“The Real Housewives of Orange County” picks up this week the day after the final episode, with most of the Housewives assessing the damage done the night before.
Katie Ginella has a hangover, and she’s not the only one.
Shannon Storm’s Beador is somewhere between shocked and angry after a tough exchange with Tamra Judge.
And Emily Simpson wonders if she was too harsh on Jenn Pedranti for living a lavish lifestyle despite being broke.
“If you owe a lot of people money, why are you wearing a Rolex?” she asks Heather Dubrow as the show flashes back to Emily’s face calling Jenn stupid for not selling the fancy watch to pay her bills. “Either hide it or sell it. That tells me you’re stupid.”
“OK, but don’t yell at anyone for being stupid,” Heather replies.
“I’ve had too many espresso martinis and probably shouldn’t be yelling across the table, ‘Pay your bills!'” says Emily.
Heather nods in agreement.
“Plus, the Rolex wasn’t working,” Emily continues as she and Heather shop for Easter baskets for their kids. “I asked her what time it was, and she said, ‘Oh, I don’t know, it’s not working.’ What the heck?”
Most of the episode takes place on the road this week, but not in the typical way that housewives travel on their girls’ getaways. Stress lines and broken alliances have divided our espresso-martini-sipping tribe this season, and it’s hard for everyone to be in the same room right now.
As all other crime freaks will remember, Shannon has been at loggerheads with Tamra and Alexis Bellino, and this week we see the wives split into two camps and head off to different destinations.
Gina Kirschenheiter invites Emily, Heather and Shannon to spend the night in the desert at the La Quinta home of former housewife Elizabeth Vargas, who has hired newly minted real estate agent Gina to sell her house for $8.9 million.
This is Gina, you’ll remember, who we watched a year ago struggling with easy questions on her real estate license mock exams. Gina, who said last season she could “definitely put together a really cute ensemble to go into fancy houses and sell them to people.”
Emily drives the gang in her husband Shane’s pickup truck, and they are not allowed to eat anything in the truck. Emily makes it to the driveway before unpacking a giant bag of Twizzlers.
When she picks the others up, Shannon has a crockpot full of chili to take to the desert. Heather has a mini Weber grill. On the way out of town, they stop by Jack In The Box and get these greasy, gooey, but delicious tacos.
This won’t end well for Shane and his truck, but Emily isn’t worried.
“Shane has high hopes that none of us will eat in his truck,” she says. “I’ll say, ‘OK, I’ll listen to you,’ and then I won’t listen to him. That’s how a marriage works.”
Elizabeth gives the quartet a tour of the mansion, including a koi pond so large it resembles a koi lake. Elizabeth says there are supposedly 500 koi living there, which is… koi-crazy!
Elizabeth leaves and Heather and Emily immediately set to work trashing her house. Heather apparently doesn’t know that when you shake a cocktail shaker, you have to hold both the top and bottom, otherwise it will fall apart and splatter alcohol all over the white kitchen.
“Emily will be shaking, not me,” Heather announces after scrubbing the carpet where her cocktails had fallen.
Emily starts shaking, immediately proving that philosopher George Santayana once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Splash! Another cocktail shaker explodes on the white marble floor as Gina grits her teeth and imagines her commission shrinking by the minute.
Outside on the patio, Shannon decides that she absolutely has to tell Emily how her best friend Gina badmouthed her a few days ago. Emily, who is usually the most cheerful and fun housewife, falls into a depression that Gina immediately notices.
The atmosphere at dinner is tense. Not only is Emily mad at Gina, but Heather also has a grudge against our girl, and as Heather becomes louder and more forceful in her complaints, Emily quickly gets over it. “I thought I was mad,” she says, laughing again.
If I had to pick a group to drive with, it would be Emily’s. At least they had snacks in Shane’s truck. Tamra only has Alexis in her truck, who talks incessantly about how much she and John, Shannon’s ex, are in love with each other.
“I feel like I’m getting to know John better than Alexis,” Katie says dryly into the camera, while Alexis continually praises his greatness.
“Does all this talking give you a headache?” Tamra finally asks her.
There’s still a lot of snow in Big Bear, so the gang rides down a hill in rafts. Alexis talks the whole time. Before they head out to dinner, Alexis calls Johnny J, and for the first time this season, we see and hear him on her FaceTime call.
“I just want to have fun,” Tamra tells the camera as Alexis’ cute talk becomes more and more awkward. “I don’t want to hear about John or Alexis and their sex life.”
“If I need to talk to my boyfriend, I will,” Alexis says in her own confessional. Then she defends the innocence of the call: “We have enough sex without needing phone sex, okay?”
At the end of dinner, Tamra makes a cryptic remark about going back to the house to put Jenn on OnlyFans. It turns out this isn’t a joke, but Tamra’s great idea to help Jenn make some money to pay her bills.
“I’ve heard from some of my friends on OnlyFans that people pay a lot of money for foot fetishes,” Tamra explains as she orders Katie to film Jenn’s foot as she presses it into a juicy apple pie.
Tamra licks Jenn’s foot clean and Katie has had enough.
“I almost feel sick,” she says into the camera.
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