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.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
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.
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.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
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.
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.
Friday, August 27, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Just When You Thought RHONJ Couldn't Get Any Worse...It So DOES!
My mantra throughout this season of The Real Housewives of New Jersey has been, after each and every episode, "that's as bad as it gets." I wait a week for the next episode and I continually have to admit that I was wrong the week earlier - because it just gets stupider and stupider.
This week, the entire families of Manzos, Lauritas and Giudices meet for dinner at the Limestone Waffle House that is Teresa Giudice's home. They sit around the sumptuous chairs (which can be yours in an upcoming auction that is now indefinitely postponed while the authorities comb through more Giudice assets that have been uncovered and decide whether it really is okay to sell children's toys and beds and hair bows to the general population) and the women all seem to be drinking fruity strawberry daiquiris. This seems to be an odd choice, because each of those suckers packs more calories than a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, but that's what they're doing,
The drinks may actually be Bellinis, because Teresa offers one to Jacqueline. They are very red Bellinis. I am sure that you can get the recipe from either Teresa's book or, more likely, where she may have gotten them herself - off the Internet. But I kid.
And what it the conversation? Uh - duh. It's about Danielle Staub, everybody's favorite punching bag. Not that she doesn't bring some of this on herself, but I always find that the best way to eliminate a problem from your life is to not keep talking and talking and talking about it.
Before the family starts in on Danielle, everybody clinks glasses and compliments Teresa on the food, and Teresa - bizarrely clad in some shredded black lace cocktail dress/negligee/mantilla - says, as if she's not desperately trying to push her book about Italian food, "some people think Italian food is so fattening, but it's so not." Albert, Caroline's husband, chimes in that when the group was in Italy, they ate their faces off but never gained weight. He delicately avoids the fact that the reason they did not gain weight is because of the enforced death march up Mount Vesuvius they were forced to endure as a condition of being held captive at Teresa's leopard-and-lace family reunion.
Jacqueline seems unable to use a fork; she is trying to do the European upside-down fork thing and I keep worrying that she will stab herself in the chin. Caroline asks, stagily, how Ashley is doing with her trial for assaulting Danielle at the country club, and Jacqueline says that Ashley seems to be doing fine. Caroline points out obviously that this may be on Ashley's record for the rest of her life, for the millionth time that someone in this extended family has pointed that out, to which I have to say: yes, it will be on her record for the rest of her life. Even if the charges are dismissed, the fact that Ashley was arrested will be on her record for the rest of her life.
Unable to lie about what Ashley did (there were 72 cameras on her at the time), Jacqueline defends the repugnant Ashley by saying that even if Ashley did wrong by pulling Danielle's hair, the hair-pulling was not accompanied by Ashely's screaming that she was going to kill Danielle, as Danielle claimed in the police report. Therefore, Ashley is somehow vindicated.
Caroline does a talking head (it is obvious that this episode is going to be the Caroline Show) and asks rhetorically, "If you are in a better place, why are you so hell-bent on hurting this child?" To which I say, nobody thought that Ashley was such a child when she moved out of her parents' home to go live with her 23-year-old boyfriend, and actually, it was the so-called child who hurt Danielle, not the other way round. OK, so Danielle said that Ashley has flabby arms and failed school and whatever else. Probably, a lot of it is true, though why an adult would be saying such things about a young person makes no sense at all. Why Ashley would respond makes no sense. Why Ashley is allowed to have a cell phone and Internet action also makes no sense - it's not as if she's working for it.
What Caroline really asking is: why are you making my niece pay for her very terrible behavior?
Because - let's face it. Ashley has not shown one iota of remorse over this whole thing. This is the thing that got her on the contract to be paid $3,300 per episode, which is a lot of money for doing the thing she is really talented at - sitting around in knit hats and ass-widening PJ bottoms and being a pouty snot. This is the only time she will realize any kind of success in her life, because the rest of her life is going to be waiting for her stepfather to fork over some money so that she can have a pedicure and buy dog sweaters.
Jacqueline chimes in with the most ridiculous argument ever: if Danielle says she was such a good friend of mine, why is she doing this to my daughter?
Again, I reiterate. Again. You told Danielle you no longer wanted to be her friend. You turned your back on her. This means that whatever warm and fuzzy feelings she once housed for you are most likely gone. By rights, those feelings should have evaporated. Also, your daughter has a weird and violent fascination with Danielle that no doubt was spurred into existence by your constant barrage of insults against her. This obsession of Ashley's with Danielle was whipped into a frenzy by you and then stirred into a luscious soup of rage with assault. The police came. Ashley was arrested. Charges of assault and harassment were filed.
However, this does not constitute Danielle doing anything to Ashley. Ashley is a menace who has not once apologized for her actions. She is the kind of person who would do this again to Danielle or anyone who ticks her off. What Ashley needs is some good residential psychiatric treatment and a real job. Ashley did something to Danielle; what is now happening to Ashley is called a consequence, not some random thing that Danielle is doing to Ashley.
Caroline is tired of everyone in her family having to battle this lunatic. The rumors she spread about Teresa being up to her eyeballs in debt and having her house foreclosed on makes Caroline mad (Teresa just sat there tight-lipped and livid that Caroline would mention this at the table or anywhere - make it go away! - only God knows whether Teresa let her family in on the bankruptcy/possible criminal charges/IRS issues). She was mean to Caroline's son Christopher (by saying that he was rude to her in a valet line, which seems so minor that the fact that Caroline even brought it up makes me snort in disgust). And she was mean to Dina, which made Dina leave the show (something about Danielle calling Dina's ex and trying to get him to stop paying child support or something).
