Last night's episode of The Real Housewives of New Jersey showed exactly how tasteless this show is, how far it's jumped over the shark, and how the majority of these people are either entrapped in a bubble of tackiness from which they will never emerge or just plain stupid.
First off, we see Teresa planning her daughter's christening. Christenings are a big deal for Italian families, but most Italian families take the baby to church and then meet everybody back home for a giant feast. Most people don't have a pseudo-wedding for a christening. Certainly most people who have declared bankruptcy in recent days don't have a pseudo-wedding for a christening.
All I can hope is that Dina as the godmother (and part of the Manzo family that owns the Brownstone, where the palatial event was held) paid, or that Bravo paid. Either way, it was an exercise in poor judgment to see these people flaunt even imaginary wealth in front of the cameras considering the amount of their debt ($11 million) compared to their annual salary ($79K).
Teresa wants ice sculptures spelling out her kid's name, and maybe a cross - after all, it is a religious occasion. Oh, yeah - and an open bar. Christopher, the younger Manzo son who used to be known as a loser but now just seems to be one of the goombah kids that doesn't go to college but probably will make more money than any of his friends who went to college, even if a lot of it is under the table, runs the event and takes the order. He has patterned himself after Christopher on The Sopranos and it works well for him. You just know that this is going to be a big, tacky party and you thank God that Dina, who does over-the-top parties that nevertheless have some degree of prettiness, is going to do the decorating - and when you think of Dina doing the decorating, you again hope that Teresa is not paying for this.
The paying thing keeps coming at you in ever-stronger waves, in large part because Joe, Teresa's husband, is standing there like a guy in an ad for depression medication. He is the perfect picture of misery in a spit-colored sweater that almost hangs on his paunchy frame. All he does is keep telling Christopher to make it nice but not too nice.
Joe is in big trouble with alleged forgery and mortgage fraud, a DUI, and bankruptcy. You know he wants to lay low on the spending front, but his wife no doubt convinced him to fork out for this event by saying that someone else would help with the bills (which, by the way, counts as income) and that the rest of their three daughters had big, weddingish christening parties and do you want her to think in 10 years' time that they don't love her as much?
So she just keeps saying that she wants it "nice," by which she means the sky's the limit, and he just keeps saying "not too nice," which means a hunk of Velveeta, some crackers, some pimentos, and a cash bar. Joe, however, is too bowled over by his own misery; at this point, he's just an empty vehicle, and Teresa is driving him like a tank through the Field of Pretty Things where she buys her leopard-spotted and rhinestone bedazzled stretch pants.
And you think it can't get any worse until they get to the next scene, in which Danielle is taking her 16-year-old daughter to the gynecologist. On television. With cameras.
Of all the things I didn't know I was supposed to be grateful for - who knew that I should be on my hands and knees thanking my mother for not making my first OB/GYN visit a national event? I mean, who knew???
And what doctor does this? Well, Dr. Domnitz, who is Danielle's gynecologist - a job that I imagine would be like that guy climbing through sewer pipes in The Shawshank Redemption - does this. You see, Dr. Domnitz must have gotten some money from the friendly makers of the HPV virus vaccine, so he wants to tell the world. And what he wants to tell Danielle's daughter, who is very quiet about whether or not she's going to have sex or currently has sex or whatever, is that probably some day she's going to have sex, so she may as well get the shot as soon as possible.
In the meantime, Danielle is trying as hard as she can to interject her vast repertoire of sexual knowledge into the doctor's lecture. She asks about oral sex, and the doctor talks about genital warts. Danielle talks about how gross sex is, and her daughter says that maybe Danielle should get an HPV shot. Danielle says she doesn't date, which is incredible, since of course Danielle has just released the second of her sex tapes in as many years. Or maybe in one year. Danielle's daughter is no dummy, so she tells her mom to go get the HPV shot anyway.
Then over to the appetizer before the big serving of Kim G Getting Mad at Danielle. Caroline's son Christopher, the one from the Brownstone, is best friends with Kim G's son. Kim G is friends with Danielle, so Caroline doesn't want anything to do with her. This makes Kim G very determined to get in good with Caroline, so she tells Christopher to set up a lunch. She won't take no for an answer. "Just get it done," she says. Christopher just kind of sits there with his hands between his knees; what's he going to do? His mother is not going to be swayed by any pretty pleasing. The only thing that will turn Caroline around is if Kim G has a giant fight with Danielle and Caroline gets to say that she knew this would happen all along.
So, naturally, this is the way it's going to go down.
Again, we go to the Marble McManse to see Teresa dressing her girls up in $700 dresses for the baby sister's christening. "You need some bracelets," she says. The whole thing looks like they are the extras for a bad made for TV movie about the 1930s, right before the Crash.
