Source: VH1 / Viacom
What did you think of the season finale of Basketball Wives? Depending on where I look, I see two strong stances. If I check out commentary on Twitter, most people are fed up with OJ and glad she left Jackie’s party house. If I check out Instagram, most people are in support of OG and believe the show was edited to make her out to be the villain. Either way, she’s the constant topic of conversations.
As for my own stance, all I can say is that I hated watching this season. Ha-ted it. Everyone and I mean every single person, could have stayed at home with their families because this season didn’t give what it was supposed to.
As I will continue to mention, I believe that the women, whether consciously or not, treated OG differently and held her to a completely different standard in Season 8. The strongest example of that was her exclusion from being on set of the reunion because she’d been painted as the aggressive, untamed woman in the group, and her emphatically being called “ugly” by Evelyn Lozada and Feby Torres. (When grown women, not kids, call one another “ugly” to the face, it’s deeper than a commentary about their personality or their style choices, and I’ve never heard anyone else be called ugly on the show.) Everyone has the right to like and dislike who they please, but that doesn’t give you the right to treat them differently, or any kind of way. Instead of that being the basis for which real conversation and change could occur going into Season 9, it was simply used as bait to get people to tune in.
First and foremost, why was it so necessary for Jackie to try and play peacemaker between OG and the ladies? If they weren’t ready to address the claims against them, they could have stayed where they were, let her be in the house hanging out with Jackie and Jennifer, and left her be. Let everybody just enjoy their time away from lockdown and come up with their own storylines.
Then, when the topic of colorism came up, none of the ladies did any homework to see the ways in which they may have played a part in the less than warm treatment of OG. They all came in sure that she was just being dramatic and that they had never in any way, displayed behavior that could be seen as colorist or that enabled such actions. If they had a change of heart and tried to be open-minded, they wanted OG to explain to them how they had gone wrong and/or teach them how they could go about things differently. That was exhausting.
And to make matters more complicated, when she did decide to address what she thought colorism to be, OG’s explanations were too vague. I’m sorry, but taking the side of a person of a lighter complexion didn’t make Kristen a colorist. That girl would just do anything to fit in. And a mother telling her child to “wake your black a– up” is not colorist without context (is that child darker than their siblings or…?).
That was exhausting, too.
And while I respect that OG recorded her conversations in full with her co-stars to attempt to show the ways in which she was edited negatively and purposely painted as a troublemaker, I found it sad that she had to go through such lengths to attempt to protect her character. In the end, a very real experience she had was turned on its head and flipped, over seven episodes, to make her look as unreasonable and crazy as possible. The gaslighting was strong and I didn’t need it. I didn’t need anything that came from this season.
Seriously, though. What did we learn about Liza Morales, aside from the fact that she can’t get Lamar Odom to fork over money for their son’s college education? Aside from a brief visit from an activist, what did we learn that was positive about Kristen Scott when she wasn’t playing bone collector and addressing racism while denying colorism? What did Shaunie O’Neal account for aside from admitting favoritism, before she fled back to Texas? Why did we need to see Feby again?!
What was the point of any of it? And what is the point of this show after all of these years?
That’s something that really needs to be considered as they determine whether or not there will be a Season 10. The lack of resolve, accountability and substance in “Season” 9 was more frustrating than entertaining. I can only hope that if greenlit for another go-round, OG will be free from her contract and able to get completely free of these women. I also hope that we’ll see some fresh new faces. Watching the same women act the same way they did back in 2010 is fun for only so long — Tami Roman told us that before she ran for the hills. But I also hope that whatever happens, there will be more to them all than making fun of people’s style, running back and forth with each other’s business, shading boyfriends and husbands and being mean girls. After more than a decade there has to be more to these women. If there’s not, let’s be done with this series entirely.
