We’ve all been taught to look out for certain signs indicating that danger is coming: Where there’s lightning, there’s thunder. Pain in your left arm might mean a heart attack. And, when Bravo puts timestamps on a Real Housewives episode, shit is about to get wild.
Wednesday night’s Real Housewives of New York was one for the books. I don’t know if it’s the alcohol, the singledom, or the fact that these women have now been working together for close to a decade, but these bitches are bringing it this season. We are approaching insanity levels that rival Season 3 and it makes me deeply happy.
Everyone has gathered at Dorinda’s home in the Berkshires for some sort of holiday sleepover/dinner party. Is it also Dorinda’s birthday? I’m not really sure and that question is never really answered for me! The festivities begin at 3:40 in the afternoon. The first fight breaks out around 3:41 pm. Sure, William Shakespeare wrote The Comedy of Errors, but could he edit an hour of television as masterfully as The Real Housewives of New York producers?
The impetus for the fight is LuAnn’s ongoing joke about helping Bethenny invent the Skinnygirl margarita because she happened to be there when Bethenny ordered the drink one time. The suggestion being that Bethenny owes her multimillion dollar skinny food empire to her. That is annoying but also, nobody believes this to be true. People of relevance and sense don’t actually think LuAnn had anything to do with Bethenny’s success BUT WHEN YOU ATTACK BETHENNY’S BUSINESS, she’s completely unable to behave like a mentally balanced person.
As a result of Luann’s stupid comment, Bethenny refuses to disclose any details about her personal life which, woooo big punishment. It is then, my friends, that the fight truly begins. Carole, one of the sanest people to ever agree to be on a reality television show, arrives in the middle of it all and you can mark the moment where she considers bolting back home to her sexy vegan boyfriend.
Because this is a team sport, Bethenny and Luann briefly pause so that LuAnn and Ramona can get into it about Tom, LuAnn’s now-fiancé, who previously dated both Ramona and Sonja. I’m not sure where I fall on this issue mostly because I don’t care.
My guess is that Ramona did go on more than one date with Tom, but it probably wasn’t eight times. I don’t think Ramona cares about LuAnn dating him other than that bringing it up pushes LuAnn’s buttons. At the same time, Tom probably downplayed his relationship with Ramona and LuAnn likely wouldn’t have given a shit regardless because she is a woman on a mission.
We shift back to Bethenny and LuAnn because Bethenny overhears LuAnn joking about Bethenny getting the same haircut as her. This, while hilarious, is not LuAnn’s best move because it makes her look like 14 year-old queen bee who won’t let the other girls in her class wear pink because it’s totally her color. Also:
However, I can forgive this deeply lame move by LuAnn because she has had a wine glass glued to her hand for the entire episode.
This is when Bethenny loses her fucking mind. She claims that the issue she has with LuAnn is her hypocrisy. I get this—hypocrites suck!—and LuAnn definitely lies a lot, but Bethenny’s reaction to those lies is completely out of pocket. The entire world knows how LuAnn likes to get down and we love her for it! (Remember pirate Johnny Depp!?) LuAnn married that portly old Count, got a fat settlement after the divorce and has been out here living her best life with the exact same haircut ever since. HOW CAN YOU BE MAD AT THAT?
Bethenny’s attack also came across as slut-shamey and, in the words of the Countess, very uncool. The only person with an actual bone to pick with LuAnn is Carole because that issue is truly where the hypocrisy reigns. LuAnn loves the PYT’s and her unhinged attacks on Carole for dating a younger man were gross and bad but Bethenny doesn’t need to fight that fight.
Now, while not a fight, we must pause and appreciate this gold medal moment of self-involvement between LuAnn and Jules. Jules’s father is in the hospital with pneumonia and the poor girl is simply trying to call the doctors for an update. LuAnn does not give a single shiny fuck about Jules’s dying father and masterfully redirects the conversation back to her at every turn because HELLO, SOMEONE WAS JUST LIKE REALLY MEAN TO HER.
By the time we hit the money moment from the promos where Dorinda yell-slurs at everybody, it’s only 4:55 pm. Think about that.
The lead up to Dorinda’s blow-up begins with Ramona and LuAnn who have been in the kitchen kiki-ing about the afternoon’s events. I have to say, I love when LuAnn and Ramona are getting along because it means that either a) They are very drunk or b) Everyone else around them is acting like such lunatics that they’re all each other has left.
Dorinda again walks into a room and completely overacts to a fairly innocuous statement, this time about a birthday cake which was either homemade or bought by her mother, depending on the scene.
For the record, it is still not clear to me whether or not it’s Dorinda’s birthday.
What’s amazing about this episode is that under normal circumstances, everyone would probably just pack up their shit, pop a Xanax and head back to their own beds. But since they’re filming the show, they still have to go through the steps of celebrating Dorinda’s maybe birthday with a dinner party which means, after all that, they ended up filming for another few hours at least.
To keep things under control, LuAnn decides to text Carole an apology for calling her a pedophile, which is fair. As a result, we learn that Luann’s first instinct is to spell pedophile with the letter f.
She also texts Bethenny an apology for her miscommunication. Because Carole and Bethenny have not been guzzling wine since 3:30 pm, they do not take kindly to these texts.
OH MY GOD GUY’S WE’RE STILL NOT DONE.
Later, Bethenny overhears LuAnn continuing to talk shit about her another fight is clearly about to break out. But even Bravo has it limits and is unable to fit that much drama into a single episode. Mind you, at this point, it is just 7:30 pm.
I could spend the next week talking about this episode and it still wouldn’t be enough. Some other incredibly important things that happened:
- Bethenny telling LuAnn that she and Sonja are playing rehab and Grey Gardens
- Ramona wondering out loud if she does, in fact, love LuAnn
- Carole helpfully pointing out that a wallpapered closest is a sign of extreme wealth
- Jules not really doing anything other than offering some solid commentary and treating everyone like her children: “Let’s open gifts!” “Let’s swim in the indoor pool!”
- Sonja, who was not invited, getting her vagina lasered and justifiably worrying that the doctor has only been performing the procedure for three months
- Bethenny’s weird, borderline homophobic response to the idea of dating a woman
- The fact that John was nowhere to be found
Can this episode be topped? Should it be topped? Do we, mere mortals, even deserve television this entertaining???