Real Housewives of Orange County Recap – 6/8/15

Heather and I are both brunettes and neither of us has the ability to fully remove the “Are you that f*cking stupid?” expression that crosses our features when it turns out that someone in front of us is in fact that f*cking stupid. Heather is married to a plastic surgeon who is the star of that E! travesty called Botched. She is building her dream house that will eventually be larger than a country (I will attempt to get citizenship there) and the other women find her kind of snooty and judgmental, which is exactly why I kind of like her. I believe she is on this show entirely due to her own vanity and she is often the only one I find somewhat rational.

Tamra and I both have nervous systems. I’ve searched my mind to find another commonalty the two of us share, but that’s about it. Tamra is a petite blonde, the owner of more bedazzled clothing than I have ever seen outside of a mall in the summer of 1987, and she has mean glinting eyes that look quite similar to the infant in Rosemary’s Baby. Tamra is the mother of a guy named Ryan who always reminded me of the meth addict who used to live in the doorway next to the deli I would go to when I lived in the city and last season he (Ryan, not the homeless meth addict) married a bonafide stranger with whom he now has a baby. Tamra has fought with her ex-husband over custody of her other children; with Heather over how uppity Heather can be (Tamra did not use the word uppity, but I read the flames of fire that shot clear out of her eyes and I deciphered that her anger was over Heather being all f*cking uppity); with Shannon because she told the entire town that Shannon’s obviously-broken marriage was broken; with Lizzie for something I can no longer remember; and with Vicki for just about everything. She also carted around a plastic computerized baby to see how well she might parent if she decided to conceive again and that fake baby committed suicide.

Lizzie and I both like to leave the house wearing mascara, except she applies hers with two shovels and I am still sticking with the wand that comes with the mascara. Lizzie is no longer a full-time Housewife. She has been demoted to the dreaded “Friend of the Housewives” status because she conducted herself during her inaugural season with something resembling grace and she never peed on a bed or pulled another woman’s hair or pretended to be a lesbian because cameras were on her. She is married and she has some kids and she designs generic bathing suits and her main claim to fame is that she used to date Nick Lachey, which might have been a very big deal somewhere around the year 2005 and now that it’s 2015, it is the ten-year anniversary of Lizzie doing something (or someone) that once mattered.

Shannon and I are both made up of DNA. It is not the same DNA, and I’d like to officially thank my ancestors for that, but that’s about the extent of what Shannon and I have in common. Actually, that’s probably not the truth. Shannon and I are both decent people. I actually believe that there’s a good person inside of the woman who last year came across as a hysterical lunatic – and made fantastic television in the process. Shannon has beautiful daughters, a husband who legitimately terrifies me, a house that has a basketball court and a kitchen with the kind of island I covet, and a sh*tload of issues. Her marriage (to the only man I’ve ever seen who looks more sinister than Ray Liotta) was in shambles last season and she never made it through a single meal without bolting from the table in tears. She fought with Heather and Tamra and became close with Vicki and sat there during the Reunion episodes insisting her marriage was magically on the mend. I can only hope that somebody in her life mentioned that being on this show was probably not a good idea for someone who fell apart on a weekly basis in high-definition, but I fear it was her imaginary friend who said it and so Shannon just chanted to the heavens for that person to disappear and then she took eighteen vitamins and washed it down with a liter of vodka and smiled that at least she is a size -12 because she has never once finished a meal.

The only one who comes off as less normal than Shannon is Vicki. Let’s see; what do Vicki and I have in common? Well, there’s…absolutely nothing. And just in case we develop something in common, I will immediately have it removed or call in an exorcist so that whatever it is won’t grow. Vicki has been on this show since the beginning and it might take a crane (or my very own personal exorcist) to lug her away from the cameras. It doesn’t matter that she has gotten divorced and fought with her children on television. It does not matter that she’s not exactly telegenic. It does not matter that now the world knows that she is cohabitating with a man who once told her daughter’s husband that he should knock her around to keep her in line and that there was a recording of him saying it as proof. All that matters is that Vicki remains on television so she can continue to buy stock in whatever company creates those hideous shirts she wears with the deep cutout designed to show her cleavage and so she can wave her vile boyfriend around and then become furious that her friends are not welcoming to a man who has treated her like garbage for years and years.

And this year there’s a brand new Housewife! Meghan is thirty and she’s married to a baseball player and she’s blonde – and that’s pretty much all I know about Meghan going in. But I’m going to hope beyond hope that Meghan never says something along the lines of “These women are crazy!” with an inflection that even slightly resembles surprise in her voice because this show has been on for way too long for anyone to pretend that what being a Housewife is really all about is sitting around discussing the merits and problems within Hemingway’s prose. I’m just gonna go with my hunch and guess that Megan has some fashion line ready to go or that she dreams of having an alcohol endorsement or that she has always yearned to start some kind of empire that caters directly to crazy people and the crazier people who actually admire them because, if not, she just wanted to appear on this show to get some attention and that would be way too sad for me to even consider.

And so the brand new season begins, and there’s something kind of quaint about seeing opening credits that only include a core group of five Housewives because over in New York, there are about a hundred and thirty four women crammed into the frame while Bethenny mutters menacingly, “Andy said I get to be in the middle.” So this little collection of women who are selling their souls (and their houses and their insurance and their children’s respect in authority figures in general) is somewhat nice to see, even as we get to hear that Tamra’s new opening line is, “Boldness comes at a cost – and I’m willing to pay.” And it’s good that she’s willing to pay the cost for being “bold,” which apparently is the newest synonym for the word “assh*le.” After all, it’s only cost her a few of her kids and most of her friendships.

Let’s hear it for boldness!

We officially begin with Heather. She and her family have been roughing it in a rental mansion as they wait for their behemoth of a house to be constructed, but Heather has a good attitude. She doesn’t mind the rental house! Only her husband is getting annoyed by it, but it’s been hard for him to be so hands-on in the construction plans because he spends his mornings and afternoons with his hands on other women’s faces and bodies as he molds them into cookie cutter perfection. I do not judge Terry for such a thing. His plastic surgery empire is building a house so grand that the young son will eventually have his very own balcony upon which he will be able to smoke his very own weed.

Would it be inappropriate for me to ask for a playdate with that kid?

The house/labyrinth still has a ways to go, but luckily there are some things that have already been decided. Heather will have her very own beauty salon with her very own $7,000 sink and really, who doesn’t need such a thing? Not all sinks are created equal. I mean, sure – they all involve water and a faucet and a drain, but this sink will sing to Heather when she starts feeling like it’s just all too much for her to handle or when she is feeling anxious because she can’t find one of her children in a house so enormous or when it sinks in that she’s still on The Real Housewives of Orange County with a woman like Tamra.