Here’s a mystery for you: why, in the middle of all the Real Housewives Of Orange County‘s scenes about scheming and ball removal was there a lovely bucolic montage of the ladies celebrating Easter? Is it because, as Tamra Judge, waxed insanely, they’re all “sisters in Christ.” Yeah, keep telling yourself that, sister.
Anyway, Lydia McLaughlin owns a boat and therefore she will throw a party for her husband’s balls on said boat. Cause “balls voyage” – get it?! Where in sam hell did little miss prissy bible arise at that one?
Before getting on the official party boat, Lydia and Doug, all decked out in their finery, take a cruise around the harbor with a hot skipper. Unlike Gilligan’s Island no one got lost on a three-hour tour, but if they had, they could’ve build a life raft out of Tamra’s earrings and used Meghan Edmonds‘ earrings to phone home!
Because Lydia and Meghan were kinda friends, and have now had kinda drama and someone – was it Shannon Beador?! Was it Meghan herself?! – didn’t invite Lydia to last week’s farm to drama dinner, Meghan obviously arrives first to this lovely yacht. This lovely yacht all festooned with cheese platters and mauve colored velvet setees like a Golden Girls dream vacation. The one where Blanche meets a wealthy suitor – and isn’t his yacht divine?! As Meghan and Lydia are ALONE, all cooped up with the fruit tray, a confrontation will inevitably have to happen. Apparently Meghan should’ve invited Lydia to someone else’s party; someone Lydia doesn’t even like, wants to avoid, and just had a fight with at a different person’s party. Ostensibly they made up, which is why Lydia is hurt and why Shannon will be at the balls party. Yes, makes sense! Well it does in Housewives land because Lydia doesn’t want to find herself Vicktimized with ‘The Vicki Treatment.’
While Jimmy Dad Jeans is forced to tersely non-reassure Doug that his the ballies will never be the same, when all Jimmy wants to do is scarf cheese, Lydia heaps all her hurt feelings onto Meghan. Nevermind that it was Shannon’s affair. Meghan blames her hormones for making her thoughtless. I’m going to need a running tally of all the evil things Meghan’s hormones have done for humanity in the Greater Newport Beach area. I mean, they’ve accused people of having super-secret boyfriends, they’ve screamed at their friends in the reverie of nature, they’ve lied about their actions, they’ve defended the prolific use of nanny to excuse their wont to party, they’ve become a model. These are some super hormones!
Maybe I’m jaded because twice I’ve had a baby and neither time did my hormones achieve such amazing fetes! But I never lost the baby weight so quickly either. It’s like Peggy Sulahian – three times she pushed and three times Diko failed to deliver upon her a “push present.” How’d we end up screwed?! I’m blaming Tamra.
Anyway, after Meghan and Lydia iron out their differences, the others arrive and everyone is in a festive mood because Vicki Gunvalson is still at home cradling her medical records and nursing her Influenza B. And, in case you were doubting her, she went to see Brooks Ayers’ medical records forger made a trusty highlighter attest to her illness, but this time Vicki was smart enough to avoid run-on sentences and she display the proof to to Kelly Dodd mid-colonic. More on that shit later (ha-ha see what I did there? Ugh).
Back to the balls portion of the evening! As they’re circling the harbor? bay? They’re also playing ring around Lydia’s hurt feelings by each woman pretending she’s the one who didn’t invite her to the dinner? Was it Shannon? Nooooo, silly rabbit – it was Peggy! Oops! Think again, it was Kelly! Ahahaha – nope it was Meghan. I’ll tell you who wasn’t copping any responsibility for it: Tamra. Instead she’s setting her sights on Peggy, getting her alone on the banquette while she is crouched between two enemies: a python-bag and Diko Tamra, herself. Tamra apologizes for not defending Peggy last week while all the other women were working her over about whether or not she had cancer. I’m in Switzerland here – don’t care, don’t want to, and unlike David I would never demand an explanation about someone’s wife’s cancer over cheap-ish beer on a borrowed boat. I’d save that inquest for P.Diddy’s yacht during a party thrown by Sonja Morgan.
