Just When You Thought RHONJ Couldn't Get Any Worse...It So DOES!

My mantra throughout this season of The Real Housewives of New Jersey has been, after each and every episode, "that's as bad as it gets." I wait a week for the next episode and I continually have to admit that I was wrong the week earlier - because it just gets stupider and stupider.

This week, the entire families of Manzos, Lauritas and Giudices meet for dinner at the Limestone Waffle House that is Teresa Giudice's home. They sit around the sumptuous chairs (which can be yours in an upcoming auction that is now indefinitely postponed while the authorities comb through more Giudice assets that have been uncovered and decide whether it really is okay to sell children's toys and beds and hair bows to the general population) and the women all seem to be drinking fruity strawberry daiquiris. This seems to be an odd choice, because each of those suckers packs more calories than a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, but that's what they're doing,

The drinks may actually be Bellinis, because Teresa offers one to Jacqueline. They are very red Bellinis. I am sure that you can get the recipe from either Teresa's book or, more likely, where she may have gotten them herself - off the Internet. But I kid.

And what it the conversation? Uh - duh. It's about Danielle Staub, everybody's favorite punching bag. Not that she doesn't bring some of this on herself, but I always find that the best way to eliminate a problem from your life is to not keep talking and talking and talking about it.

Before the family starts in on Danielle, everybody clinks glasses and compliments Teresa on the food, and Teresa - bizarrely clad in some shredded black lace cocktail dress/negligee/mantilla - says, as if she's not desperately trying to push her book about Italian food, "some people think Italian food is so fattening, but it's so not." Albert, Caroline's husband, chimes in that when the group was in Italy, they ate their faces off but never gained weight. He delicately avoids the fact that the reason they did not gain weight is because of the enforced death march up Mount Vesuvius they were forced to endure as a condition of being held captive at Teresa's leopard-and-lace family reunion.

Jacqueline seems unable to use a fork; she is trying to do the European upside-down fork thing and I keep worrying that she will stab herself in the chin. Caroline asks, stagily, how Ashley is doing with her trial for assaulting Danielle at the country club, and Jacqueline says that Ashley seems to be doing fine. Caroline points out obviously that this may be on Ashley's record for the rest of her life, for the millionth time that someone in this extended family has pointed that out, to which I have to say: yes, it will be on her record for the rest of her life. Even if the charges are dismissed, the fact that Ashley was arrested will be on her record for the rest of her life.

Unable to lie about what Ashley did (there were 72 cameras on her at the time), Jacqueline defends the repugnant Ashley by saying that even if Ashley did wrong by pulling Danielle's hair, the hair-pulling was not accompanied by Ashely's screaming that she was going to kill Danielle, as Danielle claimed in the police report. Therefore, Ashley is somehow vindicated.

Caroline does a talking head (it is obvious that this episode is going to be the Caroline Show) and asks rhetorically, "If you are in a better place, why are you so hell-bent on hurting this child?" To which I say, nobody thought that Ashley was such a child when she moved out of her parents' home to go live with her 23-year-old boyfriend, and actually, it was the so-called child who hurt Danielle, not the other way round. OK, so Danielle said that Ashley has flabby arms and failed school and whatever else. Probably, a lot of it is true, though why an adult would be saying such things about a young person makes no sense at all. Why Ashley would respond makes no sense. Why Ashley is allowed to have a cell phone and Internet action also makes no sense - it's not as if she's working for it.

What Caroline really asking is: why are you making my niece pay for her very terrible behavior?

Because - let's face it. Ashley has not shown one iota of remorse over this whole thing. This is the thing that got her on the contract to be paid $3,300 per episode, which is a lot of money for doing the thing she is really talented at - sitting around in knit hats and ass-widening PJ bottoms and being a pouty snot. This is the only time she will realize any kind of success in her life, because the rest of her life is going to be waiting for her stepfather to fork over some money so that she can have a pedicure and buy dog sweaters.

Jacqueline chimes in with the most ridiculous argument ever: if Danielle says she was such a good friend of mine, why is she doing this to my daughter?

Again, I reiterate. Again. You told Danielle you no longer wanted to be her friend. You turned your back on her. This means that whatever warm and fuzzy feelings she once housed for you are most likely gone. By rights, those feelings should have evaporated. Also, your daughter has a weird and violent fascination with Danielle that no doubt was spurred into existence by your constant barrage of insults against her. This obsession of Ashley's with Danielle was whipped into a frenzy by you and then stirred into a luscious soup of rage with assault. The police came. Ashley was arrested. Charges of assault and harassment were filed.

