On every Bravo reality show, there comes a crucial point in the filming of the season where it’s time to get the cast up and out of their element, all for the sake of the viewer’s entertainment. Shahs of Sunset fans, I bring you last night’s episode of the cast trip. Why they chose to do it so early in the season is still a bit of a mystery to me but let’s just go along for the ride like we do everything else.
Before vacation commences, Reza Farahan does have some important business to work on at home: humoring husband Adam Neely into thinking he will consider a surrogate to have their children. They meet the doctor, who looks like the villain from every recent James Bond movie I’ve seen, and settle into his office. But while Adam is ready to talk babies, Reza is transfixed with the doctor’s taste in furniture and calculates in his head how much the desk costs and how his surrogacy money would be paying for it.
Not so fast, Reza, because you haven’t even opened up your wallet yet and you might want to sit down for this one – Dr. Evil informs them that surrogacy can cost anywhere from $120-$190K. Cue sticker shock! Adam, clad in a hideous black and white checkered sport coat, tells us in his talking head that he knows Reza would rather allot that money to a new G Wagon but why invest in a G Wagon that could break down when you could buy a kid, who will take care of you when you’re broke down? Uggggh. I wonder how long it took him to come up with that little gem of wisdom. Adam is sounding broke down himself – like a broke down philosopher.
Later, Reza wants Adam to explore his preferred choice of getting a child: adoption. As they wait for the adoption agent to come over, Adam fixes them whisky and coke zero drinks because nothing says that you take an adoption meeting seriously quite like a stiff drink.
When the agent arrives and sits down, she asks what brings them to thinking about parenthood and Reza responds flatly that Adam’s clock is ticking. He then clarifies that he wants to foster/adopt a baby-aged child and cries when she tells him about the amount of children and teens that are in the system. Not that it sways Reza enough to change his age requirements, but it was worth mentioning, I suppose. He then tells her that his mom told him that she could go to Iran with an envelope of cash and bring back two kids, no questions asked. The agent looks at them awkwardly and no doubt puts a big black line through their names the second she gets out of the door.
Golnesa “GG” Gharachedaghi has a new man and that man is Shalom. She’s taking him out to dinner to meet her parents and tells him just how nervous she is – so nervous that she could fart. GG claims she has never brought anyone home before because they weren’t worthy but my official guess is that no one lasted long enough through her black out to be brought home. Since GG is Muslim, she worries that her parents won’t accept Shalom because he is Jewish. But GG didn’t give her parents enough credit and they accept him happily, thanks to GG asking them what they think of Shalom while he’s still at the table.
Mercedes “MJ” Javid goes to visit her dad in the hospital and it doesn’t seem that he has improved much. She tells him about her upcoming trip to Israel and he tells her to make a Jewish friend. Next, she shows him pictures of their family and hangs them up all around his room so he feels more at home. In case you thought this was all getting too nice and sweet, MJ pulls out some nudie magazine for him to have, which isn’t weird at all.
Seeing her father in such a state has convinced MJ even more that she needs to have a baby with her bazonga-loving fiancé Tommy Feight, married or not. Never mind that she gave Asa Soltan Rahmati hell for being pregnant and not married, in MJ’s world, it’s different because….ummm….no one really knows why because she hasn’t bothered to explain why Asa is being held to one standard and she is not. But that’s really MJ in a nutshell – just like her boobs being unable to stay in her shirt, she is unable to just stay in her own lane and worry about herself.
So, MJ’s officially in baby making mode and that means Tommy constantly watching her pee on ovulation tests. Seriously, why does he need to be in the bathroom with her overseeing what she is peeing on? Anyway, she goes on an ovulation stick, Tommy makes a joke about it being a golden shower and she immediately hands him the wet stick to go analyze. Unfortunately for them (but fortunately for the world on a whole), the test is negative and MJ wonders if she will ever ovulate. She tearily tells the cameras that she thinks the real reason Asa got pregnant was because it was really MJ who was supposed to get pregnant and this is the universe’s way of telling her to hurry up. I don’t know, I’m no philosopher Adam here but I kind of think if the universe were telling MJ to get pregnant, she wouldn’t be living in squalor with a man who refers to her boobs as “bazongas.”
