PhilMarlowe2

I think I'd shag Christian, marry David and kill Ms. Terry. The OC husbands are definitely a hard lot to choose from.

The opening quote I cannot stand belongs to Tamra. Every time she says, "I'm not getting older...," I want to scream, "YES YOU ARE! WE ALL ARE! IT IS PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE *NOT* TO BE GETTING OLDER!" at the TV. It just doesn't make any sense.

Well, it's finally happened - a NSFW Cody (foggy) full frontal. For any other unapologetic Cody admirers out there in internet-land.

So, Bravo has a new preview clip uploaded on their site and I couldn't help but laugh out loud at the description: "In Bali, Lizzie Rovsek and Tamra Barney face-off over Lizzie's birthday party and whether or not she wore pants to it." Ahh, the Housewives shows, shine on you crazy diamond...

Well, we haven't seen the reunion yet, so we don't know what happened there yet. My prediction is that Tamra went into the reunion all butt-hurt from her previous night with Eddie - er, I mean, from the viewer backlash this season - and she knew that most people had sided with Shannon, so she set her sights on the next logical target: Lizzie. Tamra is the queen of deflection, she just loves to find scapegoats for her own bad behavior. My best guess is that she turned all that nastiness onto Lizzie - and Lizzie, being a normal human being who seems to know how to conduct real relationships, was disturbed by Tamra's vitriol. Similar to how Lydia was disturbed by the level of negativity at the reunion. I think some people aren't cut out for the maliciousness of these shows - and I don't think that is a bad thing at all.

The skeptical part of me thinks Tamra deleted her FB pages simply so she wouldn't receive nasty messages while she is on vacation and that none of this noise about her getting fired has any real truth to it. I guess we will see. ETA the timing with the above post seems appropriate.

And to think Tamra was gleefully bragging in interviews at the start of the season that she "ran off" Lydia, Gretchen and Alexis from the show. Who's getting run off now? The schadenfreude is especially delicious this time of year...

It was me who coined it - and I cannot tell you how much unending pleasure it gives me to see it used again and again on these forums. Ha! To be fair, I do believe it was David who first brought up Michigan in relationship to starches. He said, "It's the Michigan in me," and that was what caused Shannon to start talking about the women in Michigan. That said, I totally had a stuffed baked potato last night because that whole conversation got me in the mood for one! I am not sure that was Shannon's intention.

I actually wonder if Lisa is lying about being under contract to do this season as a way to save face for all of her dramatic hemming and hawing before making the (predictable) choice to go back into the fray. It's a way to maintain her "above it all," victimized status. Otherwise, her dramatics about whether or not to return look ridiculously phony.

This drama was previewed in the mid-season preview. The moment that sends Tamra running barefoot is Lizzie saying, "I never said I want to f- your husband. You are a piece of crap, Tamra, you are the most insecure woman I have ever met." Based on what I have seen of Lizzie so far, I find it really hard to believe that she would so boldly lie about not having made that comment if she really had originally said it in front of the whole cast (who could presumably call her out for lying). I am majorly withholding judgment about Lizzie until I see the shows - this reeks of yet another one of Tamra "take the Beadors down" Judge's lies.

And as much as this will probably send me to hell, I think the shows as a collective group need to learn a major lesson from the early OC seasons and realize that teenage/early 20's kids are an amazing source of compelling, organic drama. I mean, the kids really made season 2 & 3 of the OC.

Will is 41?? I know this shouldn't surprise me (I'm 37 now), but, still, somehow that makes me sad. Time really is flying by. (I was 24 when BB2 was on??? Man, that is unreal to me. I cannot believe how long this show has been on!) To stay on topic, I think Zach is really cute and his crush on Frankie is a total turn-on.

Word. I rewatched the great Shannon/Heather kick-out scene today and it really stood out to me how Shannon completely heard Heather's grievances - Shannon explained that she was livid when told by Tamra that Heather had been talking about "picking sides," and when Heather explained she never said that, Shannon promptly apologized and acknowledged how terrible it would be to be accused of something you did not do. As far as I'm concerned, Shannon cleaned up her side of the street at that point. The situation would then seem to dictate that Heather would then come forward with her piece of self-responsibility and/or contrition. But, no, that is where Heather decided to step up her bitchiness and indignantly complain about how "floored" she was that Shannon would think they were close enough to come over in this way. And that is when Shannon started to get tense. Heather really was like a dog with a bone. She should be so embarrassed by her behavior.

Ohmagod, I need a Vicki Gunvalson iphone case in my life, like, yesterday.

I was just discussing with a friend today how Tamra is my number one most hated housewife - even more so than Jill Zarin or Nene or Kim Zolciak or anyone. And the reason, for me, is simple: I think most of the other vile housewives act out of deep insecurity and deep wounding whereas Tamra seems to just take mean-spirited joy in taking people down. That is not to say that Tamra isn't wounded or insecure (because she is) or that housewives like Jill Zarin and Nene aren't mean-spirited (because they are), but Tamra's ratio of meanness is just off the charts. Some of these other women are truly kind of crazy. Tamra doesn't seem crazy, she doesn't seem broken. She just seems like a wicked, wicked woman who genuinely isn't happy unless she is tearing down others. I really think she is the most vile of all housewives of any season of any city.

