It’s an all-new season of Basketball Wives L.A., and the ladies are pretty much in the same position as they were when we left them last season. There are old rifts, there are those who want to mend the rifts, and there are new rifts just waiting to happen. Sounds like your average Basketball Wives season. So let’s catch up with the ladies (and meet a new one!) and see what they’ve been up to.
We meet up with Jackie in her kitchen, where she and Doug are discussing her daughter, Chantal. Chantal is living away from home for the first time, and Jackie is beside herself with feelings of worry and sadness because she misses her little girl. Doug is quick to point out she’s not a little girl anymore, she’s a “little lady” (I’d also accept “young woman”), but Jackie needs to set her free in order to give her space and the chance to return to the nest. She fully realizes she’s an over-protective parent, but Doug is able to calm her down…slightly. Also on Jackie’s docket of stuff to tell Doug about is how much she misses the “sisterhood” she had last season with the rest of the women on the show. “I really feel bad that they decided to go the route of making up stories and acting like it was one thing when it wasn’t,” she says. She admits “There was parts in this that I played that I shouldn’t have done,” which is her way of fessing up to her role in last season’s fall-out, but she’s interested in moving forward and hopefully do-over her relationships with the girls. Just as long as they meet her halfway and also stop being jealous of her.
Laura is back in L.A. for the summer after a move to Orlando with her fiance and kids, but things are kind of tense. Things with her sister Gloria, she says, have been “tainted, and I don’t know why.” They aren’t as close as they used to be and that upsets Laura. “It’s partially my fault,” Gloria explains, “I’ve just been so focused on me.”
Gloria and Matt separated for eight months and she explains that they both did a lot of self-discovery and soul-searching during their break. They’re both stronger for it, and they’re slowly working on getting their relationship back on track. (Interestingly, Draya later observes that she thinks Gloria might be putting on a front and making her relationship seem better than it is, so we’ll have to keep an eye on that.) Gloria is also trying to be a cookbook author now, which is a development none of us saw coming. This will become a plot point soon enough, because she’s invited “all the girls” to her house to cook for them and sample her recipes. For Gloria “all the girls” doesn’t include Jackie, (“You didn’t invite psycho?” Laura asks. “You didn’t want her to get a little taste-taste on either?”) but for Malaysia, she has a looser definition of “all the girls” that does include “psycho.”
Malaysia spent the off-season in Atlanta with her husband and kids, and she has big plans for Three Beats, her kids’ jewelry line which she plans to expand into a ladies’ line. Malaysia and pretty much everyone else on the show looks amazing, and I’m loving her two-toned hair. Malaysia, always sweet as pie, tells Draya that she hasn’t been in touch with Jackie but that she doesn’t have a problem with her either after last season. “I don’t wanna be her friend. I don’t wanna go skipping into the sunset with her ass, no I don’t,” she clarifies, but she doesn’t hold a grudge either. “The part that’s not crazy is actually a nice person.”
Draya’s been working hard too these days, her number one priority being her swimwear line, Mint Swim. “I want to be rich,” she tells Malaysia. “And rich people don’t rush. They take their time.” And as for the Jackie situation, Draya is wary of the woman that mentored her and then seemingly went cuckoo on her, and Draya vows to not be so clueless this time around. “I was very naive before, and very nice. I earned my respect, so now I’m demanding it,” Draya says.
So now we kind of now where everyone stands, at least personally and on the Jackie front. But Jackie herself isn’t sure how to reconcile with the women, because she feels she’s owed an apology. She invites her friend Sundy over for some wine and therapy by the pool and tells her “They should be in line, like one, two, three, four, five, and they stand there and bow down and say ‘I’m so sorry’.”
She continues later by saying “They should get on their knees and ask for forgiveness.” And again, she repeats, the drama between them all stems from their jealousy of her. One person that definitely doesn’t appear ready to ask for Jackie’s forgiveness is Gloria. She and Draya meet up to discuss Malaysia’s idea of giving Jackie a second chance, and Gloria is pretty much in the “Hell to the no” camp. “Jackie just went way out of her way to destroy friendships, and to me that’s just not cool,” she explains. “I definitely don’t plan on befriending her again.”
Draya believes that Malaysia’s best intentions are just a way for Jackie to “weasel her way back in,” and by the end of the episode, she will have done just that.
Before that though, we meet Brooke Bailey. Brooke is a model and former video vixen who happens to be friends with Draya, and she’s currently dating Vernon Macklin.
Brooke is back in L.A. for the time being, and she’s looking to meet some of Draya’s friends, so when they meet up she asks “Have you met some nice ladies here?” to which Draya responds “I wouldn’t say they’re nice ladies, but I met some ladies.” Brooke assumes that the circle of wives that Draya is a part of views them, the two unmarried women, as a threat, but she’s willing to meet them, so she gets invited to Gloria’s dinner party to because why not? But before that, Brooke agrees to try on some of Draya’s bikini designs because Draya wants to see how they fit a woman with curves. She uses a bt more flowery language to explain it though:
“I got T and A, she got J and B.”
Her J and B are barely contained within the bikini.
“She was like BOOM, bursting out, but it was a good bursting out,” Draya says when she sees her.
She invites Brooke to her website launch where her business will open to the public and Brooke is excited to go.
Malaysia and Jackie finally meet up for their olive branch extension-fest, and it goes pretty well. Malasia tells Jackie pretty bluntly “I don’t hate you, I just feel really bad that I let you in my circle to like, kinda manipulate me.”
She also tells Jackie that the rest of the girls agree that their past is water under the bridge which isn’t e-x-a-c-t-l-y the truth, but it’s something Jackie needed to hear and appreciates. For her part, Jackie explains that what happened last year was a lot of small things that came together to form one big moment of drama and she maintains “I really didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.” But she also says “My wrongs were huge.” So that’s something!
Malaysia just wants to give Jackie the chance to say all of this to the girls, too, so she invites Jackie to Gloria’s dinner to see if they can reconcile.
Brooke and Gloria both head to Draya’s apartment to meet and Gloria is struck by Brooke’s J and B, too. More the B than the J, actually. “She has a huge booty. I’m a little jealous.”
“I wanted to smack it but I held myself back,” she says. Brooke takes that as a compliment, and they get along great. Draya wants them there for support as she launches her website, and in a supportive, positive turn, they’re really excited for her and toast to her new business.
Gloria’s dinner party finally arrives and it’s the first time everyone has seen one another in a while, and it’s the first time most of them are meeting Brooke.
“I’m not nervous to meet them, but my mind is racing because I’m like, okay, have they Googled me? Are they gonna like me? Aren’t they gonna like me? I hope they don’t try to put some poison in my food.”
As they ladies all sample Gloria’s home-cooked food, most of the are unaware that Ms. Jackie is walking up the front walk, about to give them all a surprise.
And when she does enter?
Jackie sits and eats with the ladies and it’s weird because she doesn’t explain why she’s there.
But finally, Malaysia cuts the tension by explaining that she invited Jackie because they’re all in different spaces now, and you get the sense that most of them were really happy to be in spaces that were different from Jackie’s. Malaysia promises that Jackie has an apology to deliver, but before she can…we fade to black.