Photo: HBO Max
I could have watched an entire episode set at these hospitality Olympics from the cold open, where Deborah, Marcus, and the gang go scout out potential staff for their new casino, which will be called The Diva. Instead, we get an entire episode about The Amazing Race. Possibly your enjoyment of said episode will be proportional to your enthusiasm for the reality show. For DJ, it’s the single most important piece of culture in her life; she attributes her sobriety to the series. Deborah had promised DJ she would participate with her in a “celebrity edition” of the show, should such a season come to pass, presumably thinking it never would. But life is full of plot twists! DJ is ecstatic, even after she learns that on the celebrity season the money will be going to charity and not, as she hoped, toward her personal allowance. (A million bucks a year!) Deborah, made by Kiki and Ava to see in the show an opportunity to reassert her relevance and promote her MSG show, agrees to fulfill her promise.
In Ava news: Jessica Duncan loved her Who’s Making Dinner? reboot idea. Now all she needs is Deborah’s blessing — in an earlier season, this would’ve been the real hurdle, but we’re in the somewhat saccharine farewell season, and so Deborah swiftly, sweetly approves — and the rights, which Frank … left to Kathy.
You may recall that, when we last saw Kathy (the J. Smith Cameron!), she’d decided she no longer wanted to attempt to be friends with Deborah, who had been “so awful” to her for so many years. As a testament to her devotion to Ava (quite the contrast, as usual, to the energy she brings to her relationship with DJ), Deborah joins Ava in crashing an open house that Kathy is managing as a real-estate agent. I love the reveal that Deborah has been having a PI follow Kathy around, and that DJ, savvy operator, had two separate christenings for AJ and enlisted both Kathy and Ava as godmothers.
Kathy already knows what they want — “I talked to Jimmy, against the advice of my healer” — and names her price: the porcelain salt and pepper shakers that belonged to their mother, which, according to Kathy, Deborah stole. I believe Kathy 1,000 percent, but the fact remains that Deborah will not release the shakers to her sister for any reason.
In my notes, I write, Ava takes this shockingly well considering how stupid it is, but it turns out she has a plan: To return to that antiques shop from the second episode of season one (!) with Marcus, who would happily buy half the place’s inventory at market value for his new/old casino, if the proprietor (Jefferson Mays) can hook her up with an exact replica of the shakers, which she not-so-smoothly stole from Deborah’s cabinets. While the last time Ava was in the shop, she threatened to smash everything in it, this time she comes in peace, and the shop owner reveals himself to be the forger she seeks.
Personally, I would not have advised a mother-daughter duo like DJ and Deborah to test their fragile camaraderie on-camera in the high-intensity environment of a competitive reality program, the edited results of which will air to all the world. But I was not consulted, and so we find these women alongside their starry peers, including Drew and Jonathan of Property Brothers fame, who are there to donate their winnings (should they succeed) to the Alzheimer’s Foundation, and Jordan Firstman and Trisha Paytas, who are there to make Deborah feel ancient and confused. (Deborah didn’t even think of a charity to name? Or a joke about how buying tickets to her MSG show is, if you believe the rumors, essentially the same thing as supporting mental health? Amateur hour!)
I thoroughly enjoyed watching Deborah in can’t-help-herself mom mode — ”Honey, we have talked about a racer-back cut on you!” took me OUT — and cackled at some excellent Kaitlin Olson one-liners (she was a PRINCESS who was ALSO a milkmaid in a past life!). But overall, I felt like most of this was just treading water before the inevitable. The girls were going to combust; they were destined for failure from the start; DJ was clearly only doing this as a ploy to get her mother’s undivided attention for as long as she could. We already know that DJ feels like she can’t live up to her mother’s expectations. It felt a bit like filler to me, so late in the day of our series. After spending so much of the last episode shouting the theme of the season out loud, this episode seems to abandon it completely.
Perhaps the real question is: Was it worth it for the extended sequence of DJ and Deborah botching their clown dance in full sad-clown regalia? I will say I found this sequence relatable, in that this challenge, and our collective inability to complete it, would shatter my family as well. I can’t believe they thought this was a better choice than smashing ceramics, given their respective strengths! DJ is proud of herself for not quitting, despite coming in absolute last place and getting eliminated first. But even the last beat of this joke felt so telegraphed as to be preordained: DJ asks, earnestly, for one more shot at the clown dance, and she messes it up almost immediately. They have a sweet moment at the airport where Deborah is bemused by the caste system of commercial flight, a novelty to a woman who only flies private (“I remember boarding groups!”) and DJ confesses that she knows her mom is better than her at everything and should’ve gotten to do all the challenges. Deborah tells DJ she’s proud of her for being so tough. It’s nice but feels like a retread, sorry!
Ava is having a more successful day: Dressed in a classic subterfuge fit (trench coat), she delivers the faux shakers to Kathy, who receives them with such tender emotion — “I can feel her!” — I genuinely feel for her and wish that Ava had kept the fakes and given Kathy, who would actually cherish them, the genuine article. Kathy is touched by what she believes is Ava’s grand theft and says the rights to Who’s Making Dinner? are all hers.
Upon learning of Ava’s treachery, Deborah HOWLS. Once again, she sees more of herself in Ava than she does in her own daughter, proudly calling her protégée “an evil bitch” to whom she has never felt closer. But in another way, she does pass a baton to her real daughter: The episode ends with DJ shilling her D’Jewelry on QVC: D’Tachable earrings for moms whose babies are always pulling at them. Honestly, not a bad idea! Good for her.