Eliz

AMEN I have nothing against these guys or their commentary. But I have a very strong format preference, for this and any/all shows.

Question for the group: I've now read two recaps (here and vulture) that characterize the dinner convo as Ramona "admitting" she has "only" had sex with three men since her divorce. My interpretation of that scene as I watched it was that the ladies' reaction to her saying three was that they thought she was inflating that number, not that it's an embarassingly low number. My view is that their reaction is in line with their reactions to her weak attempts at dating over the last couple years -- e.g., she can't even talk to a guy she brings to a party as her date, she says she never gets past a first date, etc. What did you all think?

It's too bad Kate went home for it, because Hot Cross Bunny Churros is a very very clever and funny name. She had a good record on creativeness of her showstoppers -- I thought her prior girl guide gingerbread and especially the braided/plaited cornmaiden were both smart and unusual (and very well executed). If she isn't already running a baking business specializing in children's themes, she should be.

Here's my unpopular opinion: I haven't seen Naomie do or say a single thing to Craig that I thought was wrong. I was really sorry to see her apologize to him, because it validates his completely wrong view that being a supportive partner means never calling someone on his bullshit. Can we just take a step back and look at how big-picture crazy it is that Bravo used that Landon-Thomas sitting-on-the-bench conversation as the frame for the whole season? To start the first episode with that, as if the whole season is leading up to it? When actually their relationship was over before it began. It never really gelled into anything. Just as a matter of narrative structure, I don't get why the producers thought they needed to set it up like that. This season was sort of aimless. I think this show is running out of gas.

Craig seems not to understand the difference between a close relationship -- in which it is important to get to the root of problems -- and a causal friendship -- in which it is not important to hash everything out, but it's enough to just smooth things over. Craig is sort of dumb, exhibit 1,000.

Hey Adam and Danny-- Re: Candice's jewelry box and last time's mirror. All the contestants bring their own serving pieces every time for their plan-ahead items. In the past I have definitely thought that some of the showstopper ones have gotten crazy, much crazier than these ones from Candice.

Ha, sounds like the Apologizer family motto is really coming together.

My armchair psychologist viewpoint: Ramona is fundamentally messed up. She had an abusive childhood that she has never dealt with. She moved to the city and got some positive attention for her looks, which made her feel better about herself but really isn't a path to substantive feelings of self-worth. And then she married Mario and made a life. All the while, the pain and hurt that she never resolved was lurking underneath. When Mario left her, that blew the lid off everything. She wasn't just hurt by his betrayal; it also stripped away the veneer of "I'm okay, I'm okay, everything is okay, my life is great" that has been papering over her severe issues for decades. She's been in a major spiral ever since. I thought it was nakedly on display in this episode -- she can't keep her shit together. She doesn't even want to keep her shit together. She's been on tilt all season, careening around from one cackling extreme to another, looking for an outlet for her rage and despair. She's my number one housewife that I couldn't stand to be in a room with for 10 minutes (tied with OC Vicky -- I think they're really similar). I find her truly toxic. But I do also feel sorry for her. If she had ever gotten some therapy she might be a functioning human being right now instead of this mess.

You know who came out of this episode looking pretty great -- Carole. 1. She's friendly to Tinsley, and in talking about the building also reveals this whole part of her life as part of the community in her building that is separate from the show and sounds eccentric and interesting. 2. She backs up her friend when her friend tells her she has just been through something terrible and is leaving Dorinda's house. 3. Manages to communicate about leaving with Dorinda in a way that they both feel fine about (theirs is probably my favorite friendship among these ladies). 4. While in the middle of doing that, she doesn't take the bait *at all* when Ramona lashes out in total desperation and lies about Bethenny saying Carole is boring. 5. She engages in zero bullshit about everyone coming to the show the paintings of her -- no disinviting or maneuvering to try to get Ramona not to come. Just says, oh well, invitations went out a long time ago, people will do what they're going to do. 6. The scene with Tinsley and Adam's sexy salad is sort of derpy, but whatever, good for her for enjoying a cute boyfriend who takes pictures of dumb salads. Good on you, Radzi.

I mean wtf. There's a lot of high-level drama going on, but let's not lose sight of this one. Sonja's behavior is terrrrrrible. And then to say, "I know Tinsley's mother, and she raised Tinsley better than this." It's so snotty and condescending, even aside from being just, like, not factual, since Tinsley doesn't seem to have done one darn thing wrong.

LuAnn is sort of fascinating. I think she has been a hustler her whole life, scratching and clawing her way to financial security. When we met her at the beginning of this show, she was at her peak success. She then suffered a huge humiliation in a very public way, and she never let anyone see it break her. After biding her time, she met Tom and saw an opportunity to regain the sort of life she wants, so she made it happen. In my opinion, the only thing that has rung false about any of it is her big put-on last season about the fairy-tale romance. Remember how weird it was when she would wax rhapsodic about how IN LOVE they were? That was a total charade. This is a transactional relationship between two people who both want that. Really, it's her best defense against all the "concern" her "friends" are laying on her; she just can't come right out and say it -- although in this episode she came pretty dang close to just saying it. Her ability to repress all bad feelings so that she always looks strong and in control doesn't necessarily make for a mentally healthy person, but I do respect it in a way.

