It’s time for Heather to throw another party, and besides a $7,000 salon sink, there’s very little Heather loves more than party planning. She’s a girl after my own heart. She appreciates themes and she considers favors and she understands that no celebration is complete without the perfect cake which she will cut into with finesse at the exact perfect time and, to prove her devotion to such social decrees, we get a flashback to the time when an uninvited guest ate part of the bow on the cake that was at the party thrown because Heather took her husband’s last name, and I don’t care what anybody says; that is so a good reason to throw a party and it wasn’t like Arbor Day was rolling around any time soon. But when that interloper nibbled on the cake’s bow that had been lovingly and perfectly constructed out of carnation pink fondant, Heather threw her the f*ck out of her house.
I admired Heather’s restraint in that moment. I would have just stabbed the woman.
Heather’s party this time around is to launch her sparkling wine line, because really, what kind of Housewife would she be if she didn’t have an endorsement deal for some sort of liquor-based product? The party will be held in Napa and she’s flying there on a private plane and the baker will drop off the cake that will be shaped like a wine bottle right to her on the tarmac and it’s so nice to see a Housewife behave like an average person, huh? A bunch of friends will be attending the event – including people who truly hate one another – but Heather is ignoring that and only focusing on that which is fabulous and for that I kind of applaud her. In fact, Heather? Please adopt me. I will live in a wing of your home that is in close proximity to the dessert room – I’m just assuming there will be one because that place is f*cking enormous – and I will spend my weekdays there and then I will jaunt off to Beverly Hills to wile away my weekends at Lisa Vanderpump’s house in Beverly Hills where I will tend to her swans and try on her shoes and count how many shades of pink can actually exist within one closet because back in the day I appealed for her to adopt me too and custody battles are just plain awkward and unpleasant for everybody so I shall alleviate the conflict and split my time. And should you need bail money after the certain carnage goes down in Napa, you can reach me at Chez Vanderpump because we all know that the sh*t Housewives get up to when they are on vacation is far more terrifying than the nonsense they usually pull when they are home.
One of the people invited to Napa – which, again, will be why I will be luxuriating in the Vanderpump manse in Beverly Hills – is Tamra, and though she fought with Heather last year, right now Heather is the only one Tamra feels like she can trust. At a juice bar where they sip blended beverages that look like a melted-down version of a Gumby doll, Tamra’s eyes fill with tears when she hears that Lizzie will be coming to the wine launch and so will Shannon because they are both people Tamra fought with terribly last season and she doesn’t quite seem to want to face any of it. I get that. But know what’s a good way to avoid having to deal with people you truly feel have wronged you, especially when they are not individuals you must engage with on a normal day to day basis? Stay off the reality show where you are all contractually mandated to interact. I understand that being a Housewife includes a salary and CUT Gym will not run itself and baby showers held at CUT Gym will not pay for themselves and I also understand that Tamra enjoys the attention that comes with being a reality star and there’s nothing wrong with that, but there is a very real way to not have to deal with people who you feel have caused you pain. The truth, if I remember correctly – it’s so hard to remember all the variables of all of the fights because there have been so many fights – is that Tamra caused a lot of people a lot of heartache that wasn’t all that necessary, but if I’m reading her wet and hardened eyes correctly, it’s she who feels as though only she has been wronged.
As some (but sadly, not all) adults eventually learn, it’s almost impossible to come to a neat resolution when you’re unwilling to take any sort of personal accountability for what caused the initial conflict. My point here is that perhaps if Tamra takes some accountability for her past conflicts, they will cease to be present conflicts. I’m not so sure that she’s ready to do that because she keeps mumbling things about being able to forgive but not forget, but Heather wants to be there for her and she doesn’t like watching her friend appear defeated. It’s hard to imagine Tamra buoying Heather up with the same levels of kindness, but perhaps there’s hope that Tamra will change – especially since changing every facet of your personality and how you react to things is such a simple process. Still, rumor has it that she’s recently embraced religion so maybe that means that at some point soon she might also embrace Lizzie.
Who wants to play bets that the embrace will occur before the Rapture? And should the Rapture roll around during the time of March Madness, I’m also betting that Duke will win.
I’d rather stay on that scene with Heather and Tamra and drink the backwash from their disgusting green juice while braiding Tamra’s hair and whispering to her, “You are the hottest woman in all of Orange County and the rest of them are just jealous,” than return to the couple’s retreat with Shannon and David, but off we go into that room filled with conflicted relationships, therapists, and tombstones made of cardboard. Yes, it’s the portion of the retreat where it’s time for each spouse to compose the eulogy each wishes the other would write and then read at his or her funeral. I’m guessing this is an exercise in acknowledgment and appreciation, but it’s more than a little bit creepy to watch David – who I really felt wanted to maul Shannon a few times last year – as he hovers above her while she lies on a black sheet with a tombstone behind her and he reads the things she wants him to say about her after she’s dead. David looks sad and shaky doing this practice activity and he says a line like, “I put up with her issues to the best of my abilities,” and the whole thing feels so wrong, like I’m actually violating something scared by just watching it, so instead of giving it my full attention, I went online to see if the dress I ordered from Revolve Clothing had shipped yet (it’s on its way!) and when I looked back at my TV, David was pretending to be the corpse and Shannon was weeping above him and saying that she had no idea what she was going to do without him.