In case you didn’t hear, Asa is pregnant. Fine, this is her story line this season but having to listen to her say that she will only dress her baby in 100% organic cotton clothing is beyond annoying. We get it – you’re growing the miracle of life, now STFU already. She meets Reza at the baby store and picks out things like a nursery sign that says “I’m not perfect but I’m so close it scares me” when really, she should be hanging something up that says “My mom is so high off cosmic energy it scares me.”
Reza arrives just in time to tell Asa how lucky she is that she got pregnant with “broke down 40 year old eggs” and tell her how all of this has affected MJ. Asa isn’t really interested in how this has affected MJ – she’s busy growing a perfect miracle child and someone else’s toxicity isn’t something she needs to be around. And by “not be around,” she means take an international trip with because despite being 7.5 months pregnant and taking a 20+ hour plane ride to get there, Asa and her 100% organic unborn baby are going to Israel.
So, I guess Destiney Rose is officially a Shah now and we have to deal with it. Her first real contribution to the group (aside from providing lamp shaded go go dancers, that is) is to join them on their trip to Israel and Shervin Roohparvar draws the short end of the stick and is tasked with picking up her and her cheetah luggage to get to the airport. He’s stuck having conversation with her and she wastes no time being inappropriate by asking him how blue balls and phone sex work with his long distance girlfriend.
Everyone makes it to the airport and Reza takes the time to explain to all the people out there how to travel when you’re a Middle Eastern man. First, you have to wear something expensive, like a Rolex or have some LV luggage because if you are rocking expensive gear, you’re less likely giving off the message that you want to die. Second, you have to befriend a sassy TSA agent by hugging and dancing with her. Finally, you have to be privileged enough to be able to joke freely about racial profiling and cultural injustices without it mattering to you because you’re a reality TV star who doesn’t seem to have any sense of political correctness or social responsibility for your own people. OK, you got me, I added the last part in.
Hey, speaking of profiling! Once they arrive in Israel, Reza, Mike Shouhed, GG, and Destiney get detained by Israeli officials, while Asa and MJ roam free in the airport food court. After 2.5 hours, Destiney and her travel leotard are released, then Shervin. At the 4 hour mark, Mike is allowed to leave. Finally, after 5 hours, both Reza and GG are released and Reza is ready for a drink. That was pretty anticlimactic.
Once at their hotel, the sweat suit gang starts popping champagne bottles and Destiney immediately breaks something, which is cause for celebration. But no time to hang around the hotel since according to Reza, Tel Aviv’s nightlife scene is so cool that Woody Allen would have hung out there, whatever that means. They all clean up and head out on the town, with MJ in another skin tight cat suit, this time in the shade of burnt orange. Can someone please tell me where MJ is finding all of these cat suits? She hasn’t worn anything else since the season started, it’s like Elvis Presley was clearing out his closet and MJ scooped up all his old stage costumes.
At the restaurant, smoking indoors is still allowed, so Asa immediately makes her exit, leaving MJ with no one to target for their life choices. Instead, talk turns to sex, like it usually does with this group of perverts, and we find out that GG likes a certain color and member the best. In fact, she announces it loudly and while Mike thinks that vulgar, it’s perfectly fine for him to jump in attest to how well-endowed he is. Good lord, what am I even watching here?
Thankfully, they move on quickly by going outside to smoke and just when I thought we were safe from horrible conversation, MJ announces she will get pregnant in and month and her child won’t be a bastard. GG points out that maybe MJ should worry about getting married first and it has nothing to do with the status of that terrible word she is using to describe children born out of wedlock. But MJ refuses to get the point and in her drunken, cat suited stupor, keeps saying it over and over. That burnt orange suit is cutting off circulation to her brain right now and Reza can’t take it anymore.
Reza steps in to tell MJ that it doesn’t matter if her kid is born in or out of wedlock and at 44, she would be winning the lottery if she got pregnant right away. He thinks maybe she should clean her lifestyle up first, maybe do some yoga and cut out the smoking but Reza should save his breath – MJ is just getting warmed up. She invites a strange guy and his girlfriends back to their hotel room to party some more and play spin the bottle. The guy ends up taking his pants off, the girls end up making out, and the hotel room is trashed.
Shervin attempts to make up for it by dropping $100 cash on the dresser. A sloppy, drunken, black-footed MJ goes to bed to sleep it off, saying she just wants to live out her youth before she gets pregnant, as if she hasn’t been doing just that for the last 44 years of her life.
Does anyone else think this trip will be just another downward spiral for MJ?
Photo Credit: Bravo