This is ultimately where I came out too. There was zero evidence that Sister Cathy had done anything to confront Maskell. In fact, she left the school entirely, which seems completely the opposite of what you would do if you wanted to protect the girls there. I keep going back to the quote from one of the other women who was in nun-training (I don't mean to be disrespectful, but I don't know the correct terminology) with Cathy and Russell, and she said they were both "very compliant nuns." I think it's entirely possible that even if Sister Cathy had some idea of what was happening, and even if she said comforting and sympathetic things to some of Maskell's victims, she didn't actually do anything about it. The same level of unquestioning obedience to priests that primed the girls to be victims would also have been operating in a nun who bought into that system enough to devote her life to it. I think the series does incredible work in documenting the sex abuse and the church's cover-up. I think it is actually not very good at all as an investigation of the murder. Throughout, it doesn't construct any coherent narrative about who killed Sister Cathy. Its position certainly seems to be that she was killed by Maskell or someone acting with him, but it spends an entire episode digressing on two unrelated randoms, and up to the very end, it comes down pretty heavy on Koob as a possible suspect, which wouldn't fit at all with the Maskell theory. The more weight it gives any of those theories, it actually ends up undercutting the connection to Maskell. It all comes down to two women, really. Sister Russell, who might have been able to shed some light on what, if anything, Cathy had done about Maskell, but did not. (And honestly, shame on her for going to her grave without telling someone what she knew.) And Jean, if she recovers further memories that link Maskell to Sister Cathy.

Boy, I do not understand the point of this episode. If the main premise of the documentary is to make the case that Sister Cathy's murder was part of a cover-up for the sex crimes at Keough, then everything they have to say about these two other random guys undercuts that. And one of these stories -- I think my uncle killed her and carried her out in a rug -- doesn't match up AT ALL with any of the facts of her murder. Of all the things that are unknown about the night she died, there's no suggestion by anyone ever that she was murdered in her apartment. My own opinion is that the show does not do a very good job connecting the sex crimes to the nun's murder. But just as a matter of internal consistency, I don't get at all why it goes on this episode-long diversion into these two other stories. The main impression it made on me was, wow, maybe amateur sleuths -- however appealing they are -- shouldn't be investigating this if they are not capable of sorting through and discarding these wild goose chases.

As long as we're armchair diagnosing, I'd go 100% narcissistic personality disorder. That lunch scene was quite a display. I hope to all that is holy that is the last time Jennifer agrees to aid and abet that shitshow. It's one thing to be a Bravo reality show Friend Of when you just show up and stage a couple fun conversations with your gal pal and tag along to parties where you take a backseat while the cast screams at each other. But when you have Real Shit happening in your life, it is completely nuts to show up for no other purpose than to be abused on camera. This was an interesting episode -- no event to get them all together in one place. I liked it. I think Shep is over this show. I found him utterly delightful in the first season, largely because he found himself so delightful. I think his shambolic lifestyle has become less charming to him as the show has held it up in front of his face. One thing I really do like about him is that he really doesn't like to fight with his friends. He could barely summon any words or outrage to display when he was supposed to reprimand Austen for breaking bro code.

She didn't make a big splash, but can we just note what a big get Candace Bushnell is as a Friend Of. The morally corrupt Faye Resnick will always hold a special place in my heart, but Candace is major. I sort of can't believe it took this many seasons for her to roll up. Would definitely read a behind-the-scenes on how she and Andy (or whoever) decided now is the time. Hope she's around a bit more this season.

Yep, I suspect that the show is not doing her any favors in that regard -- they don't want to show any substantive convos about politics, so they just pull out the snippets where Carole meta-comments about it. I mean, at a dinner party the weekend before the election (especially with people at the table with personal connections to both Hillary and Trump!), it would have been non-stop political discussion. But the show is only showing Carole talking about it, as if she has some special obsession. I admit I'm seeing all these interactions through my own lens, which is that Ramona has always been a person I could not tolerate being in a room with for 10 minutes under even normal circumstances, much less during election time. She's the walking, talking embodiment of an ignorant facebook comment thread. Carole is actually the stand-in for an awful lot of viewers in the election situation, I think, so it will be interesting to see how the show frames her next week and following the election.

This might be the final straw. I've never purchased a tv show on any physical format, but I've had dvds of the first few seasons of ER sitting in my amazon cart for a few weeks now. I keep thinking they will stream somewhere (the arc is long, but it bends toward ER streaming, right?????), but a girl can only wait so long.