She is "so driven to hurt every single one of us." Then, Caroline lets loose her inner martyr: "And I have done nothing but try to stay out of this woman's life."
Caroline is determined to lay it all on the line and go have drinks with Danielle in order to put all this fighting to rest. And get Danielle to drop her charges against Ashley. And right away, you know it's going to be a failure - and not because of Danielle.
The problem with this scenario is that Caroline wants Danielle to not only leave her family alone (which Danielle actually seems to be doing), but also drop the charges against Ashley. Caroline is operating on the premise that Danielle will believe that Caroline's decision not to mess in her life means anything. It doesn't, because Caroline has made it clear from the outset that she won't have anything to do with Danielle. Caroline also is under the mistaken impression that Danielle will somehow read from Caroline's attempt to talk with her that Caroline is offering any kind of approbation - or that Danielle actually wants Caroline's approbation.
Caroline is also going to insult the life out of Danielle by saying that what Ashley is guilty of, Danielle has been, too. She is going to ask Danielle to "save" Ashley. And yet Caroline is offering her nothing in return.
This entire scenario is called a negotiation. In order to be successful in a negotiation, you have to have a bargaining chip. Caroline believes her munificent presence is a bargaining chip - but she is offering Danielle nothing that she wants or needs. If Caroline invited her to a party, or suggested they meet for lunch sometimes to show people how civilized they could be for an hour or two at distant intervals, Danielle might have snapped the possibilities right up. But if there is nothing to snap up, Danielle will swim away, stewing in her own juices.
Teresa says that she tried to talk to Danielle at the country club, and Danielle just ran away.
I despise Teresa. She is despicable. She is a liar. She is a thief. Also, she laid in wait at that country club for Danielle, who was behaving pretty well by Danielle standards (considering she found out that her so-called friend was not her friend during the self-same fashion show) and, when Danielle did not engage her, Teresa dropped a bomb of classlessness. I am no fan of Danielle Staub, but Teresa is at least an equally horrible person.
Teresa - I'm not buying your act, I'm not buying your book, and I'm not buying any of that tacky tat you spent $11 million on to fill up your Big Neighborhood Funeral Home of a House.
Caroline says, well, she may run away from me, but I won't run away from her. She is going to try to make a deal with Danielle, but Ashley better behave going forward. Jacqueline whines that she will talk with Ashley, but she can't control her, which means she doesn't want to control her.
Right there and then, Caroline texts Danielle.
Cut to Danielle. She is eating what appears to be huge tubes of pasta and asparagus, and she seems to have learned her table manners at the same school from which Jacqueline matriculated. She is sitting with her two daughters, and she is surprised. Her older daughter asks Danielle to read the text, and Danielle does - and then she starts that weird thing that she does where she scrutinizes every word for the most ominous meanings possible. "Nonsense" (Caroline would like to put a stop to this nonsense). "I'll tell her when I think it's nonsense!"
The younger daughter starts crying and moaning. She doesn't want Mom to go to this scary-sounding meeting from which no good can come. "What normal person would do that?" Well, there's her mistake. Danielle is not a normal person. She believes that it actually matters that Caroline walk away from this meeting thinking, "Wow, I really misjudged her." Danielle loves, loves, loves that scene in Pretty Woman in which the Julia Roberts gets to go back into the Rodeo Drive shop and say, "You work on commission, right? Big mistake. Huge!'
The older daughter gets that tense mouth-face that she does when she realizes that her mother is spewing crazy-talk.
"What do we have to talk about?" Danielle muses. "I'm not in fear no more. I was, but now I'm not. The thing is, I don't want anything to do with them...so, I'm going to go."
And here is the part that where I realize that Danielle talks in Saturday morning action cartoon show speak, where there's always a watery line before the commercial that's supposed to be strong. Because she says:
She may be the matriarch of her family, but not of mine. So, here we go - matriarch to matriarch.
The older daughter's eyes slit to the side, and she realizes that this is going to be embarrassing as all get-out, especially when her mother says, "I am going to get the dignity and the respect that I deserve."
Respect is earned, dignity is self-contained. It's not something you can demand as if you're ordering a hamburger at a drive-in speaker.
Cut to Jacqueline and her husband trying to talk some sense into the puffed-out drywall that is Ashley. Ashley gets really excited when she hears that Caroline is going to speak to Danielle, and you can tell that throughout this conversation, she is fantasizing about the blog post or Facebook post or whatever she's going to run do as soon as she can leave the room. Jacqueline tells her that she can't do anything more to Danielle, and Ashley says she hasn't done anything - which is actually not a response to what Jacqueline just said.
Why is the baby sitting there? Who brings babies to conversations like this? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. You always dress him in red and black biker togs. Whatever.
"She's like herpes; she never goes away," the hatted one says of Danielle, laughing at what she thinks of as her own wit, and no doubt remembering what her doctor told her about herpes.
The stepfather says that Ashley is annoying with her Danielle talk and adds that Caroline may not get off the hook. It's costing him money, with all these legal fees, and Ashley needs to can the crap. But Ashley doesn't think she will get convicted, because she thinks that her fiction about only pulling Danielle's hair because she thought Danielle was hurting her mother will fly. She also has this idea that somehow the court will ignore the obvious evidence of Ashley pulling Danielle's hair because the tape doesn't show her telling Danielle that Ashley was going to kill her.
