Steph J

Gordon: I told you that you could seek outside relationships as long as you kept to certain rules and you broke all of them. Mia: If I had your blessing, than what's the problem? Girl, what? Follow the conversation.

Ashley, you've got a husband who (allegedly) sexually assaulted a member of the production team and a friend who showed up at your place of work and started a physical altercation with your co-worker. While a person can't be held responsible for someone else's behavior, at a certain point you are the company that you keep. And you can drop this "I wasn't thinking of Candiace when I invited Deborah" business because no one's buying it.

Don't underestimate the number of lapsed viewers who came back now that Rinna is gone. I gave up on the show a couple of seasons ago because I found her toxic to the point of being unwatchable (I would typically tune in for an episode mid-season to see if it had gotten any better and it never had) and I don't think I'm alone in that. This was the first full season I've watched in years. I know there was a lot of chatter online about Kyle and Morgan, but it never seemed to reach "Scandoval" levels of heat where even places that wouldn't normally feature articles about the show were devoting space to it.

Kyle needs to go. No cast member should be allowed to dictate the direction the way that she does, or decide to adopt a "rules for thee, but not for me" attitude like she has. It's fine if you want to keep your personal life private if you aren't on a reality show about your life, but if you are then that's the job. She's not doing her job.

How many times do you have to ask someone if you're boring them before it clicks that you are, in fact, boring? As well, Dorit, do you really want to take a deep dive into why people have questions about what genuinely seems to be an insurance scam that PK is running? This is how you're going to end up being the next Housewife sent to prison.

Dorit's a moron. Annemarie's a dud. Kyle's a mirage - even when it appears that she's giving something, it's so carefully curated that it's ultimately nothing. Unless we're going to spend an hour on Sutton's horse next week, I see no reason for two more hours of reunion time.

Karen should've turned it around on her and said "Just Ray and Juan."

What Michael meant was that he has nobody that matters without him and Carly.

I do not understand this house situation at all. Him buying her a house, I could understand, as that could be accomplished relatively quickly and then everything is done and settled. Him building her a brand new house just drags this all out longer. It makes me suspicious that Lenny is planning one of two things: 1. He's going to delay the construction process or renege completely so that Lisa is forced to go to court to enforce that outstanding part of their settlement, getting drained financially in the process since she'd be paying legal costs and the costs of renting a place in the interim (assuming Jody isn't footing the bills). 2. He's going to build her a house that she isn't going to be able to afford to maintain so that he can have the pleasure of watching her fail and have to sell it.

Has a housewife ever shredded an audience's sympathy faster than Lisa? Yeah, Lenny's an ahole, but that marriage is starting to look like a case of similarities attracting.

Kyle's hobbies are (1) working out, (2) Morgan Wade, and (3) using the show to unbalance the scales of power in her personal relationships by throwing someone close to her under the bus and making herself look like a victim. Complaining about Mauricio is her fulfilling interest this year. She's spent a lot of time constructing this narrative.

This made me laugh out loud. I'm now reimagining O Magazine covers with Carly in Oprah's place.

Lisa is dumb. That's it. That's the explanation.

"Crystal's at AnneMarie's mercy." ... Really, Kyle? Because it looked like AnneMarie was just standing there doing as little as everyone else and had no answer for what might be wrong with Crystal. This doesn't look like a "gotcha" at all.

Child Bride??? Just keep digging your grave one microaggression at a time, Dorit. I wish I could be that right about something when I'm drunk. "She has nothing to talk about except for me" says the woman who has had nothing to talk about other than Sutton's esophagus until episode 13. Okey doke, 8.5.

"I'm sorry you're so stupid" is probably the closest a Carly would ever get to an apology.

This "Burn Book" business is just embarrassing. Anytime a HW brings props, it's embarrassing. I wish they had dealt with all the Monica stuff in the first two reunion episodes and then dismissed her so that there could have been a third episode without all the screaming.

How could Ned have done that, though? A proxy, by its nature, is something that can only be exercised at the discretion of the person giving it and can always be revoked - which is why this was such a dumb thing for Ned to agree to in the first place. It was a "deal" that gave him nothing except the opportunity to be Charlie Brown to Michael's Lucy.

Mary says that she's never said anything mean about Lisa and no one checks her on that when the season started with Lisa reading mean texts that Mary sent her? "You remind me of a witch"? Hello? I hope this reunion is the last we see of Mary.

He really does seem enamored with her. Admittedly I sometimes zone out during reunions, but I can't recall another reunion where he did so much handholding with a HW.

I don't know what Grace is thinking saying that Giselle could take a deer. They might look cute, but you wouldn't want to mess with one. If they feel threatened they're either coming at you antlers first, if they have them, or hooves first and you ain't winning unless you have a fire arm. That said, Grace's assertion still wasn't as ridiculous as Juan's story about the woman and the hotel continues to be. I know that he and Robyn are committed to sticking with this story, but at this point just say "I don't want to talk about it anymore" instead of repeating this ridiculous tale of a random act of chivalry.

She was having an affair with Damian Smith. BJ's death didn't bring her and Tony back together, though, as the break up happened concurrently with her death. Because Tony couldn't catch a break, he found out about the affair the day of BJ's death when he caught Bobbie and Damian making out in a stairwell at the hospital. This happened just minutes before they found out about the accident. It might have been the anniversary of BJ's death that brought them back together, as I recall that they were separated for quite some time following a nasty divorce battle. I remember watching it and thinking that despite the fact that Tony was the injured party, he was being a real bastard to Bobbie.

I don't think it's just a budget issue or even necessarily an issue of today's writers not knowing how to write, as there are people writing soaps today who were writing in the 1990s and were very good at it (Michele Val Jean comes to mind, as one example). I think network interference and skittishness about doing anything daring or potentially controversial has essentially kneecapped daytime writing teams. That's why we see so many pregnancy storylines - because it's "safe" and guaranteed to get network approval.

Juan's "doing laundry" and his Facetime isn't working? Hmmm...

This was lame. How do you do a special about the history of General Hospital and not show clips from the Ice Princess story, Stone's death, BJ's death, Sonny and Brenda's epic first break up, the Jeff/Monica/Rick/Lesley story, or any clips of Audrey? How do you reference Alan and Lucy's wedding, but not show a clip from it? How do you leave all that out but make time for Donna Mills (don't care), Morgan Fairchild (don't care), and Stephen A. Smith (really don't care)?