Which actually holds water.
While Theresa is running around in her blue leopard-spotted flannel PJs getting the girls ready, Joe is downstairs in his sad ecru undershirt disconsolately eating coffee cake. He doesn't know that it's coffee cake; he just knows that it's something to put in his mouth over and over again, which keeps him from absolutely having to run to the front-facing garage to kill himself with car fumes.
Despite the fact that there's some kind of familial company downstairs, Teresa keeps running around in her PJs and Joe keeps eating cake. Finally, Teresa makes Joe get up to zip up her completely-inappropriate-for-church cocktail dress. Dina comes by and puts on a bedazzled and bepearled christening dress on the baby. The dress also includes a giant millinery flower smack in the middle of the baby's chest, where it can catch drool and other body fluids - upchucked formula, half-gummed Cheerios, etc. Standing in Teresa's bedroom with a hired photographer and videographer, Teresa gets the godmother Dina and the godfather Somebody Else and they all take formal pictures. Joe moans and whines the entire time. The money is being spent and everyone knows that they're broke and he doesn't think this is so much fun, but Teresa went and did it anyway and now he's going to rain feces all over her parade. He finally shoves the baby back at her and says he has something up his nose.
Excellent that the videographer got that.
So Joe drives them to the church in his Escalade or whatever the heck he drives. The entire time he's driving, he gives it to Teresa. He tells her how many photos he's going to allow her to have taken, tells her that she is not allowed to throw any more parties, that she should shop at the $5 shoe factory they pass on the road (my husband, were we that broke, would not countenance any kind of shopping at all, even $5 shoes), and then Teresa whines that in the past, Joe never knew what she spent, because she used to just write the checks. He says, well, now you don't have a checkbook anymore.
Again with the pictures - he's taking two pictures. The light hurts his eyes.
Then over to the fake Kim G's house. Kim G has a house that looks like a very, very large tract-style home: no real quality, but a lot of it. Danielle is coming over, with that weird wearing-sweater-over-her-hands thing she does, and Kim G tells her how pretty she looks in her purple. In addition to her Barney sweater, Danielle is wearing what looks like an old shawl that's been shredded through years of use and possible cat fights. With actual cats.
They schmooze about how much they love each other, how much they love Kim G's house, how much they love having girlfriends that are the same size. Danielle gets a talking head moment, and she talks about how Kim G is a very respected and very wealthy woman in the community, and you can tell that Danielle equates the wealthy with respected. It's all the same to Danielle. And she loves Kim G's house.
Danielle says Kim G is her dearest friend, an unexpected welcome surprise, they had some fights, and then they Kim G interjects that now they're better, because Kim G doesn't want to go back there to the fighting parts. Danielle starts talking about her adopted mom and how she meant well even though she was never as good a mom as Danielle and Kim G are. Then she talks about her birth mom who had her when she was 15 and says she wants to smell her mother. I want to smell my mother, she says, and you know that she's read in a book that smells bring you home and that she thinks it will look as if she's looking for home and won't that be touching if only she can smell her mother.
Kim G says "oh, boy," in that way that you say "oh, boy" when you know that someone is putting you on but that you can't call it for what it is. Kim says she knows someone who might be able to help, adding that she loves Danielle, and Danielle goes all weepy because "after all, who doesn't want to hear that they're loved?"
She adds that in the next life, one of them has to be a man, and then the circle of love will be complete.
On to the church. The Catholics apparently wouldn't let the Bravo cameras into the church, so Teresa's videographer watched the baby get sprinkled. Even Joe was a little happy. The baby did have a ridiculous blingy pacifier.
They go for cocktail hour at the Brownstone, where Caroline and Christopher mention that this party is bigger than a wedding. Teresa got a talking head moment, and she said that Christopher was her "bitch" for the night, which she meant as a compliment. Dina did a nice job on the decorations, and everybody was happy to have Dina back. Dina apparently left the show because Danielle stalked her and told Dina's ex-husband not to pay Dina any child support anymore. But she's back for the christening, and it's pretty over-the-top.
Joe and Teresa have a first dance with the baby, the two of them jogging their hips on the dance floor holding the baby. Joe, being human, got weepy and proud. He loves his baby; he just seems sick of his wife. Everybody cried at the first dance, even Caroline, who at first was saying that it was insanity. Jacqueline, who was out of most of this episode, was weeping and hugging her horrible puglike daughter Ashley.
Theresa says in another talking head moment that there are more than 200 people there that night, drinking,m dancing, etc. No mention is made of the fact that they just had a housewarming from hell party, complete with Idiot Party Planner Elvira, and why didn't they work it so that the two parties were combined?
