Greetings! I hope your Columbus Days have been suitably festive. I’m quickly falling prey to a nasty cold and started the evening with a Beyblade-induced headache, so really the last thing I felt like doing was drinking wine and watching a bunch of bitches fighting, but I do it for you, my friends. Before we get to tonight’s episode, brought to you by Midol, let’s get updated on the news from around the intertubes, shall we?
· The HuffPost is reporting that Jacqueline and Caroline will not be asked to return for season 5 of RHONJ in what’s basically a mutual parting of the ways. We still have another season to enjoy the moderate level of reason they bring, as season 4 has been shooting while the current season has been airing, but apparently these two goils haven’t been going sufficiently squirrel monkey [on camera] to justify their continued participation. Jacqueline, as we know from the previews, even ditched the season 3 reunion special. Rumor has it that there are a whole bunch more Gorga-Guidices waiting in the wings in their pink-and-purple spangly Hoboken Hooker getups, so the show will go on, lucky us.
· That very natural and holistic former model from the OC, Peggy Tanous, is retiring after just one season as a Real Housewife. Does this mean we’ll get the desperate cougar in the platinum blonde wig back? I felt there was a lot of potential there.
· Brandi Glands lost her son Jakey in a WalMart this weekend. He was found in the fitting rooms, probably trying on bras and peeing in shoes.
· RadarOnline is all fired up that the Oof-Ifs are having financial issues, the proof being that Dr. Paul (or as my brother-in-law calls him, Dr. Skirt) is offering discount plastic surgery procedures on GiltCity.com. Personally I think that’s a pretty smart business development move, but whatever.
· And finally: remember that icky guy in the hat who made the sex tape with Kim and Kyle’s oft-mentioned niece, Paris Hilton? He’s got a stalker, and she left poopy pants on his front doorstep. I know this has nothing to do with anything but I couldn’t help it.
That’s all I’ve got. Time to make the donuts.
The curtain rises Chez Vanderpump where Lisa is ordering her frightened housekeeper around regarding proper table setting. Perhaps some of the confusion comes from the glare of the hyper-reflective table. I like Art Deco well enough, but that thing is just gaudy. The poor housekeeper must see fish forks coming from 47 different directions and fear she’s under attack. What’s the occasion? Seems the Pumps are having Pandy’s boyfriend’s parents for dinner. (Remember him? The one who asked for permission to propose in episode 1? It seems a lifetime ago…) Lisa’s making potato salad, which will go nicely with the leftovers from the Oof-If bbq she made Mr. Lisa dumpster dive for, because she’s cheap like that. Fresh from the grouch can, Mr. Lisa tries to put something dirty on Lisa’s cutting board and she shoos him away with a cleaver. That was close.
Meanwhile, the Pumps’ neglected son Max is on the phone desperately professing his love to someone named Melissa that he hopes will adopt him. I am so glad he’s found a forever family, because that mom of his is really giving him the shaft. First she impounds him at one of those behavioral intervention facilities in Utah, then proceeds to list every single person, canine, and food and beverage product she loves better, on camera and for all the world to hear. Lisa does not like the sound of his phone conversation and proclaims the callee to be “stepping on her patch”. Mr. Lisa, who hasn’t been near her patch in months, takes his tea and Gigs off to the screening room to watch some Ice Road Truckers.
Over to Tay’s where she’s dolled up in a weird Frederick’s of Hollywood fetish apron and preparing to “bake cookies” with her dear friend, Dana. Sure. As Tay fondles the butter they discuss their shared horror that Brandi, that ridiculous slut, actually used the word C-O-C-K among women and children. For shame! Dana’s going to solve the whole problem by inviting everyone over for a game night, involving desserts only and drinks, and “gaming décor” like game pieces on the floor. Wow, she’s really a world-class party planner. Does the Grammys and everything. Can’t wait to see how that turns out.
Meanwhile, Kyle and her ten-foot ponytail are meeting Adrienne for lunch at the Mulholland Grill, which comped their chardonnay in exchange for the extended camera shot of their sign. Adrienne looks appropriately dressed for a change with a pink sweater tied around her shoulders, until she adjusts her posture and…mother of God, what is that? There’s a giant silver door knocker hanging from her sweater sleeves down between her hoots! Oh, the sartorial horror.
