'The Real Housewives of Atlanta' recap: Thank You for Being a Friend

Does anything better sum up Kim's coarseness, the trashy coagulation of her soul, than this scene: She's been tasked with getting in shape for her little bus tour with Kandi. (The amount of Febreze that is going to be dispensed on that trip is astronomical.) Rather than remain upright at dance practice, or hold off on the vino for a week, she's enlisted the help of a red laser sprinkler contraption that allows her to nap while it supposedly zaps fat cells. There she was, prone in a leather bikini, bitching to her gals while chomping on a piece of lukewarm cheese pizza.

"God, I need a soda or I'll die," she moaned dramatically, kicking one of her spray-tanned legs on the $3000 fat blaster bed. There was just so much to do before the tour. She had to find her vision, she was supposed to become an artist, and now she had to go to Los Angeles so her hair stylist there could tend to the wind beneath her wig.

While red lights danced on Kim's backside, Cynthia asked if she could speak with NeNe in private. In Kim's kitchen—which looked different, didn't it?—Cynthia apologized for the tension between her friend and her fiance. She wanted NeNe to know how much she valued their friendship—which Sheree in one of her routinely amusing asides labeled parasitic. She gave her a candle, which was a lovely gesture, until NeNe said she'd take a picture of it on her night stand next to her bed and send it to Peter Cynthia.

Then our leggy lady pulled out a Friend Contract, with lots of cutesie little jokes about notaries and Presidents and termination rights and clauses for rehab and death. Check this box if you want to be BFFs, if you know what I mean. Well it was all rather silly, and perhaps ill-advised, but if I had to choose a friend I'd rather the girl who makes goofy but well-intentioned gestures than the one who always announces "How are your titties doing?!" whenever I walked into a room.

On with the show! Atlanta's biggest talent agency called Sheree back and told her they really appreciated that she was working hard on her craft so they wanted to represent her—a moment which made scores of struggling, hard-working, talented actors without representation sob at the injustice of it all. Kandi came over to her house so the women could nibble from a Safeway sandwich platter and run lines. I figured we'd watched an abbreviated scene as the rehearsal was brief and quickly segued to talk of Bob Whitfield's deadbeat history. (Or was Sheree method acting here, playing the woman who pretends her ex won't pay?)

Alas, we'd already seen Sheree's performance in its entirety. As NeNe's head bobbed, buzzed off her roadie, and Phaedra's talons tapped at her Blackberry, and Cynthia rubbed her worn copy of the Friend Contract in her purse for reassurance, Sheree stumbled through her vocal exercises backstage. Her grand entrance came, and quickly went. "I love you," she said under the big lights. And....scene. If that doesn't earn her a role on Denzel Washington's arm in a high stakes thriller, what will?

NEXT: Peter, that sweet berry, makes NeNe melt

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