Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Reunion: First, My Musings about Taylor Armstrong

The ladies of Beverly Hills took to the couches in last night’s Reunion, Part 1. I’ve had a lot of difficulty mustering up any real zeal for the show this season; too much of it focused Taylor’s somewhat dubious claims about what happened in her marriage. Let me make myself clear – I don’t condone men hitting women. Actually, I don’t condone people hitting people in general. Or animals, for that matter. Taylor’s allegations, however, seem to be positioned as leverage which she uses to manipulate the other Housewives, the public, and perhaps even Andy Cohen. Andy seems to me to be far more scripted when he speaks to Taylor than he ever does with the other ladies.  Whether this is the result of exquisite legal coaching or simply painful awareness of the moment, I hate listening to him talk to her. Of course, I also hate listening to her talk, so perhaps the fact that my brain recognizes the possibility that Taylor might actually respond to questions triggers this Andy-Taylor sensitivity.

I don’t actually believe that Taylor was in the kind of abusive marriage she half-depicts in her vague tip-toeing around the issue. I do believe that Russell was aggressive. He may have hit her, though I am not entirely convinced by the black eye; the timing seems suspicious to me. He probably verbally abused her and called her names. They might have smacked each other around. I say each other because it also seems that Taylor is an aggressive person. She goes from hurt feeling to thrown-down at the drop of a hat. She screams and yells and talks trash and waves her arms and I would bet that if not held back, she’d also hit and kick and punch. Yeah, yeah – I know that he was accused of domestic violence in earlier marriages. I don’t necessarily believe that once an abuser, always an abuser, but I also don’t think that the possibility he hit her doesn’t mean that their marriage was not a two-sided beat-down. Troubled people attract other troubled people. His family and outsiders insist that Russell was completely mesmerized by Taylor and tried to please and impress her with ever-increasing spending and lavish gifts. By the time of the White Party, his credit cards had been suspended and he was in deep financial distress. I imagine that the impact of these circumstances made them both angry and desperate.

My take on the situation is that he was a perfection-seeking control freak and she is a manipulative, lying climber.

Too many of Taylor’s claims have already been refuted; her name (Shana Taylor), her relationship with Adrienne (not actually her daughter’s godmother), her family ties (not the Ford Motor Cars family), her career (now a professional victim with a small menu of sham companies, once a salesperson, never a management consultant), and her background (not an Oklahoma rancher’s daughter). Did she go to college? She claims to, but I can’t find any information about her degree or if she has one.

In addition, she is involved in a pretty nasty lawsuit that alleges that Russell misappropriated investor funds meant to capitalize a medical records company (MMRGlobal) for which he was the majority shareholder. An earlier legal settlement required the Armstrongs to repay the company $250,000 and divulge the names of anyone who purchased corporate stock from them. The company accuses the Armstrongs of breach-of-contract regarding the agreement. It further maintains that Taylor deposited money into a secret bank account in the Cook Islands that she and Russell named the Taylor Family Trust. The lawsuit further contends that Taylor’s claims of being without funds to repay the debt are without merit because of Taylor’s Bravo paycheck, Taylor’s book royalties and advances, Taylor’s earnings from her companies, Taylor’s fees for appearances, and Taylor’s gifts from corporate sponsors.

I believe it is extremely probable that Taylor Armstrong would make up or exaggerate stories of abuse to try to gain sympathy for her legal situation. When I first learned that Russell had committed suicide, I suggested that perhaps legal issues had arisen that were simply too much for him to handle. I also theorized that Taylor would amp up her claims of abuse to deflect any culpability she might have in the situation. All reports appear to indicate that Taylor was, in fact, involved in the diversion of funds. She will claim that she did what she had to in order to survive. Perhaps this is true. Perhaps it is not. No one will ever know the truth about abuse or anything else related to Russell’s private life, motives, or expectations. I doubt Taylor herself knows – she seems to be a person who can create new realties in her own mind to meet all exigencies.  

He had children. Even it her stories were completely on target, it seems cheap and tasteless to drag him through the mud. He’s dead. Positioning his body as the platform on which she’ll try to build her own relevance as quickly as possible reinforces my dislike of her. Yeah, go out and grab your quick cash and your instant fame, but realize that it will stunt any potential longevity you might have as a likeable pseudo-celebrity.

I must add that I thought it extremely interesting that she decided to leave him when the other Housewives refused to film with her. Was it a real blow to the face from Russell or just the blow-off from the ladies culminating in her exclusion from the Hawaii trip that prompted her to kick him out of the house? She certainly seemed in control of him when they were headed to Kyle’s horrible party. I couldn’t tell whether he was just a bit anti-social and weird or she was dominating him via blackmail. I still contend that Russell had no idea that Taylor was referring to her allegations of abuse when he talked about being “good.”

Reports this week state that Bravo may be called upon to testify or provide documentation about Taylor’s participation in the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Maybe this will be the event that snaps the ties that bind Bravo and Taylor; getting wrapped up in yet another legal brouhaha spawned by a Housewife can’t be the best use of the network’s time or resources. While I can’t imagine that the other ladies would be called upon to testify, I suppose they could be deposed or even called to the stand to discuss compensation as a Housewife or what they’ve seen Taylor spend. I don’t know. It seems like a big ball of Christmas lights to unravel, and Taylor has always been a shallow yet wide plastic bowl of mind-numbingly boring misery. Certainly there are more interesting, less problematic potential Housewives in Beverly Hills.

My Take on the Reunion will be posted in a bit.

Bridges and Tunnels and Underpasses

As the focus sharpens ever so slightly on the fuzzy landscape that was this week’s episode of The Real Housewives of New York City, we notice that Luann is wandering bemusedly around Sonya’s house. Apparently, she has her own key, or she simply changed to a gaseous form, slithered through the mail slot, and re-encrusted herself back into her regular old body, complete with bunching white dress and one of her daughter’s cast-off cardigans from 3rd gade. She wanders up to the boudoir where Sonya, like all old gals trying to pull off the Mrs. Manson Mingott role in The Age of Innocence, except this time with booty calls and plastic surgery, sits muumuufied in red. Her hairdresser pulls out Sonya's limpish grayish-blonde locks and studies them, piling and re-piling them on her head in ever-greater flops of hopelessness.

Being perky, or at least pretending to be perky, Luann sings, “Here Comes the Bride” and tells Sonya, “Look at you!”—which is not at all the same thing as saying, “You look beautiful.” Sonya goes into some song-and-tripped-up-dance about how all the gays of New York believe she is a Gay Icon and therefore she is going to be the Grand Marshal in the Big Gay Parade for Marriage Equality for which Alex has asked them all to skip across the Brooklyn Bridge in wedding dresses. Alex invited everyone to march, because she’s on one of the approximately 94 committees comprised of straight women whose claim to fame is that they got married that was apparently needed to get people over to the bridge on time. Apparently, Jill is on the committee as well, and Sonya is Grand Marshal. Neither Jill nor Sonya thought to mention these facts of their planned participation when they were swigging Ramona Pinot Grigio at Ramona’s Mad46 party last week. Alex invited them, and they pretended this was all some interesting news and why, that might be fun. No, much better to leap out at Alex like ghouls from under the staircase of a haunted house. Boo! Aaayaaaghhargh! Ha!

Now, when Sonya mentions that she’s suddenly and mysteriously the Grand Marshal, there’s that Mean Old Girl twinkle in her eye, because this was planned. At some point, Sonya got in on the action. Now she’s going to stick it to Alex, per Jill.

I am “light and funny and a gay icon,” Sonya tinkles.

Now, Luann doesn’t have a wedding gown because when she got married, it was a casual affair meant to keep secret the fact that the help was marrying the poor effeminate count. This was about titles we want, not about love or pomp or circumstance. It seems that Luann is planning to wear her One Nice Church Dress, but then Sonya reveals a little happy coincidence: a wedding designer that Sonya pretends to know personally very nicely sent her a bunch of gowns. Sonya has one in mind but it doesn’t fit (she says it’s because she has a big ribcage, but really, she just has a big torso), so she makes due with one of Ivana Trump’s old candlelight poly-satin taffeta cocktail dresses from 1982. This is what you call an interesting way to go. Luann wears the predictable sleeveless gown with the black bric-a-brac and Kelly swoops in bearing gifts. In fact, Sonya says, “You always come bearing gifts – cleansing kits and candles.” Kelly mentions that this particular candle is delicious, and I wonder is Sonya meant to eat it after flushing waste with a cleansing kit. Kelly is very happy and even though her spray tan makes her look sticky, so far she’s behaved fairly well.

Sonya chats a bit about the amount of sex she has, and then Alex comes in to make the moment even more awkward. Sonya and Alex cheek-kiss, while Luann stands open-mouthed and picks at a whitehead she just realized popped up around her mouth. Alex thanks everyone for donning wedding dresses and Sonya goes right into this is her big day. There is some competition, obviously, brewing about what a big day this is for Sonya and the work that Alex seems to believe she’s invested. Alex congratulates Sonya for getting to be grand marshal, but Sonya acknowledges in no way that Alex had anything to do with the day.

So you know that Sonya is gearing up for a fight. They primp and get dressed and with all of the wedding finery cascading through the air, nobody thought, oh, a bra might be a great idea.


There was a wedding last week, and Alex and Jill got into a fight there while Ramona rubbed her hands in glee. Ramona is so mad at Jill she can barely stomach her, but it’s much easier to sic her Alex on her than it is to actually tell Jill exactly what she thinks. Alex is so desperate to talk through what happened at the wedding, which was that she kept asking Jill over and over again why Jill wasn’t going to the march. When Jill tap danced around the issue, Alex got madder and madder, and ended up getting a little too aggressive. Jill, however, lost her advantage with snotty comments about Alex mingling out of her social depth, which just made her look like an Ugly Stepsister all over again.

Alex explains her well-developed argument about why the Housewives should wear wedding dresses, while Luann took advantage of the anonymity of the Talking Head Moment to say that Alex sounded like an annoying infomercial. Sonya kept discussing about how this was her big day, and she really made herself sound like a horse’s ass. It was bizarre.

They get to the march and find Alex’ husband, Simon, who was wearing a ghastly sequined jacket. You just know that in a past life, Simon was something like a ringleader for a circus or a court jester or something, because he really is All about the Costumes. Simon is verklempt because he had planned a speech for the rally, but apparently Sonya zoomed in and told the march committee that if she was going to speak, she could be the only one from the show to do so. Alex asked about this, because it was a problem for her, and she asked Sonya for permission for Simon to speech. Sonya refused to countenance this idea. The other members of Jill’s Hairy Clump backed Sonya in her determination to block Simon from the moment he had planned lo these many weeks or months or perhaps even all his life.