The conversation naturally turns to Brandi Glands and her potty mouth. Adrienne feels Brandi is “entertaining”, much like hardware repurposed as fashion is “entertaining”. Kyle feels Brandi is not a girls’ girl, and I think she is right on, which is why we are friends. Both ladies are perfectly aghast that Brandi used “the C word”. I’ve gotta say, there’s another C word that frankly makes me shudder, so use of the one that rhymes with FLOCK doesn’t faze me a whole lot, but whatever. They are just delicate flowers, I guess. Or maybe not, because when Kyle asks Adrienne how she feels about Jakey peeing on her groomed greens, Adrienne just shrugs and says “he’s 4, shit happens.” I also have all boys and I say shit doesn’t have to happen on the lawn, so I guess I am officially not on Team Brandi.
Team Brandi (made up of: Brandi and her only friend in the world, Adrienne, who appears to be wearing a disguise so as not to be caught in public with The Glands) meets up for cappys and milkshakes, which has to be a combination best enjoyed with an Ecstasy chaser. Brandi, who is in serious need of a deep conditioning treatment, is truly the crabbiest bitch this show has ever dug up. Truly – that chick is bitter, mouthy, and uncouth. She’s like Danielle with no love and no light, and no one to manage her aura. What does Adrienne see in her? Other than the storyline laid out for her by Bravo? Brandi twitches her cheek implants and moues to Adrienne that her kids are all she has, that she needs new friends, and that no one knows everything she’s gone through. Really? I think The Glands has been pretty transparent about her trials between Twitter and the various and sundry tabloid offerings. Brandi hopes Adrienne will be her new big girl friend because she, too, is hot and cold. Eeeek! Adrienne immediately begins scrambling her brain for excuses to ditch the next regularly-scheduled Housewife Summit.
Elizabeth, you got me laughing at “poopy pants,” and I haven’t been able to stop yet!
Paul Nassif may be having money troubles, though I’m inclined to agree with you that considering where and what his business is, discount specials don’t sound indicative of anything to me, except possibly overkill, as he gets more free publicity from the show than he’d get even if he had Free Boob Job Friday every week.
Be that as it may, I saw the Radaronline story, which was immediately echoed everywhere else, and it sounded plantish to me, devoid of specifics, and consisting only of vague generalities, and coming, naturally, from an “anonymous source.”
As we learned along with the Giudices, real “financial problems” of the very wealthy tend to trail over into the public information department at some point, or at least flesh themselves out somewhat.
That’s all irrelevant, however, as the Maloof family own everything in the world, and are thus much more likely to cause financial problems for other people than suffer any themselves.
I suspect that Radaronline’s “big scoop” was intended as some sort of damage control, in the wake of viewer reaction to the football game episode.
For me, it was added confirmation, as if I needed any, that one’s impressions of reality show hamsters are ephemeral and not to be counted on.
I had previously opined that Adrienne seemed jarringly out of place on Real Housewives, as another blogger put it, “she’s just not trashy enough.”
Indeed, until the football episode, aside from being no less ostentatious than anyone who chooses to live in that neighborhood, she held the singular position of not having said or done a single thing that could be called trashy or skanky, not even by a judgmental old curmudgeoness like me.
The show glossed over the issue of how many people would lose their jobs as a result of the Maloof’s removing their ball team from the city, though they did show some signs that referenced it, or I think they did, and I don’t pretend to know if they intentionally placed that ITM clip, explaining that she simply wished to obtain more revenue, so close to those scenes.
It didn’t really matter where they put it, though.
Within hours of the first reference to the ball team on the preceding episode, even people who had never heard of it, or any of the backstory, knew enough, which was exactly what Adrienne said in her ITM: She wanted more money.
That was trashy. It was also, in my opinion, an ill-thought decision to include anything at all about the ball team in the show, precisely because of the controversy, and I don’t know if I’m more surprised that she permitted it, or that Bravo did it.
I would not be surprised to learn that at least some of Bravo, and all of Adrienne’s brothers, were extremely displeased and appalled, respectively, though obviously for different reasons.
The whole raison d’être of the Real Housewives franchise is to serve up, along with the trashfest, a heapin’ helpin’ of schadenfreude.
As viewers, we are supposed to come away from watching these shows feeling both entertained and immeasurably fortunate, that though we are poor, we are blessed with the ability to create, maintain, and generally cause the presence in our lives of joy and amusement despite having little or no money to do it with, and above all that we are blessed with loving and functional families, happy marriages, and as if that were not enough, good manners.
Real Housewives allows us to sink into the same kind of suspension of disbelief as shows about vampires and werewolves.
That rich men want more money is omnipresent in our own day-to-day reality, but we don’t want our entertainment time sullied by anyone making it so plain that the more money those rich people want – and are getting – happens to be the exact same money with which we had hoped to pay the mortgage next month.