Should Be Working

"I don't need those stinkin'' sex swings;. I have Steve Lodge" Right. You two use a sex teeter-totter. Which allows Steve to remain several feet away at all times and still get a thrill of his own.

Just curious. What is so special about his family that would compel Emily to put up with Shane's nonstop mistreatment? Great Sunday and holiday dinners? A large estate?

Medically speaking, this show appears to be lifeless, with no discernible energy, pulse, or cognitive function. Even the housewives appear to have been letting mortician trainees do their gaudy makeup. Time for Andy to do the world a favor and pull the plug, Watching the interactions between Shane and Emily at that dinner, it struck me that Emily, with all her purported intelligence and lawyer smarts, seems incapable of seeing her husband as he really is -- a smartass, malicious kid who doesn't really give a damn about her emotional pains and insecurities. In fact, he constantly uses them against her, happily plays the part of the indifferent, even hostile partner, gaslighting and belittling her, gleefully sabotaging her own efforts to lose weight. While obviously frustrated and bothered by this situation, Emily continues to treat him with respect owed only to a husband who respects her, as someone who still deserves her consideration when he shows her absolutely none. Unfortunately, it's all wishful thinking on her part because she can never change (nor will he) his core personality, which is quite toxic to her. She needs to clearly see him for the jerk he really is and will always be. And she deserves a lot better.

Good episode. Tracy’s patronizing and oh so self-satisfied tone was appropriate for getting Gilfoyle to step up. But it will quickly become annoying if it defines her character for the rest of the season.

Couldn't agree more. The dynamic between Emily and Gina is classic jilted/obsessed lover and disinterested bystander. Gina picks up on it and wants to get away even more. Emily of course is dealing with numerous issues (obesity, health, an emotionally and verbally hostile spouse, demanding children, etc.) and so is under a lot of pressure. But perhaps there is a pattern at work here in her strong attraction to emotionally distant partners and her total unwillingness to understand the negative impact of this tendency on her own physical and mental well being and address it constructively.

Finally watched this episode and came away with the stark realization that all of these housewives, with the possible exception of Gina, look old, tired, worn out, and extremely unhappy. While Shannon might have lost a bit of weight and had a few procedures done, her tight-lipped grimace, frequently worried eyes, and increasingly rigid personality make her look ten years older than she is. Taryn’s dark dull shifting eyes still belie the her continued scheming and machinations, but even she looks tired, lethargic, and checked out. Vicki continues her rapid decline into isolation, utter unattractiveness, and irrelevance even as she still casts scandals out of her witch’s satchel as needed to retain and exercise a small and pitiful vestige of her once unrivaled power. Emily has lost whatever real beauty she might have had in her premiere season and replaced it with a layer of adipose tissue and a constantly constipated expression that come from being married too long to a self centered and cold hearted little twerp of a man who will never love her, instead will do all he can to reject everything about her. She gamely continues to try and make her dead marriage work, but it doesn’t stand a chance with Shane so busy sabotaging it. Kelly is free of her marriage but captured by alcohol and other addictions, including plastic surgery, that fuel her chronic rage and sense of grievance and increasingly immobilize her badly swollen face. And finally there’s Gina, so unlikable last season, ever so very slowly coming to grips with the long denied fact that her marriage to a chronic cheat is over, that she is alone with the kids and her own bad life decisions. There is a bit of the survivor in her. And on occasion when she actually feels happy, she looks more youthful and healthy than any of her rapidly aging peers.

Vicky is still the malignant narcissist most of us have always detested. Absolutely no self-awareness of personal insight. Ever. The way she repeatedly and quickly cycled between sweet little girl and angry raging bitch with Tamra was textbook. But I was expecting laps 2 and 3. Her being on house detention with occasional appearances only makes it worse for her and the rest of them. It gives her long stretches to sit at home and stew about just how badly the world treats her. Then she charges manically into her rare scenes like an aging bull on steroids, ready to set things straight but simply confirming for everyone else that she's gone from self-obsessed bitch to full-on crazy. Engrossing viewing for abnormal psych majors perhaps. But the regulars simply respond by evading and hiding, leaving her to moan and bitch to herself (and Tamra, her increasingly cautious disciple). Expect things to get even worse as Season 14 progresses.

The Theranos swindle has fascinated me from the start. Read Bad Blood and viewed everything I could find about it on youtube and google. HBO's 2-hour documentary is a welcome, expertly developed and produced expose on Holmes and her fraud from the start, including previously unseen pep talks she gave to Theranos employees and revealing comments from their best teams about the terrible quality of their technology. During videotaped questions from federal investigators who are building the criminal case against her and Sonny, Elizabeth has repeatedly claimed not to remember exactly what she promised and what her team actually ever accomplished. But the video record is already large and compelling enough to establish she focused far more on attracting investor billions than she ever did trying to direct the development of a workable technology or giving a damn about her mistreated employees. It proves, that she repeatedly lied about product capabilities just to keep the money rolling in and perpetuating the fraud. Something is really off about her. Obviously some type of sociopathy and criminal mentality at work here. In addition to the video evidence against her, the fact that she also comes across as a deep voiced robot with a strange inhuman unblinking stare certainly won't help her if she ever testifies.