Sonya kept saying that this was the wrong time to argue about this, but of course it was the only time. If Simon didn’t get the chance to speak then, he would lose the chance to speak. The event only lasted for that day. Once it was gone, it was gone, like the elasticity on Jill's thighs. Alex kept asking, why, why, why? Everybody screamed over Alex. Luann did agree that Sonya should have allowed everyone to speak, though she later skipped over to Jill's bandwagon, where they were, after all, serving Coronas and taquitos.

I see the flabby pickled fingers and bratwurst-laden fingerprints of Jill all over this one. Jill loves to screw up other people's plans in the background and then attack them when they express dismay or surprise. She also likes to create fraudulent identities to sell her book and bash the books of others.

Jill shows up after having said that she couldn’t because she’d be out of town 30 minutes away at a wedding. To protect her celebrity self from horrific Big Gay Crowd, Jill has hired a giant kielbasa wearing a white T-shirt that says Damage Control on it. She comes in and simpers over to Alex that she wanted to come even though it was inconvenient because she’s on the committee and even though everyone knew she’d be out of town she wants Alex to know she’s changed. Okie-dokie. And then Jill starts shrieking to everyone that Alex needs to quit picking on her, proving that the only thing that Jill has changed is the horrible outfit she was wearing the last time we saw her.

Picking on her! How old is she? Picking on her? Picking on her? It’s just strange, like listening to Sybil when the baby voice started coming out.

Sonya gets up and makes what is without a doubt the most ridiculous speech on the face of the planet and in the eons of time. She keeps talking about the fact that marriage should be equal. She talked about people not choosing to be gay and ridiculed. She talked about a lot of stuff but not about the topic of the day, which was that they wanted to make gay marriage legal. Luann and Kelly stood there looking resigned to being there in support of a ridiculous woman with the intellect of a brick.

Then we shoot to Cindy and her brother-partner-best-friend and they are yammering on and on about the wedding and how it broke Ramona’s heart to see Cindy’s brother smoking her best friend’s cigars. The best friend had passed. It made no sense. The dead guy wasn’t going to use them, and it’s good they didn’t get wasted, right? But why they were so offended by Ramona’s Ramona-gaffe also makes no sense.

Meanwhile, the marching troops had all made it over to Alex and Simon’s house in Brooklyn to drink champagne. Both Sonya and Jill state that they are going to Alex’s house because they are able to rise above all the nonsense. Alex does pull Jill aside and ask if they can speak at some later date about their problems. Alex downs champagne in giant gulps because she is so worried that a big fight will happen. Alex asks to hear Simon’s speech. Simon’s speech was not bad, but it wasn’t good. Sonya used the opportunity to make a snide remark behind Simon’s back.

Sonya then goes to her boyfriend’s art studio. She has paid him to do a portrait of her, or he is doing it to get a little publicity via the Bravo television network. Brian has seen her from every possible angle, and he shows a portrait that depicts her as an elderly woman. She wants to look 40, but of course she can’t look 40 because she’s at least 50 and perhaps even more. Sonya leaves with an order that he should make her look young; she needs Dorian Gray moments, not gray-skinned moments. Get out the magic wand, boy!

Cut to Luann and Sonya and lunch. They give each other a half-hearted once-over and proclaim themselves beautiful. They order champagne. Sonya, ironically, calls Alex “Bridezilla.” Luann never once states that perhaps Sonya should have gotten over herself and let anyone speak who wanted to. Now Sonya has re-written history and she claims that the reason her speech sucked so much was because Alex was hissing in the background. No, actually her speech sucked because she sucks at giving speeches. Standing there with a smile that might have one time been cute but now just makes one think that a crone is offering an apple while yapping in short Hitler-esque bursts does not a good speechmaker one make. Now Sonya says she feels as if it was a drive-by. Shooting, I presume.

I must point out: Sonya is the one who wanted to exclude everyone else from speaking that day. She was the one who said if it’s going to be me, then it must be only me. She knew there were other Housewives and their satellites who planned to speak. I don’t know if Sonya and Jill got together to do this as a stab at Alex or if Sonya is really such a stupid, narcissistic bitch that she really wanted to be the star of the Marriage Equality March. It could be that all that time I spent liking her last year, she was really just a stupid, mean bitch who was trying to decide which camp she’d pitch her tent in. She’s clearly chosen Jill and her Hairy Clump, and she’s behaving in a bitchy enough manner that even the gay community is disgusted with her.

Luann makes a crack about how Alex has found her voice and now needs to be quiet, adding some random blah about social ladders and implying that Alex doesn’t really belong to the landing to which she has ascended.

Ramona invited Sonya and Alex to a fundraiser for Gucci, and Alex tells Ramona about how Sonya shut her out of the Big Gay Parade. Ramona tries to sidestep the issue. Kelly wrangled an invitation to stop by the event, though apparently she couldn’t get a spot for lunch. Sonya brings Kelly, with the same glint in her eye she had when she snubbed Alex at the march. Ha-ha, we have outsmarted you, ha-ha. Ramona does not automatically think, oh, Sonya brought Kelly even though she knew I hadn't invited her, and maybe Alex is spot-on when she tells me about the tarpit that is Sonya's character.

Ramona hears that Kelly has entered the building, and she scrambles to find a place for her. Kelly only later informs her that she is not staying for dinner, and no thank you, she doesn’t wish to join them. It all smacked of a gotcha moment, which are happening too fast and too often on this show to make it interesting. Instead, it seems as if Jill, Kelly, and Sonya are sitting in the sauna vomiting up “I know! I know what will make them crazy!” scenarios to enact on the show.

Did anyone else think that Sonya looked like an owl?

Ramona asked Sonya about her behavior at the march, and Sonya came up with a lot of gibberish about respect and how Simon was a big, hulking guy and a bunch of other crap that didn’t explain what caused all the hullabaloo –which was in fact comprised of Sonya’s acting like a jackass.

Cut to the park, and Kelly and Luann are picking Cindy’s brains over gallon jugs of Ovaltine or perhaps cleansing tonics. They talk about hair, and Luann says that Kelly’s eyebrows could kill someone with their stabbiness.

Now back to Sonya’s, full circle as it were, and it is the big unveiling. Alex goes to the house, and Sonya, wearing one of Vicki’s cast-off dresses from Orange County, goes right in for the kill. She states that no way can she live without clearing the air, and so far as she is concerned, the air stinks because Alex and Simon, that’s his name, right?, ruined her Big Day When She Got to Be Grand Marshal. Alex says, well, I wasn’t trying to ruin anything, but my husband planned to speak, wanted to speak, bought a rainbow-sequin jacket for the occasion, and then we were told that you explicitly forbade him to speak but the planners added that if you said it was okay, he could speak. So, as time was of the essence, we approached you then, and you refused, and we were surprised, and we thought and hoped that we could appeal to your sense of reason, but apparently you had packed that up in mothballs and sent it over to a warehouse Jill rents for ill-conceived fabrics that she donates to battered women’s shelters in the guise of they’ll be glad to have it.

Every time Alex tries to express her opinion, Sonya gets louder and louder and then she begins accusing Alex of being rude. Alex is merely trying to explain a viewpoint that is in complete opposition to Sonya’s viewpoint. Sonya can’t stand to be confronted with a viewpoint that does not harmonize with hers perfectly, so she gets louder and louder. Alex keeps saying that Sonya should check the website! Then Sonya throws in the manners card. Because that’s what former waitresses who pretend to be Gay Incons do when confronted with an argument they know they can’t win: they screech manners, manners, manners despite the fact that a mannerly person would never comment on a guest’s manners, not ever, not ever, not ever. Never, in fact. Is that in Luann’s manners book? Disagree with someone and rather than putting it away until a safer time, just screech “manners” and that gives you the highest ground. In other words, you probably are correct in your assessment of my behavior at the Marriage Equality march, but MANNERS!!! SO I WIN.

For the record, both of them had bad manners, but as Sonya brought up the whole thing, she should have been willing to hear Alex out. We have a difference of opinion, but please let’s move forward is what she could have said. Alex should have let it go, too, but Alex had more at stake, as she was the one who got kicked off the program.

Finally, in the Show of Worst Manners Ever, Sonya shrilly orders Alex out of her house and yells, “Everyone, everyone, she has such bad, bad manners that I am making her leave and she has bad manners so she is leaving right now.”

Alex leaves and Luann sniggers and makes fun of Alex’ dress. Let me insert here that because Luann sang that song, she never gets to be the arbiter of taste. She tossed that baseball out and it’s in play now, never to come back to Luann's leathery palms of judgment. Sonya gives Luann and Cindy a revised version of the events and Luann agrees with her, darling, she doesn’t get it. Sonya screams that she was gracious, dammit! Hell, I was freaking gracious! Luann weighs in on it all despite the fact that she has only Sonya's made-up version of events. Even Cindy who did not appear to have a dog in that fight also agrees with Sonya, and all of this without seeing the actual frackas.

Alex calls her husband and says she is on her way home and please get her some champagne and make it cold.

Sonya stands in her Pebbles Flintstone outfit and whines on and on about how she hopes Brian has depicted her in this photo as young and gorgeous, which is to say, not at all realistically. The picture of Sonya is unveiled and it is sad and splay-legged and pathetic. She is sitting in a coal mine with her legs far, far apart. It’s either a very quick job or he’s a not very talented artist. She takes some bows and blames Alex again for her crappy speaking skills.

After the show, Andy Cohen points out that everyone in the world hates Sonya for making the day about her, but Sonya says that the day was only about her within her own group. She flapjaws for a while about Alex and Simon shouting, but really Andy isn’t buying it. David Arquette doesn’t mind Alex’ dress. David Arquette doesn’t mind the painting of Sonya. Sonya hedge-haws around whether she is still dating the artist.

The poll this week is are you on Alex’ side or Sonya’s side? Sonya looks a little grim around the jowls when the question gets asked. Andy smacks Sonya a bit and Sonya makes excuses about how Bravo edited her to make her look bad. She does some more historical rewrites about the way all the events leading up to the march played out, says that she’s a gay icon because she used to live with some gay roommates, and sometimes she let them dress her.

Alex wins the poll by a landslide, 79 percent to 21 percent, and Sonya disses everyone who voted against her by saying they just didn’t know the backstory without once accepting the fact that she is a jackhole. She also looks a little wary about the fact that Alex is on Andy’s show next week.

She should be!

