Nancybeth

THIS. I suspect none of these women could describe the plot of "The Great Gatsby." It came up a few months ago on another reality show (Below Deck, maybe?) and I got so worked up. Just call it a Roaring 20s or a Jazz Age party!!

I seem to recall Kate saying that laundry was one of the best assignments you could get as a stew -- you get to hid out from guest demands and not have to do other tasks. She was making fun of someone (maybe Jen, last season) who complained about doing laundry.

"Clueless" was a movie about high school!! Are Leeanne and Kam too dumb to realize that? Their costumes made no sense. You're right, Baltimore Betty, they should have dressed as Elle Woods! Well, Kam should have...Leeanne should get her own costume. That whole scene with her showing up at Kameron's and Kam asking her to help wash her hair and then Leeanne deciding to go out and get the same costume was weird and staged. At this point Cary and Stephanie are the only ones I can really stand to watch.

Except we saw footage of Captain Lee radioing the crew that he was going out to scout anchorages and would be back in an hour or so. So I think he was on the boat the night before, just probably sleeping. The thing is, if you give two weeks notice, that means you are leaving in two weeks. You expect someone to WORK for those two weeks. The "two day" notice thing was strange but Kate assumed that meant Caroline was planning to WORK, not lay around in bed. Once it became clear that she wasn't, they had every right to tell her to leave the boat. I think Kate's mistake came in the somewhat childish way she did it, but I also think she was out of f*cks to give regarding Caroline. My suspicion is that two days was the soonest Caroline or production could arrange for her to leave and she thought she could just hang out till then. The whole thing was weird.

I just saw that commercial and the girl looked SO familiar but I couldn't place her...thanks!!

Also, wouldn't you have to buy THREE dresses to get all the combinations she showed off? There was a black base dress, a white base dress and a red base dress, and then the same attachments in all three colors. Let's say the base dress comes with the accessories (sleeves, straps, ruffles) in the same color. Unless the accessories in the other colors are sold separately, you'd still only have a solid black look, no matter how much shit you put on and take off. But she was showing, like, the black dress with white sleeves. It reminded me of Multiples clothing from the '80s!

I was expecting Larissa to be totally unimpressed/pissed about the Brazilian steakhouse and complain but she actually seemed pretty content with the whole experience. Color me surprised. But listening to her talk every week is becoming increasingly annoying. Her command of English is good, but I don't understand the habit of attaching -ee to the end of so many words -- and not at all consistently. Sometimes she get's Colt right, sometimes it's Colt-ee. Even in the same sentence, she doesn't always put -ee on the same consonant sounds. Is Asuelu the new Benjamin Button? Is he aging in reverse. I'm scared by the end he's going to look and act younger than Oliver. The way Kalani treats him doesn't help. And if you want your brother to secretly observe the way Aseulu acts with your son, and be there just in case something goes wrong -- maybe you shouldn't tell him!

Brandi's makeup is so, so terrible. As a lover of "Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team," I can only IMAGINE what Kelli Finglass would have to say about it. She looks muddy and jaundiced. She needs to stop spray tanning and dial down the bronzer, especially on her face and neck. I think that like many natural redheads, her skin tone is pale and she's way overcompensating. She looks better here in her cameos, especially the first year: Also, she for sure got a nose job between her second and third photo, right?? That being said, Kameron could use a little more color and contrast between her hair and her skin.

I think maybe she's lost a little weight since filming, and maybe it's more noticeable now?? I actually think she and her ex's arrangement is smart -- provided they stop sleeping together. He's in L.A. during the week anyway, and instead of either having to cart the kids all the way up to him, or have him get another apartment in the OC for the weekends, she has somewhere she can go when he's in town so that the kids have stability. But it also gets them use to the fact that Mommy and Daddy don't live together anymore.

I think if Lea had done more to shut down the conversation in the car the fight wouldn't have gone nearly as far as it did. Jeff listens to and respects Lea and she was, especially when the discussion started going on the rails, really feeding into Jeff's reaction. He wouldn't listen to Megan or Tyler trying to intervene, but if Lea had spoken up and encouraged them to take it offline, or take a time out or even told Jeff that he was being very mean to Jenni, it maybe would have calmed Jeff down. Lea did try to stick up for Jenni eventually but it was too little, too late.

The problem is that Caroline got flustered and didn't use proper radio protocol. We always hear them using the same pattern: "CAPTAIN CAPTAIN [the person they are calling, twice, clearly]...CAROLINE[the person calling]." Then sometimes we'll hear a "GO FOR CAPTAIN LEE," and sometimes the person will just continue after a pause. "CAPTAIN CAPTAIN...CAROLINE. WE HAVE BROKEN GLASS ON THE SWIM PLATFORM." What Caroline did was kind of mutter into her mic, "Cap, I need a minute, hold up, there's broken glass.." So he may not have heard her properly or even realized she was calling him. It was just the latest in a long series of "Caroline gets flustered and can't keep her wits about her and doesn't follow procedure or think clearly through the problem" moments that we've seen. Which is, well, a bad trait for someone working in this particular situation. She's not cut out for it.