That seems right to me, and it's sort of messing with the season, I think. It's always been sort of a cardinal rule on all the Housewives show that the only reality in the universe of the show is whatever happens on camera. Which, that kind of has to be the rule if the show is going to make any sense. But in New York now, there seem to be several fights happening that are about off-camera things, but the show is trying to frame them as being about an on-camera thing, so it seems like everyone is being crazy. The biggest example seems to be Dorinda being so furious at Sonja about whatever Sonja has been saying outside the show, and then Sonja sits in her interviews and says that all the bad feelings still stem from her not being invited to the Berkshires last season. And almost everything that Bethenny says and does is missing the context of the drama with her ex, so, for example, Ramona needling her with fake-concern questions about Bryn are especially loaded and Bethenny can't really respond fully because she can't talk about it. Anyway, as a viewer who doesn't read any of the housewives gossip sites and only knows about any of it through comments people make in the comments here, it seems like the show is struggling right now to make sense dealing with lots of off-screen drama. It's not good tv if we don't see the actual things that make them fight -- or if the only way the drama can be laid out is a series of scenes of Dorinda putting on reading glasses and passing around her phone to show quotes of what Sonja has said on social media. I love Dorinda's selection of glasses, though.

I don't think LuAnn was being nice at all. She wasn't, like, gently pointing out to Ramona what Bethenny's point of view might be; she was taking the opportunity to join in and say, "oh, I don't think she likes her porno past being talked about." It was a chance to mention the "porno past" again, and get in her own dig once she saw that Ramona had succeeded in needling Bethenny. I think Bethenny described it perfectly in her talking head -- Ramona felt she had something on Bethenny, and she literally could not wait a second to try to embarrass B with it, and trying to do that by wrapping it up in a question about Bryn was pretty gross. Doing it that way (which I don't think for a second was Ramona's own idea) set Ramona up to be able to frame it in the aftermath as "just asking a question about her life." I think that Bethenny recognized Ramona's game instantly for what it was, and she was furious about that, not actually embarrassed by the subject of the movie -- which she clearly had already strategized how she was going to talk about it on the show.

If that last scene is in the future, then I guess one thing we know is that Matt's Book of Kevin didn't find a place as an established text. The music in this show is always good, both the song choices and original score. But man, the trombone part (french horn? no, I think trombone) taking us into the end credits of this episode is next level.

I am also an attorney, and we'll have to agree to disagree. One of the things that everyone seems to love about that ending is that all the women came together to protect Celeste. Well, why act like there's anything shameful in that. I think that one of the themes of the show is that secrecy causes pain and problems -- so the idea that this big unnecessary secret is a good thing seems to undercut that central idea.

You weren't responding to me here, but I did say way upthread that I think having Perry turn out to also be Jane's rapist was a bit of a cop out by the show, so I'm going to barge back into the discussion here. I absolutely agree that Perry abusing his wife and also attacking other women is realistic and makes perfect sense. Of course he did. And your point about it can be any man is also a good one. My issue is that in the world that the show creates, all the sexual violence comes from one man, and it all disappears when that one man is gone. The reality is that there are lots of groups of friends like Maddie, Celeste, and Jane, in which more than one of them has been the victim of violence. But it's not because there's one real bad guy out there. It's because we live in a society where that kind of violence is really common, perpetrated by many, many men. For the show to create a situation where it's all one guy doing the bad stuff lessens the overall threat. But, I get that it makes a good story, and the goal of the show is to tell a good story, not lecture anybody about the reality of society's ingrained misogyny, so fine. But that's what I meant about it being a cop out as to the reality of sexual violence.

They were both doing a version of this Audrey costume, each according to the resources (financial and physical) they had to work with. Super clever costuming to have them match but not match. Although I have to say, Renata's My Fair Lady Ascot opening day outfit is by far the best costume, in terms of matching the character. It is trying so hard, and spending so much money -- perfect. Madeline's look is like a Draper James instagram post.

Huge agree to all of this. That series of scenes -- Jane talks to Ziggy, Jane talks to Celeste, Celeste talks to Max -- was incredible, each in its own way. The Jane and Celeste conversation was amazing. Especially Celeste's face as she finally has to confront the fact that she has been denying to her therapist and herself all along.

I really loved this show. So well acted. My one gripe is that for a story that wants to say something about sexual violence, it seems like a weird message that all of it here comes from one guy. It's been nagging at me all week -- ever since last week's episode, it seemed pretty clear that Perry was Jane's attacker and was going to be the one to die (just because the last episode would have to be all the party scene, so there was no story time left for Jane to find some new character). Which -- his death is great, I'm all for it, but the fact that it also resolves Jane's story is way too tidy. For a story that seems to want to make a point about the reality and ubiquity of sexual violence, it's almost like a cop out to have only one man be responsible. I haven't read Big Little Lies, but I did read one of Liane Moriarty's earlier novels, which also had a domestic violence storyline sort of lurking in the background, and it is also sort of too-neatly handled. Maybe if she has a third novel that addresses the same theme, she'll complicate it enough to my liking? I don't know. And not to lawyer it too much, but I don't think they had to cover up what Bonnie did. I think shoving Perry off Celeste when he was in the middle of a vicious attack was probably a perfectly justifiable use of force to defend Celeste, even if it did happen to be at the top of some stairs. That all sounds complainy. But I loved it all so much. Nicole and Reese and Laura are treasures. (If you haven't seen Laura Dern's house, btw, enjoy -- http://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/laura-derns-rustic-los-angeles-home-is-a-film-buffs-dream)