Real Housewives of New Jersey made me want to just give up last night in several occasions. It opened on the culmination of the throw down between Dina and Danielle. It went something like this:
Dina: I’m a reasonable human being who is saying reasonable things.
Danielle: Bllarrrgggghghghg!!! Ashley! Facebook!
Dina: What Ashley does has nothing to do with me.
Danielle: Your sister-in-law said mean things about you!
Dina: You’re crazy.
Danielle: Don’t you ever call me crazy! Ever! Ever!
“Jacked Rick Springfield” (thanks for that one, Dina!) and his goon come in and look sort of confused about Danielle’s retelling because, I mean, even ex-cons who agree to appear on Bravo reality television shows as gross caricatures of Joey Buttafuco know when someone is straight spewing nonsense.
Dina meets up with the Manzo girls and tells them how cray-cray Danielle was. Caroline says I told you so, and although I’ve sort of veered away from my eternal love for Caroline this season what with all of the hardlined defense of family business — even in the cases of them being wrong — I have to admit that she is a spot-on judge of character. We also see Jacqueline acting like a teenage gossip in this scene, and I’m beginning to be annoyed with how much pleasure she takes in talking shit. You have three children — stop it.
The Manzo men (and Ashley’s boyfriend and that dude Danielle boinked last season) have a poker night and buy $600 worth of meat for it. As the men crowd around the table and pound their giant wooden gavel (really?!) the women filter in every so often to present them with plates of prociutto and meatballs and it’s a little annoying how they’re just basically servants. Jacqueline is bothered that Danielle’s ex is there — mostly because there’s talk that he leaked their sex tapes and she’s not okay with being associated with that. So they call him into the toy room (the New Jersey equivalent of a waterboarding chamber) and ask him point blank about the sex tapes. He tells them that “most of” the tapes were sent to him from her, that they didn’t even include him, that she was doing all sorts of “crazy stuff” in them and I feel a little bad for the 50-something formal model who now looks like the anti-plastic surgery poster child, that she felt desperate enough to send nasty material to a man who is half her age (not that I buy that for a second) but who is balding and ugly and talks badly about her to his friends. Teresa’s eyes light up at the knowledge of Danielle’s desperation, because her life is so much better than hers, her choices so much more clear. Come on lady, you’re $11 million in debt. Your life is a mess and your forehead is a one-head.
Word out of Danielle’s camp is totally different. She gets together with her own gaggle of gals (take that Manzos! I can have a team too!) but it all stinks, and I mean stinks of that all-too-familiar smell of desperation. First of all, these ladies are old. And, I get that they’re probably the same age as Danielle herself but at least she’s trying to fit the Housewives of New York standard. At least she goes to the gym and gets her eyes lifted and wears trendy clothes. These ladies look like they actually belong in the suburbs. Even Kim G. looks like someone’s Grandma and the worst offender is an overweight woman with poorly highlighted bangs and a love of tapered khakis. I mean, TAPERED KHAKIS. If I wanted to watch the real housewives of real life I’d just go to Walmart.
So, Danielle and her dumpy soccer moms are at Olive Garden and Danielle opens up with, “ I met with Dina Manzo!,” as if she needed to say her last name, as if these people would actually hang out outside of this mess of a show. And the ladies are all chomping at the bit, overacting to what she says with the faces and words that were on todays sides but it all looks like the kids fake talking in the party scene of a high school play and I, for one, am suddenly recognizing just how much this town must hate this show that these are the only people fame-hungry enough to play Danielle’s posse. She pulls out her phone and shows them an email entitled “Closure” that Dina has sent her and flicks down the screen, scrolling to represent how loooooong the email is but it’s on a phone with a 2x3 screen and I mean, it makes sense that it would take a couple clicks to get down to the bottom. It also makes sense to me that Dina would want to enunciate everything that she wanted to tell Danielle in a medium that doesn’t include perturbed diners and a screaming ghoul in your face. Danielle doesn’t agree and responds with the cleverly worded, “Lol. Whatever.” That Danielle, she’s so good with her words.
Later the ladies stand around in Kim’s house like they’ve just been invited to their first cool-kid party and Danielle’s all “Oh, I have a sex-tape. Woe is me,” and the ladies try to look like that’s not actually like a shocking thing in suburban NJ, and Tapered Khakis is all like, well, I think you need to date again because you’re figure is so amazing (only old people say that people have nice “figures”) and they need to see her get naked for her date. They all head off the lingerie store and hoot and holler and Danielle’s chicken legs come out of the dressing room in various get-ups and I think that this will be the worst of it until the whole gang goes to a strip club to get lessons, but mostly to watch Danielle practice her old moves. Tapered Pants is there and she looks crazy awkward and Kim G. is really, really un-sexy and arrhythmic, but it’s Danielle’s time on the pole that actually makes me almost lose my soup and salad. For some reason Jacked Rick Springfield is there looking nasty as all hell and it’s at this moment that I realize that he’s more than just her muscle and I re-taste the minestrone all over again.
Kim G., the two-faced little old lady that she is, visits Jacqueline and tells her all about the Danielle shit-talking and Jacqueline discounts it all but all I can think of is that this Kim G. is the worst kind of sneak and I can’t wait until Caroline gives her her comeuppance. It really sucks because Dina has decided to leave the show and Kim G. is her replacement. FML. I will miss you Dina, you too Mr. Wrinkles. Enjoy your crystals and candles and keep looking fierce!
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