Back in Yak - RHNY

I think it’s purely brilliant that this season of The Real Housewives of New York City started at a place called Mad46, since all of them seem wild mad and at least 46 years of age. The shameless plug for Ramona-brand wine with plain white labels made me think two things: first of all, that Ramona had been to one of those crap vineyards where they let you have a case of wine with your name on it but no art for the label, and second, that Ramona thought the whole drinky-drinky thing was cute rather than just pitiful. Turtle-time is just not one of those things that ever need to be repeated.


Jill walks into the party just as loud and nasal as usual, but, unlike last year when she appeared almost svelte, she has packed back on the pounds she lost in an effort to be not-the-dumpy-one and perhaps even the thin one in the wake of Bethenny’s pregnancy. The blue dress she wore to Ramona’s Mad46 party, with the huge taffeta Hot Wheels track wrapped over one shoulder, was sadly reminiscent of a wrinkled sausage filled with Smurf meat. All one could think at this moment was that Jill’s stylist was too frightened to tell her that perhaps a size 12 would be more appropriate than a size 4. It doesn’t matter for Jill; her elderly husband still deludes himself with the notion that he has himself a little trophy, a point-of-view one can only attribute to Jill’s keeping him locked in a room full of cigars and discontinued fabrics during moments when the RHNY show is not filming.

There was an awkward moment when Jill and her husband walked into the crowd where Alex was standing. Jill made no move to apologize for her earlier crap behavior. Instead, she worked very hard to nudge Alex out of the conversation until everyone had their backs to the newly self-proclaimed Brooklyn Blondeshell. This ticks Alex off mightily, as it would anyone, and Alex doesn’t take it lying down. Instead, she asks everyone to attend a highly important walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to support gay marriage rights. Everyone should wear their wedding dresses, which people keep snarking about. I have to say that I thought right away, “Good one, Alex! There’s not a broad there who can fit into her wedding dress!” Also, the wedding dress idea does make some good photo opportunities and would allow people to amortize the cost of the frock that may or may not have contributed to a lifetime of happily ever after. I am not quite certain what Jill was honking about when she kept saying, “Cap n gown, cap n gown,” unless she’s hoping to amortize the cost of her daughter’s cap and gown from high school graduation.

Meanwhile, Simon is spelling out the niceties of Australian Berlitz to Jill’s deer-in-the-headlights husband Bobby, teaching him such bon mots as the much-repeated-in-the-1990s “G’day, mate.” This is to help the Zarins navigate the foreign maze that is the Land Down Under, where apparently they will travel on their Big Stupid Seasonal Trip Paid for by Bravo.

Did anyone notice that Jill apparently has stopped wearing lipstick and instead looks like a big uncooked hot dog? Weiner, I think they’re called. When Jill sees Alex coming into the new crowd she’s formed over by the liquor table, she takes a big ol’ swig of rum and Coke and starts tootling about running around the square nekked.

In the next scene, scary Kelly comes into Jill’s bedroom and plops herself on the bed squeaking about how she can’t believe Jill is going to Australia. Now, I don’t know what the amazing part of going to Australia is: the fact that Kelly once got mauled by a koala, the fact that people might think Jill is a feral cat, or the fact that Australian-U.S. relations have been going fairly nicely since early days, and Jill’s arrival with her entourage and her incessant demands for attention could blow the whole thing out of the water. In her talking-head moment, Jill compresses her lips into a very thin bacterial line and insists that even though Kelly had a “rough time” last year, meaning that she lost her mind and her marbles, she, Jill, is a true friend who would never, ever turn her back on someone she called a friend. Which translates roughly into, “Bethenny, you freakin’ bitch, why did you not invite me on your show so we could have a friendly trough of ale and I could show you how cute I also look in a figure skating dress while showing you all my moves from when I was nine years old and a hugely successful ice skater?”

Jill, by the way, is wearing a thick spray tan and a gray T-shirt covered by one of her dog’s hoodies from PetSmart. She is bringing a buttload of luggage, including a giant empty garment bag on wheels with which she will bring home all of her purchases from Down Under. Kelly is puzzled, and in one sentence writes off Australia as a shopping haven. I must ask, does Kelly not remember Koala Blue and the gift shop at Outback Steakhouse, which offers many fine T-shirts as well as sweatshirts? And probably hoodies as well, which we know Jill likes? And maybe the fact that Australia is actually a pretty cool country not necessarily inhabited by millions of Crocodile Dundees walking around showing off their big knives?

Jill brings up the uncomfortable fact that Kelly was not at Ramona’s Mad46 cocktail party. Was she invited? Yes, Kelly was invited, but she doesn’t feel like going to the cocktail party of someone who called her crazy. Not because she has any objections to being called crazy, but because she doesn’t need to be diagnosed.

Umm…yes. You need to be diagnosed. And get on medication. And then perhaps people won’t feel the need to call you crazy.

But in all this time of thinking about that time that Ramona called her crazy, Kelly has thought of a little witty. Her witty is that if Ramona speaks to you, you’ve been Ramona’d. “It’s a verb,’ she says, pointing out that while she believes her remark was witty, it might not make sense to anyone who doesn’t live in Kelly’s special rainbows and Skittles world. So she has a helpful translation at the ready, complete with correct part of speech for those who might wish to use it in a sentence. Kelly is not crazy, she reiterates. She is, however, “put in precarious positions a lot with these women.” And yet, she’s still on the show. These women drove her to behave like a madwoman, a madwoman I repeat, and she still is going to be on the show because in the long run, it really is more important that Kelly be on TV than that Kelly is not put in precarious positions.

Kelly does say that Alex wants Jill to acknowledge her, which looks as if Kelly is trying to smooth the waters. Good for you, Kelly. You win a bonus point. It’s actually not quite right, however; Alex actually wants Jill to acknowledge her wrongdoings. But then Jill starts yammering away about how she’s always been a cheerleader for Alex, which is such a pile of crap that I am super-glad it’s not yet sandal season. Jill does NOT cheerlead for Alex; she talks about how Alex is out of her social depth. As if Jill herself would truly be acknowledged by anybody who was anybody for her social status. It’s laughable. Jill married a guy with some money, and all of a sudden pretends that she’s a member of the Social Register (no, she actually is not, because it is sitting here under my Dr. Pepper for reference).

Jill goes into a little song, one she’s rehearsed often and again, called, “I am so nice.” She is so nice, she tried to share her friends with Alex; she can’t help but be nice because she is just so nice. This is somewhat like listening to Cruella da Ville sing about how she loves puppies without the whole backstory about how she loves puppies as a coat. Even Kelly is not buying it, but she knows that if she talks back, she gets the Jill Zarin Treatment, complete with complimentary backstabbing and name-calling. So instead Kelly just sits there looking prim and mildly sad and disappointed that Jill couldn’t just say, “Sure thing, honey, if it gives you one more friend in your court I will be so happy to clear the air about all of this for you.” No, Jill doesn’t say this because the fact is that Jill wants to believe her own press. And Jill’s own press tells her that she is a Disney princess with a fabric store.

“I am nice! I am nice!”

That fight with Bethenny, Jill adds, “took years from her life” and she’s never gonna let this happen to herself again. The fact that Jill herself started the fight, fueled it, kept it going, and only retreated when she realized that everyone in the television-watching world hated her guts was not mentioned. No, Jill made herself a victim, without noticing once that all of her wounds are self-inflicted and everyone still hates, hates, hates Jill Zarin. Now she’s having a déjà vu with Alex, but really, in Jill’s mind, this is about Bethenny. In Jill’s mind – that sad, cramped little place filled with old swatches and remnants of spray tan and years of absorbed eyeliner – Bethenny used Jill to fill a void until Bethenny built her own family, got her own husband, and engineered a successful business.

What I think is that Bethenny loved Jill but then she got busy and started winning accolades and got a boyfriend, and it made Jill very, very jealous. Bethenny was moving forward and still had room for Jill, but Jill did not want to share her conquest with tawdry things like success, happiness, and fame. Jill is one of those people who like to swoop down from heights and tell people how grand and glorious their lives could be if only they were fabulous enough to be Jill. And when Jill sees someone getting lots of magazine covers and top-selling books and a handsome fiancé and money and her own show, she says, why, I need to have that, too. Of course I should have that, too. So what Jill then does is make up fake names on Amazon and promote her own book and write terrible things about other people’s books and have a skating party so that people on Skating with the Stars will see how talented she is, and if she falls on her face after taking a single step, well, then screw Bethenny. Screw Bethenny to hell.

When Bethenny comes running to see why Jill is mad, Jill teams up with the equally deplorable Countless Luann to be ultra-mean and talks, talks, talks about how bad Bethenny is. Yes, yes, there was that whole thing where Bethenny did not come running to Jill’s side while Bobby was having surgery, but that was the day Jill was at a party that Bethenny wasn’t invited to, anyway. So Bethenny, realizing that Jill is a truly terrible person, opted to cut ties and move on. This is the healthy approach; this is the right approach. But Jill doesn’t get it.

Kelly listens to the mantra of how Jill feels betrayed, and she says, “You got dumped.”

Ramona, for once with no Pinot Grigio coursing through her veins, says that Jill did all of this to herself, and coins the line that Jill had “jill-ousy.” Perhaps this was not a new phrase, but it was the first time I heard it, or at least the first time I remember hearing it. I really like it. It’s smack-on accurate, and the more Jill talks, the more precise it becomes.

Of course, now we know that the reason this scene is in Jill’s bedroom is so that we can see how deeply emotional this heart-to-heart is meant to be. Jill says that she believed that she and Bethenny had the kind of friendship where they fight and make up. But this wasn’t an “I told you I bought a blue dress so why did you show up with a blue dress?” kind of fight. This wasn’t a “You forgot that I asked you to rescue me from Andy Cohen if he monopolized my attention at the cocktail party” tiff. No, this was a Jill Is Going to Try to Demolish Bethenny So That Jill Can Have the Spoils and Teach Bethenny a Lesson about Why She Shouldn’t Try to Be Better Than Jill Zarin issue. For Jill’s information, real friends don’t try to annihilate other people and be mean to them with gangs of petty women in too-short skirts and hooker shoes and fake accents that sound like 1930s elocution lessons gone bad. No, real friends sit back when a friend is busy and wait for them calmly and rationally to have a minute or two in their lives so that everyone can enjoy everyone else’s company. Friendship is not a contest, Jill.

And so she loses.