Ashley wants to know what Aunt Caroline is going to say - because, of course, the more details, the more people will like her Internet post. This will all be so funny, goes Ashley's brain.
Jacqueline says that Danielle will probably want a public apology, and Ashley says, "Well, that;'s not gonna happen." Because it makes so much more sense to hope the judge will ignore the evidence - on camera - of Ashley's assault on Danielle. Because Ashley paying a fine and being found guilty is so much better than saying, it was a confusing situation and I don't know why I did it. I am so sorry.
Ashley rolls her eyes and shows her parents enormous disrespect - which makes sense, since Jacqueline does nothing but talk about Danielle. Jacqueline can't stand that her daughter owes Danielle.
Back at Danielle's, Danielle's pet felon Danny comes in without a coat (he probably pawned it to pay his probation fees). Danielle tells Danny that Caroline texted her. Danielle comes up with an elaborate scheme in which Caroline has planned every incidence of Danielle's discomfort in the last two years. Danny says that yeah, sure, Caroline is the boss, but it's not likely that Caroline planned the country club thing, and Danielle says, "Oh, come on," and Danny caves and does a 180-degree and just starts agreeing with Danielle that Caroline is, in fact, the Godfather.
Danielle really, really likes mafia movies.
"Caroline, you're not Carmelo," Danielle says, puzzling me before she added, "You're not a Soprano."
Oh, Carmela Soprano. The wife.
She tells Caroline to get a life.
And then she brings up a very good point - if you didn't like me, would you ring my doorbell to tell me you didn't want to be around me? Or would you just not hang around me any more?
And this is a very good point. And the "woman' that Danielle knows, they just don't do that.
But, she's still going for the drink.
She embraces her moments of insanity, but Danny gets the idea that it's not a good idea for Danielle to be in a place in which she is vulnerable. Danny, who can't be a bodyguard - no doubt because his parole officer tells him to steer clear - is nonetheless excited about the possibility of drafting an assemblage of goons to accompany Danielle to this restaurant.
Danielle is ranting by now. Caroline, you come and meet me face-to-face and tell me what your problem is with me. Which is kind of the point of the meeting, right?
Caroline's new cop son who got kicked out of law school and her makeup artist daughter who has no makeup on and looks like a big mess meet with Caroline in the kitchen to talk up the meeting. Caroline is going to go get dressed, and we see her getting dressed, checking accessories, and says she is not going to stir the pot.It;s the Big Lead-Up.
Danielle has a quick phone meeting with her energist. She is going to lead with love and drive her message home, which sound like two conflicting goals. She has hired a short, dumpy, white driver and a big, black bodyguard. "Danielle's mafia is in place," she announced, oddly.
We see them driving - Danielle in a rented town car and Caroline in a Range Rover, which must supply Range Rovers to everyone on the show. Danielle for some reason is very concerned about Caroline's red hair, and adds that her "mafia" hurts with guns.
At the Brownstone, the family is meeting in preparation for Caroline's return. They are having bellinis and half red wine-half Coke drinks. Ashley is cleaning her teeth with her tongue. Albert says that Caroline is only going to save Ashley, because, he says, Ashley "lost it," but Danielle premeditated her rudeness by lying to the court about Ashley threatening to kill her (I have to add that if someone was chasing me and pulling my hair, I would completely have it in my head that this person was trying to kill me - I don't believe that Danielle's perception is an unreasonable one). Jacqueline says, yes, her daughter was wrong, but Danielle is - and here she gives a list of stuff that Danielle did more than 20 years ago as an example of why Danielle has no right to judge her daughter. It's so rude, and so tasteless. There are children at the table. It's not in keeping with the correct level of parental horror over what Ashley did. Danielle's past, to Jacqueline, is Ashley's excuse.
Ashley gets mad. She hears it every day. Jacqueline says, no, you don't hear it every day, since most of the time you are living in sin with your boyfriend. Ashley - rightly, I think - gets up and goes to the bathroom. Her mother is surprised that Ashley is upset. She follows her and tries to get her to see that Jacqueline is all perfect and Ashley needs to always be polite to her no matter what word vomit spills out of her mouth.
Ashley's boyfriend, a total suckup to the Italians, agrees that Ashley needs to know her place and be respectful.
Caroline's cannelloni of a daughter goes and makes Ashley come to dinner.
So far as Caroline's meeting - Danielle has brought her army, but Caroline doesn't give a fiddler's fart. She is nervous - you can tell because she's doing this fast-anxious smiling thing.
Caroline opens with a lot of platitudes about how she wishes life was. Danielle agrees. The Caroline makes her misstep. She says she is "puzzled" about why Danielle feels the need to pursue "this" (meaning the criminal charges) with Ashley. She brings up Danielle's past and says that Danielle could be the person that help Ashley turn her life around. She keeps bringing up Danielle's past, which is really rude and irrelevant to Ashley's current situation, as Danielle's past did not beget Ashely's atrocious behavior.
Danielle is shocked. She can't believe that Caroline would preface a request for her to drop the charges with puzzlement and throwing Danielle's own past back in her face. Danielle says that she is not perfect, and because she was held accountable for her own mistakes, she can embrace them as positive experiences. (This is lost on Caroline). Caroline admits that Ashley was wrong and that her actions were illegal.
"This is not about me or my mistakes," Danielle says. "This is about Ashley."
And she is right! She is so right! I can't even believe how right Danielle is! Who would have known???
