “Like, ’I-coulda-bought-a-car’ money,” Drita tells her.)
Later they hit up Capo’s, a gangster-speakeasy kind of restaurant where they have to ring a bell and walk through a phone booth to enter. It’s basically a Mob Wives dream restaurant. Even though Renee and Natalie aren’t present, they’re still the topic of conversation. Drita thinks they need to tell Renee to adjust her attitude. “Maybe we need to tell her you can’t walk around talking to people the way you do,” she suggests. “She’s gonna come across the wrong person one day with that.”
“She just did,” Big Ang says.
“What do you think Renee’s doing right now?” Alicia asks at dinner.
Cut to Renee in their suite, on the phone with her son, AJ. She tearfully tells AJ that she’s falling apart and she’s angry at herself for letting things with Natalie get so bad. “Let it go,” he tells her over and over.
After she hangs up with AJ, Renee appears to storm off in search of Natalie, but when she finds her, they sit and she admits “I can’t pretty much remember a lot of yesterday.”
“You came after me,” Natalie tells her. And then Natalie tells Renee that she attempted to apologize multiple times over the “delicious” comment but Renee didn’t want to hear it. Renee listens to everything Natalie says, about feeling disrespected and hurt by Renee’s actions, and Renee finally apologizes. “YOu know, Natalie, in all honesty, I’m really sorry for yesterday. Was I wrong for raising my hands? 100%. So forgive me.”
“You hurt me. I hurt you. We went to a dark place and it shouldn’t have got there,” Natalie says. “I do forgive you. And I do accept your apology.”
“We’re gonna make it rain like it never rained before!” Natalie says at the club. And then she gets in on the lap dance action and hops on top of Alicia. “Natalie dresses just like a stripper,” Drita comments. “Go look up ’stripper, 1985,’ same outfit…Nasty Nat, out on the stage.”
Renee, who has sworn off pills and booze for the rest of the trip, decided to find her kicks on the stripper pole, so she hops up on stage. “Party Renee is on the scene!”
“After this, I need a truckload of Hail Marys!” she says.
“Who would think, all we needed was girls in g-strings to be happy?” Drita says, explaining that this, their last night in Sin City, was the best night of the trip. And now it’s almost over.
“When I was in Vegas, I lost a lot of money,” Drita says.
“I know. I could tell by the way you were acting,” Lee says. “How much did you lose?”
“A lot,” she says. And then she tells him the exact amount ($8,000, better known as “I-coulda-bought-a-car” thousand dollars.).
“What the f—???” Lee proceeds to curse Drita out, calling her a dick, among other things. And then there was this gem, as he signed off the call.
This might be considered emotional abuse in any other relationship, but with these two, it’s actually affection.
Renee meets with Alicia for lunch to find out the latest and as soon as Alicia arrives, she can tell something’s up. “I know this face all too well, it’s not good news.”
Edward’s sentencing, it turns out, was postponed. “I want to cry, I want to scream, I just feel so helpless,” Alicia says. She’s willing to move past the lying and cheating she discovered on those wire taps and at this point, she’s just desperate to have her husband back. She breaks down in front of Renee, who knows exactly what she’s going through, and Renee coaches her to let her guard down and show some emotion. It’s difficult enough to go through this, but it’s made worse by the fact that Alicia is keeping it all in and not talking to her family about it.
“We gotta be as strong as stone,” Renee tells her. “You’re not alone.”