Peggy is afraid of snakes. SO afraid she wouldn’t touch Kelly’s bag to hand it back to Kelly. Yet Peggy was seated next to Tamra, and, Tamra, well she’s the ultimate snake! It is literally hilarious how slithery an operator Tamra is. Like when Tamra actually claims to know what it’s like to be ganged-up upon, and we’re reminded of the one time RHOC did the decent thing in giving Tamra a taste of her own medicine in Bali, yet we weren’t reminded of the countless – and I mean COUNTLESS – times Tamra has persecuted others. Alexis Bellino? Gretchen Rossi? Jeana Keough? I could go on, but Tamra is a changed woman since finding Jesus.
Peggy smartly leaps up and away from the offending snake, which unfortunately she thinks is Kelly’s purse. Tamra is as transparent as a ziplock bag – we all know she’s suddenly loving Peggy in an attempt to further isolate Vicki. Ugh – Tamra go pray harder!
Finally Lydia makes a toast to Doug’s beautiful balls, soon to be sullied and in need of “scrotox,” and it’s all over but the crying. Or the hyperventilating, rather.
The next morning it’s V-Day. Lydia, dressed like she’s heading for the club, takes Doug to the doctor where she prays over his junk and believes her prayer will keep Doug’s “huevos’ are safe from any slip-ups. In the lobby while waiting for Doug, she has to put her head between her knees to keep from fainting and not even a FaceTime with Judy, Princess Sparkle Thoughts can calm her down. [EYE ROLL].
OK, some Vicktim-level TMI here: my husband got a vasectomy and no, his balls were not removed! Actually the whole thing took 15 minutes, I did not drive him, he came home, laid in bed with some ice bags and watched TV for two days. I think it was the best two days of his adult life – certainly the most relaxing he’s had since we’ve had children. What I’m trying to say is IT IS NO BIG DEAL. I was not having a panic attack in the waiting room lobby, but I was feeling mighty annoyed that he got to lie around because after you have a baby there’s none of that! What I’m saying is that life isn’t fair, Lydia, get over it.
Also sometimes the shit gets impacted and the toxins drained in a forceful way. Which is why Kelly and Vicki meet for colonic, and amid the many, many MANY icky things I’ve heard on this show, learning about Vicki’s constipation ranks the worst. It comes as no surprise that Vicki is filled with shit. “Filled to the brim” she reveals, and as the colonic is working its magic, Vicki dissolves into tears about how she’s so tired of the shit of her own making. As Vick felt around for her now-soft and squishy colon, she acknowledged she’d gone down a dark road when she followed the trail marked “Brooks Canyon” and now she just wants her friends and her status as OG of The OC back. Vicki’s wistful melancholy at least seemed genuine. I think she does miss when life was silly and people weren’t probing through her every nuance to figure out when, why, and how she lied. Like Vicki said, she just wants to be loved and to be loved means casseroles. Which may also be why she’s so constipated, cause Holy Cheese, Tamra!
On the other side of the water, we meet Shannon’s mommy. Mama Shannon is all words of wisdom and simple platitudes, quite the opposite of Shannon’s shrieking and crystal ruminology. Obviously things aren’t going well with David, and Shannon is glad she can blame his distance on how fat she’s become since Vicki stuffed cheesy casseroles down her throat.
Shannon’s mom, (was her name Pat?) also dealt with infidelity from Shannon’s dad. They finally they divorced when Shannon was in college, because Shannon explains that in her mom’s generation people stayed married for the kids. Shannon doesn’t appear to recognize that this is precisely what’s happening in her own marriage. After Shannon cried over her weight and David, her mom strongly encouraged her to see a real Doctor – not Dr. Tim – for a real check-up, and then get her head thoroughly examined. Then they all sat down to what I think was the best Easter dinner saw – taco buffet on the patio under the sunset. Everyone was happy except David. These two ruin everything!