Caroline is getting huffy. She can't salvage this, so she is going to turn it into an attack. She tries to sell Danielle the fiction that Ashley thought she was defending her mother, a lie which is made clear by the camera footage - Jacqueline is not even near Danielle.
Caroline says that Danielle needs to tell the truth (read, stand by Ashley), and then Caroline will respect Danielle. Which is such a reckless hand to play, as it is based on the assumption that anyone in the world cares a lick about whether Caroline Manzo respects them.
I actually liked Caroline a little before this episode. But she went from what I thought was a considerably changed version of her formerly bullying little self to a seemingly wiser and more thoughtful person - right back to a little bully. She's getting louder now, because she's mad that for some strange reason, this person is not hearkening to her demands like a waiter at her husband's business.
Danielle says that while it may be a surprise to Caroline, Danielle doesn't need Caroline to validate her. She feels that she has been attacked and insulted and gossiped about (all true).
Caroline says that she wants one example in which she has hurt Danielle. The way Caroline hurt Danielle, of course, was by egging the others on, but the only proof Danielle has of this was Jacqueline's earlier disloyalty to Caroline. Danielle considers playing this card -you can see she's toying with this idea while at the same time trying to come up with some example of Caroline directly bothering her. She can't. But Caroline's family has hurt her. Caroline's friend have. And really, since it was Caroline herself who called this meeting, since it is Caroline herself who is asking for all the favors - it really isn't required of Danielle to come up with anything. Caroline is getting louder and louder. She knows that she lost her persuasive argument, but she is not smart enough to know why, and it makes her mad, like when the dog can't catch his tail. So she turns to her old standard, bullying. She is going to try to browbeat Danielle to do Caroline's bidding, and then she is going to swan back to the Brownstone and tell everyone how that "garbage" kowtowed to her, dammit.
And when Danielle turns it around and says, "What have I ever done to you, Caroline," Caroline spews some nonsense about how Teresa is her, Ashley is her, Dina is her. I have to say here that Caroline can't have it all ways. She can't be the one who never did anything to Danielle but is taking on the hurts of the whole world. She is not neutral. She is not the rescuer. She's just a housewife getting a few things off her chest.
Caroline is right that Danielle attacked the children. But the Manzo/Laurita/Giudice bullied Danielle, and Danielle is a nutjob.
We are no longer talking about Ashley - Caroline is just mad. She's mad about the entourage at the Brownstone. She's going to say some f-words. She's mad about a lot. She's about to break down, but she's working hard to keep it all in.
And Danielle drops her bomb. It's a good one. Caroline has brought up Danielle's unsavory past. Caroline passed judgment on Danielle based on her past, which was more than 20 years ago. And she lassoed everyone she could into her coterie of People Who Judge Danielle.
So Danielle says, "What about all your friends who are under indictment now?"
It's a good one. It's something that Caroline never thought Danielle would have the guts to bring up. She has no response. She gulps. This is true, this is mean, this hurts. If she thought about it, she would apologize to Danielle, say, you know, you just taught me something, and maybe Danielle would give Caroline what she wants. But Caroline has no subtlety, no finesse. Danielle hasn't either, but Danielle has been coached brilliantly for this meeting. Brilliantly. She has been rehearsed and put through questions - nothing catches her off-guard, nothing takes her off her game. Caroline hurts, so she is going to attack.
She tells Danielle that she is a clown, and Danielle says that she can't believe that red-headed Caroline is calling her a clown. Caroline says that Danielle will. not. hurt. her. It's just pathetic. It's stupid. Caroline looks foolish and Danielle looks calm and cool. Caroline is a pushy Fred Flintstone of a woman, yelling for her brontosaurus burger, and the sad thing is that she spent all of her earned currency as the Wise Woman on petulant, bratty Ashley.
Caorline pulls the garbage card - the insult she hurled at Danielle in Season One, and Danielle leaves. Caroline is so proud that Danielle is leaving first, which she looks at as some kind of accomplishment.
Caroline is wrong, of course. Lobbing insults at people and expecting them to sit there and take them is silly. Any normal person would walk away from such a conversation - what did Caroline expect? Did she think that Danielle would burst into tears? Did she think she'd leap across the table and attack her? Did she expect her to sit there a minute longer and listen to Caroline's brain diarrhea flowing out of that hole under her nose?
I am, if you can't tell, completely disgusted by Caroline.
Caroline continues to shoot off her mouth with such bon mots as "enjoy your life," to which Danielle says, "yes, I am," and Caroline seems to think she's hit some kind of target. She is happy that Danielle is walking away from her. Now, I wouldn't be walking; I'd be sprinting. Get this meatball sandwich out of my way, I'm outta here.
In her talking head, Caroline proclaims Danielle to be soulless, heartless, and not worth her time. I have to disagree, and I don't like sticking up for Danielle. Danielle was polite considering the circumstances, she was calm, and she made logical arguments. All in all, she did better than Caroline in this little Manzo-created Showdown. She won, just the way she won against Dina. Because it makes NO SENSE to try to hurt people with meetings in which you tell them that you don't want them in your life. That meeting is about you and you saying what you want to say. It doesn't resolve anything, because you don't care to hear what they have to say - and more to the point, the person you're spewing your rants against doesn't care what you have to say.
Danielle was hoping that Caroline would say something that would ease the sting of the United Attack. If Caroline had said, wow, this kid, what did she do? Tell me how to get through it, or something, she would have won Danielle over. And Caroline could have done it without getting involved in Danielle's life. But, no - Caroline wanted to dictate terms to Danielle, and she just didn't have anything to offer in return.
