The Marquee Blog

Family ties on 'Real Housewives'

Please tell me the producers forced Lisa to take NeNe with her to visit the family on the West Coast.

Otherwise I am at a loss as to why the boisterous NeNe at all needed to come along to celebrate Lisa’s grandma’s birthday. I suspect that even with grandma being in her 90s, she's still never met the likes of NeNe.

Thursday night’s episode didn’t quite suck me in, though I felt some sympathy for Lisa as she struggled with visiting her brother’s grave.

I was slightly annoyed that her family felt so driven to push her to do it when she was clearly not comfortable with the situation. The fact that her dad refused to allow her a few minutes alone at the site as per her request was just the icing on the cake.

But back to grandma. She looked fabulous for her age! If, as she asserted, Vaseline played a role in her looking so young then sign me up.

Back home in the ATL, Kim spent time with new cast member Khandi who is going to try and help Kim with her music career (good luck with that). As Kim goes on and on about how much alike the two of them are, I had a moment of deja vu.

Didn’t she say the same thing about Sheree last season? And we all know how that turned out.

For more on the "Real Housewives of Atlanta" visit Essence.com.