However, this does not constitute Danielle doing anything to Ashley. Ashley is a menace who has not once apologized for her actions. She is the kind of person who would do this again to Danielle or anyone who ticks her off. What Ashley needs is some good residential psychiatric treatment and a real job. Ashley did something to Danielle; what is now happening to Ashley is called a consequence, not some random thing that Danielle is doing to Ashley.

Caroline is tired of everyone in her family having to battle this lunatic. The rumors she spread about Teresa being up to her eyeballs in debt and having her house foreclosed on makes Caroline mad (Teresa just sat there tight-lipped and livid that Caroline would mention this at the table or anywhere - make it go away! - only God knows whether Teresa let her family in on the bankruptcy/possible criminal charges/IRS issues). She was mean to Caroline's son Christopher (by saying that he was rude to her in a valet line, which seems so minor that the fact that Caroline even brought it up makes me snort in disgust). And she was mean to Dina, which made Dina leave the show (something about Danielle calling Dina's ex and trying to get him to stop paying child support or something).

She is "so driven to hurt every single one of us." Then, Caroline lets loose her inner martyr: "And I have done nothing but try to stay out of this woman's life."

Caroline is determined to lay it all on the line and go have drinks with Danielle in order to put all this fighting to rest. And get Danielle to drop her charges against Ashley. And right away, you know it's going to be a failure - and not because of Danielle.

The problem with this scenario is that Caroline wants Danielle to not only leave her family alone (which Danielle actually seems to be doing), but also drop the charges against Ashley. Caroline is operating on the premise that Danielle will believe that Caroline's decision not to mess in her life means anything. It doesn't, because Caroline has made it clear from the outset that she won't have anything to do with Danielle. Caroline also is under the mistaken impression that Danielle will somehow read from Caroline's attempt to talk with her that Caroline is offering any kind of approbation - or that Danielle actually wants Caroline's approbation.

Caroline is also going to insult the life out of Danielle by saying that what Ashley is guilty of, Danielle has been, too. She is going to ask Danielle to "save" Ashley. And yet Caroline is offering her nothing in return.

This entire scenario is called a negotiation. In order to be successful in a negotiation, you have to have a bargaining chip. Caroline believes her munificent presence is a bargaining chip - but she is offering Danielle nothing that she wants or needs. If Caroline invited her to a party, or suggested they meet for lunch sometimes to show people how civilized they could be for an hour or two at distant intervals, Danielle might have snapped the possibilities right up. But if there is nothing to snap up, Danielle will swim away, stewing in her own juices.

Teresa says that she tried to talk to Danielle at the country club, and Danielle just ran away. 

I despise Teresa. She is despicable. She is a liar. She is a thief. Also, she laid in wait at that country club for Danielle, who was behaving pretty well by Danielle standards (considering she found out that her so-called friend was not her friend during the self-same fashion show) and, when Danielle did not engage her, Teresa dropped a bomb of classlessness. I am no fan of Danielle Staub, but Teresa is at least an equally horrible person.

Teresa - I'm not buying your act, I'm not buying your book, and I'm not buying any of that tacky tat you spent $11 million on to fill up your Big Neighborhood Funeral Home of a House.

Caroline says, well, she may run away from me, but I won't run away from her. She is going to try to make a deal with Danielle, but Ashley better behave going forward. Jacqueline whines that she will talk with Ashley, but she can't control her, which means she doesn't want to control her.

Right there and then, Caroline texts Danielle.

Cut to Danielle. She is eating what appears to be huge tubes of pasta and asparagus, and she seems to have learned her table manners at the same school from which Jacqueline matriculated. She is sitting with her two daughters, and she is surprised. Her older daughter asks Danielle to read the text, and Danielle does - and then she starts that weird thing that she does where she scrutinizes every word for the most ominous meanings possible. "Nonsense" (Caroline would like to put a stop to this nonsense). "I'll tell her when I think it's nonsense!"

The younger daughter starts crying and moaning. She doesn't want Mom to go to this scary-sounding meeting from which no good can come. "What normal person would do that?" Well, there's her mistake. Danielle is not a normal person. She believes that it actually matters that Caroline walk away from this meeting thinking, "Wow, I really misjudged her." Danielle loves, loves, loves that scene in Pretty Woman  in which the Julia Roberts gets to go back into the Rodeo Drive shop and say, "You work on commission, right? Big mistake. Huge!'

