Real Housewives of Orange County Recap – 7/27/15

I attended a Game Night once. There were about twenty of us gathered in a rustic living room, one of those great places with wooden beams across the ceiling and a roaring fireplace in the corner, and all of us were splayed out comfortably across the rug. I don’t remember seeing any theme decorations on the tables, but I know there was alcohol on the counter in the kitchen. We played a bunch of different games, but my favorite was the one where we were all presented with some initials and we had to come up with what those initials stood for and one person had the actual answer and the point was to guess who had the correct response. The one I remember the best was P.A.S.S. Turns out those initials stand for a group who call themselves “Parents Against Subliminal Seduction,” which I guess holds sit-ins outside of Disney movies in an effort to finally put a forever stop to animators doing shit like making Aladdin get an erection or from having the castle in The Little Mermaid sculpted from perfectly formed penises, a monument to both royal majesty and circumcision.

Years later, I would actually teach my Film students about P.A.S.S. – and I’d pass around the box cover of The Little Mermaid to both prove my point and to guarantee excellent class attendance from that point forward because if d*cks are being discussed, it turns out kids come to class – but on that Game Night, the far more hilarious answers were the fake ones. I can’t remember all of them, but the one that sticks out – much like Aladdin’s hard-on – was the one a friend of mine came up with: “Paraplegics Association: Still Sitting.” It was a response so politically incorrect and so wrong and so unexpected that there were people literally rolling around the room in laughter and so the first time I heard about a Game Night happening in the rarified universe of The Real Housewives, I was excited to experience some of that silliness, however vicariously.

How naïve I used to be…

Game Nights for Housewives are a full contact sport where resentments that have never really been gulped down bubble to the surface. Crutches are hidden from women who are all but incapacitated and meth is maybe smoked in the bathroom and people get phone calls about death. What I’m saying is that it turns out that I’d way rather be experiencing a Game Night with paraplegic parents who sit around discussing seduction that’s subliminal than be in any room with a woman like Shannon Beador.

But before Shannon can walk through the front door of Meghan’s home – the very site where police who will unquestionably investigate Shannon for a murder one day might want to begin their investigation – Meghan first has to prepare for the big event. And Meghan, a new and still-optimistic Housewife, is going all out, but luckily she’s got some help. Hayley is there to unwrap decorations and organize gigantic lollipops in a vase like they are flowers, which I guess means that the kid not only has to put her dirty dishes in the dishwasher for that hundred dollar allowance; she has also been tasked with setting up centerpieces to impress Orange County women who might very well fling those lollipops stick-first across the room later as makeshift daggers due to misplaced anger, sheer drunkenness, or because one is Shannon. And Meghan, dear Meghan, is explaining that Game Night is so needed right now, that they all need to just relax and have a good hearty chuckle, and I cannot help wondering if the girl has never tuned in to watch any other Housewives Game Night because maybe nothing can be more fraught with terror than women sitting around a table with cards or dominos – and I say that as someone who tends to gravitate to the grisliest of horror films. Let me tell you, bloody stumps and stringy entrails and madmen wielding rusty machetes have nothing on Game Night in the off-kilter universe of a Real Housewife.

Starting the bonding theme early, Meghan lets Hayley know that there are some new guidelines that she must follow in their home. Guideline one is that she has to go to the supermarket every other week. Guideline two is that she must be home by midnight on the weekends. Aaaand…that’s it. Still, I do respect Meghan for trying to give the kid more structure and I hope that Hayley respects her for it instead of whispering to her friends that her step-monster has lost her mind the way I used to say the very same thing to my own friends, though I had a real right to say such a thing as my step-monster was a hybrid creature – half lunatic and half assh*le – and Meghan strikes me as fully human so I hope she catches a break.

As Meghan and the girl who I’m guessing will continue to roll in somewhere around 3:00AM any damn night she pleases scatter candy around the living room, Heather and Terry are in a car across town. Guess what? Heather’s favorite sound is champagne popping! Who’s surprised? Anyway, they are celebrating that they’re finally alone (with a camera crew because nothing says “intimate quality time” more than a lens pointed at your face), and they’re having a day date. And what do Heather and Terry do on a date? They shop! Heather, you see, is getting tired of only browsing for diamond doorknobs and granite sold at the one-percenter’s store and she needs clothing to go on the upcoming Housewives vacation and I can only hope that the filmy tees she’s looking at are made from a fabric that’s bullet-proof because maybe the only thing more sinister in its foreshadowing than a Game Night is a vacation all these women have to take together. Heather’s phone rings while she’s in a jewelry store – you guys, how could she not need a new long skinny necklace to go over her bathing suit? – and it’s Meghan and Heather answers it on speaker because that’s what you do when you’re a Real Housewife. Part of your contract is that every conversation must be recorded and part of being a minion who has to interact with a Real Housewife in exchange for having the name of your store appear on Bravo is having to listen to that conversation, the bulk of which is that Meghan and Heather are going to be partners for Game Night because neither of their husbands can be there.

Back at party central (which will one day be known as the scene of a hideous crime), Meghan speaks with the men she hired to be hosts for Game Night while caterers prepare food that probably nobody will eat and the bartender who will soon serve Shannon vodka in a tall glass sets up. The place is decked out in the colors of a Candyland rainbow. Every hue is represented except that dark, miserable, withholding dark blue that is the color embodiment of Meghan’s husband and every single person who crosses the threshold seems intent on commenting on his absence. I’m legitimately not sure what is wrong with these people. Not only is it rude to point out that your hostess’ husband clearly hates her, but the guy sucks so who really wants him there? I mean, I for one am so thrilled by his absence that I spontaneously made up a song about being tickled carnation pink that the guy isn’t around. I’d ask Tamra to sing it with me, but it doesn’t include the word “whore” so I’m not sure she’ll be into it.