At the end, Teresa is hanging all over Joe in the glow of party success, and she asks him if it was worth it. He nicely tells her that she did a good job, and she throws in that this is the last christening, and he looks stunned. And she says what? You don't like taking pictures? And then he's kind of mad, because she's posing the question of whether they'll try for his much-wanted son under the guise of him being grouchy about posing for pictures and paying mammoth christening party bills. It was a screw you moment covered up with smiles and lipstick, kind of like when she baited Danielle at the country club.
He says he's going home, and she's surprised. He says he doesn't want to see the bill. He's unhappy and miserable and mad, yet Teresa keeps partying into the night, party, party, party while her husband faces prison and losing everything and on top of that the humiliation of having been a sham this entire time, not the earner and provider he wanted to look like.
Cut to Danielle taking her daughters to some diner. They talk about the older one's Sweet 16 party funded in last week's episode by Bravo (the mysterious charity Sweet 16) but not about the OB/GYN visit, and then the older one mentions that someone in town heard from someone who told someone that they heard from Teresa that Danielle is looking for her birth mother.
And Danielle gets MAD.
Only Kim G knows that! If she wanted to tell the girls, she'd tell them! It's her deepest most innermost secret! How dare Theresa be talking about it and laughing about it, the way she did when she attacked Danielle that time at the country club! That's it! I can't talk about this in front of you girls!
So she goes outside the diner and she stands right in the window in front of the girls and she calls her guy buddy, Danny Provolone, who used to be in prison but is out now and tells him everything, knowing that he needs to eat out of her garbage can and therefore will validate every last thing she says.
You bitch! she says in her talking head. You f-in bitch for letting my daughters find out this way.
The daughters, by the way, were completely nonplussed by the news that their mother was looking for her birth mother. Seriously, they didn't stop shoveling down French fries or swilling chocolate milkshakes for five seconds. They are so used to everything their mother doing being a major pronouncement - I am going to the toilet must be said with the gravitas of Al Gore or Oprah Winfrey - that really, they've been able to take in any pronouncement ranging from I am looking for my birth mother to Is oral sex safe? without batting an eyelash. No reaction.
Danielle adds that even the most evil of evil people would know that this is crossing the line. Because any time you cross Danielle, you've crossed the line.
Danny tells her that he'll stand by her however she is going to handle this, like maybe if Danielle asks, he'll whack Kim G.
Meanwhile, it's the day or so after the christening, and Caroline and Christopher are at the Brownstone. Christopher broaches the idea of Caroline going to lunch with Kim G if the two sons accompany them. Caroline says that she is not interested in a friendship with Kim G because Kim G escorted Danielle to the courthouse when she filed charges against the repugnant Ashley. Caroline took that as not a show of friendship for Danielle so much as a statement of enmity against Ashley, and therefore the Manzos. She's not interested, though she remarks that Kim G will someday get her uh-oh moment with Danielle. She doesn't say she's looking forward to it, but you can tell she is. Because Caroline, the most reserved and wisest of the housewives, enjoys the role of being the most reserved and wisest of the housewives. She watched herself in earlier shows and realized she came off as a big, thumping, mafia-sounding Goombah. Now she's gonna be a lady, and don't you forget it.
"It not about you, it's about your relationship with Danielle," Caroline says sagely to the cameras. "Let's not get the two confused."
Actually, since Kim G has professed long-lasting love and friendship with Danielle, it is actually kind of about Kim G, since Caroline's refusal to see her is based on what Caroline considers the poor life choices being made by Kim G.
But next scene, Kim G goes running over to Jacqueline's house (she was just passing and had to stop because she lives next door, which actually means that she ran over from the house) and starts dropping curse words like big nuclear weapons all over Jacqueline's clean hand-scraped floors. Jacqueline is holding her baby, but Kim G is cradling her anger. She's very mad, and she wants everyone to know it.
Which is why she ran over the Jacqueline's: in two minutes, Jacqueline will tell her Facebook-happy daughter and the news will be all over the Internet.
Kim G knows that Danielle found out that Kim G was gossiping about Danielle's Birth Mother Quest, and in an effort to look like the righteous one, she is going to get the news to the Manzos first. This way, she looks as if she herself called off the friendship, not Danielle. In this, Kim G believes that she will be saving face.
Jacqueline is ridiculous to let Kim G in the house: this is, after all, the woman who accompanied Danielle to the courthouse when Danielle filed charges against Jacqueline's daughter, Ashley. Even if Ashley deserved an assault charge for what was, after all, assault, you don't consort with the one who helped filed the charges against your offspring!