Back in Brooklyn, dogs dress horribly and Alex needs to update her window boxes. Simon is working in the slate office at the bottom of McCord’s Brooklyn house. Alex is also working here. She is going to become a model and she expects this to be a money-making enterprise. I actually have no problem with Alex being a model. If someone wants to pay her, fine. If she likes what she sees in the mirror, fine. I also like what I see in the mirror, but generally I am considering the amazing new tile in my bathroom, which really shines in the very wonderful new mirrors. I think it’s good, though, for women to appreciate themselves; this whole embracing oneself notion is what feminists have begged us to do for years and years, though maybe not by modeling. But whatever. Be a model. It will make Jill mad, and really, isn’t that as good a reason as any? If Alex could model skating costumes or SkinnyGirl T-shirts, it will send Jill completely over the edge.

Show you the money. Now you’re finally responsible for your own income, and those window-boxes need work.

Kelly gets edited in saying that being a model means that you’re photogenic, not pretty. Is this from when Kelly was introduced to the show as a second-season replacement? Because this sounds like a familiar line from Kelly, who was also a model and is not pretty in the sense of being pretty. Okay. Whatever. If she said it in relation to Alex trying to be a model, it was a bitchy thing to say. If she said it to describe modeling in general, it was an accurate thing to say. Who knows? Kelly has that bonus point from earlier, so I am going to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Next, they end up in some art thing and Sonya is wearing a black diaper, while some lady named Cindy is wearing Joan Jett’s old bridesmaid dress. Cindy is apparently the New One, the one meant to fill part of the massive Bethenny void. Like Bethenny, Cindy is a businesswoman. Like Bethenny’s, Cindy’s business is about making women feel good about themselves. Unlike Bethenny, who focuses on the Whole Woman, Cindy focuses on a very small, private part. She removes the hair and replaces it with Bedazzlement. Which all of the Housewives could use, because they wear really short skirts.

Now, the thing I notice about men is that they really don’t care about whether an area is sparkly. Granted, you don’t want fringe hanging out down below, but ewwwww. The brother is the business partner. Because people want their brothers to think about how bits can be more attractive with less hair and more rhinestones. Cindy has two really cute kids via IVF and she works out to lose the baby weight. She acts like a minor celebrity.

It was a terrible introduction.

Jill comes in and weighs in on the artist’s pedigree and states that the children could not have come from the belly of Cindy because Cindy is, frankly, old. Jill is followed by Alex and Simon, as well as a rude comment from Kelly about them coming to the opening of an envelope, so an art gallery is of course a no-brainer. The comment was mildly funny but has been done before, so she loses half a point. I am trying to be gentle, so I will allow her to keep that half-point. Simon, as usual, is dressed ridiculously. It’s not a pose, I think, or rampant queensmanship, so much as bad taste similar to that of Doc Brown in the second Back to the Future movie. Or was that the third? It’s hard to tell with all of those commercials on TBS.

Luann and Kelly come in. Ramona is there. The artist takes some photos of Jill, Sonya, and Ramona, conspicuously leaving Alex out of the photo. Simon tries to intervene, but Alex shakes her head, just barely perceptibly. Simon leaps out of the frame while Alex downs a giant glass of champagne. It was very rude of the artist-guy, and the artist-guy is obviously a social nitwit. Then he announces that the art project they will all work on together involves taking off their shoes and foot-painting. Goofiness ensues, with complaints about the cost of shoes and people holding up their dress hems, which are a good four feet away from the paint – because the skirts, once again, are way too short. Mutton, lamb, and that whole thing.

Afterwards, everyone is trying to get the paint off their feet, and Simon is helping. Jill is demented with jealousy-jillousy about Cindy having babies, and she wants to know who the doctor is who conceived what Jill obviously thinks is a weird mad science thingy that results in babies. No daddy? Baby-daddy? Jill knows that, as the person who just met Cindy, she has the complete right to ask very personal questions about the daddy. In fact, Jill knows there is no daddy, but like Jill in all cases, this is a chance to pretend to stand on high moral ground while at the same time not-so-subtly putting someone down for the choices they make in their own lives. Of course, if Jill had known Cindy pre-conception, Jill would have told everyone in the room that those two precious babies were All Her Idea.

Head-shot, suddenly, of Sonya. Wearing, inexplicably, a fuchsia-ish head-bow just like the black one she had at the art-foot-painty-thing. Because when Sonya saw those at the shop, she cried, “I must have one in every color!” So she does. She has one in every color. Because there is nothing as cute as an elderly lady dating lots of guys and wearing hairbows. I liked Sonya last year. I still may. The black hair bow, with the black diaper, was kind of ironic and cool. But the fuchsia bow went one step too far. So Sonya asks a tall, bald guy on a date and Luann takes that moment to announce the fact that she basically has toilet paper stuck to her foot. Way to go, wingman!

At the end of the evening, Alex is clutching a big eraser that looks somewhat like money, everybody is sizing everybody else up to see if they are worthy of air kisses, and Sonya slinks out, but without her champagne, because she doesn’t want to get arrested for drinking in public. This, see, is a funny reference to Sonya’s DUI arrest like year, and is self-deprecating and sort of entertaining. Much like Sonya.

Next, in the guise that all of these women are amazing businessgals, Ramona needs to hire an assistant. She needs her current assistant to be the strong, silent partner, but she needs her new assistant to handle all the crap work. Several young women parade through, but they are too sensitive, too boring, too quiet, not very energetic, badly dressed, and have bad skin. Ramona explains that she needs strong, insensitive, not pretty, but well put-together. In response to a suggestion that perhaps Ramona was rude to offer a girl skin care on a job interview, Ramona announces that she has a skin care line. So that makes it fine. The girl had skin, good or bad, and Ramona cares for it by telling her she really needs it. A job interview for the girl and a marketing opportunity for Ramona. This is what we in the biz call a “win-win.”

On to Orsay, a scary-looking place with a badly-painted sign. It’s a double-date with America’s favorite not-so-young sweethearts, Luann and Sonya. And their dates. Sonya has the tall, bald guy who may or may not untie the ribbon on her halter dress and Luann has one of her favorite types, a strange-featured European guy with bad clothes and ghastly hair and an outrageous AK-sent. If they have a strong chin, Luann dismisses them with a wave and a grunt. She prefers the ones who look as if they might have descended from European royalty, no chins and puffy hair and an affinity for expensive liqueurs. All the time that Luann spent in Europe, that tiny little partydom that it is, she never met Jacques before. While I was always under the impression that Europe was more than 17 Americans and 32 pretenders flitting around Cap-San-Blauberg, apparently I am wrong. Luann knows; she’s part of the hilter koloi. As for Jacques, he’s 12, but only Sonya and Luann will mention this. And so Jacques sits sullenly clutching his wine for fear the waiter will grab it out of his stubby but aristocratic paw; he’s old enough for a little vino, dammit! Sonya orders a hunk o’ steak with a ponkin’ good char, while Luann daintily and pretentiously orders the Orsay Salad, except in French, which translates to “Or-SAY SA-LOD.” The waiter, from Queens, dutifully writes down “cheeseburger.”

Sonya invited her date to hang some paintings, and he did. Luann asks him to make a studio for one of her children, and he asks to see Luann’s gardens. Which, of course, she doesn’t have if she’s taken Cindy up on her offer to give her the pubescent regions of an alopecia patient, except with sparkles. Jacques takes the opportunity to announce that he knows two things: he loves New York, and he loves Luann. If Luann would just marry him, he could stay in New York without those pesky INS agents being so inquisitive about what he’s doing in the country 25 years past the expiration of his student visa. Luann is verklempt and tries to kiss him; he is busy having a moment, however, and would she not interrupt with love and other nonsense, and plus, he’s not sure that he really wants to kiss her. But his speech is there, and he forces it on the audience: when you know where you want to be, and with who you want to be, you choose Allstate. It’s a 1960s commercial that would have made Don Draper cringe, but it’s there hanging like wisteria in the fishy fumes of Orsay and it makes Luann happy. And then Jacques serves it up for Brian, Sonya’s less soundbitey date, by announcing that Brian keeps looking at Sonya every minute. And how does Jacques know this? Why, he is looking at Brian every minute.

And so it goes.

But Sonya has a complicated life, with children, and sexy relationships on TV, and the devastation of her divorce, and sexy relationships on TV…it’s all so complicated.

Now to the Hamptons, where Ramona has a house with lotion placed conveniently on the windowsill. Because you could be admiring the view and realize that your hands are all scrapey. Ramona is inexpertly slicing a bagel, and the bagel is not in halves, and Martha Stewart should definitely have Ramona on her show to teach her to slice a bagel. If that idea comes off, by the way, I want 10 percent of her pay. Ramona pretends that the reason the bagel is all skewey is because she is so angry at Alex for not being on time. After all, Ramona has a tennis game. Rather than going off to her game and graciously allowing her guests to sleep in, Ramona throws all of her energy into showing that if only Alex had come down on time, there would have been bagels. But now that Alex is late, the bagels are all screwed up, and whose fault is that? Not Ramona’s, because the bagels are all messed up and Alex is late and Ramona has a tennis game that apparently causes her to cast off all the duties of a decent host.

“It’s my house; play by my freakin’ rules!!!”

Alex comes down with some makeup on, because after all she is trying to jump-start a modeling career, and Ramona lays into her. Ramona also has makeup on, or a lot of blood pooling in her upper eyelids, but she makes a big deal about Alex and her makeup because she does not get, after all, this whole thing about 36-year-old Alex trying to be a model.

Ramona chats a lot of chat about how much she likes Alex and the long-despised Simon, but she quickly launches into a tirade about Jill. Jill will be so surprised when she sees Alex and Ramona together at the wedding of some friend whose wedding is incidental to all the rest of the action, and Ramona can’t wait to see her face. Jill’s, not the bride’s. Meanwhile, Alex is furious that Jill is betraying all gay people everywhere by not marching in the Big Gay March for Marriage Rights in Which We All Wear Wedding Dresses. Not only is Jill not bothering to come back to the city for the march after Alex invited her, but Jill also was on the committee for the march and isn’t even trying to get back to support a cause to which she has obviously donated money so that her name could be on the program!

OMG! Holy Pinot Grigio!

Jill left Alex a message and said that she couldn’t come to the march because she was going to be out of town (30 minutes away) for a wedding (to which she thought Alex wasn’t invited).

This is fodder! Alex is delighted. She has caught Jill yet in another lie. This gives her the excuse to behave inexcusably.

And she does. Though I found Alex to be almost repulsive in her later quest to show Jill up, I understand that when you are done with someone, you are done. Anything they do appears to be a giant sin, even if pointing this out makes us look shrill and insane. So that’s exactly what Alex does.

