While we’re on the subject of movies, I’d really like to just put it out there that I never want to see a movie about Vicki. I don’t even want to see a movie where I’m randomly sitting in the same theatre as Vicki. I cannot stand Vicki. I now hate everything about the woman and after she has flounced her way across my television screen for this many years, I feel absolutely justified in saying such a thing. Vicki is envious and she is cruel. She has not made it easy for one new woman to enter a group of which she believes she is the figurehead. She has hazed and threatened people into being her friend. She is an overbearing parent, an assh*le of a spouse, and the walking embodiment of desperation. If there’s a vote held that allows write-ins, she will not even make it into last place to become the woman who should appear on the upcoming $10 bill. She has fought with every single person she has known over the years before retreating into tears or shrieks that sound like they have been generated by another species. She has chosen to be with a man who advocated physical violence against her daughter. She stands atop bars and does shots and screams for everybody in the vicinity to whoop it up. She had plastic surgery and looks exactly the same as she did during season one, when she proudly announced to the camera (clearly operated by a kind soul who did his very best not to push in too close for a close-up) that she hoped her son’s friends considered her a MILF. She is the absolute worst, an amalgam of qualities I thought would spontaneously combust if combined since it’s all so toxic and terrible. But all that said – and I’ve left out some of my harsher criticisms because I’m kind and I know how to show some restraint – I don’t believe she knows that Brooks is faking his illness, if he is in fact faking it. I think Vicki – smart and driven in business – is an absolute moron in life. I think she really has no idea that this guy might be deceiving her and so she genuinely believes that her friends are behaving in a collectively horrific manner for even daring to suggest something nefarious about a scenario she’s been convinced to believe is true. Allow me to be clear here: I do not feel badly for Vicki and I could honestly care less if she is happy. In fact, I’d like to toss in my vote that I never even get to find out how she ends up due to the fact that she and her face will finally be thrown off this show for good. However, all that said, I think she’s a fool, not a liar.
But back to the fiesta. Everyone is there! Lynn Curtain from a long-ago season shows up and I can almost smell the weed wafting through my screen just from seeing her face. Vicki’s son Michael is there after having successfully avoided his mother all season long. Ryan and his tattoos and the family I still genuinely fear he will snap and mutilate show up with no smiles on their faces. Vicki stands close to Lizzie, the woman who used to be a Housewife, because none of the current ones Housewives stand her anymore. Some woman named Tammy who appeared on this show long before any of the participants realized they could land some sh*tty endorsement deals by throwing their privacy to the wind comes by and Vicki holds her hand. It’s a meeting and greeting that is bathed in a gorgeous and heavenly light and I swear I can hear the revving of chainsaws somewhere in the distance.
Then Shannon arrives and she already feels uncomfortable. Maybe it’s from the piece of plastic still lodged in her ass or maybe it’s because she thinks there’s a good chance that her former best friend Vicki will call her “disgusting” again – you know, like friends sometimes do. Still, she walks into that party and hugs Vicki’s brother and his girlfriend and that’s when Tamra appears. She floats out like a well-used angel on the arm of her devoted husband who made sure to wear his beaded choker for the big day. She is greeted by hugs and well-wishes as she explains how drastically she thinks her life will change after the ceremony. She bets that she will be a better person. She bets that she will be a better friend!
She will undoubtedly lose those bets.
Vicki kisses Tamra and tells her how beautiful she looks, which is sweet considering that last week she said that Tamra looked “like crap” in everything she was trying on, but there is no time for such negativity because now a choir is here, singing poolside. As they harmonize about faith, Tamra’s eyes fill with tears and she looks up at the sky. She either really believes in the power of God now or she once saw Julia Roberts make a similar expression in a movie. Listen, I don’t mean to make light of something I think Tamra probably finds a really poignancy in, but when someone appears on this show for so long and conducts herself almost universally deplorably, it’s hard for a viewer like myself to suspend disbelief for a moment and buy that a woman like Tamra can change. That said, I’m willing to hop on the bandwagon – and not just because that bandwagon has a choir and will probably stop at a station with some hors d’oeuvres or because I have a fabulous white dress I’ve only worn once and it has asked very politely to be taken out again. No, I’m really hoping that Tamra gets something real and lasting from this ceremony because then perhaps one assh*le will be wiped off the planet for good. Unfortunately, the entire cast of Vanderpump Rules will be back soon to, um, fill her slot – and that’s what (I’m sure) Jax the Bartender has said…twice.
As Tamra is dunked underneath the water, we get a montage of some of her more hideous and tragic moments. That was kind of Bravo, I suppose, to allow the viewer to see a nice contrast here between the sanctity of the moment and the way Tamra used to act – yesterday – but she is brought up from the water and she looks drenched in tranquility. Her husband embraces her and the choir lets loose with a stirring rendition of Amazing Grace and Vicki – oh, Vicki – raises her hand high into the sky as she sings because goddammit, she is devout, and nobody looks better in a white f*cking dress than she does and Brooks told her that before she left for the party without him. He told her she is the most beautiful, definitely the fairest of them all, and then he pushed her white-lace-and-Spanx-clad ass out the door so he could do some more research on how to doctor a PET-scan.
