There comes a point during each and every year when the leaves turn from a bold green into a way less vibrant shade of dark yellow, when Oreos, M&Ms, ice cream, and lattes become available in pumpkin spice, and everyone in the vicinity begins to smell vaguely of nutmeg. The sun sets a bit earlier each evening and I fall asleep pondering the age-old question of exactly when I’m supposed to break out my boots or if I should continue to wear sandals while hoping my fake tan is continuing to fool anyone who isn’t blind.
It’s the time when the networks release their newest shows after hyping them nonstop for months and it’s also the time when I’m afraid to watch any of them because I’m reluctant to get hooked on another show, lest the day come when I choose to never again leave my house because I’ve become too emotionally attached to my twelve remotes. It’s the time of year when all of my favorite candy begins to appear in what some marketing moron coined a “fun size,” as though a smaller Milky Way could possibly be more fun than one that’s the size of a beer truck. And it’s also the precise moment when horror movies enter the theatres and I consider making some new friends who aren’t such wusses.
Yes, I have reached the point in my life where nobody I spend a great deal of time with wants to watch scary movies anymore. I understand that not everyone wants to pay to experience an abject burst of stinging fear, but I wish there was at least one person I could drag with me to see Goodnight Mommy, an Austrian film that is rumored to be the most terrifying hour and forty minutes that has ever graced a movie screen. I need to see it, but I also know that I’m too much of a chicken to watch it alone so I am currently compiling blackmail information on all of those nearest and dearest to me in the hopes of swaying someone to accompany me to the theatre by promising never to reveal that he has peed in his bed while in his thirties.
With horror movies taking hold of my mind and the darkest secrets of my loved ones filed away in a fireproof safe that has a combination of 666, I have begun to imagine the horror subgenres our beloved Housewives would be most likely to star in and I’ve come to some conclusions:
Tamra would definitely star in a possession film. If film history has taught us anything – besides the fact that there is apparently no cap on how many Fast and the Furious movies can be made – it’s that evil spirits enjoy inhabiting delicate women who are on the cusp of becoming spiritual and our Tamra now fits the bill. Luckily, the woman’s got a pastor who makes house calls so she’ll probably be freed from the demon who has scurried inside of her by the time the ninth part of the Reunion airs.
Heather would appear in a slasher film, but there’s not a shot in Tamra’s version of hell that she’d survive. For the most part, you need to have a unisex name to make it out alive in one of those movies and there’s also the issue that Heather is quite likely to want to investigate that strange noise she hears on the fifth floor of her labyrinth of a home because a part of her thinks that any sound she hears in the distance is of a bottle of champagne being popped instead of a chainsaw being revved up.
Shannon would be the absolute star of a found footage horror film. I’m willing to wager that she has hired at least one private investigator during the last year or so and that there is surveillance video of David cavorting around Orange County before he made the choice to return to his family. It is also my staunch belief that the Batphone Meghan called earlier in the season contains the footage Shannon doesn’t want anybody to see. Shannon’s been growing on me like a fungus lately, so I hope she’d survive the film – though chances are she’d end up making it because she’s been the masked killer all along.
Meghan would appear in a Gothic horror movie. She’d play the plucky young upstart who would venture bravely down narrow hallways with only a flickering candle to guide her in order to probe all of the secrets that might exist around her. One of the tropes of Gothic horror is the thrill of diving headband-first into the unknown as well as battling dreadful creatures who are out to silence you, and since Meghan has already come face to face with Brooks, zombies and vampires wouldn’t even cause this bitch to break a sweat.
And speaking of Brooks, his special lady would end up in a home invasion film similar to The Strangers. In one of these movies, someone enters a setting you’ve been made to feel is safe and secure and rattles your world before leaving you with nothing, including often a pulse. Vicki would play that idiot character who naively and solemnly lets the bad guy in and it won’t take her long to fall in love with him because, even if he’s holding a hatchet and walking towards her slowly without blinking, that means she won’t ever have to be alone in her kitchen. There’s a large part of me that believes Vicki really doesn’t know that Brooks might be lying to her about anything (or everything), that she is certain that the reason he moved in with her is because he craves her gorgeous face and her sparkling personality instead of considering that he’s had his eye on her big screen TV and her life insurance policy for some time now, and he will destroy her with nary an ounce of guilt to get exactly what he wants. On the plus side, should Brooks destroy her, she won’t appear in the sequel.
I wouldn’t pay to see any of those movies, but just imagining them has brought me a great deal of pleasure and I will celebrate by rubbing myself with some nutmeg and diving into this week’s episode.
We begin with Shannon and David arriving at a lovely sunset dinner for date night and once again we are privy to watching Shannon order her Grey Goose “in a tall glass.” Seeing that her beverage preference does little to nothing in furthering the action at hand, at this point I have to believe that the editors are simply out to make fun of the woman by illustrating that she has ordered vodka more often on this show than Vicki has broken up and gotten back together with an alleged cancer patient and even more times than Tamra has tried to make hot pink tank tops bedazzled with crucifixes happen. David wants to maybe order some empanadas as an appetizer but Shannon is appalled by such an idea. She exercised for over two hours earlier in the day! She was on a floor doing sit-ups and then she perspired atop an exercise ball! She sweated a quarter of her ass off and she’s trying like hell to get the next quarter off by nightfall! She will work out and stay drunk all of the time if that means that she will not contribute to the soaring divorce rate in Orange County!
The thing is, Shannon actually looks pretty fantastic. I’d been under the impression that she was spending her days writhing around atop an inflatable exercise ball so she could feel like a woman again, but she’s actually lost some weight. She should allow herself to dive tongue-first into some of the salami and cheese that’s on the menu for the night, but the woman is committed to her health and to her tighter ass and she orders the meatballs instead. Once the waiter (who mistakenly believes that appearing on The Real Housewives will lead to him getting his SAG card) leaves, Shannon tells David that she spoke to Tamra and Heather earlier in the day and she’s amazed and rather happy that friendships that once seemed terribly tenuous – as is wont to happen when relationships are built atop the crumbling mounds of quicksand in Reality Land – are now strong while her friendship with Vicki is disintegrating in a manner in which Shannon didn’t expect.
“That is kind of interesting,” says David. He’s a man I believe is probably trying with all of his might to save his marriage for the sake of the family at large in spite of the fact that he doesn’t really like his wife. I’m betting that he really didn’t appreciate coming off as such a d*ckhead last season for all the world to see when he spent fifteen straight episodes glaring menacingly at his spouse. Luckily for him, he is surrounded now by a scumbag like Brooks (even if the guy hasn’t been faking his cancer, he’s still revolting and sleazy); Eddie, a guy who makes me want to spell out the word “misogyny” in dumbbells; and a withholding horror story brought to life in the body of Jim Edmonds. Long story short, David’s looking pretty good right now.