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This season really is something. Most of what we’re getting is kids calling from home, lots of inane events, and Dolores settling for another no-good man who seems like he doesn’t want to entirely commit to her. Even when we get a sit-down between the different “sides” of the show, it ends like most of my sexual encounters: prematurely and before anyone is satisfied with what transpired. But at least we finally got the Boujie Kidz fasjion shjow.
The episode really kicks off when Jackie goes to Teresa’s house and the pair of them pretend that they actually like each other and this is not an arrangement of convenience. Teresa tells Jackie that she’s glad she finally “stood up for herself.” How? By becoming friends with the woman who unfairly maligned her for seasons? Oh yeah, that’s really standing up for what’s right. Jackie tells her, “I was a broken person for so long, but I’m not anymore.” Let me get this straight: Jackie was broken, and that’s why she was friends with Melissa, the one who wasn’t spreading rumors about her husband having an affair, but now that she’s whole, she’s friends with Teresa? This makes no sense, and I hate that I ever once, for even a second, defended Jackie.
Next up is a lunch between Dolores and her boyfriend, Paulie, a bar of soap that somehow eroded itself into a real man. She asks him just how long it’s going to take him to get a divorce, and he’s like, shrug emoji. He tells her that even if he gets divorced, it’s not as if he’s going to propose to her the next day. That’s not what she’s asking for, as she makes clear. She says that he told her it would take a year, and it has taken longer than that — now going on three years. She just wants some clarification and an update, and he’s acting as though she asked him for a kidney.
Then Paul says, “If it’s not going fast enough for you, then maybe you should make a change.” She’s just looking for a time frame for this divorce so she can decide whether she wants to commit to this man or not, and he’s telling her that if it’s not going according to her time frame, then maybe she should break up with him. What is this my-way-or-the-highway nonsense, and why is almost every single man on this show an utter disappointment?
That’s especially true of Joe Gorga. When he learns that Paul and Dolores are going into business together (don’t do it, Dolo!), he says that he has known Dolores his whole life and she doesn’t want to work — she wants to drive a Rolls-Royce and let other people work. I don’t know Dolores in real life, but we’ve all “known” her for the past several years, and this does not at all jibe with the Dolores we have seen on the show. Why are these men trying to make her look like some kind of gold digger when she could just live in her house with her 18 dogs and not take a dime of their money and be all right?
Then there’s a golf tournament during which Margaret Josephs has Rachel, Dolores, Melissa, and Lexi (the one with an accent even more mysterious than Dorit Kemsley’s) dress up in cute little green outfits and drive around giving golfers mocktails. I grew up around golfers, and if there’s one thing I can tell you about them, it is that they don’t want to be playing a round on a sunny afternoon drinking soft drinks. Marge is like, “You can spike them!” Which is like selling vegan sandwiches and telling people to put bacon on them. If you want to sell cocktails, just sell cocktails. I am baffled by every decision that was made this entire episode.
The Jens Fessler and Aydin are having lunch somewhere and sharing an enormous margarity for two that seems to have a jar of jelly on top of it for some reason. I don’t know. I don’t live this — I just report on it. This is when the official plan to demolish Danielle begins with Jen telling Jen F. that she and Teresa did not set her up last season, even though they totally did. As Melissa pointed out earlier in the episode when talking about Danielle, Teresa and Jen will expect her to have their backs, but they won’t have hers for even a second. How can Jackie and Jen F. hop on this careering bandwagon when they see how badly Tre and Jen treat their little minions? Again — baffled.
Danielle is too busy worrying about all the ironing she has to do for New York Fashion Week. When she arrives at the venue, not only are there a bunch of other brands also presenting, but she’s getting her models from “the fashion company.” What company is this? How is it providing underage models? Why are some of the brands showing full-on ball gowns for toddlers and Danielle is sending a little girl down the runway in a baseball-print romper with ruffles around the legs that looks like it was a home-ec sewing project? This whole thing makes about as much sense as, well, bringing mocktails to golfers.