While Tamra towels herself off upstairs, the celebration begins in earnest. There’s everything anyone attending a party could possibly hope for: drinks, food, and reprehensible enemies confined in a small space that overlooks a pier where someone can easily be held underwater – and not in the baptismal kind of way. It all starts off without any kind of viciousness, as tends to be the case with the Housewives. These bitches need to pace themselves. Vicki heads upstairs and sticks close to her brother while Heather and Shannon kvell over the twin cakes that Tamra’s got on display. One is an angel food cake and one is decorated to look like the devil because Tamra is so very clever and there are so many (well, two) facets to her personality and maybe I’d make fun of her desserts for a while just to be nasty, but the truth is that I want a slice of that devil cake and I want it now.
Before I can figure out how to create and then patent a television screen that allows viewers to reach in and grab themselves a little something on which to nosh, we get to watch as Lizzie, Heather, and Meghan order some drinks. Vicki hangs back and gravely shares that it’s really her decision right now to not include herself in the celebration alongside the women she pretends are her friends. Those who no longer trust her as far as they can heave her stand beside the bar and toast grandly to friendship and I had myself my first good laugh of the evening while in a private room upstairs, Tamra hears the excellent (and very temporary) news that everybody at her party is getting along swimmingly. Such information makes Tamra really happy because she is walking piousness now and all she wants for her day is calmness and kindness, which are perhaps the two words I’ve used the least often to describe our newly-holy hostess.
Back at the party, it is Meghan who invites Vicki over to join them because she’s standing there alone looking seriously uncomfortable. It’s a kind gesture and it’s not one Vicki would have done for Meghan in a zillion light-years, but Vicki is far too consumed thinking about the ways Shannon has betrayed her to do anything ridiculous like thank some thirty year old. In fact, Vicki is so incensed that she has forgotten how to speak and she phrases her fury thusly: “How dare her do this to me?” What Vicki can’t seem to get through her head – besides the proper use of conventional language – is that her boyfriend is shady as hell and every single story he has told at a party or around a campfire or in the living room that she pays for has holes that an obese person can crawl through. At a certain point, people begin to catch on to lies and deception and it’s actually a true friend who will not turn a blind eye to what’s going down. Vicki doesn’t want to deal with any of it though. She wants to give Tamra, her Warrior Sister, a gift and then she wants to leave and she implores her brother’s girlfriend to get herself together so they can rush for the exit before anyone attempts to ask her about anything that’s real.
Speaking of what’s real and what’s a boldface lie, there’s a new story flying about that Terry was called in the dead of the night to send a colleague over to Brooks’ house to give the ailing guy an IV. Unfortunately (or is it fortunately? Nothing makes sense anymore!), that story is yet another fraudulent yarn spun by a monster of a man who is apparently dumb enough to try to get away with all of these lies while his life is being broadcast on Bravo. I give him credit for almost succeeding, but his deceptions are crashing down now and the only one who seems immune to the fallout is Brooks himself. As the rest of them stand in all white on a dock, he is at home relaxing. As Shannon states that Vicki told her the story about Terry coming to Brooks’ aid, my guess is that Brooks is reclining on a microsuede brown chaise in a house he pays nothing for and surfing porn sites where not a single person he comes across looks like Vicki because God is not so cruel as to create two of them.
“Why is she covering for him?” asks Heather. See, she can’t understand why Vicki might be concealing the truth for this man knowingly. Luckily, Inspector Meghan is here and she’s got the opinion that Brooks is faking his cancer to get out of paying child support because, if he says he’s too sick to work, he would also be too sick to make those payments and he would get some sympathy on top of everything. His alleged cancer would become a duplicitous cherry atop a sundae made entirely out of horsesh*t. And while I make ice cream analogies so I can find some joy in this sh*tstorm, Heather and Shannon discuss how uncomfortable they feel being around Vicki while Meghan announces that she doesn’t feel awkward in the slightest. In fact, Meghan needs to speak to Vicki – which might be one of the most idiotic things I’ve ever heard anyone utter. Anything that still must be said can be fired off like a grenade at the Reunion, Meghan! The woman is not about to admit to lying, evading, or even dying her f*cking hair and you have already earned your spot on next season’s show by impersonating a cancer patient over the phone in order to get some pertinent information so keep quiet! But then I remembered that this is the finale episode and that means that going quietly into that good night is not really an option for anyone.
Before things can explode, Tamra shows up with dry hair and she’s wearing a tiered dress that makes her look like a pretty cupcake and she wants to take pictures with all of her friends. Vicki’s not there, though. She’s run off because she doesn’t know if the women there are her friends or her enemies and that might be the saddest thing I’ve ever heard a grown woman say. If you cannot differentiate between people who love you and those who actively root against you, go make some new friends. Maybe extend your circle and gravitate towards women who are not paid to interact with you or have to secure their jobs by fighting with you with cameras present. Or maybe instead of any of that, maybe Vicki can stop proclaiming things like, “Satan is the author of confusion,” because she sounds like the dumbest person ever to walk the planet and her allegiance to goodness is something I can’t imagine that anyone believes in anymore. I tell you, there is maybe nothing that makes me angrier than an assh*le spouting religion after behaving continuously like a heathen while publicly cavorting with a f*cking liar.