Which is why this episode was stupid.
The end of the show, and Danielle goes home to her little family and Caroline goes to a restaurant with her big family. Everybody loves everyone in their spearate little hamlets.
This week, the entire families of Manzos, Lauritas and Giudices meet for dinner at the Limestone Waffle House that is Teresa Giudice's home. They sit around the sumptuous chairs (which can be yours in an upcoming auction that is now indefinitely postponed while the authorities comb through more Giudice assets that have been uncovered and decide whether it really is okay to sell children's toys and beds and hair bows to the general population) and the women all seem to be drinking fruity strawberry daiquiris. This seems to be an odd choice, because each of those suckers packs more calories than a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, but that's what they're doing,
The drinks may actually be Bellinis, because Teresa offers one to Jacqueline. They are very red Bellinis. I am sure that you can get the recipe from either Teresa's book or, more likely, where she may have gotten them herself - off the Internet. But I kid.
And what it the conversation? Uh - duh. It's about Danielle Staub, everybody's favorite punching bag. Not that she doesn't bring some of this on herself, but I always find that the best way to eliminate a problem from your life is to not keep talking and talking and talking about it.
Before the family starts in on Danielle, everybody clinks glasses and compliments Teresa on the food, and Teresa - bizarrely clad in some shredded black lace cocktail dress/negligee/mantilla - says, as if she's not desperately trying to push her book about Italian food, "some people think Italian food is so fattening, but it's so not." Albert, Caroline's husband, chimes in that when the group was in Italy, they ate their faces off but never gained weight. He delicately avoids the fact that the reason they did not gain weight is because of the enforced death march up Mount Vesuvius they were forced to endure as a condition of being held captive at Teresa's leopard-and-lace family reunion.
Jacqueline seems unable to use a fork; she is trying to do the European upside-down fork thing and I keep worrying that she will stab herself in the chin. Caroline asks, stagily, how Ashley is doing with her trial for assaulting Danielle at the country club, and Jacqueline says that Ashley seems to be doing fine. Caroline points out obviously that this may be on Ashley's record for the rest of her life, for the millionth time that someone in this extended family has pointed that out, to which I have to say: yes, it will be on her record for the rest of her life. Even if the charges are dismissed, the fact that Ashley was arrested will be on her record for the rest of her life.
Unable to lie about what Ashley did (there were 72 cameras on her at the time), Jacqueline defends the repugnant Ashley by saying that even if Ashley did wrong by pulling Danielle's hair, the hair-pulling was not accompanied by Ashely's screaming that she was going to kill Danielle, as Danielle claimed in the police report. Therefore, Ashley is somehow vindicated.
Caroline does a talking head (it is obvious that this episode is going to be the Caroline Show) and asks rhetorically, "If you are in a better place, why are you so hell-bent on hurting this child?" To which I say, nobody thought that Ashley was such a child when she moved out of her parents' home to go live with her 23-year-old boyfriend, and actually, it was the so-called child who hurt Danielle, not the other way round. OK, so Danielle said that Ashley has flabby arms and failed school and whatever else. Probably, a lot of it is true, though why an adult would be saying such things about a young person makes no sense at all. Why Ashley would respond makes no sense. Why Ashley is allowed to have a cell phone and Internet action also makes no sense - it's not as if she's working for it.
What Caroline really asking is: why are you making my niece pay for her very terrible behavior?
Because - let's face it. Ashley has not shown one iota of remorse over this whole thing. This is the thing that got her on the contract to be paid $3,300 per episode, which is a lot of money for doing the thing she is really talented at - sitting around in knit hats and ass-widening PJ bottoms and being a pouty snot. This is the only time she will realize any kind of success in her life, because the rest of her life is going to be waiting for her stepfather to fork over some money so that she can have a pedicure and buy dog sweaters.
Jacqueline chimes in with the most ridiculous argument ever: if Danielle says she was such a good friend of mine, why is she doing this to my daughter?
Again, I reiterate. Again. You told Danielle you no longer wanted to be her friend. You turned your back on her. This means that whatever warm and fuzzy feelings she once housed for you are most likely gone. By rights, those feelings should have evaporated. Also, your daughter has a weird and violent fascination with Danielle that no doubt was spurred into existence by your constant barrage of insults against her. This obsession of Ashley's with Danielle was whipped into a frenzy by you and then stirred into a luscious soup of rage with assault. The police came. Ashley was arrested. Charges of assault and harassment were filed.
However, this does not constitute Danielle doing anything to Ashley. Ashley is a menace who has not once apologized for her actions. She is the kind of person who would do this again to Danielle or anyone who ticks her off. What Ashley needs is some good residential psychiatric treatment and a real job. Ashley did something to Danielle; what is now happening to Ashley is called a consequence, not some random thing that Danielle is doing to Ashley.
Caroline is tired of everyone in her family having to battle this lunatic. The rumors she spread about Teresa being up to her eyeballs in debt and having her house foreclosed on makes Caroline mad (Teresa just sat there tight-lipped and livid that Caroline would mention this at the table or anywhere - make it go away! - only God knows whether Teresa let her family in on the bankruptcy/possible criminal charges/IRS issues). She was mean to Caroline's son Christopher (by saying that he was rude to her in a valet line, which seems so minor that the fact that Caroline even brought it up makes me snort in disgust). And she was mean to Dina, which made Dina leave the show (something about Danielle calling Dina's ex and trying to get him to stop paying child support or something).
