LibertarianSlut

Bravo is apologizing because they aired a black woman wearing an Indian costume? I notice there is no ‘why’ in the elaborate apology. What were they attempting to teach? It’s a costume! Unless Kenya personally did something heinous to a particular Indian and then dressed up as her in an effort to mock, this is not a bridge, but a causeway, too far for the entire network. And even if Kenya had intentions to provoke a particular Indian person, this is reality TV—a reality TV station is apologizing for airing reality?? They’re going to have to go backward in time and cancel every single person if this is the new standard. If they continue to bend to the woke police, literally everyone is going to get cancelled. Last season, one of Marlo’s staff members mispronounced “haute couture.” Why didn’t Bravo make a blanket apology for that insult to the French-speaking people, language and “community”? Why is it ok to potentially offend Quebecers, a group who has been historically “marginalized”? There’s something “offensive” that can be read into the term “domestic cat,” which is what Porsha called herself. It sounds a hair too close to domestic servant. I can read offense into literally everything—there is something “problematic” about a mermaid costume, which is the head of a woman and the tail of a fish. If the Indian headdress is offensive, then the mermaid costume, which one can argue, objectifies and fetishizes women as sex objects, is also offensive. I have no idea where this is headed and I shiver for the culture. I am half-considering resuming watching this show just so that I can quit it again. What “values” does Bravo uphold, as they alluded to in their “apology”???? That is the billion dollar question. The million dollar question is, what is the “gravity of the situation”? Who encompasses the Native American “community” and how did this hurt a community, not in a tenuous way, but in a way that encompassed “gravity”? Bravo has zero idea what it’s saying. These are the musings of a mad man, excuse me, mad person, excuse me, these are the musings of a human person who may experience mental health difficulties. This “apology” gives bullshit a bad name, and I wonder what, if any, connections the people who are responsible for it have with “the” (as if there is only one) Native American Community.

Her pattern is so sad. It’s extremely difficult for the justice system to do, ahem, justice when the case relies so heavily on eyewitness testimony, and the eyewitness (Tinsley) refuses to so much as sign an affidavit, yet keeps returning to the scene of the ongoing crime for two and a half years. I’ve posted this article before, below, in an episode thread. I like using this article, because it is extremely sympathetic to Tinsley, so I think it would be hard to claim bias against her, yet her dysfunction is still as plain as the tiny nose on her face: https://pagesix.com/2016/04/16/the-tragic-downfall-of-new-yorks-hottest-socialite/ From the article: her life had already been derailed a decade ago because she voluntarily starred in a reality show, “unhealthy” relationship pattern for years, “continued to date [after significant mayhem]”, friends commenting that she has “growing up” to do, and “she doesn’t understand that the dance is over” when it comes to eligible bachelors. This sounds mighty familiar to me. 🤔 This is a 45 year old woman who acts like Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan circa 2000! She was 40 at the time of this article, which still made her 20 years too old to carry on like this. (Since this is not the Nico Fanjul thread, it’s not relevant for me to comment on what has been alleged about his behavior). With regard to Tinsley, there have clearly been regular bouts with very destructive alcohol consumption, so how did she reach the conclusion that post-arrest would be an appropriate time to join a reality show that is notorious for heavy drinking women? (The show wasn’t as bad with alcohol when Tinsley joined as it is now, but it wasn’t the Temperament Housewives of New York City either. Home girl was not in any position to star in the show that gave us Turtle Time IMO). This was a really irresponsible decision for Tinsley to make. It makes me so sad that Dale enabled this, but Tinsley claims to be an adult, so she gets to make her own choices. What I also found interesting about this article was that Tinsley made a cameo on Gossip Girl, because when I first heard she was joining this show, I was crestfallen, and thought RHNYC was going to turn into Gossip Girl because of her. PS Tinsley turned out to be exactly the way I predicted she would be, unlike Jules and Kristen, who came on as sort of weak characters, but showed some gumption somewhere along the way. Even Alex found her voice. My prediction for what will happen next comes straight from the article—crying and screaming about Scott’s new girlfriend or wife, someone who another posted predicted will materialize within 6-12 months. If Tinsley doesn’t get help, it’s my opinion that it’s just a matter as to whether her outbursts will make the press. Scott seems like the type to be willing to pay mucho bucks to keep things quiet, but even he seems like he’s reached a limit. I have a feeling he rues the day that he decided to fucks wit Tinsley Mortimer. Just reading the tea leaves...she seems like a bunny burner. A bunny burner who shops at the best stores and eats at the best restaurants I guess. 🙆‍♀️ She needs more help than I had previously thought. And this gives me no greater pleasure to write in 2021 than it did in 2019—she has so much more in common with Sonja than I used to think. If instead of going to rehab, she comes back to the show (which would be her third foray into NY society and her third foray into reality TV) to cry about Scott and she were to get sympathy, as if this were normal or unavoidable, I think I’m out, which is just as well. I’m kind of looking for an escape route anyway!

OMG, it was the most off-brand thing ever. I should have put “fashion week” with an asterisk next to it. It was a kid’s show and Antonia and Joey walked while Teresa and Milania watched and they all went out to dinner afterward and Joey said “I love everybody at this table.” But it was about as model-ly as the Posche Fashion Shows or the Envy Fashion Shows. It made S2 Gia walking hand-in-hand with an adult model look like the Alexander McQueen VOSS collection. Come to think of it, this show has been plagued with some janky-ass runways. I can’t forget Ashley (I am refusing to type her name any other way) walking in the Posche “fashion show” in season two, completely insecure, hunched forward (to hide the arms that Danielle said she should tone, perhaps?) with her crooked nervous smile and crowded teeth. Just...no. I’d rather see Melissa walk at the Brownstone in a feather dress that was two sizes too big for her than see some of the other “models” that Kim D put forth on her “runways” aka floors of restaurants across the seasons. That was an affront. To whom? The audience, aesthetics, real fashion shows, real models...I could go on.

This is completely where I come out on it too. I save my pity for widows and orphans. If she was my friend IRL, I’d be there for her, but since she’s not, I feel I can be objective about this and say that I don’t feel sorry for someone who designed their own destruction. This is not different from Luann and Tom for me. I don’t feel sorry for her if she couldn’t see this coming. Or maybe I do feel sorry for her, but in a mental health way, not “he screwed you, sister” way. I have hesitated to post about Tinsley in the past because I was afraid that disliking her would make me look like I was jealous of what she had, which couldn’t be further from the truth, but now that there is nothing to even inspire jealousy, I feel a little like Lincoln saving the Emancipation Proclamation for after Antietam—I think the truth, as I see it, may be appreciated more now. First of all, since this is the Tinsley thread, and not the Tinsley and Scott thread, I have reviewed the copious notes I have made about her over the years, and she was not always nice by a long shot. She soiled Ramona’s bedsheets, and instead of trying to make it nice, she insulted the quality of the sheets and kept it moving. That horrifies me. When she wasn’t crying, having a tantrum, or throwing herself on the floor, I guess she had good manners, but when she was drunk, she was mean. She wasn’t only mean to Luann in Miami, she was mean to Luann in Mexico for worrying about being in Page Six, which is the exact thing Tinsley fell all over herself crying about. How about schooling Luann about how wrong it was to say “Palm Beach” when she meant “West Palm Beach” in front of a table full of women? If Luann had schooled Tinsley that way, she would never hear the end of what a snob she was (and BTW Tinsley, West Palm Beach is in Palm Beach, so...). She was also sober and mean in season 12 when Ramona had the audacity to attempt to elevate herself, and Tinsley pissed all over it, and wondered whether Ramona was trying to be another Sonja, which, she ain’t wearing diapers on the Hampton Jitney, so my guess would be no? 🤔 Tinsley also made fun of a guy she was set up with on a date who didn’t drink. That seems like low character to me—the opposite of how she is portrayed. She was insecure and immature to me, and she kept getting piled on, but she kept re-upping her contract for the show, so how much did she really hate it at the end of the day? At least Luann had some moxie. With Tinsley, I just see someone insecure and immature. Tinsley had big balls twice while she was on the franchise—at the season 12 reunion and in season 9, when they were in Mexico. The common denominator? Both times, she was on the cusp of leaving town to be with Scott, so she finally said what was on her mind. That is like the timid mail sorter who gets fired and says “fuck you” to everyone on their way out. Not so ballsy if you think about it. Jules had balls that Tinsley never showed when she yelled at Queen B at the reunion that she was hurting people. Tinsley only went for Dorinda when she knew she’d have backup. All I saw over her tenure on the show was a child. I have no love lost for Bethenny, but she had a job to do, which was getting into cast members’ business to some extent, and when they were in Vermont and Bethenny asked Tinsley what is going on with her living situation and Tinsley lost it and screamed “give me a fucking second!,” and then had a meltdown, it was reminiscent of who Bethenny would go on to be, and I realized we were not playing with a woman with a full deck, and I didn’t see the benign, sweet being she was playing on TV. Plus, who amongst us wouldn’t be benign if we were living in a $30,000 a month hotel suite? If I saw Tinsley struggle with something real and come up the victor, I might have seen what she was made of something I could respect. I think a lot of what is portrayed as her not getting into the fray is that she had the name Tinsley Mortimer, so she could sit there and look at her nail polish, and I think her lack of focus on the show is often mistaken as being above the fray. Tinsley was not articulate. She said “like” at every juncture, and she was often at a loss for words, and that’s hard for me to understand for someone who has what is supposed to be have a myriad of businesses and Ivy League education. (I am going to give her the benefit of the doubt that the college she attended at Columbia was in the Ivy League). I think her brain was pickled with alcohol, like an early Sonja, because I saw her on America’s Next Top Model pimping her handbag line several years before she came on the show, and she was much more articulate. This is not someone to be celebrated for that reason alone IMO. This is someone who should perhaps be guided away from reality TV and toward a staff of really good mental health professionals. I don’t like when the host of the reunion has to step in to advocate for a cast member (Andy for Tinsley, reunion 11) because she can’t or won’t do it for herself. That’s an unbalanced equation to me. She did not have to come on this show after the Fanjul shit happened. She could have gone out west, far away from Florida, and gotten herself some damned help (UCLA has an excellent dual diagnosis outpatient program). Instead, she headed north to re-invent herself as “a little socialite” (which was her plan all along and part of the reason her second marriage to Topper failed, according to publicist R. Couri Hay) while her trust was still frozen, which is why she had to shack up with Sonja. I will never not think it is crass to market yourself and your mug shot fresh off of an arrest that was associated with a violent situation. I thought it was uncool when Luann did it too, so I’m not having selective outrage here. Tinsley did not have to film scenes with the oppressive Dale. Again, she could have gone somewhere (if not LA, somewhere in Utah or Vancouver) to learn adulting skills and independence. She went away to boarding school. She had over two and a half decades to become her own person, and she chose not to exercise them, just like she chose not to have children without a partner. Dale wasn’t some Svengali that had a spell over Tinsley. Tinsley got married behind Dale’s back—if she wanted a child, she could have pulled the trigger on the eggs, potentially with a gestational surrogate. Or she could have at least looked into adoption. Onto Scott, and why I quoted the post I did, didn’t Maya Angelou warn us that “when someone tells you who they are, believe them”? When Tinsley met Scott, she was not just drunk, but wasted. She slurred to him she was really skinny for her 35th birthday in Vegas and then dropped a ring from her ex in a glass. That’s not how too many love stories begin. But this is how she began shit not just with Scott, but with Chad and the guy Bethenny set her up with in Miami...and she wonders why these situations don’t work out?? She also told a therapist, before she met Scott, that she wanted a WASP-y man like her dad who didn’t have to work, and then in the same episode, she told Bethenny that she was over WASPs and any future man in her life would need to have a job. If she didn’t know what she wanted, how was she ever going to get it? So I never saw this as a fairytale—I saw this as a Mack truck going off a cliff—so it is hard for me to summon an emotion for her now that this turned out exactly the way I predicted. Tinsley just always struck me as such a victim, but this is not a fairytale, this is New York (kind of like how when Jill was gossiping, Alex was in Brooklyn 😃). It is great if a woman finds a Prince Charming, but I am not someone who is going to buy into the narrative that a woman needs a Prince Charming to save her. I am more of the Sex and the City school of thought, and that did not come without my own hard knocks and hard-learned lessons, but having had those painful experiences, it makes my sympathy for Tinsley very short by nature. It was crystal clear to me that Scott (who was a half a decade younger, and that probably should have come into the equation) was pulling all of the strings. He was into playing with her at the beginning (their first date lasted five days) and then he lost interest and she didn’t get the memo and it was almost painful to watch. This was not her first rodeo—she had two goes at it with Topper and then the shit with Fanjul, but she didn’t decide to look before she leaped, so this happened. It’s cause and effect. It’s the chain of events that Stevie Wonder could have seen. What we want and what we have are often two very different things. I’m short on patience for a woman who should have known this. Dorinda revealed that Tinsley had been to Niagara Falls with Scott at her tea party. Tinsley was so appalled that the info got out because she was sure things weren’t going to work out. The next week Tinsley was off to Chicago to be with Scott because if she didn’t take the opportunity “now” she may never get it again. How is that healthy in any way, shape or form? To be sure a relationship is DOA one week, and to move halfway across the country to be with him the next? All I see there is dysfunction. She told Andy at one of the early reunions that Scott was seeing other people and she had to be mature about this. I’ve said this before—if a man really wants a woman, he will move heaven and earth to be with her, and it was apparent that this was not happening here, and if she didn’t see it, I don’t know what to say. I guess I can say “I’m sorry,” but in a very global way, not in a personal way. I’m not sorry other than to say, if I were casting the die, I’d give her a happy marriage and a healthy husband, but I have nothing to do with it. Luann went through divorce twice and Ramona went through it (all three times on camera) but they had a game plan, so I felt more positive feelings toward them, even if they weren’t perfect in the way they handled their situations either. Tinsley makes me uncomfortable with her helplessness, I don’t think she’s a victim, and I think she was given so many passes, and many because she looked like a frail doll, which makes me highly uncomfortable. I think people should be judged on their spirt and character and not how, I guess, cute their outfits or their curls are <shivers at what I see as an attempt to manipulate the audience’s sympathy through her childlike looks>. I think Tinsley got to slide on a lot of things over the course of four seasons because of her “look” and I find that kind of disturbing. Dale may have created this, but anyone at any time has the right to change their mind and break out of the mold, even if they need help. The day that Tinsley puts it out there in public that she’s been living life incorrectly is the day I will have human feelings for her (she puts everything else out there publicly, so why not? Tell that to Page Six and then step away from the spotlight. Also, if it’s not public, I wouldn’t hear about it as I don’t know her IRL, so I can’t speak to that). Tinsley was quoted in an article many months ago saying that Scott was more controlling than anyone else she’d ever dated (paraphrasing), but why is she telling the press that, and not a therapist? They broke up the day after Bethenny dared Tinsley to call him on camera, even though Tinsley didn’t rise to the occasion. I mean, how private is this guy if he was willing to show up on Bravo as a blind date and Carole’s friend? He obviously wasn’t that private; it seems like he was mostly private when it came to Tinsley, like he is some kind of Stephanie Tanner from Full House circa 1990 with her “secret boyfriend.” Like, that is not a huge warning sign? He wasn’t so private that he couldn’t star in Coupon Cabin commercials with Adam. I mean, WTF? But I don’t place the blame with Scott—slavery is over, no one was putting a gun to her head to stay. She could have left and stayed gone until he made serious concessions, of which there is no evidence. Sure, he proposed. The difference between a woman with an engagement ring and a woman without one is nothing in the eyes of the law. Men on Marriage Bootcamp and various other reality shows do this all the time—they have a “fiancée” of five-plus years. So I just never saw this move to Scott for Scott as some grand gesture on his part. It seemed like same old, same old, so I was not excited, nor was I optimistic (except for my own selfish reasons that she was finally off the show) when she went off to be with him. Bottom line, he was just not that into her. I predicted at the time that Tinsley would come back onto the show trying to make yet another New York comeback “once this thing with Scott goes tits-up.” Of course I hope to be wrong—I hope this thing was just a big misunderstanding and Scott or someone else comes along to sweep her off her feet with an even bigger and better story (as long as I don’t have to keep seeing it in the news). I’m just not buying it until I see a change in her. Nothing changes if nothing changes. Grow up, get serious help, and get out of the public eye for a really good chunk of time, is my best advice to her. Own your life. Run your own race. As soon as she stops needing a man to define her, that man that is right for her may very well show up. But she has to be willing to recognize this man. The fact that she looked down on someone who didn’t drink as a potential date showed me that she had a whole hell of a lot of work to do. That’s not bad, that’s just a prescription. And she doesn’t have to listen to me, as I am nobody, but I have turned many facets of my life around and seen it pay off in spades. I see no signs that Tinsley is prepared to do this (how long did it take her to stop with the curls and cut her hair, as Carole recommended 100 years ago?), so she’ll keep going on her track, I’ll keep going on mine, and I guess that’s about all I’ve got to say about that. ETA—Tinsley had two failed marriages with Topper, but only one divorce, so I fixed that, as I don’t want what I think is a thoughtful argument to fall on one misstatement of fact.

You’re probably right—I don’t remember it being there season one, but it was there season two! When they were playing pool and Juicy asked Teresa if she got arrested at the country club and she squealed “no’ a bunch of times...my window panes cracked. Oh, now it’s in my head! I’m trying to think where to redirect my thoughts: “first you were one, then you were two...” or “I just want to grow up”. The only thing I’m shocked about is that Antonia hasn’t had a song yet, she just walked in fashion week...right? 😧

Tre and Juicy were great on the phone together; still pals with chemistry. Best part of epi was definitely no Jackie, and as the cherry on top, I’d just like to point out that the support from the rest of the cast continues to wane. Regardless of how much Melissa stands up for Jackie, she and Joe still started laughing when Teresa suggested that Jackie should give it to Evan up the ass and then maybe he wouldn’t go cheating. Jackie’s blood vessels must have burst when she saw that, in addition to the footage at the beggining of the ep, when Melissa told Joe that she didn’t think Tre invented the story about Evan. Melissa said “I believe she heard it” and then went on to have an issue based solely on the way Teresa delivered the news. Thin-skinned Jackie, whenever she resurfaces, is going to turn into a mannequin about this “betrayal.” I think Jackie expected total loyalty from Melissa, and this was not that. Melissa “this motherfucker is winning” Gorga has headed for greener pastures 💰. <Nodding thoughtfully>. Margaret has been machine-gunning for Jennifer since season nine, when Jennifer had the audacity to talk about the sunset in Paramus when they were looking at the sunset in Oklahoma. This has nothing to do with “serious drinking issue problems” as Marge puts it; this has to do with her vendetta against Jen and the fact that Jen didn’t co-sign Marge Sr’s facilitation of adultery at the vineyard. I don’t think any of them have “serious drinking issue problems,” but the one who appears to drink the most right now is Teresa, as @SweetieDarling pointed out. She was the one getting sloshy at 11am on “Margarent’s” trip to Lake George, and she was the one who played a part in Margaret’s hair tug last season when she was drunk. But we’ll never hear a word about that, because, to Marge, Jennifer is a peon and Teresa is the Don. Margaret is continuing Siggy’s season eight behavior of picking winners and losers based not on their behavior, but where they are on the pecking order. Not cool, Pigtails!

Excellent recon—any links you can post about the sister or any of the inside baseball to which you referred and I bolded?? Methinks there may be gold in them thar hills! 😀

This was the most uninspired episode I’ve seen since Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. What did we have? JoeGo—the sixth cast member (I’m not including Jackie as a f/t cast member until she shows up to work) had an ambiguous birthday. Wow, fun! Did we know his birthday wish that Teresa invite Jackie to his pool party? I wonder why that is. 🤔 Surely it has nothing, absolutely zero, to do with keeping that gravy train going so that something as absurd as Growing With Gorga can exist Jennifer—she wants her sister to go to Turkey, but her mom might get mad and she’s got a ton of kids, one of whom looks healthy.....🚿🚿🚿I needed a shower to jostle myself awake Dolores—she wants David to put a ring on it, but she’ll settle for more quality time 💤 Melissa—is just obsessed with all things Teresa Getting Laid and it’s getting a little creepy. I guess the old saw that those who can’t do, urge is coming to life. When was the last time the bitch had a storyline? When she had a guy from church write a song for her about how hard it was to be On Display and Soul Diggaz put it to AutoTune in her basement? Bitch ain’t relevant. How many times must I repeat that? (Ok, enough Melissa song puns for one paragraph, I concede). 😇 It’s crass the way that the Gorgas put their children’s sex education on camera, and it’s boring. They have been having faux-outrage about it since they came on the show. Melissa pretends to have the dilemma of the giant schism between Old School and New School Italian weighing on her (when you can most certainly see the hamster wheel running in her otherwise empty head), Joe insists his daughter will never have sex and nothing ever comes out of it. Last season, in the ice cream shop, Antonia told them that she knew all about sex, and then used the words to prove it (this is when they were pretending to contemplate having another baby). It’s time to give up the ghost that you two (or, da two of yah’s) are crushingly boring, and without Teresa you would be put out to pasture. Or taken out back and shot, whichever is more expedient. They should be worried more about their own nonexistent sex life. Melissa had to buy her nose, tits and hair—why didn’t they just throw the personality in there as four for the price of three? It would have made my life a lot easier than having to discern her nasally bullshit. She’s, I guess, mad that Michelle talked about her when prompted by Jennifer? Isn’t that what people do at parties? Why is the only one who is allowed to assert an opinion Jackie, in Melissa’s tiny mind? Melissa, close your mouth, you’re catching flies, and get with the program. No one gives a shit about you and nobody thinks you have money—you outed your own damn self in the Hamptons last season. Get off my screen, you offend me with your amateurish behavior, you lout. I love how both the Gorgas attend a nice pool party at Teresa’s and both use the phrase “commere” to summon someone with whom they’re not happy. Mellissa always bitches how pissed she will be if someone ruins a girls’ trip that she is on, even if it’s not “her” trip (Jamaica, Hamptons) but she and her small husband can wreak havoc at someone else’s pool party? Getdafuckouddahere. See, I can do it too. Teresa—IMO she fucked up by inviting Jackie to the pool party, and she lucked out that Jackie was too chicken to come, which was one more shovelful of dirt on Jackie’s grave as a cast member. All Jackie should get from Teresa ever again is this: Margaret—she is ghostwriting a book about her life on camera when we are tuning in to see her life unfold on camera. Shit’s way too meta for me, and if I have to see the pic of Marge Sr in a crop top in the 70s ever again, I will write my own book about trauma! I will give credit to Margaret on one front and one front alone—she knows she is not organically interesting, so she goes along to get along. Damning with faint praise is the best I can do here. She knows that she got first chair at last season’s reunion because an unwell person pulled her hair and Teresa orchestrated it. If Teresa would have had nothing to do with that hair pull, Margaret’s ample ass would have been behind Melissa’s at the S10 reunion and she knows it, and she is dancing to whatever tune Teresa is humming. I’m embarrassed enough that she doesn’t have to be that the best thing that ever happened to Margaret was that production aired film that wasn’t good enough to make it to the episode from the Steven Dann store at the finale. Since Jackie is an absent wuss, I’ll give a shout-out to Juicy—you didn’t go for Teresa’s money after all. Pretty much everyone on the cast owes him an apology. Frank—find your way out from Joe Gorga’s ass and let Teresa invite whoever the fuck she wants to invite to her own damned party, including the really pretty real estate agent with the Madea smushy boobs. Tony—you get a shout-out as someone who had more screen time than that shallow, botoxed bag of bones, but if Joe Gorga is your best friend, I question your judgment. The pineapple—you are boring as hell, not interesting, not ironic, a proxy for Teresa’s nonexistent love life, yet you somehow still had more of a presence on this episode than half the husbands! 🍍 John—I give him so much credit for not laughing at a man who prefaces the conversation with “I always look good” while said man is donning a bracelet, white shorts, and a hot pink Hanes t-shirt. I’m pretty sure I got a Barbie on sale once who was wearing said outfit 🤔. Clearly John did not give a shit about Joe’s double-talk, because the fact of the matter is that his wife is going to get more money on the commission from selling Casa Giudice than John with ever make on Growing With Napoleon. Bill—why aren’t you crying bitch tears that your wife’s naked wasted nasty drunkenness is going to ruin you and your career? Cause you’re not a whining bitch named Evan Goldschneider, I guess. This episode was an abomination. Nothing happened, except stupidity and a few cute outfits (werk, Dolores!). Teresa is playing this game at a higher level than she used to, and Melissa’s desperation for her to revert to season three Teresa with the “hot Italian temper” is palpable. Remember that Voltaire quote that if there was no God, we would have to invent Him? If there was no Teresa, Melissa would be spraying perfume at Dillard’s and she knows it, but her hatred of this fact is so much more blatant than Margaret’s, who has moved into the acceptance phase of grief—the grief of knowing that she is not a lead. I’m just gong to post a reminder that Jackie said she would never acknowledge Teresa ever again. She stuck to it this week and if that’s winning (because Jackie won, y’all 😀) , losing must be a goddamned son of a gun! I’m excited to see what happens next week...rubs hands in anticipation. 👏

I had to re-watch, because I knew I didn’t catch nearly all of the stupidity, sloth, lying and deception the first time around, and also to mix up the topics a bit (a bit—I can only work with what the show is giving me): What is up with Margaret calling Joe and asking him if he worked on the house and him saying no because he went out the night before, and, no, they didn’t talk about Evan? This is Margaret’s fourth season of trying to get Joe to work on his own damned house, which makes it the fourth consecutive season that Margaret is living in a construction zone. How lovely and aspirational. And Joe B is lying. Again. I guess those of us who thought that Jackie could turn the table on Teresa by telling her to talk to Evan were wrong. Teresa has no interest in talking to Evan, and at this point, I cannot blame her. I noticed this since Melissa joined the show: when it comes time to vacation, Teresa is always game to be active while Melissa is trying to be sexy. Season four comes to mind, when they went to California. Teresa got into a bodysuit and went surfing, while Melissa wore a bikini top and refused to get in the water, because she wanted to “keep it sexy.” 🤮 Season three, when they went to the DR and Teresa was going from street vendor to street vendor, trying to get inspiration for her cookbook, while Melissa complained she was getting blood on her Guccis. I don’t think Teresa is a particularly attractive woman, but she is organically sexy, unlike Melissa who tries way too damned hard. Ok, I am just going to parse the financial shenanigans that went on, because there is a lot of unmined gold there! When Melissa found out Jennifer wanted to talk to her and Jen was leading into the story of the owed money, but hadn’t said anything bad yet, Melissa was already breathing with her mouth open, like literally panting, and yanking on her earring. These are not the actions of someone with nothing to hide. Then she asked Jen, “why would my husband ever split Grow With Gorga with someone else?” So this bitch doesn’t even seem to grasp the concept of a partnership, even though that is allegedly the agreement she had at her store with Jackie (a third Jackie, not the crazy one or...the other crazy one). Ok, so that’s Melissa’s party line—Joe doesn’t owe, because it is unfathomable that he would partner up. Got it. But then when Melissa called Joe on the phone to, I guess, get his side, Joe had a completely different story and said that he already paid Michelle’s husband for the work he did, which implies a partnership of some sort, so I guess they really cleared that up and showed everyone they were wrong. Good work, Dumb and Dumber. 👍 I have said it before that I really don’t like the emotional blackmail that Teresa and Melissa used to do with each other over JoeGo, but I just don’t see Teresa engaging in it now, so I simply can’t call her out for what’s not there. But Melissa really went low when she told Teresa to take Joe’s side because he is “your only living family member.” Does Melissa know about families and how they work and how there are these four young ladies named Gia, Gabriella, Milania and Audriana who are Teresa’s living family members? And I thought...I could have sworn...that Melissa came on the show and retained the party line that she wanted the chance to be sisterly with Teresa, but Teresa was blocking her. So isn’t Melissa a “living family member” of Teresa’s too? Melissa doesn’t care; she just wants Teresa to fall in line and, ironically, go rage on someone’s ass, because she is apparently better at it than Melissa, and Melissa has no compunction about trying to get Teresa enraged through rhetoric about her dead parents in order to get her dirty work done. This naked attempt at manipulation of Teresa is not just gross, it’s disgusting. I can’t seem to remember the last time Teresa dangled Melissa’s dead dad in front of her in order to make a point. 🤔 So Jackie’s learning disabled brother had the coronavirus and got stuck on a cruise in Chile, but let’s put all that aside in order to discuss how Teresa was “very, very mean” to Jackie and spread a “very mean rumor.” Priorities are firmly in order. Jackie doesn’t know if she can be as big of a person as her brother is? I’m here to tell her that she can’t, or at least she is on the very wrong track toward getting that way. Teresa’s family in black-and-white flashbacks was far more entertaining than this. Melissa seems strangely invested in Teresa getting a new man, and I have a hunch it has absolutely zero to do with Teresa’s happiness and all about a way for Melissa to try to needle Teresa. Melissa feels bad for people who are single during this pandemic? I feel bad for people who are quarantined with husbands they cannot stand, such as when a husband suggests sex, and his wife tells him “you got issues.” Teresa won’t list her house with Michelle until Michelle’s husband clears it up with Joe Gorga? The way to clear up lack of payment is to render payment. If Teresa was suggesting that Michelle’s husband forgo payment for services rendered in order for Michelle to get/keep the listing, she has no leg to stand on, and if she even knows what she’s saying, I highly doubt she means it. That was the definition of lip service. Listening very closely to Margaret’s story about her life in the city, this was not a situation that needed to be shouted from the rooftops—it just wasn’t that interesting. She said it was in the eighties “everybody was sleeping together,” she was 22 years old, living in the city and at her first job she was shopping with her really good looking older boss and they went back to his apartment and slept together and it was awkward. I’m simply not getting upset that this happened—it sounds like the story of every single woman who has moved to a big city and galavanted with men (which is often a big attraction to city life for single women)—and it’s not book worthy. This woman is writing a book about being raised by wolves (Bethenny Frankel already been there, done that) and sleeping with her boss. Is there a single person going online to preorder this? Anyone who wants to hear about this shit can just go spend the money that they were going to spend on the book to get a spa pedicure at the salon. They would hear far more hair-raising stories and come out with cute toes, to boot. Jackie...Teresa was not concerned about your well-being and your marriage. If Teresa says otherwise at another point in the season, I will call that out as bullshit too. Jackie is older than me and has better credentials. Why do I need to figure this out for her? Someone pointed this out up thread and I just have to second it—Jackie is getting “everybody that they care about” back together to celebrate Evan’s birthday again? I thought Jackie had so many friends, none of whom would ever treat her this way. Where were those friends at the corn hole restaurant? This was strictly for TV. At home, Evan can’t get in a word edgewise with Jackie. The only time he was allowed to speak was when she was taking a breath. Often a man will cheat when he feels emasculated. Teresa can’t stop talking about Jackie and Jackie can’t stop talking about Teresa. My prediction is that this will eventually get sorted out in the wash and one of their names will no longer be uttered in the mid-near future. When this season ends, Jackie will have three seasons under her belt. You know who else had three seasons? Kathy. Remember her? Yeah, me neither. I can’t believe that, at Evan’s event, which was supposed to be a light, fun do-over, Jackie cornered Jennifer and said that Teresa “clearly” can hurt her family, but Jackie can’t say anything ot hurt Teresa’s family. I thought Jackie no longer cared about that shit. Isn’t that her party line? For someone who really doesn’t want this discussed and is so mad his name is being dragged through the mud, Evan sure had a thing or six to say about it. If I’m not cheating and some stupid woman says I am and I am a really big, smart person in finance, why do I entertain such, as Evan said, “bullshit”? Evan says, “even if it’s baseless, you can’t fully erase it.” First of all, that was not the first time in this episode that Evan referred to his fidelity or lack thereof as a hypothetical. He never once says anything even approximating, “Jackie, I have never and would never cheat on you.” That’s telling to me. Second of all, ok Evan, if it can’t fully be erased, then why are you still bitching about it? Just let it die already if it’s nothing. There’s either something there, which is what is causing all of this belaboring, or Evan is trying to bolster his wife’s screen time by keeping it alive. I would hazard a guess that both are true. Evan may very well be giving Jackie a poor man’s version of the Camille Grammer treatment. On first watch, I missed the huge bear hug Jackie enveloped Jennifer in when she arrived. At last season’s reunion, Jackie was treating Jennifer like she was beneath contempt, like she was the scum of the earth, while Jackie snickered on the other side of the couch with her buddy Melissa. What’s changed since then, other than the fact that back then Jackie was getting along with Teresa and now she’s not? This bitch can’t fight a two-front war?? Season four, Teresa fought a four-front war if one is only counting full-time cast members, and an eight front war if one wants to add Lauren Manzo, Joe Go, Richie and Rosie into the mix. And she still walked away victor, not the victim. Melissa showed everyone the bracelet Joe bought her for their sixteen year anniversary, and I swear I heard Margaret’s response to be “that’s for sixteen years of the same banking,” but then it said on closed caption that it was for “sixteen years of the same banging” and I realized that made a whole lot more sense. Though I don’t really believe that Melissa bangs her husband anymore, it is far more likely that she’s tossing him one every so often when she’s drunk than the idea that the Gorgas would have worked with the same bank for 16 years, or even 16 months. These two have scams up the wazoo, and I’d bet they have a bankruptcy petition all filled out just waiting to be filed. Jackie is going to feel like such a fool when she sees last episode, now that she asked the guys to tell Evan that it’s “fucking bullshit nonsense please.” First of all, bitch, read a room. They all think he’s cheating, down to a man. They said so in a myriad of ways to Evan’s face as soon as Jackie walked away (and Evan laughed). Second of all, why does everyone on the planet earth have to report to Evan that Evan is not cheating? That’s not how any of this works. I feel like I am in the upside-down. To begin to dispel rumors about cheating, it is Evan who would do the talking. But Evan has been strangely silent and when he is not silent, he is ambiguous. Jackie feels “nothing” for Teresa. Right. As if she’s not seething with rage, not just below the surface, but on the surface. She was so bothered by Jen mentioning that Teresa may have heard something that she went from not wanting to make a toast, to making a toast to all the women Evan are fucking, ha ha ha. That toast may have been slightly amusing if someone who was at ease and actually trying to make a joke did it, but when a hysterical woman gives it, it’s just sad. This bitch don’t know if she’s coming or going and she really needs to get it together. Last season Margaret suggested that Danielle needed to be checked into Bellevue. May I suggest two for the price of one? I’ll probably have more to say later!

This. Is. Everything. Now I know why you are the Supreme Diva! I hope to see you in the Jackie thread—there are some highly acclaimed posts over there! 😁

Here is my meditation on Janky Jackie for this week! 😁

I’m just going to stick my pretty little nose in here for a second and say I respect both you and @hiyo for keeping the discourse fun, light and civil 💋 Stick with me kid—you’ll learn that and a whole host of other things. 👍 @Crazydoxielady, I just wanted to give you the heads up that the post you quoted as not from @BrownBear2012. There must be a glitch in the system or something, but I wrote that long post that you upvoted. The crown is heavy and I don’t want it to get misplaced and crush anyone. ❤️

Melissa is acting brand new about this money owing rumor, and pretending it’s a low blow? Might I remind her that this is exactly how she came on the show? A big part of her S3 storyline was her nasally-voiced brother in law crying to everyone who would listen that Joe Giudice owes him “mun-ney” and I can’t seem to remember Mel shutting that down in an act of sister in law alliance. If I believed in karma, I’d say it’s a stealth bitch. Dolores was all over that shit and I am living for it. What was especially beautiful about this takedown was that Jen just stated her case with hashtag facts, and Mel had no room to maneuver. When Jackie is not there to prop her up and gang up on Jen, Melissa is completely outmanned and she knows it. I would say in the instance of someone having third party info on you, Jen quite possibly may be “the wrong fucking girl.” There was no denial by Melissa, just fixation on a number, in an attempt to divert from the fact that she couldn’t deny Joe owes this dude money and shady shit is going on in the House of Gorga. If someone told me that there was a rumor that my husband owed thousands and thousands of dollars, I’d be like, “yeah, ok, did you hear about my debt? Check me out, because I have deals in the works that are in the six and seven figures.” But Melissa is reacting like the broke-ass bitch she is. On the phone, Joe sounded like a guilty man. His story sounded like a little boy who was caught with his hand in the cookie jar, with weak denials and hollow protestations. Teresa is not interested in backing Joe on something that very well may be true, Melissa’s attempt at emotional blackmail notwithstanding. Teresa’s husband went to jail for something similar, and the schadenfreude is real. Now that their parents are not here anymore, