RHONY: Cutting Room Floor Show PLUS The New Jersey Hoiusewives are NOT Well-to-Do

I was looking for answers when I tuned in last night to the Lost Footage episode of The Real Housewives of New York City. I got none.

So many times during the season, the characters - mostly Jill Zarin - said that if we saw the footage that was not aired this season, we would see them in a different light.

I saw them in the exact same light.

I didn't like Jill's jewelry shopping scene. It just reinforced all the things I didn't like about her book (see my Barnes & Noble review at http://my.barnesandnoble.com/communityportal/Review.aspx?page=Review&reviewid=1383327) - husbands buy jewelry that costs more than some people's houses and still we get to kvetch about not getting more jewelry. "I should have got married in July," says Jill when confronted with the idea of having her new Chopard watch be a birthday, anniversary and holiday gift. She did strong-arm her husband, the long-suffering Bobby, with the promise of You-Know-What if he would up the watch ante with a big necklace that was shaped like pop-tops from old beer cans, but with diamonds.

Pretty much everything Jill did made no news - she is Jill Zarin, a spoiled, petted housewife who stamps her feet when she doesn't get her way, or someone else gets fame and her own show, or when not everybody goes running over to her side of the Titanic so that she can a) tilt the boat her way to reach the last space on a lifeboat (after throwing out Alex and her two small children because, after all, they were never friends or b) throw you down into the sharks before she has to jump so that they won't be so hungry when she hits the water. And maybe the stumps that are all that are left of you will cushion her fall into the cold, cold, dark  water.

Bethenny - poor Bethenny, deer in the headlights while Ramona and Alex told the stories of how hideous they became when they were pregnant. But every woman has to go through those kinds of stories or the stories from women who say they never looked bad or felt bad and the baby came out and they were right back to normal only better. Rite of passage.

Kelly was mean to make fun of Ramona while she was trying to learn to walk the runway. But Kelly has a hard time celebrating anybody else's joy. I also enjoyed the fact that when the designer said Kelly looked like an Olympic athlete, Kelly said somethung like, "too bad I don't have the brain of an Olympic athlete," which flummoxed everyone in the room.

I thought Jill was very rude to be such a clank-clunky mess while her daughter was trying to study. Perhaps Jill needs to buy a larger apartment so that there is a quiet office in which Ally can do her work, rather than just clinking and clanking and trying to look like she was important in her black wife-beater being all Kitchen Mom.

I just can't tell you how much I dislike that woman.

I thought Alex looked great on the runway. So she wasn't a professional model: that wasn't the point. The point was that the dress looked great on a Real Woman and the walk celebrated a Real Woman.

Kelly scared me during her workout thing. Her conversation is littered with snippets about how fun and light and fabulous Kelly is, so much so that she has Kelly World. Her conversation is also full of side jabs at whomever happens to be around. She jumps from one place to another as if all she is doing is taking it these one-liner Hallmark card things that she thinks must make her sound sophisticated or smart. She talked about Eric Ripert, no doubt to give credence to her argument that Bethenny is not a chef. She believes she has a great palate. She also said in her Talking Head that she looks exactly the same after a marathon that she does after getting ready to go to a party. Which is to say, she always looks pretty greasy and her hair is always a mess.

But as she kept yammering on and on, I kept wondering the same thing:

Is she having a bad reaction to Xanax? Or crack?

Bethenny's PETA billboard was pretty cool. I thought it was interesting that Jill and LuAnn couldn't be there - either not invited or too eaten up with jealousy...but certainly I would have liked to see the cameras on THEM at that moment so I could hear the horrible things they must have been saying.

Ramona's party was pretty tense. I thought Kelly looked actually kind of pretty for the first time - it was nice to see her out of the pillowcase dress she seems to be wearing all the damned time, which highlights her legs (which she obviously believes to be her best feature) but also broadens her shoulders and makes her neck look short.

Ramona was on a high of excitement and I do think that she snipped too much about the place cards. It was certainly rude that Jill tried to switch them around, but I would have let it fly. That's what rude people do at parties. I thought it was lame but funny how Jill said - well, you did that at my party at Saks. Such a nanny-nanny-boo-boo thing to say. Just let it go. Sit where you're told. It's not the damned bleachers in a football game.

Kelly's discussion of Ramona Chair was rude and weird. A party with place cards is a party with place cards. And no, dear - you follow the hostess' rules. What if you had decided to run screaming into the kitchen that nobody in there was a chef because you'd never heard of them? What if you decided to tell all the guests they looked like vampires?

I was glad to see LuAnn finally cop to the fact that it was rude for her to listen to conversations via speakerphone without making her presence known. The thing is that it was not just on Jill - LuAnn should have spoken up herself. So - let;'s make it clear: Jill and LuAnn were rude TWO TIMES. And the thing is that LuAnn and Jill were enjoying being mean together while listening to these conversations. There was no eureka moment after the fact that oh, perhaps we need to call to let her know we were listening to her together and making fun of her and we're sorry because it was so freakin' rude that nobody, not nobody, can take LuAnn seriously as a manners guru ever, ever again.

Over the river, apparently, the RHONJ are not the well-to-do women that they portray themselves to be. There are tax liens and judgments out the wazoo.

In addition to Teresa Guidice's declared bankrutpcy debt of about $11 million, Jacqueline's husband's business has apparently filed for involuntary bankruptcy. Also, Danielle has tax liens in the millions and even Carlyon has judgments against her. DIna's husband was sued for what seems like a paltry $12,500 or so. Elvira, the party planner who did Teresa's over-the-top and revolting housewarming party, and who weighed in heavily on people requiring help (drivers, nannies, chauffers, etc.), apparently has tax liens of about $300,000. Too bad she didn't spend any of that income on clothes for herself.

On a side note, Elvira had been hinting to everyone in town that Elvira was going to be the new housewife on the TV show, replacing Dina Manzo who left a few weeks ago. Andy Cohen begged to differ, telling her in a Tweet late last week that her 15 minutes are over.

Thanks for that!