It’s not uncommon for Shannon Storm’s Beador to get herself into trouble, but that definitely wasn’t the case this week on The Real Housewives of Orange County.
It’s been a rough season for Shannon so far. Her drunk driving arrest during the show’s break put her in the spotlight in a less than flattering way. Her three daughters are now all in college and have emptied their nest, except for Archie the dog.
Alexis Bellino is back on the show this season after getting together with Shannon’s ex, John Janssen, a few months earlier. And in last week’s episode, John announced that he was suing Shannon for $75,000.
Of course, all the other housewives were helpful and friendly, but – oh, wait, this is The Real Housewives – of course they were neither helpful nor friendly. That’s not what they do, is it?
So Shannon found herself in the crosshairs this week when Tamra Judge called her out for drinking and Alexis got on her knees to get the $75,000 that he said was a loan and Shannon said was a gift.
Things got ugly (or ugliest) at a dinner party that Gina Kirschenheiter threw at a restaurant, even though Shannon had brought her former housewife Vicki Gunvalson along as human emotional support.
It starts well. While other housewives order martinis of varying degrees, Shannon orders something non-alcoholic.
“Oh yes, an alcoholic shouldn’t drink,” Tamra says, interrupting all conversation in the room while the other women wait to see what happens next.
“She can drink alcohol, but she can’t drive!” Vicki replies, perhaps unhelpfully.
“Who made you the damn judge and jury?” Shannon asks Tamra. “Because let me tell you something: Every damn day I wake up, I think about what happened.”
“Is that after “Do you have anything to drink?” Tamra replies snippily, while everyone at the table’s jaws drop at the meanness of the moment.
We’ve written before about how The Real Housewives of Orange County, and really the entire franchise, has a nasty drinking problem. In Season 15, when then-Housewife Braunwyn Windham-Burke announced she was an alcoholic, the others continued to pressure her to join them for shots and cocktails and all the other booze that fuels all the show’s fights and drama.
Shannon hasn’t said she’s an alcoholic, only that she limits herself to two drinks at any given time and never when she’s driving. Tamra, who isn’t a doctor or addiction specialist to our knowledge, thinks she knows better.
“She had to go to rehab and that’s what she did,” says Vicki.
“She went to therapy to figure out why she was dating bad guys,” Tamra yells back. Alexis giggles at that, which is kind of funny since she’s now dating the guy who was so bad for Shannon that she needed therapy.
Shannon yells at Tamra to stop, which only provokes her to go even further and reveal to the other Housewives that John Janssen has sued Shannon for $75,000.
Now it’s Alexis’ turn to make Shannon’s life difficult by telling the others that she has “the receipts” and then showing them screenshots of John’s transfers to Shannon that Alexis happened to have on her phone.
“Unbelievable,” Shannon says, storming out of the private dining room. Well, she tries, at least. The room has a bookshelf as a secret door, and it takes her a few moments to find an escape route.
Gina’s dinner party is pretty much in a mess at this point, but Vicki decides to give the others a little speech about how they are all good Christians and should really be nicer to each other.
“That’s disgusting,” she concludes. “That’s not how we behave.”
Several of the other housewives are self-aware and know that they actually behave the same way.
“I mean, Vicki gives a speech about how we’re all disgusting? That’s crazy,” Heather Dubrow says to the camera.
“Please show flashbacks of how disgusting Vicki is now,” Emily Simpson asks the producers conducting her debriefing, and that’s exactly what they do, with a montage of Vicki yelling and cursing at this person and that person from seasons past.
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