Getting the new countertop inside, then installed.
Episode six of “Bethenny and Fredrik” begins as Bethenny and Carole Radziwill meet at the eyewear store, where Bethenny is relieved to learn she doesn’t need glasses. She surmises that her difficulty seeing must be stress-induced. It’s been a tough week, we learn, as Bethenny’s still reeling from last episode’s revelation that Fredrik has set them up to go way over budget on the apartment renovations. “I expect surprises in a renovation, I just don’t expect surprises from my partner in a renovation,” she explains.
The pair finally face off at an emergency meeting at 10 Madison Square West with the design and contracting team, where Fredrik is more concerned about the havoc a wave of humid weather is wreaking on his hair. She reminds him of the budget parameters they agreed to in their original meeting, and gets angry that there will be $60,000 worth of expenses she wasn’t aware of. Then she brings up her concerns that she’s shouldering an undue portion of the responsibilities for the business.
“You said to me you were going to make all this money, but I’ve been the only one looking for apartments,” she argues. “Hundreds of emails to Jordan; I’ve been looking in the Hamptons. How is that a skin-in-the-game partnership?” Fredrik feels like they’ve both been hunting for listings and blames her anger on her trust issues, then suggests that he would have already sold the apartment if he weren’t working with her. That last part incites Bethenny to loudly declare him a “snake oil salesman,” a line that’s been heavily touted in promos all season.
When Fredrik rehashes the fight with his husband, he seems truly not to understand Bethenny’s frustration with the budgets, and says his real anger is over the way she has been speaking to him and the level of rage she shows over fixable disagreements. “It’s almost like you’re answering to the headmistress, you know, and she’s like yelling at you with a ruler,” Derek suggests, before switching gears and urging Fredrik to try to reach out to Bethenny and talk things over calmly. Derek loves second chances, we learn.
The summit occurs at a Tribeca restaurant, where we learn that Bethenny has been feeling “yucky” and regretful. We find out that it was actually Bethenny that reached out to initiate the meeting. Fredrik apologizes when Bethenny says that her foul mood was caused by his saying that he would have sold the apartment if it weren’t for her involvement. The talk comes back to the budget numbers and Bethenny’s feeling that Fredrik hasn’t been fully honest with her. Fredrik wasn’t expecting to get this level of blame directed at him and says he can’t do this any more. He’s still insisting that Bethenny must not have looked at the budget numbers, and she seems to prove his point when she explains, confusingly, that she did look but didn’t know what they meant. The extra money was included in the paperwork, she just didn’t realize that it wasn’t accounted for in the $300,000 figure.
Fredrik’s tearing up at this point. “I saw you as a friend. You called me a snake and you called me a liar and I’ve never lied to you. I might have confused you, but I never lied to you,” he tells her. That seems to register with Bethenny, who then offers him a hug. Her trust issues don’t usually come out in business relationships, but their friendship has made this one feel partly personal. She wants to move forward with more trust.
Having reached a détente, their next meeting is back at the apartment. The chevron floors are complete, there’s stone in the bathroom, and the showpiece bathtub has arrived. It’s much closer to looking habitable. They’re both thrilled. While they are there, James, the contractor, and a team of deliverymen arrive with a slab of porcelain designated for the kitchen countertop. It turns out they haven’t quite figured out how to get the monstrously sized item inside yet, and Fredrik goes faint at the suggestion that they make have to cut it in half to make the trip. “There ain’t going to be no seam in that countertop,” Bethenny makes clear. “The queen hath spoken.”
Fredrik and Bethenny with their contractor, James.
Through some feat of magic, they make it in. Fredrik is so struck by the sight of the piece in the kitchen that he likens it his first glimpse of an unclothed Derek. Bethenny: “Nobody cares. Seven contractors [don’t] want to hear about your husband’s physique in the nude while installing stone,” she reminds him. Never one to neglect a potential double entendre, Bethenny then high-fives the workers for their skill at “getting it up.”
With the peace having hopefully being reached, we look forward to next week, when we’ll delve into the wonders of staging the renovated Madison Square apartment.
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