I’ve come to believe that watching Reunion episodes of The Real Housewives of F*cking Wherever is very similar to sleeping with a guy you promised yourself you’d never writhe beneath again before a cocktail of literal cocktails combined with the false notion that sex doesn’t have to mean anything settled first into your head and then gravitated quickly towards your waxed nether regions. What I mean here is that you think that you will get some satisfaction from the whole experience, but what you are really left with is a few hours lost from your life, a teensy bit of regret, and a wet spot that you could swear looks exactly like Vicki Gunvalson’s first face.
Just like sex with an ex, nothing that happens during a Reunion is brand new. Sure, maybe someone has a new outfit to show off or a tighter ass to wiggle or a point to make that’s said in a different manner than it’s ever been stated before (examples here might include “Here’s the newest reason I think Brooks is a liar” and “No, I’m staying on top”), but it all really comes down to the fact that, in both scenarios, nothing changes and nothing is truly gained and you probably could have achieved far greater happiness by eating a Snickers in a dark room where you could pretend to ignore the suggestion written on the wrapper of the King Size bar that a chocolate bar so humongous is really designed for sharing.
F*ck Snickers and whomever designed its packaging. F*ck the sharing of candy of any kind. And really f*ck the OC Housewives who have done next to nothing all season long. Beverly Hills had a wineglass-heaving sociopath and an alcoholic who relapsed right there on camera. New Jersey boasts an incarcerated castmate who never completed the evolution cycle and a son-in-law who was rumored to have banged his wife’s mother. Atlanta has NeNe, the largest being ever measured by the naked eye that allegedly doesn’t contain some Sasquatch blood. And what does Orange County have? A whole lot of nothing.
Before the Reunion started, I sat down to reflect on the events that transpired this season under the golden yellow sun of Orange County, but here’s all I can remember going down. And I thought about it for over ten seconds:
1. Brooks might or might not have cancer – and we’ll never really know the truth. What we do know is that he’s all but put himself on a press tour recently where he gives interview after interview about just how much Vicki sucks, why Vicki’s daughter shouldn’t have judged him for that time he suggested her husband cold-clock her across the face, and the fact that he’s genuinely sick – but not so sick that he can’t cross the country to sit for interviews with esteemed media outlets like Radar Online.
2. Vicki might or might not know that Brooks is lying about having cancer, but one thing that is definite is that she was knowingly recorded by a camera while choosing a creepy guy over her own daughter.
3. Oklahoma gets tornadoes.
4. Tamra hearts Jesus, bondage parties, and her terrifying firstborn son who will certainly snap one day and either cause a bloody massacre or find religion just like his mother did.
5. Heather is building a house the size of Narnia.
6. Meghan has an emotionally withholding husband, a headband collection that someone who secretly hates her once convinced her was flattering, and a future starring in a private investigator show that will undoubtedly premiere next autumn on Bravo. Her costar will be Theresa or Joe Giudice – whichever one is not currently in prison – because Bravo either truly loves those morons or those morons have pictures of Andy Cohen cavorting with a pregnant farm animal and Bravo is just trying to keep them quiet.
7. The Beador marriage that came across last season as almost unchartered in its level of misery was actually even worse than any of us knew. Shannon has fought like hell to keep her family together by participating in fake eulogies, rolling around on an exercise ball for twenty hours per week, and welcoming house calls from therapists. As a result, she now only cries sixteen times a day.
8. Vicki has secretly been Jesus this entire time, which I guess means that now Easter will be cancelled. And since Vicki will be the reason Cadbury Cream Eggs get discontinued, I think we can all agree that the woman-warrior-prophet needs to be lynched.
It is with the understanding in mind that absolutely nothing else happened all season long that I settled in for Part One of the Reunion with a heavy heart. What else could possibly come out? After all, have we not all seen breathless media reports that, at this point, not even Vicki’s other personalities are speaking to her? Have we not all heard that Shannon brings “proof” to the Reunion that Brooks lied about having cancer and also lied that time he told her not to be ridiculous, that of course she doesn’t drink too much vodka? Have we not all seen previews that promise that Brooks – a suspected liar – will finally reveal the truth? Are we expected to believe anything the guy says? Are we also expected to believe that Vicki won’t still be on this show next season, a show that has recorded her mother’s death, her divorce, being lied to by “her man,” and being told by every single fellow Housewife that she is full of sh*t? Is she coming back because that’s what a prophet would do or because a pathetic woman like herself might keel over and die without the attention – positive or negative – that comes to her because she appears on Bravo? Can all of this psychosis maybe be traced back to that time she wasn’t chosen as Head Cheerleader in the eleventh grade on the very same week Bobby decided he wanted a prom date who was pretty?