Cut to the chapel where the lovely bride is fluffing her dress and Jill is hanging on her poor old husband for support in every sense of the word. Jill is yakking about how she can improve on Spanx, a highly popular brand of support and constriction products. Jill has regained her weight and she now wants to hone in on the very competitive market in which people try to introduce an ever-increasing level of fat suck to people who may like to eat a cannoli every once in a while. Spanx won’t do it, she whines. I must do something better so that all of us who battle in the name of small size and too-short skirts can live without fear of bulging thighs and split seams. Jill is wearing a dress that looks like a topography map, while a few seconds later Ramona shows up in a Nancy Sinatra bridal gown and Alex appears, out of the same damned car, dammit, in a dress made of the little tube parts of calamari. Ramona and Alex are matching shades of blonde and cream, and Jill’s heart drops when she realizes that she is no longer the queen bee, but in fact Ramona is the queen bee, flitting and making court while Jill can only complain that her support garments are showing and blowing and not working particularly well.

Jill is so mad that she didn’t know that Alex was coming, and then she tells Alex, in the guise of knowing all, that of course she knew Alex was coming. Alex attacks her. Why aren’t you coming to the march? Jill lent her name, but not her support. There’s some ugly cigar story that Ramona tells with some other guy right behind her and Cindy gets really mad. It’s all bizarre. There is a moment where everybody breaks out and hyperventilates. Ramona doesn’t care if people disapprove of gay life as long as you give them choice. Jill vents to random leathery people about why she can’t go and live up to the activities of the causes she has pledged to support. She calls Alex a bitch and talks about how the party is far beyond the social reach of Alex. Ha-ha, who is the superior one now? Jill is vile and a climber and revolting, and these comments cement that fact. No one will invite Jill to be in the Social Register because not only is she not from the right stock, but she is also a reaching bitch with no manners. One of the sad leathery hangers-on adds tentatively that she herself is very old-fashioned, but she does venture to wonder why are Alex and Ramona wearing cream? Jill is delighted to have this new idea, and she pounces on it gladly like a ball of girl yarn from Cindy’s Amazing Bits Shop. It’s disrespectful to the bride, way more than having some auld bitch corral some of the guests and get them to snark on other guests. Except, no – it’s not.

Both actions are equally disrespectful.

The crux of the issue is that Alex is going back to New York to march later that day, while Jill is staying in the Hamptons (beach) to have fun. This makes Jill anxious that people will realize that she is only a check-writer and not a serious cause-supporter. Jill hisses that she has changed and will always be nice and kind. Unless, of course, she finds herself with two hangers-on under a balcony who give temporary credence to every chunk of word-vomit she spews.

Ramona comes over to speak to Jill and her hangers-on, and they talk about nonsense until Alex can’t stop her own eruption of word-lava. She wants people to know that Jill is not really the queen of accountability, and honey – we all know this. Jill is only the queen of Bobby’s accounts ability. Trying to lighten the TLC-esque heaviness of the moment, Ramona sticks her finger in the wedding cake. The bride, who has not cut the cake, loses seven years of fertility, but Ramona assiduously licks her finger and dumps the remaining icing back onto the cake meant to serve the masses.

AFTER THE SHOW:

Jill and Ramona on the same side of the couch at Andy’s 100th show, and Ramona looks wholly appropriate for mutton dressed as lamb while Jill looks like a two-bit hooker in a Halloween costume she found in her mother’s basement when her mother lost her house to Buffalo Bill. The hair that didn’t work for Madonna in the 1980s doesn’t work for the sallow and elderly Jill Zarin, especially because Jill is also wearing a cheap-looking stripper suit and toting a drugged dog clad in a kimono who was meant to represent a million displaced Japanese. It sounds like an Oscar Wilde moment that even Oscar Wilde would not write about. Andy, certainly, had no clue what to do.

There is a drinking game with the words “Pinot Grigio” as the impetus to swig. There is a question about who is Team Jill or Team Ramona, and Jill goes nuts. She knows how this is going to turn out, and there’s nothing Jill hates as much as a discernible measurement. Tina Fey has appointed Jill the queen bee and Ramona the banker, but Tina is pregnant and didn’t include any information about how the queen bee can be dethroned. Jill says that she herself looks the same as always, but the fact is that Jill is just a carefully made up old wan. There is infighting over who made the bride cry, and I have to say that Jill comes up the loser because she simply can’t cop to the truth.

She has never, she claims, seen Bethenny’s show. No. I can’t believe it. I feel certain, 100 percent certain, that Jill sits with a bottle of any other wine besides Ramona Pinot Grigio and watches the show intently while yelling at Bobby, “Why? Why? Why can’t I have my own show? Why can’t people like me like they like Bethenny? What frickin’ good are you if you can’t give me this one little thing?” So there she sits, in her ill-fitting fake mid-century modern apartment designed by a mere walker, angry and bitter over her bad choices and wondering why people don’t congratulate her on her taste, never wondering if perhaps she has none.

Ramona makes another politically incorrect statement about gays, but she fixes it all by also advocating bestiality. Then there is a counting of Jill’s shameless plugging of her book, and Jill wins by default because Ramona refuses to play. Jill is able to identify random screaming as well as viewers’ wishes to drug her. Jill plugs her Snooki, slut-inspired look by talking about her new shapewear line, because, after all, who wouldn’t want to be shaped like the highly middle-aged Jill Zarin.

Hiccup Girl? Yawn. Fame going to your head messes one up but Ramona wins over Team Jill, yet Jill still can’t deal.

Real Housewives: Sofa Koff!

The long-awaited reunion (part 1) of the Real Housewives of New Jersey happened last night (happened is the way I choose to explain it) - and I hate to say this again, but I have to say this again: Danielle once again won the day. Not by a lot, because there really were no winners here, including me, who watched it and am feeling a little blue because I did watch it.

The loser of the evening was without a doubt Theresa. This however, cements Theresa as the loser for the season. Bankruptcy, a house which is certainly going to be foreclosed on, legal woes, DUIs, foreheads, $11 million of unpaid bills, vendors everywhere being put into financial distress because of the Giudice's greed, leopard clothes, period ragu, mindless F-bombing rants and the IRS - ladies and gentlemen of the casino never fear, for here is the Biggest Losing Streak in the World, spray-tanned for your orangish viewing displeasure.

As I mentioned, the set this time is an Atlantic City casino, and the room is dressed up with giant playing cards with N.J. in the corners - which were actually pretty cool. Andy Cohen looked suitably natty and non-threatening in one of his usual-type, form-fitted suits. Is he Tim Ginn? No. But he's not going to get anyone's attention during this episode, so it doesn't matter.

The Housewives did not look so good.

For the occasion, Theresa had donned a large strapless thing that I am guessing she converted from a 1970s hooked bath rug to a dress-type girding device that was inappropriately short and too tight. Jacqueline was wearing a sequined dress in red that called uncomfortable attention to her shoulder-killing breast mounds, purchased on an earlier show (the breasts, not the dress, which I believe comes from the Snooki collection. In fact, perhaps both the dress and the breasts come from the Snooki collection). She had a black bra on. She was spray-tanned to within an each of her life and her hair looked like Cher's circa 1973, which is not a bad thing on Cher.

Caroline looked appropriate in purple. She also has lost a lot of weight. Good for her. Portion control.

Danielle - oh, dear. Danielle was wearing a copper-colored tube top as a skirt and one of Danny Provolone's wife-beater T-shirts with ankle boots and really dark hair extensions. I am supposing that the outfit was supposed to make her look edgy, per her new imaginary rock-star status, but unfortunately, it just made her appear to have a huge roll of fat around her middle. It was a most unfortunate ensemble.

Supposedly, the woman haven't seen each other in a year, which seems unlikely, since they all live two houses away from each other. Andy says something about how they are finally in the same room with each other, and Theresa says, finally, and Jacqueline says, without armed guards.

So that's how it's gonna be, Jackie? Danielle's eyes narrow.

The governor of "Jersey" as Andy calls him said sometime in the not-too-distant past that he doesn't like Jersey Shore, which he believes is not a good representation of the state. No one admits to having watched it except Theresa, who says she doesn't like it because the girl (Snooki, probably, met a guy and had sex with him right away). Theresa does it old school (on credit up to $11 million, I guess that means) and doesn't think you should have sex right away. Then she adds, all fake innocence and eyebrows like Nixon, "I don't think you should have sex right away the first week you meet 'em. Like certain people in this room." And then, like the cowardly asscheese that she is, she says, "But we're not gonna get into this right now. Go on, ask your questions."

And right away I know that Theresa, Jacqueline and Caroline have decided on a party line. These will be the things that they bring up. Some of them may be true. Some may not be true. It doesn't matter, because they are going to say them loud, and who will know the difference?

The problem is that some of the things they say in this show are frankly too newly minted to be credible. If Danielle and Steve had really had sex in front of Theresa's kids, for instance, we would have heard it by now. I believe that Theresa has decided that if she can make Danielle look as bad as possible, she, Theresa, will look better by comparison.

This is because Theresa is an idiot and she assumes that everyone else is even stupider than she is. Really, every time Theresa opens her mouth, she is calling every last person in the world a moron, because she actually thinks that we will believe whatever line of salmonella-smacked bullshit she delivers. It's really incredibly insulting.

"Oh, let's go back to that one," Theresa says, adding that Danielle allegedly slept with Steve a week after she met him, in full view of Theresa's children (who get to hear their mother talking about how often she schtups their Daddy one room from theirs in the Pee-Wee's Playhouse Palatial Steak & Ale). Danielle says this wasn't true, and the Other Ones screech yes! Yes, it is! Gia heard you! Milania heard you! Tilapia heard you! and this all seems very flimsy and howly but yet also a Red Flag, because if Theresa's friend Steve had been involved in this, why didn't they bring it up to Steve? It just doesn't pass the BS test.

I do seem to be swearing much today. I apologize. I think I caught it from the show, but I am definitely going to get some antivirals so it goes away.

Jacqueline undermines the story still more by saying that Theresa's kids heard it, and then she adds, you straddled him right in front of the kids.Okay - they either heard or or they saw it. Which is it? Because if it had really been the more ominous, they saw you, they would have led with that one.

Andy knows it's BS, too. He makes them move to his own topic. There is some stuff about how Danielle says "woman" instead of  "women." They bring up "ethnicity," rerevnovated," "sangwich." They are all in agreement about how nice it is to have their own languages. For a minute, it all seems happy. We are all so unique and delightful!

On to the kids. Danielle's kids are great and their careers are great. Jacqueline and Theresa squeezed out some kids. There is some nonsense about fertiility bracelets and contractions. Babies and leopard pajamas and talk of goddaughters. During this scene, all the Other Ones are smiling proudly and even Danielle smiles sentimentally. Babies and stuff. Go back and check for that smile; as batshit crazy as Danielle is, she is human, and that's more than I can say for Gorilla Giudice.