Kim G is in high dudgeon, and she wants everyone to know that everybody was right and Danielle is evil. Kim G was only fooled because she is so trusting and caring. But now, Danielle has been emailing people and telling them not to be friends with Kim G. Kim G says that she did everything for Danielle, letting her use her driver, going to the pharmacy for her children, picking up restaurant tabs, but of course never mentioning that she spilled the beans about Danielle's private, personal business to all and sundry.
She says that you can't reason with Danielle. Everything that Jacqueline already knows.
But Kim G doesn't get what she wants from Jacqueline because Jacqueline says that Kim G has been behaving in a two-faced way and that she should have always been honest with Danielle if she was going to behave as her friend. And then Kim G goes a step out - she rants that no one wants to be her friend anymore since she started hanging out with Danielle. Jacqueline doesn't like her, Theresa doesn't like her, Caroline won't have lunch with her (the all-important lunch with Caroline once more raising its ugly head, perhaps because Danielle is moving and maybe she won't be on the show anymore and maybe nobody will care if old, two-faced Kim G isn't on the show, too). So, says Kim G, Tell the girls: I'm done with her.
Kim of course hopes that this declaration will lead to a wine-infused powwow with the Manzos and Theresa in the comfort of Caroline's kitchen, preferably while sitting at the big granite island.
Next scene, we see Danny over at Danielle's. Danielle is dressed like an invalid, and she clings to Danny like he's the body of two frozen seamen and her only hope to escape the wreckage of the Titanic is to drift away on their rafty floatiness. She talks about what a victim she is, and how Kim G probably only did this to set her up in an elaborate bid to become friends with the Manzos (wrong - she did it to be on television) and then adds that these were the monsters, the animals, the evil ones who attacked her at the country club. Her vulnerable victim pose is lessened somewhat by her continuous stream of profanity.
She decides that the only thing she can do is have it out face-to-face with Kim G. Because she is hurt and a victim, Danny drives her. And waits ominously in the leased Range Rover while she goes in to have lunch with Kim G.
Kim G is poised for a fight. She knows she was an evil gossip-whore, but she believes that she will get away with it because Danielle is such a freak show herself. The really sad part is that Kim G keeps forgetting that the cameras record stuff. So even if Danielle is a freak show with a personality disorder and a high degree of personal skankiness, everyone will see that Kim G in fact was a lying, backstabbing backstabber-liar. Because the cameras recorded it.
Danielle is straight to the point. Her daughter has heard through the grapevine that Kim G told Theresa that Danielle is looking for her biological mother. I know you talk to them, she says. Kim G doesn't have the grace to look sheepish. She confirms Danielle's suspicions as if she, Kim G, had never withheld this fact before. Absolutely. Danielle said that Kim should have known better than to talk about something so personal to Danielle to those animals. And Kim G glosses right over this very true point. You know, Danielle, I don't have a beef with those women: you do. Sometimes in situations with you, it's been very uncomfortable.
Roll footage of Danielle thinking she was Mariah Carey at a baby cancer fundraiser, dropping by with an entourage that included about 20 people who were not invited to the do, all of them looking menacing and threatening patrons with forks and using profanity and being rude about Christopher Manzo, the 20-year-old kid who at that time was just a humble valet in the parking lot. Roll more footage of Danielle crying over people talking about the Manzos at her birthday party and accusing everyone of not liking her and being disloyal.
Danielle is not a class act. But Kim G is a really classless act. Had Kim G disengaged herself from Danielle immediately after any of the incidents which she now brings up as examples of why she had to be a disloyal friend to Danielle, it would have been fine. But she put up with those incidents, which made her complicit in them. She can't use Danielle's bad behavior in the past as a reason to treat her badly after them.
Kim G has the whole thing figured out. She knows that Danielle is going to create a scene. Already people at the restaurant are gaping and pointing. Danielle wins arguments by being loud - people just give in to shut her up. So Kim G is determined that she will be way louder than Danielle. She will give as good as she gets, and then some. And she plays for the cameras, dropping f-bombs a-go-go. She calls Danielle sneaky, jealous, disloyal and says that everyone is right about Danielle. She says Danielle has no friends, calls her a pathetic old lady and then rings the big bell by screaming loudly, publicly, about Danielle's much-discussed square tits. If someone has said it about Danielle before, Kim G is gonna say it again - this time, with loudness.
They are a sensation. A group of ladies having lunch are entranced and entertained by the scene. Danny drives up to collect Danielle from the screaming, pointing banshee that is Kim G. Danielle lobs off a lame, "Go be with your friends, bitch."
Next week, Joe gets his DUI, and they all go to Venice.
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