Before anyone loses their sh*t too completely because Meghan and Shannon did not immediately teleport themselves to a hospital in the desert so they could hold the hand of a wounded liar, allow us to consider some of the many reasons that perhaps prompted them not to go:
1. They needed time to make a casserole.
2. Meghan gazed deeply into her husband’s eyes, saw what she believed was a sparkle, and realized the glistening shimmer covering his pupils meant there was a possibility he was going to attempt to be kind to her for fifteen whole minutes that day. Since such an event happens less frequently than an eclipse, there was no way she was gonna miss it to go hang out with Vicki f*cking Gunvalson.
3. Shannon – though she was blessedly not a passenger on the Vomit RV to Hell where some sh*t-talking about her vow renewal ceremony went down – knows Vicki well enough to realize how emphatically not happy Vicki is that Shannon’s life is improving and therefore doesn’t want to extend herself for someone who recently shrieked, “You’re a cheater!” into her husband’s face at a party Vicki was lucky to be invited to in the first place.
4. Vicki sucks stringy antelope balls.
Think about it really: how many co-workers have you jetted off to visit in the hospital? I work in a place with a lot of people. I’m very good friends with some and I’m cordial and collegial to the rest. Those who I no longer qualify as “work friends” are people I’d do anything for, and that includes making hospital visits where I will show up with a bag crammed full of their favorite candy and a Cookie Monster stuffed animal because dammit if that furry blue monster doesn’t just make everything all better. For the rest of the people I work with, I kick in some money for the “Get Well Soon!” fruit basket and I sign the card someone shoves under my face while I’m trying to make photocopies. What I’m saying here is that Vicki Gunvalson is essentially Meghan and Shannon’s colleague and they owe her nothing. Not only that, but Vicki was rude as f*ck to Meghan upon meeting her because Vicki harbors bizarre delusions of grandeur within her mottled mind and she sees this series as her show and she has somehow yet to grow out of the eighth grade mentality that whispers to her hourly that it’s up to her to haze the new girl. As for Shannon, Vicki lied to Shannon’s face for well over a year about her boyfriend having cancer in order to get some sympathy. Ergo, no matter what Tamra and Vicki’s BFF Jesus might say, Meghan and Shannon are and should be going nowhere. Vicki can stay in that hospital until one of her children shows up to get her. She can lie there until someone builds her a cross made out of tongue depressors that she can nail herself to with used Q-tips. I realize Vicki hates being alone more than any living being on this or any other planet, but perhaps being alone with her ravaged and selfish thoughts will finally be the punishment she deserves for having been such a self-righteous assh*le for more seasons than I care to count.
None of this ranting is to say that I enjoy watching terrible things happen to Vicki. In fact, I’d be thrilled to never again watch anything happen to Vicki. Along with my vivid hopes for world peace, an entire do-over of this election cycle, and Twix bars with no caloric content, I sometimes lull myself to sleep at night thinking about a universe in which Vicki Gunvalson is no longer a Real Housewife. Unfortunately, I long ago made peace with the fact that David Duke would sooner buy a menorah and lead his followers in a rousing rendition of Hava Nagila than Vicki would finally drop that Swarovski orange and fade away into oblivion. Like the vodka she enjoys mainlining, this show is her lifeline; she’s clearly going nowhere.
I do understand why Heather and Kelly believed they had a real shot in convincing Meghan and Shannon to hightail it to the hospital to check on their injured co-worker. After all, they were in the accident with Vicki. They know just how jarring and scary the moment was. They are stuck in some sand dunes waiting for word about their friends. It makes sense for them to hope someone would run off to comfort that terrible woman. But it also makes sense for women who have had nothing but a contentious relationship with Vicki over the last year to only wish her well from afar. Will this refusal to show up at a hospital come back to haunt them? Probably. I mean, there are three hours of an eventual reunion to fill up and Kelly screaming “C*nt!” during Meghan’s pre-insemination party will only cover two hours of airtime. Still, I’m going on the record and saying I don’t think any of these women made the wrong choice here – and I make that proclamation knowing full well that Kelly Dodd will think I’m a dumb f*ck because of it.