She is "so driven to hurt every single one of us." Then, Caroline lets loose her inner martyr: "And I have done nothing but try to stay out of this woman's life."
Caroline is determined to lay it all on the line and go have drinks with Danielle in order to put all this fighting to rest. And get Danielle to drop her charges against Ashley. And right away, you know it's going to be a failure - and not because of Danielle.
The problem with this scenario is that Caroline wants Danielle to not only leave her family alone (which Danielle actually seems to be doing), but also drop the charges against Ashley. Caroline is operating on the premise that Danielle will believe that Caroline's decision not to mess in her life means anything. It doesn't, because Caroline has made it clear from the outset that she won't have anything to do with Danielle. Caroline also is under the mistaken impression that Danielle will somehow read from Caroline's attempt to talk with her that Caroline is offering any kind of approbation - or that Danielle actually wants Caroline's approbation.
Caroline is also going to insult the life out of Danielle by saying that what Ashley is guilty of, Danielle has been, too. She is going to ask Danielle to "save" Ashley. And yet Caroline is offering her nothing in return.
This entire scenario is called a negotiation. In order to be successful in a negotiation, you have to have a bargaining chip. Caroline believes her munificent presence is a bargaining chip - but she is offering Danielle nothing that she wants or needs. If Caroline invited her to a party, or suggested they meet for lunch sometimes to show people how civilized they could be for an hour or two at distant intervals, Danielle might have snapped the possibilities right up. But if there is nothing to snap up, Danielle will swim away, stewing in her own juices.
Teresa says that she tried to talk to Danielle at the country club, and Danielle just ran away.
I despise Teresa. She is despicable. She is a liar. She is a thief. Also, she laid in wait at that country club for Danielle, who was behaving pretty well by Danielle standards (considering she found out that her so-called friend was not her friend during the self-same fashion show) and, when Danielle did not engage her, Teresa dropped a bomb of classlessness. I am no fan of Danielle Staub, but Teresa is at least an equally horrible person.
Teresa - I'm not buying your act, I'm not buying your book, and I'm not buying any of that tacky tat you spent $11 million on to fill up your Big Neighborhood Funeral Home of a House.
Caroline says, well, she may run away from me, but I won't run away from her. She is going to try to make a deal with Danielle, but Ashley better behave going forward. Jacqueline whines that she will talk with Ashley, but she can't control her, which means she doesn't want to control her.
Right there and then, Caroline texts Danielle.
Cut to Danielle. She is eating what appears to be huge tubes of pasta and asparagus, and she seems to have learned her table manners at the same school from which Jacqueline matriculated. She is sitting with her two daughters, and she is surprised. Her older daughter asks Danielle to read the text, and Danielle does - and then she starts that weird thing that she does where she scrutinizes every word for the most ominous meanings possible. "Nonsense" (Caroline would like to put a stop to this nonsense). "I'll tell her when I think it's nonsense!"
The younger daughter starts crying and moaning. She doesn't want Mom to go to this scary-sounding meeting from which no good can come. "What normal person would do that?" Well, there's her mistake. Danielle is not a normal person. She believes that it actually matters that Caroline walk away from this meeting thinking, "Wow, I really misjudged her." Danielle loves, loves, loves that scene in Pretty Woman in which the Julia Roberts gets to go back into the Rodeo Drive shop and say, "You work on commission, right? Big mistake. Huge!'
The older daughter gets that tense mouth-face that she does when she realizes that her mother is spewing crazy-talk.
"What do we have to talk about?" Danielle muses. "I'm not in fear no more. I was, but now I'm not. The thing is, I don't want anything to do with them...so, I'm going to go."
And here is the part that where I realize that Danielle talks in Saturday morning action cartoon show speak, where there's always a watery line before the commercial that's supposed to be strong. Because she says:
She may be the matriarch of her family, but not of mine. So, here we go - matriarch to matriarch.
The older daughter's eyes slit to the side, and she realizes that this is going to be embarrassing as all get-out, especially when her mother says, "I am going to get the dignity and the respect that I deserve."
Respect is earned, dignity is self-contained. It's not something you can demand as if you're ordering a hamburger at a drive-in speaker.
Cut to Jacqueline and her husband trying to talk some sense into the puffed-out drywall that is Ashley. Ashley gets really excited when she hears that Caroline is going to speak to Danielle, and you can tell that throughout this conversation, she is fantasizing about the blog post or Facebook post or whatever she's going to run do as soon as she can leave the room. Jacqueline tells her that she can't do anything more to Danielle, and Ashley says she hasn't done anything - which is actually not a response to what Jacqueline just said.
Why is the baby sitting there? Who brings babies to conversations like this? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. You always dress him in red and black biker togs. Whatever.
"She's like herpes; she never goes away," the hatted one says of Danielle, laughing at what she thinks of as her own wit, and no doubt remembering what her doctor told her about herpes.
The stepfather says that Ashley is annoying with her Danielle talk and adds that Caroline may not get off the hook. It's costing him money, with all these legal fees, and Ashley needs to can the crap. But Ashley doesn't think she will get convicted, because she thinks that her fiction about only pulling Danielle's hair because she thought Danielle was hurting her mother will fly. She also has this idea that somehow the court will ignore the obvious evidence of Ashley pulling Danielle's hair because the tape doesn't show her telling Danielle that Ashley was going to kill her.
Ashley wants to know what Aunt Caroline is going to say - because, of course, the more details, the more people will like her Internet post. This will all be so funny, goes Ashley's brain.
