An Irish critic once wrote that Samuel Beckett’s absurd masterpiece Waiting for Godot was “a play in which nothing happens twice.”
Now it’s happening again, as the current season of “The Real Housewives of Orange County” hasn’t aired for seven episodes and there’s nothing more in sight.
Alexis Bellino is still mad at Shannon Storm’s Beador and vice versa. Tamra Judge and Shannon are still at odds over Shannon’s recent drinking history. Heather is still scaring Gina Kirschenheiter.
Jenn Pedranti is still kind of sweet and clueless and Emily Simpson is her saucy, funny self. Newcomer Katie Ginella tries to avoid criticism.
That’s it. That’s every episode of this season so far, and it’s…not good. Not good at all.
The climax of the episode is when Tamra and Shannon meet in the final scene to talk about the alcohol that Shannon occasionally drinks in her life after the drunk driving and which, in Tamra’s opinion, Shannon should swear off completely.
“I’m not going to scream,” Tamara Jenn says on the phone as she heads off to meet Shannon. “I’m going to start with… with my (unpronounceable). No, with my heart, my heart.”
She is sitting at the table when Shannon arrives nervously.
“I know this is probably difficult for you,” Tamara says in their first conversation since Tamra yelled in Shannon’s face about her drinking an episode or two ago.
“Wow, okay, after the way you spoke to me at dinner?” Shannon replies with a hint of anger that is hard to hide. “You just defamed me.”
Tamara denies having defamed her.
“You always say, ‘You’re drunk, you need to sober up,'” Shannon continues. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“So you don’t have a drinking problem?” Tamra replies.
“I have drunk alcohol, and I drank it to excess during certain dark periods of my life,” Shannon replies. “If I get to a point where alcohol becomes a problem for me, I will deal with it.”
Shannon reminds Tamra that she has seen Tamra drinking herself a time or two.
“Oh God, Shannon, have I ever driven my car into a house?” Tamra replies, referring to the circumstances of Shannon’s arrest in 2023.
Shannon gets up and leaves the table, leaving producers on site scrambling to try to control the damage, or at least make sure the cameras and microphones record the damage in real time.
“All she has done is hurt me and spread character-damaging lies about me,” Shannon says from behind the door of the restaurant restroom.
At the table, Tamra asks a producer where Shannon went and if she’s coming back. In the bathroom, he answers.
“Is she getting something to drink?” asks Tamra.
“I know what I did, and I don’t need Tamara Judge to be the person who decides my punishment,” Shannon says, still out of sight in the bathroom and unaware of the irony that she doesn’t want to be judged by a judge.
She returns to the table. They talk. Shannon tells Tamra about her ex-boyfriend John Janssen’s threat to sue her for $75,000. Tamra, who has just returned from a trip with Alexis Bellino, John’s current girlfriend, is understanding of Shannon’s feelings.
They hug each other and reconcile. At least for the moment.
Elsewhere in this week’s episode:
— The sleepovers from last week’s episode end. In La Quinta, Gina, Heather, Emily and Shannon wake up to fry sausages and drink juice from hollowed-out whole pineapples. In Big Bear, Tamra, Jenn, Alexis and Katie wake up to a trashed house. Guess which group went to the bar and partied late into the night?
— At the bar in Big Bear, Tamra tells the bartender that she’s setting up an OnlyFans account for Jenn and asks if he’d pay for it. He says no, but admiringly agrees that Jenn could make good money from it.
Back in Orange County, Jenn and her boyfriend Ryan go for pedicures together. She mentions that Tamra created her an OnlyFans page while she was traveling. “That’s not going to happen,” Ryan says.
“I should probably check if he has an account,” Jenn later says to the camera.
— Gina and Emily are playing pickleball after breakfast at La Quinta. They hit the ball about twice and then discuss what Gina said that made Emily feel the way she did.
“Everyone (beep) hates me,” Gina says, crying, throwing her pickleball racket onto the court and storming off.
Emily follows her and finds out why her best friend is so upset about the argument.
“I see what’s happening between Shannon and Tamra,” she cries.
“- that’s not us,” says Emily, laughing and crying a little herself. “They’re two disturbed weirdos.”
“They are so (squeaky)!” Gina replies, still crying.
“That’s them!” says Emily as she and Gina hug.
— Shannon and Heather, who had overheard Emily and Gina’s argument, show up next to play pickleball. It takes about two hits on the ball before Heather announces, “I’m not walking that far,” and they give up.