The question from the (not-too-bright) caller is: why didn't Danielle call Jacqueline after her baby was born? Oooh! oooh! I can answer this one myself! Because Jacqueline told her not to! She said to Danielle, don't you ever talk about or come near my baby. Danielle's mistake was to think that by saying this, Jacqueline meant, don't you ever talk about or come near my baby. How can they have it every way? We don't want you near us, dammit, but don't you forget to send a freakin' baby gift, bee-yoch!

Jacqueline is going to be pissy over this, because the baby is only like two years old by now, so Danielle says congratulations, he's beautiful to which Jacqueline says, super-pissily, I know he is and this is going to be a fight. You can tell that Jacqueline is revving up the Baby Huey Theresa, and there's going to be bloodshed.

Dina is not there, and everyone is mad - but the Other Ones get to see her all the time. It was Danielle's fault, they all say, and Danielle doesn't care. But Andy brings up the conversation last season where Caroline, weeping hysterically, accuses Danielle of trying to do some mysterious thing to Dina.

I have to say that Dina is gone and I don't miss her. Perhaps I am in the minority. It's not that I have anything against Dina - it's just that I really don't care. Any of these women could be gone next week and I wouldn't care. They would be a blip on the edge of my radar and sometimes manybe when I saw someone in a too tight dress, with tacky furniture and a spray tan and too much Botox, my brain would fart "RHONJ." And then it would go away, and I would think, I need to buy orange juice and a printer cartridge.

So, anyway, apparently Danielle is accused of trying to get Dina's daughter taken away. Danielle says she would never do that; she doesn't believe that Dina is an unfit mother. Theresa hears what she wants to hear, which is unfit mother and she's all, "Let's not talk about unfit mothers," which seems to me to be the wrong reaction, considering that Danielle didn't actually call Dina an unfit mother. Then there's some talk of silencing people (by which I think Jacqueline means "gag order," and Danielle says that maybe her attorneys did in fact put a gag order on Dina.

And the judges wouldn't put a gag order on Dina if Danielle had said something bad. Caroline says we can't talk about her sister (because Caroline thinks everyone should just blindly obey her), and Danielle says that she is allowed to clarify the story now that it;s been brought up (which is true, legally). Danielle says she never tried to have Dina's kids taken away.

And this may be true. The story I read was about child support, not custody.

Caroline does her bully thing, do not speak about my sister. Caroline confusingly welcomes Danielle to her world, and Danielle says she doesn't want to be in her world, and Caroline says that's the best gift anyone could ever give her. (Headed to the ER for my whiplash injury; Caroline will be hearing from my personal injury lawyer).

Jacqueline waves her arms menacingly and talks about proof and crap and she looks like a stuffed crust pizza that's been glittered in red by Martha Stewart, who also happens to be from New Jersey. Why isn't Martha Stewart on this show? I could learn handy tips for the holidays at the same time that I am learning about whatever it is I am learning about on this show. Martha would judge the crispiness of the biscotti and it would all be over with. Nobody gets to feel good about themselves if Martha is on the show.

Back at the set, Shut your mouth you piece of garbage shut up shut up shut up says Jaqueline, and I see what Ashley is in 20 years, a glittery sausage yelling her own random brain-tweets and then telling everyone to shuddup shuddup shuddup.

Theresa says that Danielle didn't even acknowledge their babies, which is ridiculous, because they told her not to, and Danielle says something about how Theresa didn't even acknowledge her own nephew. She must mean that Theresa didn't mention it in a blog or something. Who cares? Why didn't Theresa just say whaddevah?

Because that's not what this is about. What this is about is that somebody in the Giudice family (maybe Joe's sister who married a - gasp!- black man, or maybe Joe's mistress, who had sex with Joe - hurl!) had a baby, and the Giudices weren't planning to acknowledge this.

Yet another Giudice secret - with the important point being that in this case, Danielle had done her homework.

Gold star, Miss Staub!

Theresa acts as if Danielle has something horrible and true, which makes me wonder if there's some truth in it, and starts screaming "Don't you break up my family!" And then hitches her horrible dress over to Danielle and she's pointing and screaming F-you F-you F-you Bitch Bitch Bitch F-you F-you F-you! You F-in bitch! You mother-f-ing bitch! You f-in bitch!"

Andy tries to pull Theresa, who is still yelling her happy words, away from Danielle, and Theresa shoves him into a chair. Danielle gets up and leaves the set, which makes perfect sense to me. A big be-flowered gorilla shouting in my face? I'd be SO out of there.

Theresa is throwing furniture and grunting and telling profanities and Jacqueline is doing some snap-up-with-a-z-formation thing and it's really quite terrible. Caroline goes to try to calm Theresa down, saying she knows Danielle is a bitch and Theresa just keeps yelling insensibly, like a gorilla on The Jerry Springer Show.

Which is what this show is. The '90s had Jerry, and now we have Andy.

Theresa is yelling that Danielle better get her ass back to the set so that she can - what? Continue to scream? Hit her? Kill her? Daniell says that she won't go back to the set until Theresa sits down, and if she gets up again, she's done. Danielle is right - the Other Ones brought up something and talked about it, and then when Danielle tried to defend herself, they screamed about law and right and bitches.

They can't have it both ways.

Had they just let Danielle defend herself, there would have been doubt. That would have worked to their advantage in the long run. But because they all - Theresa, Caroline, and Jacqueline - decided to sceam and rant, they came off looking like bullies.

Danielle is a little upset. I would be a little upset. I actually am a little upset.

Danielle tells Andy that she won't go back unless someone is put in charge of Theresa. Andy says that he won't let her get up and that he pulled Theresa off of Danielle. I have to say that Andy looked like a complete fool; he wasn't trying very hard to get Theresa off of Danielle, and he let her stand up in the first place. I am wondering if this is why Danielle was fired - was she going to sue?

She's not worth it she's not worth it she's not worth it. Theresa is promising not to hit Danielle.

Caroline says that Lori, who may or may not be Danielle's girlfriend, tried to come after Danielle. Big deal. They had to hold Lori back. Big deal. Theresa's fault, all of it. It really made me mad that Caroline hinted after that raging gorilla f-bomb tantrum that it was Theresa who needed to be protected.

Theresa is now mumbling that Danielle was tawkking about her family. I have to say that if Theresa wants to kill everyone who is talking bad about her family, Theresa better just start making appointments for duels. She may be finished by 2189. Because everyone is talking about Theresa's family. Everyone. I bet the Queen of England says every night right before she goes to bed, "Oh, Philip, those children's hair bows are quite dreadful." I bet the Pope says, "Why, oh why are they portraying themselves as Catholic?" I bet the Dali Lama goes, "I truly hate the profusion of leopard print crap."

Caroline makes some crap excuse for Theresa about how Theresa never does this kind of profanity-laden killfest, otherwise Caroline - who is so discerning - wouldn't be her friend. Because we really believe this, right? Thanks, Caroline, for trying to make us all feel stupid. Of course, Theresa does this. Whenever she doesn't get her own way, she does this. What Caroline wants us to think is that because Caroline is so controlled and ladylike herself, we should believe her when she says that Theresa would never do this because Caroline wouldn't have a friend who does this.

Except we already know that Caroline is not so ladylike, because we saw her have her own tantrum just last week. So, there it is.

Suddenly, Jacqueline accuses Danielle of wanting to take credit for introducing her to her fertility doctor. Danielle says that she took Jaacqueline to her appointments, Jacqueline says she didn't. Who cares? Is this really something to argue about? Jacqueline says, what? Do I owe you my child? And Danielle says, you don't owe me anything, and Jacqueline is still ranting and literally baring her teeth and looking ridiculous.

Do you think you got me pregnant? Jacqueline asks, ridiculously. Caroline realizes Her Side looks stupid, and she cuts Jacqueline off.

We have to watch some stuff about how Albie probably isn't going to get to be a lawyer, and Danielle sticks up for her. Caroline ignores this show of goodwill and decency - which, even if it was manufactured, was a sign of goodwill and decency. Theresa is ready to be insulted when she brings up the fact that Gia got to be a model, and she is mad because Danielle said during the season that Gia wasn't a supermodel. Danielle explains that Gia is eight years old, and by definition is not a supermodel. Danielle says in the reunion that she hopes Gia gets all of her dreams. She adds that she thinks Gia is beautiful and did a great job on the runway at Fashion Week.

Then Theresa wants to know about the lace and crinoline comment in which Danielle said that when her children were small, they wore lace and crinoline. Her dogs wore leopard.

Theresa dresses her children in horrible leopard. Danielle won't cop to insulting the way the kis are dressed. This is a mistake. She should say, yes, I am not fond of the leopard look, but if anyone could pull it off, your girls can.

Because Danielle has no answers, Caroline bitchily "interprets" Danielle's comment to mean that Theresa's kids look like dogs. Caroline knows that this is not what Danielle meant, because Caroline herself laughed like a hyena from The Lion King when Theresa and her girls made their grand entrance in their shiny satin and flannel leopard-print Bo-Peep/pantalette/hair bow ensembles.

I won't say that the kids are dogs. I don't think they are pretty or cute, though. Do you think that Theresa's forehead is lower because her mother made her wear bows, too? Because those are really heavy-looking bows.

There is some talk about a heinous Bravo poll about who viewers would want to be their mother. They choose Caroline, because at least she would totally pull out the stops for you if you wanted to be in law school. Theresa is horribly jealous and uses the excuse that of course viewers would want Caroline, because her kids are old.

Danielle gets the least votes. Danielle doesn't feel that she has to defend her parenting. Jacqueline says that Danielle's daughters go to the school nurse and cry every day. This is another mean thing to bring up. How much Danielle overshares with her kids. Danielle says that sometimes she regrets sharing too much with the girls, but added that another housewife with a teenager (everyone knows this is Jacqueline, including Jacqueline, whose oversharing resulted in her daughter being a hideous assaulting criminal as opposed to what she was before, which was a big, doughy, self-entitled little bitch).

Is there nobody else who thinks that outing little girls for their pain at their mother's reality show antics (which are without question revolting) is playing unfair? Taking your finger and digging into the painful sore that must be their lives? Revealing yet another aspect of their already far-too-public lives?
Period ragu, period wine. Women, don't get near the food at that time of the month or it will curdle. Theresa shills her cookbook, which has nothing that you couldn't get from any Italian food Web site - which is probably where she got the recipes.