David apparently didn’t approve of the casual “taco cart” Easter supper, and he also doesn’t approve of Shannon growing up with a silver spoon. Well, he married the high maintenance diva! Shannon was telling an anecdote about being in high school and crashing into her family’s personal gas pump when David started picking on her. Obviously Shannon got defensive. Also, David didn’t acknowledge that his daughters are growing up with that same silver spoon – one which Shannon has loaded up with organic, gluten-free vitamins, and it’s a bitter pill they swallow.
David’s jabs turned everyone off their tacos and maybe that was his plan – like revenge diet. It was uncomfortable in front of their daughters and Shannon’s mom, but these two never keep their personal problems appropriately under wraps. Marriage should be a covered casserole dish – please do not whip off the aluminum foil and plop it down on the dinner table while everyone else is enjoying tacos!
I know what Shannon’s thinking – how can this be the same man who fished a broken colonic tube out of my butt?! This marriage should be doomed, but we know it’s probably only headed for another affair and more of Shannon’s excuses, defenses, and justifications … oh my!
At Peggy’s she informs us that Armenians invented Easter and Christianity so now she will make a special serpent-shaped cookies. I don’t have the energy to Google this. After plopping the cookies into the oven, Peggy is suddenly lit with a fire from within over David rudely questioning Diko about her cancer during the Balls Voyage party. I agree! Totally uncalled for, and David’s shifty eyes should focus on his own shit – which stinks!
At CUT Fitness, Lydia and Tamra, “sisters in Christ” work out. Tamra has been experiencing pain and redness in her wrists and blames Vicki for her mysterious health issue. Vicki really is powerful, isn’t she? She’s made Shannon fat, Meghan crazy, and now Tamra has carpal tunnel. Perhaps Vicki really is Satan. And speak of the devil, while Tamra is sniffing, the phone rights and it’s… VICKI!
After admitting that inviting Ricky (and Gretchen) to her party was “a mistake” (You think?!), Steve told Vicki it was time to shit or get off the pot: either honestly attempt to fix things with Tamra, or let it go and accept that the friendship is dead. Obviously Vicki has a reality television career to protect, so she gives Tamra another call to again suggest they get coffee, alone.
Rationally Vicki seems to accept that their best hope is to figure out how to be civil to each other because they have so many ‘friends’ in common, and that is the most disingenuous thing about this show and the total disconnect at which RHOC has found itself. In the real world, Tamra and Vicki would have been over, yet this season is rehashing two season’s ago – or is it three?- drama and trying, once again, to patch this fallen fake-friendship of TamIcki.
Well, Vicki called, and while My Little Lydia watched on mouth agape and eyes wider than Doug’s beautiful balls, Tamra agreed to meet for coffee. We end on that cliffhanger. Cause oooh drama!
The worst is, the way these two are acting up in blogs and on twitter, we know whatever resolution occurred fell apart again before the season ended so we’ll likely be treated to this same reheated casserole of a storyline next season. Listen Bravo: tater tots lose their crunch! They get soggy and gluey and stop tasting like the fake potato they are supposed to be imitating, then everyone else throws those left-overs out. Let’s do that. Either give Tamra a gym spinoff, which is probably what she’s hoping for with her ardent ‘I hate Vicki‘ resilience, or do the show with the two of them barely speaking and develop their relationships with the other women instead. Whatever the case, hand this show a colonic tube and get things moving!
Also, why do I just sense that we’ll be fighting over who didn’t invite Lydia to dinner for the remainder of the season?
TELL US – SHOULD LYDIA CARE WHO DIDN’T INVITE HER TO DINNER? SHOULD VICKI AND TAMRA TRY TO PATCH THINGS UP?
[Photo Credits: Bravo]