Jacqueline says that Danielle will probably want a public apology, and Ashley says, "Well, that;'s not gonna happen." Because it makes so much more sense to hope the judge will ignore the evidence - on camera - of Ashley's assault on Danielle. Because Ashley paying a fine and being found guilty is so much better than saying, it was a confusing situation and I don't know why I did it. I am so sorry.
Ashley rolls her eyes and shows her parents enormous disrespect - which makes sense, since Jacqueline does nothing but talk about Danielle. Jacqueline can't stand that her daughter owes Danielle.
Back at Danielle's, Danielle's pet felon Danny comes in without a coat (he probably pawned it to pay his probation fees). Danielle tells Danny that Caroline texted her. Danielle comes up with an elaborate scheme in which Caroline has planned every incidence of Danielle's discomfort in the last two years. Danny says that yeah, sure, Caroline is the boss, but it's not likely that Caroline planned the country club thing, and Danielle says, "Oh, come on," and Danny caves and does a 180-degree and just starts agreeing with Danielle that Caroline is, in fact, the Godfather.
Danielle really, really likes mafia movies.
"Caroline, you're not Carmelo," Danielle says, puzzling me before she added, "You're not a Soprano."
Oh, Carmela Soprano. The wife.
She tells Caroline to get a life.
And then she brings up a very good point - if you didn't like me, would you ring my doorbell to tell me you didn't want to be around me? Or would you just not hang around me any more?
And this is a very good point. And the "woman' that Danielle knows, they just don't do that.
But, she's still going for the drink.
She embraces her moments of insanity, but Danny gets the idea that it's not a good idea for Danielle to be in a place in which she is vulnerable. Danny, who can't be a bodyguard - no doubt because his parole officer tells him to steer clear - is nonetheless excited about the possibility of drafting an assemblage of goons to accompany Danielle to this restaurant.
Danielle is ranting by now. Caroline, you come and meet me face-to-face and tell me what your problem is with me. Which is kind of the point of the meeting, right?
Caroline's new cop son who got kicked out of law school and her makeup artist daughter who has no makeup on and looks like a big mess meet with Caroline in the kitchen to talk up the meeting. Caroline is going to go get dressed, and we see her getting dressed, checking accessories, and says she is not going to stir the pot.It;s the Big Lead-Up.
Danielle has a quick phone meeting with her energist. She is going to lead with love and drive her message home, which sound like two conflicting goals. She has hired a short, dumpy, white driver and a big, black bodyguard. "Danielle's mafia is in place," she announced, oddly.
We see them driving - Danielle in a rented town car and Caroline in a Range Rover, which must supply Range Rovers to everyone on the show. Danielle for some reason is very concerned about Caroline's red hair, and adds that her "mafia" hurts with guns.
At the Brownstone, the family is meeting in preparation for Caroline's return. They are having bellinis and half red wine-half Coke drinks. Ashley is cleaning her teeth with her tongue. Albert says that Caroline is only going to save Ashley, because, he says, Ashley "lost it," but Danielle premeditated her rudeness by lying to the court about Ashley threatening to kill her (I have to add that if someone was chasing me and pulling my hair, I would completely have it in my head that this person was trying to kill me - I don't believe that Danielle's perception is an unreasonable one). Jacqueline says, yes, her daughter was wrong, but Danielle is - and here she gives a list of stuff that Danielle did more than 20 years ago as an example of why Danielle has no right to judge her daughter. It's so rude, and so tasteless. There are children at the table. It's not in keeping with the correct level of parental horror over what Ashley did. Danielle's past, to Jacqueline, is Ashley's excuse.
Ashley gets mad. She hears it every day. Jacqueline says, no, you don't hear it every day, since most of the time you are living in sin with your boyfriend. Ashley - rightly, I think - gets up and goes to the bathroom. Her mother is surprised that Ashley is upset. She follows her and tries to get her to see that Jacqueline is all perfect and Ashley needs to always be polite to her no matter what word vomit spills out of her mouth.
Ashley's boyfriend, a total suckup to the Italians, agrees that Ashley needs to know her place and be respectful.
Caroline's cannelloni of a daughter goes and makes Ashley come to dinner.
So far as Caroline's meeting - Danielle has brought her army, but Caroline doesn't give a fiddler's fart. She is nervous - you can tell because she's doing this fast-anxious smiling thing.
Caroline opens with a lot of platitudes about how she wishes life was. Danielle agrees. The Caroline makes her misstep. She says she is "puzzled" about why Danielle feels the need to pursue "this" (meaning the criminal charges) with Ashley. She brings up Danielle's past and says that Danielle could be the person that help Ashley turn her life around. She keeps bringing up Danielle's past, which is really rude and irrelevant to Ashley's current situation, as Danielle's past did not beget Ashely's atrocious behavior.
Danielle is shocked. She can't believe that Caroline would preface a request for her to drop the charges with puzzlement and throwing Danielle's own past back in her face. Danielle says that she is not perfect, and because she was held accountable for her own mistakes, she can embrace them as positive experiences. (This is lost on Caroline). Caroline admits that Ashley was wrong and that her actions were illegal.
"This is not about me or my mistakes," Danielle says. "This is about Ashley."
And she is right! She is so right! I can't even believe how right Danielle is! Who would have known???
Caroline is getting huffy. She can't salvage this, so she is going to turn it into an attack. She tries to sell Danielle the fiction that Ashley thought she was defending her mother, a lie which is made clear by the camera footage - Jacqueline is not even near Danielle.
