Last week’s episode of The Real Housewives of Orange County ended with Meghan telling Vicki that she is old, bitter, and pissed off at the world. Like an echo-filled scream heard reverberating through every corner of Heather’s cavernous mansion – even in the luggage closet that’s behind the butler’s pantry which you can reach if you make the wrong turn coming out of bathroom #8 – Meghan’s statement results in every other woman sitting there momentarily stunned. How dare Meghan tell the truth? These women have taken a blood oath over champagne flutes and plasma-soaked safety pins that they would never reveal to the masses certain things they all know to be accurate. Nobody is to say that, in spite of her good-natured and self-effacing comments about being rich, that Heather cares enormously about being wealthy. It is never supposed to come out verbally that Tamra’s son Ryan looks like a serial killer who keeps a dead family in his basement. It’s just polite to pretend when speaking that Vicki is physically lovely and totally emotionally balanced and that Brooks is positively dreamy. And one should never say that Shannon is a walking, talking, and vodka-guzzling shell of a person who is married to another human being who is also currently just a rattling collection of bones and regret because those are the kinds of things one simply doesn’t say unless it’s behind that person’s back.
Unfortunately, the new girl was not invited to any sort of orientation sessions that involved slicing into fingers and that means that Meghan did not make a blood oath with her Orange County sisters and so she will say whatever the f*ck she wants at a table set up amid a construction site and she will do it while Vicki eats, points, and prays. She will be lynched for her actions later, but first let’s allow everyone else at that table to weigh in on the fact that Meghan said those hateful (and entirely accurate) words to Vicki after being told that she is a little girl who needs to shut up. Still clearly angling to get back on this show as a full-time Real Housewife (why?), Lizzie tells Meghan that now is not the time and that Vicki asked her repeatedly not to talk about Brooks. Shannon finds the energy to set down her goblet of alcohol and retell the story of how Meghan is really young. Heather, who has bordered on becoming a ridiculous caricature for many years but impressively has never allowed it to happen, takes Meghan’s side for the moment and tries to reiterate that Meghan is only speaking from the perspective of someone dealing with a loved one who has cancer, just like Brooks might have cancer. And Meghan herself finds the strength – even though she’s not currently wearing a bedazzled headband that helps her pretend that she’s a superhero whose greatest superpower is being thinner than anyone she has ever met – to insist that she is not talking badly about Brooks but that she cannot understand why he’d walk away from doing aggressive cancer treatments like chemotherapy. Does Meghan have a point? I think she does. Has anyone asked for her opinion on the matter? Not even once, not even while hammered. Will Vicki ever appreciate Meghan’s concern? Not even if Meghan quickly swaps superpowers with one of her caped buddies and morphs into Curing Disease Woman and flies over Vicki’s house where Brooks is living to drop good health down the chimney. For all involved – including the viewers – this is a losing battle fought about a scary diagnosis that’s allegedly been given to an even scarier (and certainly slimier) man and it’s all so unpleasant that if I were at that table, I wouldn’t even want dessert unless it was something made out of chocolate.
“I am done talking about Brooks’ illness with you,” Vicki says with finality to Meghan. “I don’t believe you have his best intentions at heart. I think you’re just being nosy.” And that kind of comment and belief right there illustrates almost perfectly the woman Vicki Gunvalson has become. She will rant and rave and point and then she will calmly sputter out a few sentences and a psalm here and there and she will expect everybody else to take what she said as closure to the matter. She will never fully root for the happiness of another woman so she refuses to believe that some women have purely kind motivations. She will also (at least during this season anyway) ignore that here is yet another mildly compelling example of how this guy Brooks (a man she has announced she loves because he’s got a beating heart and a collection of cells and she would positively keel over and die if she had to spend an evening alone) might be lying once again, but this time it could be about something serious.
That kind of honest self-reflection is hard. It’s way easier to rattle off some excuses and toss on a smirk and lead a toast to a great lunch that might have only gone well had Vicki stayed home and Shannon got stuck in bathroom #5 where she was secretly trying out the bidet.
As Meghan slowly chews her food, her eyes filling with tears and her head down with her hair shimmering around her like a curtain of gold that Vicki will tell her later looks tarnished, the other fair-haired ones decide they should go to the bathroom because no issue is really resolved on this show until Vicki announces that she must “go potty” and Tamra and Shannon can stand beside her at a sink or near a wall and tell her that she is never wrong and Meghan is the worst and Brooks loves her so much and he didn’t mean it that time he slept with a stripper.
“I never want to see her again,” fumes Vicki about Meghan, and maybe this is a good opportunity for Vicki to consider why she refuses to walk away from a television show where she is mandated to interact with women she claims to loathe, women she is convinced wish her genuine unhappiness. Wouldn’t it be better for her not to be crying with a lens crammed into her face? Oh, it wouldn’t? Has it finally happened that Vicki has turned into a literal example of that famous existential question of hearing a tree fall down in the forest? In other words, if Vicki is not shown crying on television, does she really have working tear ducts? Does she actually exist or could this horrifying woman be something all of us collectively imagined to take our minds off things like the Iran deal?
“Vicki’s a bitch,” Meghan says rather succinctly to Lizzie, but it’s Lizzie’s response that I find way more interesting.
“Vicki’s tough,” Lizzie nods, and all that comment allows me to think is screw Lizzie and all of her makeup and f*ck Gretchen and her hideous handbags and Alexis and her pretend couture and Lynn and her bejeweled cuffs and Jeanna and her mountain of hair and all of the rest of the women over the years who have allowed Vicki to get away with behaving in a manner befitting a wilderness creature, and not one of those cute illustrated ones.
“I would be livid,” Shannon assures Vicki, a comment that doesn’t really carry all that much weight since Shannon is always livid about something and studies have proven that Shannon will always side with whatever is facing off against Meghan King Edmonds and if what’s facing off against the woman is a fork, well f*ck, Shannon will root for that pronged utensil because Meghan is horrible and did you hear that she once tried to paint Shannon as uncharitable? There’s not too much time right now to focus on Shannon and her supportive form of crazy because Vicki maintains suddenly that she feels weak and her voice gets halting and fluttery and she begs the women to all say a prayer for her beloved who is fighting for his life and shame on everybody, especially the borderline smart ones who want to be there for Vicki but cannot stop themselves from seeing her overblown reaction to anything having to do with Brooks and his illness as – at best – odd.
Vicki finally leaves and Meghan maintains to the rest of the shell-shocked ladies who lunch that she was not coming from a place of malice and everybody just kind of stares at her and then Tamra jumps in to break the ice and promote herself all at the same time because she is a woman of skills. Turns out that CUT Fitness’ YouTube channel was launched with a sex tape! But she’s just kidding, you guys, and we should all have known that because Tamra would win the prize of being the classiest woman in all of Orange County as long as the prize was given a day after an ecological travesty and everybody else in Orange County fell into the ocean. The real (and really gross) story is that all of the workout videos have titles that could easily be the title of a sex tape because Tamra is nothing if not an expert in the art of language and she is excited to show off her talents at a sex party that’s not really a sex party but instead another way to advertise a gym I wouldn’t enter even during a torrential downpour that includes hail, whipping winds, and Ramona Singer’s Pinot streaming from the sky like piss. On the other hand, having this staunch stance against Tamra, her business, her family, her pink wardrobe, and her pretend sex tape means that I will not be invited to the party and that’s a shame but at least I can lend Heather some latex and leather to wear because the rich girl’s plum out.