Ring for the anniversary? Oh, it's just a yellow sapphire. Theresa said a diamond ring would be a half-million dollars. Of course, before she knew that her financial circus would be made public, she wanted everyone to think it was a real diamond. She's the kind of person who would buy fake Gucci shoes for her kid.

She only raises divas. Which may make life difficult when they are working regular jobs or delivering pizzas.

It's all just part of the $11 million debacle. The shopping trips show us what we know about Theresa - she's a spendy thief who wants the stuff but doesn't pay the bills.

The Other Ones act as if this is cute. Danielle's face is inscrutable.

Birthday parties, housewarming parties, she wants what she wants when she wants it, baptisms, etc.

The whole apartment above the pizzeria is too much for Theresa. For the first time, there is the look of regret on her face.

Of course, it's not regret at having bilked innocent people out of money. It's regret because the gravy train is over and no one is handing out credit to her anymore.

Theresa says her house is not in foreclosure, but she has her husband and her four kids, so she doesn't care if it happens (it will, they will live over the pizzeria and she will try to weave a fable about how their Italian trip brought them back to their roots and who needs all that stuff?). When pursued by Andy and his pesky questions, Theresa tries to skim over the bills, all the stuff that was written in the New York Post, it's all incorrect, some of it is, anyway, Joe didn't tell her, he was trying to protect her. Her stuff may be auctioned, but she's not paying attention. She's not in denial.

Jacqueline is almost in tears. Theresa insults the lying New York Post and said that it's not true - $100,000 at Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdales and Nordtrom? No way. Because you forgot Posche. A full $9K of that amount is from Posche!

Maybe. I am just making that up, because it sounds right.

Danielle is so happy.

Theresa won't clarify exactly what her financial situation is, and Jacqueline jumps to her defense and said that her husband just told her not to spend so much money. You know when your husband says not to spend so much money? Jacqueline says, as if $11 million in debt is just because someone thought that the white sandals would also be cute for summer, so she was getting the brown ones and the white ones, even though she only wears sandals for three months, but she really wants them, so damn the meat budget, but she's getting the white sandals, too.

Theresa was working, she was making her own money. She could spend what she wanted. She has adjusted her own lifestyle. The kids - they don't demand stuff. The whole thing has made them closer.

To stand up for her again. Jaccqueline said that the second Theresa found out (that there's not a magical fairy paying the bills) that they were $11 million in debt and this might cramp their lifestyle, she went to work immediately - appearances every night.

And Theresa becomes even, unbelievably, more detestable than before.

Theresa doesn't like negative, and she stays only in the positive (except where Danielle is concerned). If (when) they lose their house, they'll just build it back.

Joe's accident was when he yawned, not when he drank, and no way was it because he was drinking about money problems (I read that he was partying with another Bravo franchise right before the accident). Officer. I was just drinking because I was so "shooken" up about driving into a forest and hitting all those trees. Theresa starts to deny, but then has to admit when the other housewives say it, that the citation is still considered a DUI. But they got the ticket in the mail a week later (apparently, when people get arrested in New Jersey, the police don't act on the spot - they take a few days to think about it). Danielle says the obvious - why go have a few drinks after a car accident? Caroline corrects Theresa when she says he yawned. He fell asleep for a minute. This is the official excuse. Yes, that's actually what Theresa thinks now, too.

Danielle doesn't approve of DUIs. Of course, I still suspect that Danielle was a bit under the influence after the nail salon in the first episode. If I had to live with Theresa, the liquor would flow like non-sauce making time.

Is Danielle a victim or a villain? She wants to be both. The stripping moment made me ill. Butt crack and booty shorts. Engage and suggest. Horrible confession, and she's such a devout Catholic. (As a Catholic, I want to point out that no way can these people speak for my group.)

Danny says there is a kindred spirit thing going on. I know that Danny kicks Danielle to the curb at the end of the season. He wants to be on the show.

Now, Jacqueline brings up that Danny may have been married at one time. Ooh. This is her dirt? Big deal. Jacqueline's daughter was convicted on assault charges. Didja hear that?

When you hear Jacqueline speak, you know why her daughter was so obsessed with Danielle.

So Danny might have been married. So what? Is he a prize? No.

I have to say that Danny seemed to be in this more for the chance to be on TV than for the chance to have sexual relations with Danielle.

Jacqueline and Theresa want to make the Danny thing a big deal. Who cares? He's just a lonesome piece of provolone. No one cares. Danielle didn't hang out with him, she says - and so what if she did? This is not news. The idea was always communicated that maybe Danny thought Danielle was kind of hot.

Danielle says that she really can't afford to have her house renovated but that people needed to pay attention to the show - she didn't pay for the Sweet 16. It was all for charity. I don't know if this means that people paid to get in - I have no clue what this means. Do I care? No.

Andy tries to get Danielle to talk about whether or not she and Lori are in a relationship, and Danielle does not admit whether or not she is "swimming in the lady pond." Caroline sticks up for the not outing of people who may or may not be gay, but she says that editing is not to blame for how people are portrayed on the show.

Okay, Caroline, I stick by my earlier thoughts about you.

Caroline thinks it's fine for someone to strip or be a prostitute, but she has a husband who loves her, nanny nanny boo-boo.

Jacqueline has watched the sex tape. She has analyzed it in ways that Jacqueline is not able to analyze things, because Jacqueline doesn't have a brain; she has a skull full of Urkel-Os cereal. Then Theresa chimes in (okay, apparently Theresa has seen it, too) and she wants to do a timeline of the sex tape because it will prove whether this was an old mistake or a new one. Long hair or short? Danielle says it was long hair, because she had clip-in extensions.

Who cares? I am sure that Danielle is making money from the sex tape, and whatever. Grab those 15 minutes, sistah. I don't care. I was pretty horrified, and then I found out about Theresa and her $11 million and Ashley and her assault, and now I don't care. Where my outrage might have once been is a big callus of RHONJ incidents.

Theresa starts screaming bitch and more bad words.

Caroline is mad and yelling about the OK Corral because Caroline has been called on the "dead light in their eyes" comments, and Danielle is denying that her kids really know about the sex tape.

Of course, Danielle's kids know about the sex tape. They hear the whispers, poor littles. Danielle can lie to herself about that - mommy should have been more discreet, big mistake - and whatever. Does it help to have three bitches talking about it in a fake-compassionate way?

Caroline does some nonsense about how she wants Danielle's autograph because Danielle is so perfect. Sarcasm, but not funny sarcasm.

Next, we hear about the baby-with-cancer fundraiser, an event made unspeakable by Danielle's paranoia and the license that Danielle's paranoia gave her posse. I've already talked about that. It was ghastly, and there is no excuse. Caroline wants to focus on Danielle being mean to Christopher, which seems to me to be the least of the issues. Danger to her son in the form of Danny? Really. What is Danny going to do? Call him a punk. Big deal. Over.

If Caroline had talked about something without screaming fool!  and whatever other names she decided to call, she might have won. But she lowered herself, and now they all look bad.

But Danielle - oh, geez. She looks better than them.

More on Real Housewives of D.C. - An Amendment to the First

In my Friday post about the Real Housewives of D.C., I wrote about Stacie's search for her birth mom, and I was kind of annoyed, so I was a little scathing. I was thinking about it today when I was looking for information about the Salahis, and I thought I would do a quick expansion of what I was thinking.

This is what I wrote:

"She's selfish," say Stacie's friends, and Stacie says that it would "rock" her birth mother's world if people knew she had a black child. But Stacie has a right to know, dammit. Everyone cries about the selfishness of this woman who didn't get an abortion some time in the 1960s and just wants not to have her husband get mad at her.

That sounds really harsh.

I still mean that for whatever reason, Stacie's birth mom carried a baby she knew she couldn't keep to term and gave her to an obviously amazing family - Stacie received an expensive education and seems to have started life with all the possible gifts of family support, culture and strong priorities.

And I do understand Stacie's desire to meet both her birth mother and birth father.

However, I have to say that my respect for Stacie's feelings does not equate to agreement with her stance. It no doubt feels to Stacie that her mother is being selfish in not telling her family about Stacie and not revealing Stacie's father's name.

That said, Stacie's mother already has made clear what she was willing to do for her daughter. What she was willing to do was carry her to term and give her to another family.

There were issues that caused this woman to give up the child: perhaps issues with race, with her relationship with the father, with the times, and with her own future. They are perhaps issues that might not matter if the pregnancy happened today - people had different value systems back thirty or forty years ago.

However, the issues might matter; who is to say whether this was a case of forbidden love or something different altogether? We aren't standing in that woman's shoes.

Stacie found her and the woman was willing to talk to her. I don't really know whether Stacie likes this woman at all; it sounds as if she is only reluctantly keeping her secret. Obviously, the woman was curious about the daughter she gave up.

However, she has repeatedly told Stacie that she doesn't want to reveal the name of Stacie's birth father. Perhaps she is concerned that he will step in and wreak havoc in her own life. Perhaps she is worried that her husband will find out. Perhaps she is worried about the life of the birth father? Perhaps there is another story that no one knows about?

I just think to label someone as "selfish" for keeping her part of a bargain made all those years ago and expecting other people to also keep that bargain is a bit unfair. She made a deal that worked for the conditions of her life and for Stacie's life many years ago, and to expect her now, in her old age, to uncover this to other people whose lives would also be damaged seems unfeeling in itself.

Stacie "wants," but she has no right to "expect." It would be a wonderful thing if her birth mother felt comfortable opening her life to Stacie and giving Stacie her full history. She's not required to do so, though - and berating her (albeit as an unknown entity) on television seems mean and unfeeling - despite the fact that Stacie herself said that it would be a "scandal" for her mother.

Real Housewives of D.C. - Store Grapes

This episode of the Real Housewives of D.C. was all about facades. Which is what they are all about. This time, it was more of Michaele and Tareq's facade, and how annoyed other people are that they get away with it.

The episode starts with the dessicated Lynda feeding her large pet model, Ebong, large slabs of bacon. She is wearing a little apron and standing next to her Joy of Cooking cookbook. Her children, aged 16 and 19, slither into breakfast wearing giant feety pajamas, and some other random grown son comes in wearing a giant white shirt. I will think of him as Fonzie because at the moment he walked in wearing the white T-shirt, Ebong said, "Ayyyyyyy."

So, henceforth, he will be known as Fonzie.

All the kids have that slack look of mommy-doing-too-much-for-them: that smug, self-satisfied demeanor that comes from having your parents give you jobs and it really not mattering much whether you have a job or not because they're always your trust fund.