Caroline says that Danielle needs to tell the truth (read, stand by Ashley), and then Caroline will respect Danielle. Which is such a reckless hand to play, as it is based on the assumption that anyone in the world cares a lick about whether Caroline Manzo respects them.
I actually liked Caroline a little before this episode. But she went from what I thought was a considerably changed version of her formerly bullying little self to a seemingly wiser and more thoughtful person - right back to a little bully. She's getting louder now, because she's mad that for some strange reason, this person is not hearkening to her demands like a waiter at her husband's business.
Danielle says that while it may be a surprise to Caroline, Danielle doesn't need Caroline to validate her. She feels that she has been attacked and insulted and gossiped about (all true).
Caroline says that she wants one example in which she has hurt Danielle. The way Caroline hurt Danielle, of course, was by egging the others on, but the only proof Danielle has of this was Jacqueline's earlier disloyalty to Caroline. Danielle considers playing this card -you can see she's toying with this idea while at the same time trying to come up with some example of Caroline directly bothering her. She can't. But Caroline's family has hurt her. Caroline's friend have. And really, since it was Caroline herself who called this meeting, since it is Caroline herself who is asking for all the favors - it really isn't required of Danielle to come up with anything. Caroline is getting louder and louder. She knows that she lost her persuasive argument, but she is not smart enough to know why, and it makes her mad, like when the dog can't catch his tail. So she turns to her old standard, bullying. She is going to try to browbeat Danielle to do Caroline's bidding, and then she is going to swan back to the Brownstone and tell everyone how that "garbage" kowtowed to her, dammit.
And when Danielle turns it around and says, "What have I ever done to you, Caroline," Caroline spews some nonsense about how Teresa is her, Ashley is her, Dina is her. I have to say here that Caroline can't have it all ways. She can't be the one who never did anything to Danielle but is taking on the hurts of the whole world. She is not neutral. She is not the rescuer. She's just a housewife getting a few things off her chest.
Caroline is right that Danielle attacked the children. But the Manzo/Laurita/Giudice bullied Danielle, and Danielle is a nutjob.
We are no longer talking about Ashley - Caroline is just mad. She's mad about the entourage at the Brownstone. She's going to say some f-words. She's mad about a lot. She's about to break down, but she's working hard to keep it all in.
And Danielle drops her bomb. It's a good one. Caroline has brought up Danielle's unsavory past. Caroline passed judgment on Danielle based on her past, which was more than 20 years ago. And she lassoed everyone she could into her coterie of People Who Judge Danielle.
So Danielle says, "What about all your friends who are under indictment now?"
It's a good one. It's something that Caroline never thought Danielle would have the guts to bring up. She has no response. She gulps. This is true, this is mean, this hurts. If she thought about it, she would apologize to Danielle, say, you know, you just taught me something, and maybe Danielle would give Caroline what she wants. But Caroline has no subtlety, no finesse. Danielle hasn't either, but Danielle has been coached brilliantly for this meeting. Brilliantly. She has been rehearsed and put through questions - nothing catches her off-guard, nothing takes her off her game. Caroline hurts, so she is going to attack.
She tells Danielle that she is a clown, and Danielle says that she can't believe that red-headed Caroline is calling her a clown. Caroline says that Danielle will. not. hurt. her. It's just pathetic. It's stupid. Caroline looks foolish and Danielle looks calm and cool. Caroline is a pushy Fred Flintstone of a woman, yelling for her brontosaurus burger, and the sad thing is that she spent all of her earned currency as the Wise Woman on petulant, bratty Ashley.
Caorline pulls the garbage card - the insult she hurled at Danielle in Season One, and Danielle leaves. Caroline is so proud that Danielle is leaving first, which she looks at as some kind of accomplishment.
Caroline is wrong, of course. Lobbing insults at people and expecting them to sit there and take them is silly. Any normal person would walk away from such a conversation - what did Caroline expect? Did she think that Danielle would burst into tears? Did she think she'd leap across the table and attack her? Did she expect her to sit there a minute longer and listen to Caroline's brain diarrhea flowing out of that hole under her nose?
I am, if you can't tell, completely disgusted by Caroline.
Caroline continues to shoot off her mouth with such bon mots as "enjoy your life," to which Danielle says, "yes, I am," and Caroline seems to think she's hit some kind of target. She is happy that Danielle is walking away from her. Now, I wouldn't be walking; I'd be sprinting. Get this meatball sandwich out of my way, I'm outta here.
In her talking head, Caroline proclaims Danielle to be soulless, heartless, and not worth her time. I have to disagree, and I don't like sticking up for Danielle. Danielle was polite considering the circumstances, she was calm, and she made logical arguments. All in all, she did better than Caroline in this little Manzo-created Showdown. She won, just the way she won against Dina. Because it makes NO SENSE to try to hurt people with meetings in which you tell them that you don't want them in your life. That meeting is about you and you saying what you want to say. It doesn't resolve anything, because you don't care to hear what they have to say - and more to the point, the person you're spewing your rants against doesn't care what you have to say.
Danielle was hoping that Caroline would say something that would ease the sting of the United Attack. If Caroline had said, wow, this kid, what did she do? Tell me how to get through it, or something, she would have won Danielle over. And Caroline could have done it without getting involved in Danielle's life. But, no - Caroline wanted to dictate terms to Danielle, and she just didn't have anything to offer in return.
Which is why this episode was stupid.
The end of the show, and Danielle goes home to her little family and Caroline goes to a restaurant with her big family. Everybody loves everyone in their spearate little hamlets.
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