So, a few more details from the reunion - Shannon apparently handled herself very well, Shannon and Vicki are still going strong, Lizzie apparently leaves the set in tears after a huge fight with Tamra. And, according to the article, apparently the women are all going to turn on Tamra in Bali - which leads to her mad sprint through the hotel. God, I hope Tamra does not come out on top somehow at the reunion.

Wow, I am shocked David is 58 - he looks great. I seriously would have guessed 10 years younger.

It was after. Chairgate was all Heather, IMO. Heather got weirdly upset about it and then, when she realized what a fool she had made of herself, she completely projected her issues about the chair onto Shannon.

Especially if that person clearly has more to say and feels unresolved in the conversation. My problem with Heather is that she is a stealth bitch, and knows how to do things that outwardly seem totally reasonable but are in fact incredibly passive-aggressive power plays. Did Heather outright claim that Shannon drinks too much? No, she did not. She "simply" repeated that Tamra mentioned that Shannon reminds her of her four years ago when she was drinking too much. Girl, please. Heather knew exactly what she was doing when she lobbed that tidbit out there - she is keeping the "Shannon is a drunk" narrative going under a pretense of simply reporting what Tamra had said. It's the same thing Jill Zarin and Luann did to Ramona on RHoNY - "let's pretend to be 'concerned' so that we can really plant seeds in the viewer's head about Ramona being a drunk." Lisa V also did this with her "jokes" to Kyle about Mauricio on RHoBH. This is my problem with Heather - and why, ultimately, I will always side with Shannon - Heather plays to be right and to win - and she will do crappy stuff like passive-aggressively provoke someone with "innocent" comments about what Tamra said about her drinking too much, and then, when Shannon has a reaction to what Heather is doing, Heather will point the finger at her for getting aggressive and then kick her out - er, ask her to leave (because of "the children!" - of course). For all her hysteria, I don't think Shannon cares about winning. I think she is honestly trying to navigate a crazy-making situation and she is doing it only half-successfully.

Howie really was the one to ruin that season. I have no idea why he felt the need to honor this amazingly stupid deal he made with Maggie. If he had just listened to Rachel, he could have renegged on it. I still can't believe a spot on All-Stars was wasted on him. If ever there were someone who *wasn't* an All-Star, it was Howie. Though James was a close second. S7 was way too S6-heavy.

No, it is true - this is why I don't really like Brianna as a person. She is full of excuses - for herself and others. And, to be honest, I have no memory of those early season decisions. But I do feel bad for her in the clip. I think Vicki majorly fucked her up and that we are getting a glimpse of her real pain.

I really don't Wil as a person but his impersonations are always on-point. He actually somehow manages to look like each one of the different contestants - somehow he physically captures each one's essence. His impersonation of Dan was off the charts amazing. And his Julie is always on-point.

Admittedly, I have some built-in sympathy for Brianna because of my own experience being raised by a very narcissistic mother (and I am saying this as someone who does not like Brianna as a person - I find her need to take down Brooks really gross). At the end of the day, it is of course true that any adult needs to take responsibility for his/her own life and realize that no parent can stop them from doing what they want. But I will also say, from experience, that when you are the child of a narcissist, it is very possible that you don't actually understand that reality on an emotional level. For most of my life, I lived in absolute fear of my mother and her responses to my life decisions. I dreaded the drama. You could tell me that I had a right to do what I wanted, that I could hang up the phone, that I could draw boundaries - and I might intellectually understand that - but emotionally? Physically? I just didn't get it. I would literally get terror and anxiety thinking about drawing hard lines in the sand - I immediately would brace myself against the feeling of inevitable shame and humiliation I would have to undergo. It took years of working on myself and thousands of dollars on therapy to get to a point where I actually understood I had a right to my own life on a real cellular level. Now that I am on the other side of it, it all of course makes sense, and my mother could never stop me from doing anything. But it took work and I count myself as extremely fortunate to have gotten to this point by the age of 36 (sadly, I have seen similar people take much longer to break free from those binds - if they ever do). Brianna is still young, she is barely out of the house in terms of the scope of her life. There is a real trauma that can occur from being raised by a narcissist. It is also very possible that Brianna used staying close to Colby as her reason for studying in the OC so that she didn't have to admit that she was doing it to please her mother (and, by extension, wouldn't have to get into a fight about it). I have always maintained that Vicki was probably worse behind closed doors than she was on camera. Even Michael, who does draw boundaries, seems to have thinly-veiled major resentment against Vicki. He also has a very frightened look in his eyes at all times, they're always darting around skittishly. I think both those kids probably have a lot of rage that they have repressed. Obviously, this is all conjecture on my part, but it is how I intuitively see them.

Whoa, has anyone else checked out the preview of Vicki and Briana in family therapy? That is the realeast I have ever seen shit get in the Gunvalson household. Even though that therapist seems largely ineffectual to me, somehow he did get Briana to drop the Brooks bashing long enough to get into some of her deeply held pain of being raised by such a narcissist. Can't wait to see more.

This post gives me all kinds of life.