Sure, I write Real Housewives recaps. I sit in front of my television set two nights a week with my laptop propped open and resting on my leg and I take copious notes. I type out in a rhythmic pitter-patter what these women say and what they wear and the ways in which they deflect their odious behavior and my hands actually cramp by the end of the evening, so busy are my fingers as they hit the keys to form words I never could have imagined I’d ever transcribe. By the way, try explaining to a man you’re dating that you can’t hang out on a Monday or Tuesday night in the middle of summer when you’re not working because you have to watch Bravo and then compose ten pages about what Vicki said to Meghan and see how he reacts. Before you do it, I’m going to recommend that you only say such a sentence while wearing lingerie because I find that you’ll be forgiven far more quickly.
But just because I watch this franchise faithfully does not mean that I engage with any other aspect besides the show itself. I do not follow any of these women on Twitter and I have never bought a single item that any one of them endorses. I also did not tune in to watch something recently aired that I think was called The Housewife Awards and I certainly didn’t participate in the voting process. Since I didn’t watch, I have no idea what the categories were or who won or if any Housewife made a pilgrimage to some podium to accept an award, which I’d bet several of them would happily do as there might have been a red carpet there and maybe the trophy looked shiny and perhaps some of the women believed that they could melt the thing down and turn it into a pair of matching golden bangles like Wonder Woman used to wear.
What I have decided to do, however, is hand out a few of my own awards to the Housewives past and present and I will even fashion a tiara out of generic aluminum foil to give to any who have been craving a pop of silver. And the winners are…
MOST LIKELY TO HAVE CHILDREN WHO WILL EMANCIPATE THEMSELVES IN THE IMMINENT FUTURE: This award clearly belongs to Theresa from New Jersey. I think that two of her daughters might start the paperwork process simply so they can get away from their square-shaped Neanderthal of a father – my apologies to Neanderthals and their kin everywhere for such a loathsome comparison – though I believe that the middle child might do it so she may embark on a journey to discover her true heritage. And when she discovers the family of baboons who birthed her, I’d like to formally request that cameras are there to document the entire thing and that both Bravo and The Animal Planet air the special concurrently and I will watch one channel and DVR the other because I have always been a girl who has enjoyed event television.
MOST LIKELY TO WALK AWAY FROM THIS FRANCHISE FULLY UNSCATHED AND STILL LOADED DOWN WITH RICHES, LOVED ONES, AND FRIENDS WHO ARE BOTH HUMAN AND SWAN: Dame Lisa Vanderpump wins this one easily. She has been on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills since its inception and she has never lost her snarky wit, her cheeky comebacks, or one of her dogs. She is reality show perfection personified, and I usually wait until her season airs to formally drop a request that she will adopt me, but what the hell. Who cares that it’s the off-season? Lisa, I’m quiet and I can cook and I have a very extensive shoe collection and my education has already been paid for and I promise to never wear silk blouses in shades of either pink or purple in an effort to pull focus from you. Will you please be my new mommy? (And should this plea hurt the feelings of my actual mother, I’d just like to implore the woman to take a deep breath and remember that she can always come visit and that Lisa’s house is always spotless and gleaming and carbohydrates are rarely consumed inside of its hallowed walls so my mother should feel right at home.)
MOST LIKELY TO APPEAR IN SHARKNADO 16, 17, AND 18: Kim Richards earns this award hands-down, provided she’s out on bail at the time of filming. And sure, I heard she died in the last movie, but this is Kim Richards we are talking about. She is the single most accomplished actress of our time – as long as time has moved in reverse and the world has ended. She can play anything, including a ghost.
MOST LIKELY TO CAUSE A SWEEPING BOUT OF NAUSEA TO MOVE THROUGH ME IN A MANNER THAT IS SO PAINFUL AND POTENT THAT I’LL BE CERTAIN THAT I CAUGHT A FLESH-EATING VIRUS FROM THE MAN I NIBBLED ON RECENTLY FOR FUN: This one is hard, so I’m gonna have to award a tie. I bandied about Brandi’s name in my mind – and my mind is now on strike as a result – and I considered NeNe and Vicki and her recent discussions of vomit and enemas, but I’ve instead decided that the race is actually between Kim from Atlanta (a woman so casually profane and steeped in conspicuous consumption that I might become religious just so I can pray for her) and every woman and her very unfortunate significant other from New Jersey, a group of people whose very existence complicates matters for me in the Kim Prayer Plan because just looking at them makes me question whether or not there really is a God.
Ladies, you can collect your tinfoil tiaras on Thursday between the hours of ten and two because that’s when the security guard will be here for my protection. Kim, you can feel free to bypass my home and stop by Target instead to steal your own tinfoil. In the meantime, as I prepare for my visitors by pouring myself some vodka in a tall glass and shimmying into a camisole that’s bullet-proof, let’s talk about the women of Orange County, most of whom are too boring to have received any of my awards.
It’s appropriate that the episode begins with Shannon because she was in the running for the emancipated children category but since one of those kids is currently on crutches, I thought it might be hard for her to hightail it down Sunset Boulevard to locate an attorney. It seems a little tense in the Beador household. Vacation Shannon died of a hangover and now Laundry Shannon is in charge and after she’s done sticking in that load of whites that will be cleaned with organic detergent, she needs to sit down with her deliriously happy husband so they can discipline their twin daughters for toilet-papering a house while Shannon was getting drunk in the tropics. I agree that Shannon has a point in doling out a punishment here. What her kids did counts as vandalism – the lowest form of vandalism maybe ever measured, but vandalism nonetheless – and one of her kids ended up hurt after scaling a fence and that’s the kind of behavior she doesn’t want to see escalate. That part I understand. What I don’t understand is having this discussion and handing out punishments on camera. Have these kids not already been exposed enough? Must they exist in this segment so that Shannon can later look directly at the camera and extoll how this experience proves that her relationship with her husband has evolved so vastly that he didn’t tell her to go f*ck herself in front of their children? And when you have a kid who murmurs on camera that you drink too much, isn’t that maybe also an issue that should be discussed instead of how her kids should write a letter of apology to the people whose home they covered in Cottonelle? Again, the punishment seems fine to me. Make those kids write that letter! But for goodness sake, you sick woman, do your actual parenting off-camera because your kids already think you’re an alcoholic joke; airing even more family grievances cannot possibly work in your – or their – favor.