Real Housewives of Orange County Recap – 7/6/15

As much as I enjoy entertainment that involves both frigid chills and terrifying thrills, one thing I have never been drawn to is gratuitous carnage. And it is with that aversion in mind that I have decided to start a petition to remove Shannon from The Real Housewives of Orange County before her head goes spinning off of her neck and gains real height and then bursts into a pink pulpy mess midair like a psychologically-damaged watermelon. Now, I know what you’re going to say: Shannon makes for good television with her array of crazy – and I wouldn’t argue with that – but I also genuinely believe that we are watching a woman implode from within and the whole thing has started to make me feel just a little bit grimy.

Shannon is an adult. She is not thirty. Yet somehow during all of her stages of development, she managed to leap over the stage where she should have learned the skill to at least appear differently on the outside from how she actually feels on the inside. As a result, she lacks the total ability to ever really come off as cool or calm – and f*ck collected; she never comes off that way. And tonight she brings the crazy quickly.

On this latest episode of a show where it seems that someone is always moving to or from a large house decked out in various hues of brown, Meghan is preparing for her upcoming moving day with the support of her adoring husband. Yes, Jim is as affectionate as ever with his beautiful wife, as long as we all collectively agree that the new definition of “affectionate” is “being a douchebag who only mutters sentences that have misogynistic undertones while wearing terrible jeans with far too much stitching on the back pockets.” Somebody please inform Webster’s about the change. I’d do it myself, but they’re already annoyed with me for requesting that they toss out “bootylicious” and instead create at least twenty-two brand new words for “lunatic” because I’m starting to run dry here.

Since my petition to oust Shannon for her own good still has to go through an intense editing process – I strongly believe that there must be a section of visual aids that illustrate all of the different ways Shannon’s eyes can fill with the smoldering fire of betrayal, but my editor thinks the twelve pictures I’ve collected more than suffice and that’s just crazy – Ms. Beador is still on this show, she’s still nuts, and in one of my favorite examples of completely non-organic reality filmmaking, Shannon calls Meghan and there are camera crews at both of their homes ready to record it all.

“I hear you had a good party the other night,” says Shannon, her voice filled with a syrupy sweetness even though she f*cking hates Meghan – and all thirty year olds – and she didn’t even want to go to that party and she starts charities and where in the hell is David and can she please get some vodka in a tall glass?

(Quick aside here: a few years ago, I had a party to celebrate the release of my novel. I invited people I care about and didn’t invite people who are mere acquaintances because I just didn’t see the point. And one of those people – a co-worker of mine – made sure to come up to me the day before the event and ask if my party was that weekend and what my plans were for it and then she nodded sort of smugly and I left the room feeling completely perplexed because it was very apparent that this person, who had never before once inquired about any of my other weekend plans, was trying to make me feel uncomfortable about not inviting her to a party I cannot imagine she even wanted to attend in the first place and I literally laughed at her pretend show of brave dignity. And now I think that woman and Shannon are long-lost twins who I hope will one day find one another at a retreat for people who have suffered terribly at the hands of others and have absolutely no responsibility for any of their personal pain. I strongly recommend that alcohol be served there.)

Anyway, back to the phone call. Shannon is calling to extend a rickety olive branch to Meghan by inviting her over to play some dice game. Meghan – who has met Shannon three times and has encountered three very different personalities during each one of those meetings – is a bit reluctant to play any kind of game with whichever version of Shannon might show up, but one thing she learns fairly quickly is that not one of Shannon’s personalities takes frank criticism very well. The reactions Shannon has to Meghan’s concerns are hilarious. She widens her eyes in utter bafflement. She looks to her left at what I’m imagining is an off-camera production assistant (or an imaginary friend) who I hope – for his own safety – nodded sagely at Shannon so she’d think he was agreeing with whatever thought was at that moment careening through her head. And on the other end of the line, Meghan hasn’t even broken a sweat. She says that she looks forward to Shannon proving the kindness she always insists is at her core while she’s screaming at other women and the reaction of pure fury that then appears on Shannon’s face was maybe the scariest thing I’ve seen since I first laid eyes on that clown from the movie It.

Later on – after she screamed into a pillow for a while and moved her couch so that both it and her life would achieve better sense of feng shui – Shannon calls Meghan back to say that she doesn’t much care for the idea that she has anything to prove to Meghan and she again brings up an olive branch and Meghan just kind of shrugs and will probably hang up that phone and go about her day while Shannon will commence her newest art project, making voodoo dolls in the likeness of the women she encounters who attempt to disrupt what is so clearly a blissful and enviable life.

Over at a spa and far away from olive branches of any kind, Vicki and Tamra are there to get a treatment that involves covering their bodies with something that looks like marshmallow fluff – and that reminds me that I f*cking love marshmallow fluff. But to deal with the task at hand, allow me to just say that the interaction between these two women is lovely and calm and supportive and they really have a great time together when they are not shrieking in one another’s face.

Also: I still love marshmallow fluff.

I also kind of love Heather. Listen: I get it. I know that she comes off as pretentious since I have been blessed with the gift of vision and all, but the thing I enjoy about her is that she seems very in on the joke. She knows her issues are not the same issues that you or I deal with on a consistent basis, but she strikes me as self-aware and funny and smart – and in this reality television universe, intelligence is not something to be scoffed at like a metaphorical olive branch. Still, Heather is having a rough time corralling her kids all on her own since Terry is working constantly these days, both on his own practice and on that E! show called Botched that I refuse to watch because I have yet to develop a tolerance for watching someone get her vagina tightened on camera.

I guess I’m just shy like that.

The good thing about Heather is that she seems pretty aware that it’s because her husband never stops working that she gets to have the life she has, though there’s something real to be said about the fact that their kids miss their father. But should Heather ever lose sight of why Terry works so much, perhaps she can listen to the astute advice given by fictional agent Ari Gold on Entourage when his wife gets annoyed with him for giving his attention to a business call that comes in the middle of their therapy session: “You can have it if you want to live in Agora f*cking Hills, and go to group therapy, but if you want a Beverly Hills mansion, a country club membership, and nine weeks a year in a Tuscan villa, then I’m gonna need to take a call when it comes in at noon on a mother*cking Wednesday.”

The guy’s got a point – that’s all I’m saying.