When we see Danielle’s clothes, they’re, well, fine. There’s nothing that you couldn’t already find at Ross. What makes Danielle’s line different? What makes it better? Nothing that I can discern, but good for Danielle. Also, I thought tickets to the show were tight and she got only so many? She’s not giving them to buyers for kids’ boutiques, but she gave one to Melissa, which makes sense; we need the show there, and Melissa has helped her with her business. But Melissa brings Cousin Nick. There aren’t tickets for any of the other women, but Cousin Nick got to take the PATH train in from Jersey City to go to a kids’-fashion show? Great. Makes total sense. Not at all baffled.
Of all the things that baffled me this episode, two of them happen when Teresa and Luis are doing yoga by their pool. The first is when Teresa is helping Luis stretch, and he says, “My pee-pee just bumped into you.” What adult man says pee-pee to his wife? Can’t you say dick? Cock? Penis? If you want to go cutesy, you could even go wiener or ding-a-ling. But pee-pee? That’s what 5-year-olds call it when playing doctor. However, Teresa is so dumb that the American Medical Association told her that she can’t even pretend to be a member of the profession.
The second bafflement was Teresa calling John Fuda “John Fugese.” What is that about? Is she trying to imply that he’s a mobster? Did he used to use that name and she’s making fun of him, even though it’s something we haven’t heard about on the show? Did he release a hip-hop EP in the early aughts, and that was his rapper name? What is up with that? She says it every time she’s talking about him. Meanwhile, this is a woman who changed her name from Jew-dice to Jew-dee-che and changed her husband’s name from Luis to Louie. I guess she thinks she can just make up names for people. Who in the name of Victoria Denise Gunvalson Jr. would think they could just do that?
So Luis calls Paulie and asks Paulie to ask John Fuda if he can sit down with him to talk about their issues, because that is what a real man does. They decide that they’re going to have their wives come to this sit-down in an empty room in a Jersey restaurant, and we know this is going to end horribly — not because we saw John leaving the room in the trailer but because there is no way Teresa is going to give them the apology they want. Even John says he thinks the whole thing is going to “go left” because Teresa is not rational, and he is absolutely correct.
When they all arrive, Luis tells John to start even though Luis — who says he feeds two wolves every day, which also baffles me — is the one who called the meeting. Teresa says that she wasn’t calling John a drug dealer currently; it’s that she meant he was one in the past. Rachel is exactly right when she says that it doesn’t matter which verb Teresa used — it was the intention behind bringing it up, and she was bringing it up to embarrass him.
Teresa says it was already out there in the universe, but Rachel says it wasn’t “public,” and by that I think she means it wasn’t on the show. This is what drives me nuts. When Luis had that crazy video that was out “in the universe” and Margaret brought it up on the show so that Luis could address it, that is when Teresa turned on Marge. Now she’s doing the exact same thing, and she sees no problem with it. Teresa’s rules only apply to her, and even those lies only apply if they help whatever stupid argument she’s currently making.
Then John says that Teresa got this information from his ex who is in jail for making crystal meth and once forced him to get into an accident that shattered his femur. Teresa says, “That’s Jaiden’s mom. I don’t want you to talk like that.” How is Teresa going to put this woman’s feelings before those of John and Rachel? How is she going to decide what Jaiden’s father and adoptive mother have to say about his biological mother? What if they told her not to talk about her daughters on the show? She would lose her freakin’ mind (what little of it she has).
John says they owe him an apology, and Teresa says that they owe them an apology, and John says it’s not tit for tat. John then tells Teresa, “Here’s how this is going to go.” Teresa says he doesn’t set the rules, because Teresa has been setting the ever-changing rules on this show for years. I love that John is now dictating how he will be treated rather than taking Teresa’s shit like everyone else. However, I didn’t like that Luis kept silent the whole time and that this became a confrontation between John and Teresa. That seemed icky to me for a number of reasons, even though he’s right.
On his way out, he says that she’s the poster child for mortgage fraud, which is hilariously accurate, and then he says he’ll call if he wants his money laundered. As he leaves, Teresa yells at him that he’s a drug dealer. No “was”; no past tense. Present. She has now done just what she said she wouldn’t do. But Teresa wouldn’t know the rules unless she were making them up. She has no idea how to be decent, no idea how to argue with facts. I don’t know what reality she’s living in. Baffled. It leaves me just baffled.
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Brian Moylan , 2024-06-10 16:43:00
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