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‘Real Housewives of Rhode Island’: Everything that happened in Episode 1
Including throuple drama, beach fights, and swinger rumors.
“Welcome to Rhode Island, b***, this is how we roll.”
After almost a year of waiting, “The Real Housewives of Rhode Island” is real.
The first ever New England–set “Housewives” franchise from Bravo dropped a 90-minute pilot episode Thursday night.
It casts Rhode Island as a tiny rumor-filled state where everyone knows everyone, and rumors fly. In the episode, we meet six of the seven Rhody native cast members.
We don’t meet Rulla Nehme Pontarelli, but we may meet her Sunday, when episode two drops. After episode 1, the show moves to its regular time slot of Sundays at 9 p.m.
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In classic Bravo format — they use first names only under each cast member when they speak — we’ll use Bravo format first names throughout.
Grab your popcorn…
Wedding pressure
We open in Providence at the home of Alicia Carmody, who runs Pizza Mamma in Cranston with her long-time fiancé, Billy Kitsilis. The couple and their daughter, Celina, 9, are getting ready for a visit from Alicia’s “big Italian family” — her six aunts all live in Rhody.
Alicia embodies the Rhody accent, by the way. Think Lois from “Family Guy.” Insert chef’s hand emoji.
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Alicia’s family complains of making the arduous 15-minute drive from Cranston to Providence. “It’s just so fah!” Auntie Sharon says.
(This is very real. Rhode Islanders hate driving more than 10 minutes.)
They then start pressuring Billy to marry Alicia. She explains to the camera they got engaged when she was 7 months pregnant with their now 9-year-old.
“Listen, I’m aging,” an aunt says.
“Billy, I want you to get your swagger back, and just bang her against the wall,” a relative tells Billy, while the rest laugh.
“Can we eat?” says an embarrassed Billy.
The King of Cannibis and Queen of Weed
Alicia explains she’s known cast member Liz McGraw “since I was born… sometimes Liz makes me nervous. She’s definitely a queen. Queen Elizabeth. She lives in the most gorgeous castle.”
Liz lives in a stunning mansion on the water in Cranston. It appears to be Pawtucket Village.
Embodying the intimidating queen character, Liz drinks from a silver goblet, and walks her cat on a leash. She tells the camera, “Everyone always says I’m blunt and I bite people’s heads off. And— I get this a lot lately — I can be scary.”
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She and husband, Gerry, own Slater Mill Dispensary. Liz says the cannabis dispensary was “one of the first on the East Coast. I like to believe that we trailblazed. My husband’s the King of Cannabis, so by proxy, that makes me the Queen of Weed.”
She tells the camera she met Gerry at a bar, and were married six months when “the whole ancestry DNA thing was blowing up… we are related somewhere down the line.”
[Ahem, mic drop.]
Throuple woes
Liz, the oldest of the group, is close with the youngest: Kelsey Swanson, a former Miss Rhode Island and University of Rhode Island alum. They meet at Water Street Kitchen and Bar in East Greenwich, and the conversation turns to Kelsey’s relationship.
Kelsey explains to the camera: “I live a life of luxury. And I’ve been lucky to be a lady of leisure for 10 years now… The house literally has everything I need, four kitchens, 79 TVs.” (Wait what.)
“My boyfriend’s family is probably one of the most prominent families in the state of Rhode Island,” she says. “My relationship is very unorthodox. This man dates multiple people. And for the first half of the year, my boyfriend is in Miami. And when he’s in Miami, he’s with somebody else.”
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We see photos of the two of them, his face taken out.
At age 30, she’s looking for a “committed relationship… And either I accept it, or I have to leave.” Kelsey starts to tear up, telling Liz she doesn’t know what to do.
Jo-Ellen vs. Rosie
In Wakefield, Jo-Ellen Tiberi and her husband, Gary, pull up to Rhody staple Matunuck Oyster Bar.
We learn they met in high school when “he was this hot senior” and she was a freshman. We see her yearbook where she hearts next to Gary’s photo.
Her sister Jen “loved him. But I was like, ‘I want to marry this man.’ And I chased him. Finally I got him.”
“I know that I can be a bitch,” she adds. “But I’m not actually a bitch. When people get to know me, they’re not as scared.”
We learn she doesn’t like Rosie Woods DiMare, a former local NBC WJAR Channel 10 reporter, who complains that “the only people watching the news the last 10 years were 50-plus. If I don’t go somewhere and somebody says ‘My grandfather loves you,’ then I’ve had a bad day.”
Rosie – who has been married to Rich for one year– now hosts an online show called “Rhode Trippin.”
Jo-Ellen says she’s ‘not a fan” of Rosie’s.
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“Rhode Trippin?” Jo-Ellen scoffs and looks down at her phone. “Ok, I just want you to know there’s 215 views.”
Rosie and Alicia discuss an upcoming picnic; Rosie worries about whether Jo-Ellen will be “nice,” adding that Jo-Ellen said “some nasty things about me when she didn’t think I could hear her.”
The two wonder whether the rumors are true that Jo-Ellen is “a swinger.”
Picnic drama
At Goddard Beach in Wakefield, a group — part of the cast— gathers for Rosie’s picnic. Rosie pulls up in a Barbie-pink Jeep.
Rosie’s friend Ashley Iaconetti – a “Bachelor in Paradise” alum and the only non-native Rhode Islander— comes bearing a bright orange bucket of Dunkin’ Munchkins.
“If there’s one thing that will warm up a Rhode Island crowd, it is Dunkin’,” Ashley says to the camera. Ashely married Warwick native Jared Haibon; they met on “Bachelor in Paradise.”
Now married six years, with kids, the couple runs Audrey’s Coffee House and Lounge in South Kingstown. (Later we hear Ashley complain to Jared that she wants him to work fewer hours, and that Audrey’s doesn’t make the money they thought it would.)
They start playing Never Have I Ever.
Rosie says “Never have I ever been a polygamist… I thought Kelsey was that.” Kelsey isn’t present.
Jo-Ellen jumps in: “Rosie, you constantly talk s***.”
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Rosie says to the camera, “I’m a very nosy person: Nosy Rosie… I used to be a reporter.”
It escalates into a fight between Rosie and Jo-Ellen, with Rosie saying she “didn’t have to come to my f****** picnic. I didn’t have to pay $1,000 for your f****** [picnic] gift bag.”
Jo-Ellen: “Shut the f*** up. Are you out of your mind?”
Rosie starts crying.
Jo-Ellen offers an olive branch of inviting everyone, including Rosie, to her Fourth of July party.
Fourth of July
For her big bash, Jo-Ellen and her husband rented a house in Portsmouth on the water. Jo-Ellen explains that “Fourth of July is huge in Rhode Island, but I have no idea what the Fourth of July is about.”
At a gorgeous waterfront house in Portsmouth, the guests arrive.
Liz arrives with a pal, “RHONJ” alum Dolores Catania. We learn they met at a cannabis convention.
Kelsey says she’s known Jo-Ellen since high school, when Jo-Ellen worked at a tanning salon and “hooked up” with the salon’s owner and his wife. “She’s ballsy.”
Jo-Ellen tells Kelsey about Rosie’s polygamy question at the picnic. Kelsey says Rosie is asking certain questions because she has something “calculating in her brain.”
Kelsey confronts Rosie about the polygamy question, which Rosie downplays.
“You never know who’s telling you the truth and who’s stabbing you in the back,” Kelsey tells the camera. “It is very hard to trust people around here.”
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Lauren Daley is a freelance culture writer. She can be reached at [email protected]. She tweets @laurendaley1, and Instagrams at @laurendaley1. Read more stories on Facebook here.
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