The problem is that Jeff wants to make his business successful ON TV. The TV show requires drama, conflict, interesting characters. A real successful business requires a team where drama and conflict are properly managed, and people are working for the good of the business and NOT for the sake of entertainment. He also needs to be a better leader and manager -- or let Gage take over more of those functions. As someone else mentioned, they need to move the business out of their home. He also needs separate the Jeff Lewis Design staff from his personal staff, stop forcing the group lunches and cocktails, stop taking four or five people on simple errands, etc. But all of those things are going to kill the entertainment value of the show. So he's got to make a choice -- although it sounds like maybe Bravo has made that choice for him, in that they have not yet renewed the show.

I think it's more likely that another event was supposed to take place altogether, likely hosted by one of the more established Housewives -- maybe Kelly? A housewarming, a party for Jolie's theater debut, who knows. Something that would have made sense to have extended families at. Maybe even just a Mother's Day brunch? The random Femme Fatale-themed party just struck me as a very strange finale event where everyone's families showed up!

Why does the cake say "Happy Birthday 50th Slade"?? Is that a Cake Wrecks situation or what?

My theory is that Emily's Femme Fatale party was NOT originally intended to be the season finale "event," hence the reason that Shannon was double booked to go to the concert. That wasn't really a family-friendly party and it seemed like only the Housewives brought extra guests with them -- everyone else arriving were just women by themselves. I think something got screwed up and another big event didn't transpire, hence the producers deciding to jam together Emily's dumb Femme Fatale party with the RH + family event that usually ends the season, i.e. Tamra's baptism, Shannon's rental housewarming and Meghan's candle party (the last three seasons).

I actually kind of think it's a combination of the two -- LeeAnne is dismayed by Brandi's trashiness BECAUSE she's envious of Brandi's money. I do agree that LeeAnne seems to go after her disproportionately. Brandi has one thing that LeeAnne doesnt...$$$. She doesn't think that Brandi deserves it or lives up to it.

I hate to say this, but I have my suspicions that if Olga was having a baby girl, Steven wouldn't be nearly as insistent about being there and being involved. Maybe I'm not giving the kid enough credit, but there's just something about the way he says "My SON."

Yup, it was near the northeastern shore of Lake Tahoe, on the Nevada side. I was just in the area where it was filmed a few months ago for work.

This is a REALLY good point. Seeing what we know of Kevin as a teen, I would think fame and celebrity would have only made things worse! But we're expected to root for all of the Big Three, so we have to make him lovable and sympathetic.

Except Girl Scout cookie sales don't usually take place in the fall. According to their website, most cookie sales take place between January and April, although they caveat that some start as early as September. So I guess it's not unheard of for cookie sales to be going on during election season, but it struck me as odd last night. I was going to say that he must get a LOT of sick leave, considering how long he was out for his cardiac issues last year! They really need to figure out a logical way for Kate and Toby to move to the East Coast because with just the two of them in L.A., the plot gets real convoluted. Wait until she has that baby and the Pearsons are always showing up at a moment's notice.

Toby seemed to have a decent job last season, with people working for him -- something in IT, maybe? He's clearly the breadwinner there. The airfare back and forth to the East Coast alone must cost a lot, and it feels like they're always showing up. I would assume he's been taking paid sick leave to deal with the depression.

The Maggie and Gary storyline would work much better if when they hooked up at breast cancer support group wasn't the first time they met. Like, maybe they knew each other in college...or they went on a couple dates, all his friends liked her but they didn't click. And then they run into each other a few years later at support group and bam! It's too much, too soon otherwise, both the depth of their relationship and her integration into his circle at a really terrible time. I also think it would help if more time as passing between episodes.

The "cornbread" looked more like Johnnycakes, which are also known as (I am not making this up), Hoecakes. They are made with cornmeal, but they are not cornbread. Also, bringing in fried chicken from Popeye's or Publix or Hardee's or another local place is often done as the centerpiece of a communal meal. I like Fernanda too, especially when she started imitating their accents! The rest of the couples...I don't know, y'all. They're trainwreck-y but not as entertaining, somehow?

I assume the private experiences make filming much easier for the production company. You don't have to worry about being in a crowd of people, having people show off for the camera, needing releases, infringing on an establishment's business. It happens on almost every "reality" show. Breaking news -- they're NOT reality. I also think the reason that The Little Couple seems SO repetitive is that Bill and Jen really restrict filming. There aren't a lot of episodes per season, the seasons are spaced out and everything seems stretched out. It's like they're filming maybe two or three days a month? It's not a ton of material to work with so they have to pad it a lot. I'm also wondered if they don't like to be filmed disciplining the kids? Maybe they're just not good at it, I don't know. But it's possible that they take it a little easier when the cameras are around, and the kids are more aware of the cameras so they act up, and it doesn't come off well.

So, I actually do media training as part of my real life job, and I think it's really unfair to take young women who have never had practice doing this kind of thing, toss them in front of a camera and see what happens, without any kind of REAL training before hand. If nothing else, you "ambush" them, then do actual training and let them try it again. But we don't put anyone (and I work for high-ranking military officers) in front of a camera who hasn't gotten some tips and some practice on how to deliver you messages, how to handle questions that are outside the scope of the interview, how to deflect and other strategies that will make your organization look good! It's fun to see them flounder and make funny comments but it would be so much more valuable to teach them something FIRST.