The older daughter gets that tense mouth-face that she does when she realizes that her mother is spewing crazy-talk.

"What do we have to talk about?" Danielle muses. "I'm not in fear no more. I was, but now I'm not. The thing is, I don't want anything to do with them...so, I'm going to go."

And here is the part that where I realize that Danielle talks in Saturday morning action cartoon show speak, where there's always a watery line before the commercial that's supposed to be strong. Because she says:

She may be the matriarch of her family, but not of mine. So, here we go - matriarch to matriarch.

The older daughter's eyes slit to the side, and she realizes that this is going to be embarrassing as all get-out, especially when her mother says, "I am going to get the dignity and the respect that I deserve."

Respect is earned, dignity is self-contained. It's not something you can demand as if you're ordering a hamburger at a drive-in speaker.

Cut to Jacqueline and her husband trying to talk some sense into the puffed-out drywall that is Ashley. Ashley gets really excited when she hears that Caroline is going to speak to Danielle, and you can tell that throughout this conversation, she is fantasizing about the blog post or Facebook post or whatever she's going to run do as soon as she can leave the room. Jacqueline tells her that she can't do anything more to Danielle, and Ashley says she hasn't done anything - which is actually not a response to what Jacqueline just said.

Why is the baby sitting there? Who brings babies to conversations like this? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. You always dress him in red and black biker togs. Whatever.

"She's like herpes; she never goes away," the hatted one says of Danielle, laughing at what she thinks of as her own wit, and no doubt remembering what her doctor told her about herpes.

The stepfather says that Ashley is annoying with her Danielle talk and adds that Caroline may not get off the hook. It's costing him money, with all these legal fees, and Ashley needs to can the crap. But Ashley doesn't think she will get convicted, because she thinks that her fiction about only pulling Danielle's hair because she thought Danielle was hurting her mother will fly. She also has this idea that somehow the court will ignore the obvious evidence of Ashley pulling Danielle's hair because the tape doesn't show her telling Danielle that Ashley was going to kill her.

Ashley wants to know what Aunt Caroline is going to say - because, of course, the more details, the more people will like her Internet post. This will all be so funny, goes Ashley's brain.

Jacqueline says that Danielle will probably want a public apology, and Ashley says, "Well, that;'s not gonna happen." Because it makes so much more sense to hope the judge will ignore the evidence - on camera - of Ashley's assault on Danielle. Because Ashley paying a fine and being found guilty is so much better than saying, it was a confusing situation and I don't know why I did it. I am so sorry.

Ashley rolls her eyes and shows her parents enormous disrespect - which makes sense, since Jacqueline does nothing but talk about Danielle. Jacqueline can't stand that her daughter owes Danielle.

Back at Danielle's, Danielle's pet felon Danny comes in without a coat (he probably pawned it to pay his probation fees). Danielle tells Danny that Caroline texted her. Danielle comes up with an elaborate scheme in which Caroline has planned every incidence of Danielle's discomfort in the last two years. Danny says that yeah, sure, Caroline is the boss, but it's not likely that Caroline planned the country club thing, and Danielle says, "Oh, come on," and Danny caves and does a 180-degree and just starts agreeing with Danielle that Caroline is, in fact, the Godfather.

Danielle really, really likes mafia movies.

"Caroline, you're not Carmelo," Danielle says, puzzling me before she added, "You're not a Soprano."

Oh, Carmela Soprano. The wife.

She tells Caroline to get a life.

And then she brings up a very good point - if you didn't like me, would you ring my doorbell to tell me you didn't want to be around me? Or would you just not hang around me any more? 

And this is a very good point. And the "woman' that Danielle knows, they just don't do that.

But, she's still going for the drink.
  
She embraces her moments of insanity, but Danny gets the idea that it's not a good idea for Danielle to be in a place in which she is vulnerable. Danny, who can't be a bodyguard - no doubt because his parole officer tells him to steer clear - is nonetheless excited about the possibility of drafting an assemblage of goons to accompany Danielle to this restaurant.

Danielle is ranting by now. Caroline, you come and meet me face-to-face and tell me what your problem is with me. Which is kind of the point of the meeting, right?

Caroline's new cop son who got kicked out of law school and her makeup artist daughter who has no makeup on and looks like a big mess meet with Caroline in the kitchen to talk up the meeting. Caroline is going to go get dressed, and we see her getting dressed, checking accessories, and says she is not going to stir the pot.It;s the Big Lead-Up.