This week’s episode kicks off three hours after the accident with Tamra being wheeled out of the hospital by her husband. She’s in decent shape, but rather than drive all those hours back to her comfortable home, she decides it makes more sense for her to rest in the barren desert camp where Heather and Kelly still reside. I for one am shocked that Heather hasn’t called her chauffer or her chef or her butler or the doyenne of her main foyer to come get her out of this arid hellhole where her friends have dropped like flies, but Heather really is tougher than she seems. She’s holding down that dusty fort like a f*cking pro. Already having been in touch with Vicki’s daughter, she can inform Tamra that Vicki will be okay. Tamra is relieved to hear this information, but she’s also feeling all kinds of guilty. She was the one racing that RV over the peeks and deep-dropping valleys of the desert landscape and those actions put her friend in the hospital. That’s a rough situation to find oneself in and I don’t envy Tamra for the tumult she feels racing through her insides. Still, pretending she will not repress those feelings in order to have more energy to strike out against Meghan and Shannon for not immediately rushing to Vicki’s side would be nothing short of an idiotic assumption. She may have found Jesus and all, but Tamra can still project blame with the very best of them.
As for the women who are about to be called selfish bitches, Meghan welcomes Shannon and David to their lovely home and immediately announces the happy news that she is pregnant. Then she pulls up her sporty polo shirt to show off her baby bump – the one that doesn’t yet exist on her perfectly flat tummy – and, since she’s with child and all, Shannon kindly restrains herself from slapping Meghan and her negligible BMI as hard as she possibly can. The two couples then climb in golf carts that are segregated by sex – you know, so Jim doesn’t have to be around the newest mother of his child any more than he must – and they all head out to a beautifully manicured golf course that looks all the more lovely when it’s contrasted with the misery of the desert where the horror of last week took place. At some point, Meghan finally tells Shannon about the accident. (Why she waited until they were halfway through a golf game is beyond me, but perhaps that was the call of one of the ever-present producers.) Shannon is horrified to hear the news. Just as she is inhaling in shock, her phone rings. It’s Heather calling to inform them how sad it is that Vicki is alone…and that Brianna is home sick with the flu and her two young children…and that nobody has Vicki’s son’s phone number…and, once again, it’s so devastating Vicki is alone…and Meghan and Shannon are so close to that hospital. Yes, every guilt trip imaginable is dropped on the slender collective shoulders of Meghan and Shannon in that moment. Meghan responds with a blisteringly cold, “That’s so sad,” that she then follows up with a staunch silence that almost made me high-five my television screen because it’s rare to see someone so blatantly unwilling to be coerced into doing something she refuses to do. As for Shannon, she doesn’t know what Heather wants from her in this moment, but it seems as though Heather wants her to rush to the bedside of a woman who has been f*cking horrible to her and Shannon is not having any of it, not even when Heather calls back and reiterates that the rest of them are in shock. That’s right around the time Meghan jumps in to the conversation to inform Heather she’s just Mapquested the route and the group that’s suffering from PTSD is only forty-five short minutes away from their ailing friend’s bedside so perhaps they should go ahead and drive there since, after all, Vicki is their friend. Kelly and Heather are stunned – stunned! – hearing such a suggestion. They also appear stunned at hearing Meghan intonate that Vicki is not her friend. Um, have these women been paying attention? Vicki has treated Meghan like dogsh*t. She repeatedly disregarded the relationship Meghan built with her stepchildren. Meghan publicly exposed Vicki’s boyfriend as a f*cking liar. For Meghan to say that she and Vicki are not friends is the kind of sentence that shouldn’t elicit any sort of reaction, certainly not shock.
Want to check in with human monster Kelly Dodd to see how she feels about Meghan and Shannon refusing to go visit Vicki? Well, Kelly – the sweetest woman on the planet as long as the planet has just been ravaged by a zombie apocalypse – believes Shannon and Meghan are seriously out of line. She would go see someone in the hospital! And she would do it “out of human decency.” I, for one, believe Kelly when she says this. Has she not illustrated time and time again this season how very decent she can be? As for Shannon’s husband – the one Kelly said looked like a pedophile during one of her sparkling moments of decency – he suggests Vicki text Brooks to come sit by her side. David is cold, people. I might love him.