It looks like Vicki has been playing around with her tranquilizer dosage. What the hell does her tweet mean? That Kelly is out of a job because the Vickster said "I don't use cocaine" during the reunion? What exactly is Bravo working overtime on? Finding Kelly a good rehab clinic? Scoring Vicki some more Xanax?

It's probably reassuring for Casita to know that if her RHOC gig falls through, she can always get work as the "Rubber Faced Lady" at carnival sideshows.

OK, let's start with some random reaction shots of Gina Casita in response to Shannon from last night's part 3 reunion..................... A picture conveys a thousand words, and together with her actions it's clear that Gina Casita has hated Shannon's guts from the start, views her with utter contempt and resentment, and has been out to denegrate and destroy her from the very start of this season. But why? One, Tamra no doubt coached her on Shannon's hoity toity and self-absorbed ways before shooting even started (as she probably did with Meghan Edmonds). On a more Freudian level, perhaps Shannon reminds her of all those wealthier, well-educated women on Long Island who saw right through her low-rent, shit-stirring nature during her younger years and dismissed her accordingly and Shannon is payback. Third, she needed to hit the ground running during her first season, impress the hell Andy and the other producers right off the bat, show herself to be a very capable but younger Tamra version 2.0, ensure her place on the show. Her season-long obsessive focus (and that of the others) on Shannon's fragile mental health has been a non sequitur, a red herring. from the start. Sure, Shannon has always been a vulnerable lady prone to obsessive thinking and feeling sorry for herself, but her mental health issues absolutely pale by comparison to the shortcomings, dysfunctions, and transgressions of all of the other housewives (with perhaps the exception of Emily). Tamra's long and sordid history of intentional cruelty and duplicity. Vicki's raging malignant narcissism and her many shady antics with Brookes, culminating in the cancer scam. Kelly Dodd, while she's proven to be a relatively reliable friend, continues with manic episodes and outbursts that make a wild pinball game seem like a relaxing yoga session. Still, the constant topic this season (and the reunion show), to the nearly complete exclusion of nearly all else, has been Shannon's precarious mental health and outrageous selfishness. It's all very selective and calculated. And wrong. Near the end of the third reunion episode, Gina Casita, her arms flailing and eyes jumping out of their sockets, explodes at Shannon "You are an open book of bullshit!!" No, Gina, you, your fellow castmates, and the show's producers have been the real bullshitters. Shannon needs to climb out of this tank of vicious and relentless barracudas and get on with own her life in healthy, positive ways, far far away from the vicious RHOC cameras, producers, and cast.

I heartily endorse everything said here. And it's damn well written to boot.

Because she's so skilled and practiced at what she does (shit stirring, backstabbing, etc.) that no one else has the guts or fortitude to take her on directly. She's a relentless street fighter that you never want to cross, even when she's quoting the parables of Jesus or crying over Eddie's latest cardiogram. Perhaps if they joined together and all mobbed her when she was really down and vulnerable (like when she slipped and broke her foot in Mexico), they might stand a chance..On second thought, no, she'd simply come back at them all with a fury. They all know that beneath her mask of professional respectability... Lies this...

Just a sampling of the many odd faces of Gina...With the nonstop wild facial contortions and frequent use of her hands, she really does belong with Teresa and Caroline and the rest of the New Jersey mob show. Not sure why she's so obsessed with confronting Shannon (and providing us with these reaction shots in the process) when the other RHOC ho-wives have plenty of shortcomings (newbie Gina herself being near the very top of the list). Guess she's programmed to go after the most vulnerable grass-eater in the herd. Whatever the motivations, she's objectionable on countless levels. And needs to be gone.

I've been thinking the same thing. You can see it in the bleakness of his outlook and facial expression. Now he has to summon immense energy just to smile and make brief small talk for the cameras. Not too long ago, it was so easy for him to dismiss these chattering ladies with a smile and a silly grin when he knew he'd soon be hitting the nearby hills for a few hours of endurance yamming on his fancy racing bike, leaving the goddam OC completely behind. No more. Now he walks around a middle-aged invalid, with his speeding pulse and that jumping fish sensation arrhythmia in his chest constant reminders of his own fragile mortality. No wonder he sighed so deeply when Shannon started complaining that no one was fair to her on the drive over to the ho party. If she has any real clue of the hell he's going through, she sure doesn't convey it.