Danielle has a quick phone meeting with her energist. She is going to lead with love and drive her message home, which sound like two conflicting goals. She has hired a short, dumpy, white driver and a big, black bodyguard. "Danielle's mafia is in place," she announced, oddly.

We see them driving - Danielle in a rented town car and Caroline in a Range Rover, which must supply Range Rovers to everyone on the show. Danielle for some reason is very concerned about Caroline's red hair, and adds that her "mafia" hurts with guns.

At the Brownstone, the family is meeting in preparation for Caroline's return. They are having bellinis and half red wine-half Coke drinks. Ashley is cleaning her teeth with her tongue. Albert says that Caroline is only going to save Ashley, because, he says, Ashley "lost it," but Danielle premeditated her rudeness by lying to the court about Ashley threatening to kill her (I have to add that if someone was chasing me and pulling my hair, I would completely have it in my head that this person was trying to kill me - I don't believe that Danielle's perception is an unreasonable one). Jacqueline says, yes, her daughter was wrong, but Danielle is - and here she gives a list of stuff that Danielle did more than 20 years ago as an example of why Danielle has no right to judge her daughter. It's so rude, and so tasteless. There are children at the table. It's not in keeping with the correct level of parental horror over what Ashley did. Danielle's past, to Jacqueline, is Ashley's excuse.

Ashley gets mad. She hears it every day. Jacqueline says, no, you don't hear it every day, since most of the time you are living in sin with your boyfriend. Ashley - rightly, I think - gets up and goes to the bathroom. Her mother is surprised that Ashley is upset. She follows her and tries to get her to see that Jacqueline is all perfect and Ashley needs to always be polite to her no matter what word vomit spills out of her mouth.

Ashley's boyfriend, a total suckup to the Italians, agrees that Ashley needs to know her place and be respectful.

Caroline's cannelloni of a daughter goes and makes Ashley come to dinner. 

So far as Caroline's meeting - Danielle has brought her army, but Caroline doesn't give a fiddler's fart. She is nervous - you can tell because she's doing this fast-anxious smiling thing.

Caroline opens with a lot of platitudes about how she wishes life was. Danielle agrees. The Caroline makes her misstep. She says she is "puzzled" about why Danielle feels the need to pursue "this" (meaning the criminal charges) with Ashley. She brings up Danielle's past and says that Danielle could be the person that help Ashley turn her life around. She keeps bringing up Danielle's past, which is really rude and irrelevant to Ashley's current situation, as Danielle's past did not beget Ashely's atrocious behavior.

Danielle is shocked. She can't believe that Caroline would preface a request for her to drop the charges with puzzlement and throwing Danielle's own past back in her face. Danielle says that she is not perfect, and because she was held accountable for her own mistakes, she can embrace them as positive experiences. (This is lost on Caroline). Caroline admits that Ashley was wrong and that her actions were illegal.

"This is not about me or my mistakes," Danielle says. "This is about Ashley."

And she is right! She is so right! I can't even believe how right Danielle is! Who would have known???

Caroline is getting huffy. She can't salvage this, so she is going to turn it into an attack. She tries to sell Danielle the fiction that Ashley thought she was defending her mother, a lie which is made clear by the camera footage - Jacqueline is not even near Danielle.

Caroline says that Danielle needs to tell the truth (read, stand by Ashley), and then Caroline will respect Danielle. Which is such a reckless hand to play, as it is based on the assumption that anyone in the world cares a lick about whether Caroline Manzo respects them.

I actually liked Caroline a little before this episode. But she went from what I thought was a considerably changed version of her formerly bullying little self to a seemingly wiser and more thoughtful person - right back to a little bully. She's getting louder now, because she's mad that for some strange reason, this person is not hearkening to her demands like a waiter at her husband's business.

Danielle says that while it may be a surprise to Caroline, Danielle doesn't need Caroline to validate her. She feels that she has been attacked and insulted and gossiped about (all true).

