What’s even left to say anymore?
That Brooks really has cancer or that he never had cancer?
That Shannon’s marriage has legitimately been repaired or that it’s currently being held together by a very loose Band-Aid with emotional puss threatening to leak out from all sides?
That Tamra is a reformed sinner or one just taking a break from sinning due to sheer exhaustion and the recommendation of a PR rep she met while standing on line at her local CVS buying generic antifungal cream?
That Heather might or might not petition the United States Postal Service to get her very own zip code for her behemoth of a home?
That Meghan believes that her terrifyingly chilly husband truly loves her or that she just got temporarily dazzled by a proximity to fame and ended up in over her head in a marriage that reads like a Grimm’s cautionary fairytale about a once-blonde woman who was swept off her feet by a psychotic baseball player?
That Vicki is a pathetic assh*le?
As we head into part f*cking three of a Reunion that could have been covered in half the time if they’d just left out the colonic montage, what we do know for sure is that nothing will be resolved. The questions we have will never get answered despite my guess that every single one of these women will be back next season, even Vicki. It probably won’t matter that there’s an epidemic of rumors floating around that the rest of the OC Housewives are threatening to refuse to film with her in the form of a reality TV fatwa or that she has been exposed to be foolish, hysterical, cunning and naïve (hard to pull off both at the same time, but then again, Vicki is special), friendless, and the kind of mother who chooses a man over her own kid. She’ll still be back. She cannot stay away from any kind of attention. But it’s not her fault – God made her that way.
It is with the relative certainty that nothing of real consequence will come out that I feel rather fatigued just seeing the women sitting on the couch. Everything about tonight that’s even remotely compelling has already been leaked to the press. We know Shannon has paperwork from the facility where Brooks allegedly got his cancer scans done and that the paperwork “proves” his deceit. We know Vicki whispers that she’s now afraid of the guy she keeps texting. We know that Tamra probably has both a rosary and a flask in her hot pink bedazzled clutch. In fact, I’d venture to say that the only thing we don’t know is why so many of us keep watching this nonsense – but that, my friends, is a post for another day.
Today’s task is to wrap up an endless season where very little happened, where the root of most of the conflict involved someone who is not even a Housewife, a man widely believed to be a total and complete liar. And so his interview, though staggering in its levels of audacity, is rather moot, as are the women’s reactions to anything he says, as are my reactions to all of it. Still, I’ve got a job to do here, and I take all jobs (full-time jobs, freelance jobs, voluntary jobs, blowj*bs) very seriously.
The beginning of the end kicks off with what I’ll call THE EXCAVATION OF BROOKS’ LIES, wherein we watch footage of all the Housewives coming to the conclusion in their own time that Brooks isn’t actually sick and instead has been running a long-con on all of them. Once again, I started this season astonished by how frail the guy looked and I figured his significant weight loss was due to a disease – and that the disease was cancer, not anorexia. But watching this season play out – and watching the highlight reel here that, to be fair, only includes the more curious aspects of his claims – I’m fully on board with the mindset that the guy has been lying this entire time. Still, it’s mildly revolting that some of the women are smiling widely as they watch the montage, especially Meghan. There’s a smugness there that’s hard to swallow despite the fact that she’s probably been correct in her assumptions this entire time. Kudos, Meghan. Now stop being a wench.
When the sequence ends, Andy hops right into the questions and what comes out is that Brooks just seems to have what Heather succinctly calls “a credibility problem.” At this point, nobody believes a single syllable he says – except maybe Vicki. She still maintains that the story about how Brooks once dated a stripper (I appreciated that we got to see a flashback of that conversation as we were treated to some shots of Vicki’s former face) was false and the woman in question was actually “a Poker Player Waitress,” which is maybe another way to describe both someone who graduated Magna Cum Laude from Hooker University and my Halloween costume for next year. Asked if Vicki believes that Brooks has cancer, she says she does because she hasn’t seen nearly enough evidence to prove that he’s been lying. And speaking of her charismatic truth-teller, let’s head back to Andy’s interview with the guy!