My honest take on this is that these two people desperately want to be happy but they simply don’t make one another – even at the very best of times – all that happy. They’ve been married for a long time now. Neither wants to be alone. Neither really wants to cause harm to the other, but I can’t recall a single moment of easy laughter between the two of them and I really hope a pile of that footage exists somewhere on a cutting room floor because otherwise it’s hard to see what these two people are fighting for. The scene ends with Shannon sitting as instructed on David’s knee and the two of them embrace and I hope that they make it, but holy shit – I think we should hold onto our tranquilizers, because I’m thinking it’s going to be a very bumpy season.
Here’s the truth: I’m more than happy to root for pretty much all of these women. I want them to end up happy. Part of it is that I don’t particularly care enough to wish them any ill will because that sh*t takes way more energy, but I also can’t really go out of my way to send them frequent positive vibes because I’ve run out of my collection of Sonja Morgan Abundance Candles and I seem to have misplaced my voodoo doll and I have no f*cking idea about how to hang cleansed crystals in a proper feng shui pattern. Still, I hope they all find peace – and by that I mean real peace, not this-crystal-has-brought-me-some-peace peace.
Moving on to a relationship that we know just about nothing about, we join Meghan and Jim while they shop for furniture. Meghan is thrilled that they’re buying new things so that she will finally get to live in a house where Jim’s ex-wife didn’t once lick the flatware. It’s an odd little dynamic these two have, no? She comes off as a peppy optimist and he comes off like a strict father who was once told that the best parenting strategy is to be constantly dismissive and to say “no” a lot. Now look, these two people were clearly filmed for hundreds of hours and the editors and the producers of this show are out to compile the footage into storylines – and the story of a grumpy man married to a happy woman is a story. It’s not a great story and it’s probably not the whole story, but so far Meghan’s husband’s two narratives seem to be “unemotional husband” and “baseball legend who held Heather and Terry’s kids when they were babies.” I’m not saying those stories are not absolutely scintillating, but I hope we get something else from these people pretty soon because after a while I just stopped listening to them speak and focused instead on how I liked Meghan’s ponytail.
Back home after the couple’s retreat, Shannon and David – who have wisely left their cardboard tombstones behind and didn’t bring them home as favors – sit their daughters down and explain that they should have no worries about the family breaking up and then David asks each daughter for forgiveness individually. It’s an emotional little scene and you can see how nervous David looks and how comforted Shannon appears and their kids seem lovely. That said, there are those scenes within these shows that just seem like they cross the line of what should be private, and a father apologizing for abandoning his family screams that it should be one of them.
Over at Tamra’s, Vicki calls from Mexico. The look on Eddie’s face when Tamra answers the phone probably matched the look on a lot of viewers’ faces too. Not having spoken in months and months, Vicki has decided that she misses Tamra, especially since she is dancing drunk on top of a bar all alone and has been pretending for hours that her shadow was Tamra, but she couldn’t quite get her shadow to make those mean, glaring stares like her former best friend can. Anyway, clearly drunk off her ass, Vicki invites Tamra to the party she’s having when she gets back and they both sort of threaten one another that each better be nice to the other and it’s almost heartwarming when Tamra tells Vicki that she better be nice to her or Tamra will punch Vicki in the throat.
These two. How can anybody not root for them?
Because of something awesome called editing, Vicki’s party shows up right away. The guests will dine outside and try to clobber a piñata that’s filled with mini bottles of alcohol and just maybe they won’t also clobber one another. But the guests who are showing up all have a palpable air of apprehension about them. Meghan say that she feels weird that she’s going to the party of someone she doesn’t know, but I think it’s fair that we translate that into that she’s terrified to meet Vicki because she’s watched this show for years and Vicki is often nice and then, just as often, she is out of her f*cking mind and that kind of combination is the stuff that nightmares populated by piñatas are made of. Tamra is nervous because she hasn’t seen Vicki in forever and because both Shannon and Lizzie will be there and they both hate her and that’s all their faults, not Tamra’s, because Tamra is evolving. Lizzie is not looking forward to seeing Tamra and Heather, who is not nervous at all, brings another baseball player’s wife with her because the woman has sworn up and down that she will not eat the cake without receiving a cue that doing so is acceptable.
The only ones – besides Heather – who seem calm are Shannon and David, but their calmness is almost eerie. They get ready at home and Shannon gives him a kiss and both of their voices (especially David’s) have gone down about twelve octaves and they even seem to be moving more slowly. They are clearly trying to be kind and patient with one another, and maybe it’s that viewers have never seen these two behave in such a manner, but it’s jarring and not in a surprising or good way. Instead, it just looks like an act that can’t properly be executed for too long before one of them explodes.
As always, loved your recap. I have never understood “I will forgive but not forget” statement, to me that sounds more like a warning than a forgiving and I have never understood why people would go to counseling with a bunch of strangers where you are barring your soul and or heartbreak but I’m kind of socially awkward and I would certainly be awkwarder (shout out to Kristen RHONY for her use of royaler) in that type of a situation.