Caroline says that she wants one example in which she has hurt Danielle. The way Caroline hurt Danielle, of course, was by egging the others on, but the only proof Danielle has of this was Jacqueline's earlier disloyalty to Caroline. Danielle considers playing this card -you can see she's toying with this idea while at the same time trying to come up with some example of Caroline directly bothering her. She can't. But Caroline's family has hurt her. Caroline's friend have. And really, since it was Caroline herself who called this meeting, since it is Caroline herself who is asking for all the favors - it really isn't required of Danielle to come up with anything. Caroline is getting louder and louder. She knows that she lost her persuasive argument, but she is not smart enough to know why, and it makes her mad, like when the dog can't catch his tail. So she turns to her old standard, bullying. She is going to try to browbeat Danielle to do Caroline's bidding, and then she is going to swan back to the Brownstone and tell everyone how that "garbage" kowtowed to her, dammit.

And when Danielle turns it around and says, "What have I ever done to you, Caroline," Caroline spews some nonsense about how Teresa is her, Ashley is her, Dina is her. I have to say here that Caroline can't have it all ways. She can't be the one who never did anything to Danielle but is taking on the hurts of the whole world. She is not neutral. She is not the rescuer. She's just a housewife getting a few things off her chest.

Caroline is right that Danielle attacked the children. But the Manzo/Laurita/Giudice bullied Danielle, and Danielle is a nutjob.

We are no longer talking about Ashley - Caroline is just mad. She's mad about the entourage at the Brownstone. She's going to say some f-words. She's mad about a lot. She's about to break down, but she's working hard to keep it all in.

And Danielle drops her bomb. It's a good one. Caroline has brought up Danielle's unsavory past. Caroline passed judgment on Danielle based on her past, which was more than 20 years ago. And she lassoed everyone she could into her coterie of People Who Judge Danielle.

So Danielle says, "What about all your friends who are under indictment now?"

It's a good one. It's something that Caroline never thought Danielle would have the guts to bring up. She has no response. She gulps. This is true, this is mean, this hurts. If she thought about it, she would apologize to Danielle, say, you know, you just taught me something, and maybe Danielle would give Caroline what she wants. But Caroline has no subtlety, no finesse. Danielle hasn't either, but Danielle has been coached brilliantly for this meeting. Brilliantly. She has been rehearsed and put through questions - nothing catches her off-guard, nothing takes her off her game. Caroline hurts, so she is going to attack.

She tells Danielle that she is a clown, and Danielle says that she can't believe that red-headed Caroline is calling her a clown. Caroline says that Danielle will. not. hurt. her. It's just pathetic. It's stupid. Caroline looks foolish and Danielle looks calm and cool. Caroline is a pushy Fred Flintstone of a woman, yelling for her brontosaurus burger, and the sad thing is that she spent all of her earned currency as the Wise Woman on petulant, bratty Ashley.

Caorline pulls the garbage card - the insult she hurled at Danielle in Season One, and Danielle leaves. Caroline is so proud that Danielle is leaving first, which she looks at as some kind of accomplishment.

Caroline is wrong, of course. Lobbing insults at people and expecting them to sit there and take them is silly. Any normal person would walk away from such a conversation - what did Caroline expect? Did she think that Danielle would burst into tears? Did she think she'd leap across the table and attack her? Did she expect her to sit there a minute longer and listen to Caroline's brain diarrhea flowing out of that hole under her nose?

I am, if you can't tell, completely disgusted by Caroline.

Caroline continues to shoot off her mouth with such bon mots as "enjoy your life," to which Danielle says, "yes, I am," and Caroline seems to think she's hit some kind of target. She is happy that Danielle is walking away from her. Now, I wouldn't be walking; I'd be sprinting. Get this meatball sandwich out of my way, I'm outta here.

In her talking head, Caroline proclaims Danielle to be soulless, heartless, and not worth her time. I have to disagree, and I don't like sticking up for Danielle. Danielle was polite considering the circumstances, she was calm, and she made logical arguments. All in all, she did better than Caroline in this little Manzo-created Showdown. She won, just the way she won against Dina. Because it makes NO SENSE to try to hurt people with meetings in which you tell them that you don't want them in your life. That meeting is about you and you saying what you want to say. It doesn't resolve anything, because you don't care to hear what they have to say - and more to the point, the person you're spewing your rants against doesn't care what you have to say.

Danielle was hoping that Caroline would say something that would ease the sting of the United Attack. If Caroline had said, wow, this kid, what did she do? Tell me how to get through it, or something, she would have won Danielle over. And Caroline could have done it without getting involved in Danielle's life. But, no - Caroline wanted to dictate terms to Danielle, and she just didn't have anything to offer in return.

Which is why this episode was stupid.

The end of the show, and Danielle goes home to her little family and Caroline goes to a restaurant with her big family. Everybody loves everyone in their spearate little hamlets.