They sit at a table heavily weighed down with bacon and sausage and is it my mistake or is the Pellegrino tinted orange? They are talking about the new house Lynda hopes to buy, and they all hope that when they get there, the Suddenly Domestic Lynda will make her Signature 16 Quarts o' Chili and that the house will have a pool and that after eating chili, they can dive right in and get horrible cramps (I am assuming from not waiting the requisite 30 minutes after eating, but I guess it could also be that Lynda just makes some spicy, gas-making chili).

Lynda has enjoyed living in a hotel for the last five years, but now she oddly feels the need to give her nearly grown and actually grown children a yard. To which I must ask, "Why?" So they can toddle around in delightful little running steps? So they can practice for Little League? So they can get married in a gazebo draped in ivory bunting, against which the giant model Ebong will be even more imposing and beautiful?

Cut over to Stacie. She is having A Different World moment with her sorority sisters and they are practicing songs that they sang in their sorority years back so that they can do them again at their Howard University reunion. One of them jumps right into the conversation with, "So, how's your search for your birth father going?" which is not at all what she was supposed to do, as that was meant to be the crown on the conversation. Stacie blithely steers her back to the Real Beginning of the Discussion, which is, "I found my birth mother and she's white." The women are horrified. The mother's relationship was "secret" and no one in her family of New White Husband and New White Child knows that she had a secret baby with a Nigerian while she was in the Peace Corps.

And I start wondering: was Hillary Clinton in the Peace Corps? just because I try to entertain myself with stories like this from time to time, and then Stacie says something along the lines of "it's a big problem," meaning that news about her birth is going to create a scandal. And I Google Hillary Clinton Peace Corps but all I can really get is stuff about her swearing people into the Peace Corps and honoring the oldest-living Peace Corps volunteer. I could pull up a bio, but by then i am bored with my theory, so I hit Play again on the DVR.

Stacie's friends are being surprised in that way that people are when they are on TV but they have already been fully briefed on the conversation. Stacie's White Birth Mother got pregnant and the Peace Corps sent her back to the United States and she never told Stacie's Black Birth Father that Stacie existed. It was a love that couldn't happen, them being from two different countries and in the Peace Corps.

"She's selfish," say Stacie's friends, and Stacie says that it would "rock" her birth mother's world if people knew she had a black child. But Stacie has a right to know, dammit. Everyone cries about the selfishness of this woman who didn't get an abortion some time in the 1960s and just wants not to have her husband get mad at her.

Mary is so happy that she is helping Ted open his salon and his Hella Spa (Hela Spa), Washington, D.C. has the reputation of being Hollywood for ugly people, and she is delighted to be part of the move to change that. But then Michaele comes in wearing yet another of her backless pillowcases and a lot of bleached hair, and she screams hello to Ted and throws herself on him like she's hoping to impale his lungs with her nipples. She grinds on him for a while, and then Mary comes in. Mary looks sad, in a dress that shows badly that she is not wearing a bra when she very much should be wearing a bra, no makeup, sad frizzy hair.

Ted does not notice her. She stands there some more and he still does not notice her. She stands there even more, and Ted doesn't notice her, and even though she is pretending to not feel like a loser by play-acting nicey-nice with the help and pawing through the swag bags for the Big Party. Finally she clears her throat, "a-hem," and Ted looks over and goggles. He is surprised perhaps to see that Mary is the unkempt braless woman is apparently Mary, the woman who says that her contacts are simply going to make him in Washington. Mary is so jealous that she is oozing green slime, and then she and Michaele engage in this sick little hang-on-the-hairdresser girlfight, kissing him, hugging him, and generally trying to prove to the other one that she is the most important person in this hairdresser's life.

Mary gets her talking head moment and says that while Michaele may be donating some of her crappy-ass wine, she feels that she, Mary, is the one who is really sponsoring the event.

She is getting her hair done and it's all fine until Ted walks up and says, "What's going on, gorgeous?" as if he hadn't seen her 15 minutes earlier. Mary asks Ted to do the hair for some fashion charity thingy she is doing, and he says he will, and then she says that she noticed that he didn't notice her quickly enough for her liking when she came in the door. "Am I your favorite?" and he says there is plenty of him to go around.

"Who's number one here?" she asks.

He tells the stylist to "hook a bitch up," which really isn't funny and is kind of crass.

The salon opening is full of Housewives telling each other how lovely they look and Cat is over all us Americans who have three-month holidays in the sun. Lynda comes in with her pet model and says hi to Michaele. In a small town like Washington, you run into people, she says, adding that she doesn't hold a grudge because life is too short.

Tareq and Michaele are clinking plastic champagne saucers of some ambery-colored liquid (Lipton Iced Tea and white wine? peach-flavored - and colored - wine? Rotten, spoiled wine that has been sitting in the un-airconditioned double-wide that sits on the edge of their grape farm?) and once again, Mary is seething.

She believes that Tareq and Michaele use their wine as a bartering system to get into things and get to know important people in Washington, D.C. Mary says this in a way that makes me sad that she doesn't have anything to use as a bartering system - other than her sense of entitlement.

To Cat, she declares them as social climbers, and Cat says that she despises social climbers.

Mary says that in D.C., you have to have a certain integrity, or you aren't going to make it. I am glad to know that there is so much integrity being swung around in D.C. If she hadn't told me, I would never have known. Also, good to know that integrity seems to be - according to Mary - indigenous to Our Nation's Capital.

Back at Mary's big traditional stucco house with odd contemporary windows, Mary's Lolly daughter has quit her waitressing job and now is an assistant who has, like, her own desk. But she can take her dog. And I have to wonder - look at Mary's eyes! What is she on???

Cat is throwing a ball in the yard of her rented house in which she no longer lives. Michaele calls to invite her for grape-stomping, and Cat asks to invite her friend, Jason. Michaele says yes. Cat gets in a dig about whether this time there will be wine served at Michaele's winery.

Then Michaele calls Lynda, and they talk about the perfect weather before Michaele informs Lynda that she is inviting all the Housewives and their significant others or husbands (Lynda is the only one without a husband) for grape-stomping. Lynda declines because her kid has football that day.

She says in her talking head that of course if Michaele had been a true friend to her, she would be only too happy to be at Michaele's party. So I am guessing that whole forgive and forget because life is too short thing isn't working out for her.

Michaele is secretly crushed, though she pretends to be pensive on the camera.

Cat and Jason and Mary go to Mary's high-end contemporary furniture store in Georgetown and Mary informs them that she is going to further insult the integrity of her traditional house by painting the dining room high-gloss black and adding contemporary furniture. Cat looks horrified, and basically tells Mary that she is horrified. Then Cat says she wouldn't sit in any of the chairs in that store for more than five minutes (something about her knobbly bottom) and Mary tells her to just. Shut. The. Hell. Up. To which Cat replies, "Should I just say I love everything then?"

Because it's Mary's friend's store. Jason (a hairdresser) and Cat say the furniture looks like something the guy from American Psycho would have, and they laugh and laugh. Mary sits there sucking the skewer stuck up her butt. Then the storekeeper gives them some wine and Jason - wearing a knit cap from Wal-Mart and the arm protector from his grandmother's sofa - makes fun of the plastic cups.

He is finished being disdainful of the store. He tells Cat and Mary about going to the Congressional Black Caucus Dinner. Mary says it's the biggest weekend for the African-American community. Apparently, Michaele invited them and her ticket only admitted one, but they snuck right through. They sit in the empty chairs because sometimes people don't show up to these things.

Mary is mad because she has invited Ted and Jason to meet All the Important People and it just Doesn't Look right for them to be sneaking everywhere.

Anyway, Secret Service spots Michaele and Tareq and they get escorted out by Secret Service.

"Brazen!" says Cat, and Mary is amazed by this word.

Somehow, after they are finished getting thrown out, Tareq and Michaele end up sneaking back into the VIP room.

They all go to the grape stomp, which is the first time they've stomped since Tareq's mom tried to have him removed from the property. Tareq's mom is a local reporter, and she's sent the press, and Michaele is concerned that the press-media is there. Tareq calls Stacie to let her know that there may be problems getting in.

Mary wants to see what the grape farm is all about. The vineyards.

There does seem to be some double-wides, and Mary says she has never seen Michaele without Tareq since Michaele was behind the counter at Nordstrom's selling makeup.

More on the Black Caucus dinner: Stacie is horrified that they would insult the black community like this. Obama was there! Stacie's very own delightful president!

She calls Tareq back. She has two young kids and she can't be walking into all this crazy shit. She wants the scoop. Cat asks, "Are we safe to come to your place?" and the phone goes dead.

Tareq and Michaele have dressed their security guards like Secret Service guys. Michaele hangs on 40 seconds too long in each air kiss. Tareq tells everyone to stomp three gallons and he'll give them a bottle of wine of their choice. Cat can't get over the security. She grills Michaele, who pretends not to know what they are talking about.

Stacie is just drinking.

Cat won't stomp. She must have funky feet. She is flat-out rude to this big imbecile whose mother wants him off her damned property.

"I know you're American, but let's just have some manners," said Cat.

Michaele's assistant says love is better than being bitchy to everybody. Stacie's husband says that generally you don't expect your service provider to call you a bitch, but, keeping it real, Cat was being a bitch.

He may be the show's only redemption.

They start to stomp, and both Cat and Mary notice that the grapes in bins on the platform are Thompson seedless, from the supermarket.

Michaele stomps as if she is a go-go dancer in the 1960s. Mary says not one ounce of liquid came from those grapes. Cat keeps saying "Bollocks!" She grabs Jason's early car back to D.C. Michaele is mad that Cat was insulting. Mary tries to defend Cat because she had the exact same thoughts that Cat did. They all smack around their glasses of vin rose.

Mary brings up the Black Caucus dinner and Stacie says that Jason and Ted were upset about not having tickets. Michaele says that they did have tickets; they just weren't seated together. Mary tells Michaele that she builds people up and she doesn't like to talk about people. Then she talks about Lynda with Michaele and Mary smacks Michaele for picking fights with Lynda. Mary tells Michaele that Lynda adores her. They are agreeing to disagree. Stacie is gonna take Michaele's side.

Now Mary is going to bring up some incident where Michaele said, "Ask Mary - she likes to talk about people." Michaele plays dumb and then says that she heard that Mary, Lynda and Cat took great enjoyment in making fun of Michaele. Stacie said that Mary wasn't part of it and that it was Lynda who said the bad things. Then she says that Mary was close to it.

Tareq brings up something about Mary's daughter and next week we're going to see Mary crying. Somebody goes to the hospital. It annoys me that I had to sit through this lackluster episode to get to something that may or may not be interesting.