Scott likes to meditate for about fifteen minutes before a session and I’m guessing he got in some good quiet time during his drive all from L.A. and he immediately lets Heather know that her grandmother is with her. It’s a comment that brings Heather some joy and we get to see a photo of her on her wedding day with her grandmother but then the salads arrive and it’s time to talk about Meghan. He sees her eventually having one child and Meghan looks thrilled and I hope she gets herself that one child and that Maury Povich tells her husband that the kid is not his. Meghan, he also says, needs to lay down her façade and not care what other people think and I agree with that sentiment wholeheartedly but I’d probably be far more enthusiastic if the cynical part of me wasn’t piping up to wonder if this guy is getting paid for this lunch or if he’s showing up simply for the exposure. How long might it be before he slides happily into the slot Patti Stanger’s cancelation left vacant in the Bravo lineup?
Then Tamra brings up Shannon and the way she accused Tamra of creating conflict and the spiritual advisor points right at Meghan and says that Shannon’s problem is really with her and that the simple reason is that Shannon sees Meghan as a threat. That’s all fine and good and it validates what anyone with vision already knew, but it’s far more interesting to talk about the way that Scott closes his eyes and bobs a little bit in his seat when Tamra speaks of Vicki and Brooks and his cancer. He comes out of his mini trance and proclaims he feels “wishy-washy” on the cancer thing and he says it’s possible that Brooks does not have cancer. He will not call the guy a liar and he says that it’s possible that Brooks is sick, but he is not seeing that illness as a reality. Tamra and Heather both react with shock; neither can imagine someone faking such a thing. Meghan, however, actually once had a coworker who pretended to have cancer to cash in on sympathy so she knows the depths to which people can sink. Still, Tamra decides that she’s not going to tell anyone what the psychic said because it will turn into something very messy and Shannon already thinks that she’s covered in the sh*t she likes to stir and Vicki will probably end up blaming Tamra for it and besides, it’ll all eventually be on TV anyway.
The next day at CUT Fitness, Tamra is ready to lead a booty class. Meghan, who can’t seem to grow the ass that she so desperately wants, looks at Tamra’s heiny in spandex and decided then and there to take her class. Then Vicki shows up and she does a limp “whoo-hoo” as she enters the room and Tamra speaks to her over the headset microphone she’s wearing which I’m imagining is the very same one she wears in her closet while trying on faux-Gaultier bras as she dances around to Express Yourself. And then Shannon and Heather show up and the class begins and it all starts with running some laps and the women follow Tamra out of the studio and into a parking lot. Shannon stays behind. Since childbirth, running makes her pee. Now, I have tried out a great many excuses over the years to get out of working out, and I think I like this one. “No sweetie,” I’ll say, “I can’t join you for a hike because I might pee mid-step.”
I should probably say that sentence while wearing lingerie too.
Brooks shows up at the gym after the class ends and Tamra brings out a birthday cake for him and everybody is getting along and it’s apparently Meghan’s turn to plan an event and so she invites everybody to a NASCAR event. Vicki and Brooks can’t go, but the discussion shifts from racing to how Brooks is dealing with a disease that we are now all supposed to doubt he might have. He tells the ladies that he is stopping chemo and taking doses of antioxidants instead and at one point he speaks of having cancer in the past tense and Tamra can’t stop herself from hearing such a thing because now she’s suspicious. I mean, she got the man a cake but that doesn’t mean she completely believes the guy but before anybody can really get into it, Ryan and his girlfriend arrive with Tamra’s new granddaughter. The baby is also swathed in hot pink, but she’s about a minute old so I am choosing to let the matter go.
Someone who can’t let a matter go is Tamra, but don’t you call her a sh*t-stirrer! She is just a concerned friend and how dare you think differently? But she cannot seem to stop herself from asking Shannon (after Vicki leaves) about the look that crossed her face when Brooks was discussing his new treatment plans and Shannon explains that, upon receiving the diagnosis initially, Vicki called Shannon for help but Vicki and Brooks never followed up with the expert she tried to set them up with. In fact, Brooks never submitted his paperwork to them, a fact that now reads as almost sinister because the editors of this show have done their job really well this week and doubt has been planted and the suspicion will grow from both water and from Shannon peeing on it as she runs to her car.
And then Meghan does something really foolish. Feeling perhaps a closeness to Shannon because the woman hasn’t screamed that she is in fact charitable in Meghan’s face in the last few days, Meghan tells her what the psychic said about Brooks not having cancer. My suggestion would be for Meghan to say as little to Shannon as possible because, even if she’s well-intentioned, Shannon is an often-intoxicated and overly emotional person who doesn’t particularly like Meghan and will never stop herself from tossing her headband-first into the fire. Shannon does not believe the allegations, even though she strikes me as the kind of woman who would typically put some stock in psychic wisdom, and Heather just can’t wrap her mind around the fact that anyone would lie about such a thing. Tamra and Meghan, however, are starting to really question things. After all, Tamra knows full well how sketchy this guy’s past is and Meghan cannot imagine why Brooks is quitting chemo, but that’s a charge Shannon shoots down and then they all agree – while wearing microphones and being filmed by cameramen – that they shouldn’t say anything because it’s really not their business.
But then comes the dinner between Shannon and David and Vicki and Brooks, and I’m guessing that once a wee bit of vodka finds its way into Shannon’s bloodstream, she will not be able to stop herself from announcing what all of the women (especially Meghan and Tamra, that f*cking sh*t-stirrer) were saying about Brooks and I really hope that every person working in that restaurant is being paid double what they usually earn because I can only imagine the upcoming carnage.
It all starts kind off kind of gross but rather calm. There’s a joke made about Vicki and Brooks having sex and I could live twelve lifetimes without ever needing to picture such an image (go ahead…try not to picture it now) and then they order drinks and Brooks gets one too because it’s his birthday and Shannon is floored that he would drink alcohol because it’s loaded with sugar and sugar is terrible for cancer. But the real issue is that Shannon feels “dirty” because she is sitting on information that Vicki and Brooks don’t know about but maybe what she should tell herself is that what’s really going on is not that she’s sitting on information, but that she’s crouching on a rumor and she doesn’t actually have to say a word. Unfortunately, Shannon is like a splintered nerve ending and she can’t seem to make herself just shut the f*ck up and so she whispers across the table that Vicki should come to the bathroom with her and Vicki whispers back that it’s weird that she needs “to go potty” now so Shannon all but whimpers that Vicki needs to come with her. I’m wondering – I think I have to wonder – how much of this pressing need to repeat this rumor is a direct manifestation of Shannon feeling deceived in her own life for so long. Is she perhaps incapable of keeping her mouth shut because every single interaction that in any way so much as smells of deceit takes her back to that broken place she landed with a thud after David’s affair? I’m willing to psychoanalyze the f*ck out of this woman because I don’t want to simply believe that she has no ability to sometimes just keep quiet.
In the bathroom Shannon immediately breaks down. She doesn’t want to screw anything up, she says, but Meghan (Meghan, you sucker…) “said something that was not good” after Vicki left CUT. Vicki stops Shannon and tells her that she doesn’t want to hear anything. She’s sick of people saying bad things about Brooks and she actually asks Shannon not to tell her what was said because she’s heard enough horrible comments said about the guy over the years and they leave the bathroom without what was said about Brooks faking cancer ever leaving Shannon’s trembling lips.
But back at the table, Vicki gets angry. She doesn’t want Brooks’ birthday ruined – which is why no birthday should ever be spent with the Joyful Beadors – and Shannon cries at the table that this is not what she wanted and she shouldn’t have said anything and then Vicki can’t handle it anymore and she gets up and yells that this man, a man who has loved her more than anybody ever has, deals with so much shi*t because he dates her and she’s sick of him being hurt because of his affiliation with her and they leave the restaurant and Shannon and her husband look at one another and agree that tonight was a nightmare, but I’m guessing that so was last night and tomorrow night will probably be a nightmare too.
So does Brooks really have cancer? I guess it’s hard to know the real answer to that question. On the one hand, he certainly doesn’t appear to be healthy. The guy is emaciated and his pallor has been startling all season and I guess I’m pleased to report that I am the kind of person I’m betting many of you are as well in that the idea of faking a disease as debilitating and terrifying as cancer seems an impossible thing to fully pull off. That said, we live in a society where it’s now known that people lie about their race and then defend their actions with logic that is, at best, not even circular but trapezoidal. We live in a society where Maury Povich still gets a salary to announce the DNA results of toothless Americans every weekday on television. We live in a society where Donald Trump is running for President and leading many of the polls and the woman who has the biggest chance of beating him is under investigation by the federal government but still managed to carve some time out to take a selfie with Kim Kardashian. What I’m getting at here is that there would have been a time when I found the likelihood of anybody pretending to have cancer to be completely unfathomable and that just isn’t the case anymore. And if Brooks is faking this disease, I hope that one of my Housewife Award Winners takes her tinfoil crown and shoves it straight up his ass right after his coffee enema is administered.
I’ll make her a brand new tiara to take the old one’s place.
Nell Kalter teaches Film and Media at a school in New York. She is the author of the books THAT YEAR and STUDENT, both available on amazon. Check out her website at nellkalter.com. Her twitter is @nell_kalter.