Real Housewives of Orange County Recap – 8/24/15

I just have to say something: I have no idea why someone would choose to become a Real Housewife at this point. It was different in the beginning, back when the franchise was just a colorful daydream in the mind of Andy Cohen as he sat in his living room and pretended that he was a talk show host by chatting with his dog and his plants. Nobody could know back then what exactly they were getting themselves into as they allowed cameras into their bathrooms and into their bedrooms and into the parties they threw for absolutely no reason whatsoever except for the fact that a producer dying to get a raise said something like, “Why don’t you invite everyone over for a Game Night?!” Nobody back then could be entirely sure how the massive amount of footage would eventually be edited. Certainly nobody could possibly fathom how the behavior that once seemed – at best – mildly bipolar in some of the participants would eventually morph into a cottage industry that has allowed rudeness to become acceptable and rampant cruelty to become simply part of a never-ending storyline. And definitely not one woman involved so much as considered the afternoon when it would hit the press that her husband’s name appeared on the hacked list of Ashley Madison clients.

But this show – in all of its many cities and incarnations – has been on for a very long time now and nobody can pretend to pretend that they have no idea that the cracks in a marriage will come off looking like seismic shifts and that hints of hidden bitterness between two grown women will be analyzed and hashed and then rehashed some more and then exploited by all involved. Sure, there are benefits that come with getting bloody while standing open-legged on the reality battlefield terrain. I’m sure these women get tables in restaurants quickly and they get to stick their names on bottles of wine and there’s a paycheck involved and all of a sudden the minutia of their lives seems like it might actually be important, but what about all that’s lost in the process? What about the feelings that have to live somewhere – even if they are buried under other sh*t like pride and hubris and ego – when you engage in a life where everything becomes public and you willingly partake in more conflicted conversations than you even did back in those middle school days when everyone was miserable and gawky and food always got stuck in your braces?

I can’t stand her for sure, but I guess I understand why someone like Vicki is reluctant to leave this show. Even though she’s publicly experienced loss and divorce and betrayal, at this point I’m going to take a not-so-wild mental leap and imagine that her identity is now very much tied up in being a Bravolebrity (just typing that word means that my uncle, a Professor of Linguistics, might come kill me) and she will not willingly walk away from this kind of exposure because it makes her feel important. And I suppose that I get that, but I can’t understand why someone like Meghan has chosen to appear on this show. See, Meghan seems like a somewhat decent person and yet she knew full well that she’d be joining a cast of characters who rarely play nice and she had to know that the bulk of her days would start involving fighting with people she actually doesn’t have to even know in the first place. I really wish for her sake that she’d take her bat and her ball (and leave her d*ckhead of a husband behind on the field) and just walk away, but since she’s made the choice to be here, I’m gonna have to react to the fact that she says during episode, “That’s just one of the perks of being married to Jim Edmonds!” But we’ll get there a bit later.

First we are treated to watching Tamra, her son Ryan, Ryan’s fiancé Sarah, and their baby tour Vicki’s palatial grounds as they take in the space where they might get married. No matter that there have been recent reports that Ryan might have physically assaulted Sarah and no matter than there is something about the way the guy looks that causes me to check that all of my windows are tightly secured and so is the bolt on my front door; there’s a wedding to plan, dammit, and I can only imagine that it’ll be televised and so will the eventual divorce. I’d take a moment to consider whether or not I’ve grown more cynical lately, but I’m really just working under a set of stats that hint heavily that marriages both on this show – and near Vicki’s house – don’t last. Anyone wanna wager with me? I could use the extra cash. It’s almost boot season.

Anyhoo, as Ryan and Sarah wander the grounds and Ryan considers where one might best bury a body, Vicki and Tamra sit down to talk about what a terrible person Meghan is because she said out loud that maybe Brooks doesn’t have cancer even though it was actually the psychic Tamra hired who said it first and Tamra was the one who asked the psychic about Brooks in the first place. But who cares about any of that when Meghan – who is thirty – had the audacity to vocalize what had already been vocalized? To her credit, Tamra does tell Vicki that Meghan did not proclaim to the universe at large that Brooks is a liar, but Vicki doesn’t really want to hear any of the truth because she has decided that she hates Meghan and since Meghan has decided to be on this show, now she has to deal with assh*les. I did, however, really appreciate the way Vicki – in a glass-is-even-fuller-than-one-of-Shannon’s-tumblers-of-vodka kind of way – decided to believe that the psychic not seeing cancer in Brooks must mean that his cancer has been cured just like they’ve prayed for. I can’t help it; I love when a Real Housewife claims to be motivated by God.

“Meghan has no idea what she’s in for,” muses Tamra – also an incredibly devout lady – about how Vicki will try to destroy the spirit and the reputation of the new girl and then, if she has any extra energy, Vicki will cut off Meghan’s flowing blonde hair and then burn every single one of Meghan’s headbands while announcing to the entire population that Meghan is barren. And listen, that’s the kind of shit that Vicki does and being on this show allows her to get away with such behavior, but referring to Brooks as “my man” has to be the kind of behavior for which she should be pummeled for, right?

While Vicki decides if she should use a shovel or a brick to bash Meghan’s head in for something Tamra is just as guilty of doing, Meghan, Jim, Heather, and Terry show up at a NASCAR event. Now, I don’t watch NASCAR and I don’t get the appeal of NASCAR, but I have long since realized that I am in the minority here because it’s a sport that has a huge audience. Not that any of the Housewives are part of that typical audience either, but they get to exist in NASCAR’s rarefied airspace for the day as they are greeted by a press rep and then introduced to a bunch of the drivers. Yes, having those kinds of experiences are the perks Meghan referred to that come with marrying a man who comes off as sullen and withholding and downright disinterested in his wife at all times and this kind of commentary from a stranger about her marriage is exactly what Meghan signed on for by becoming a Housewife and the whole thing could have been so easily avoided.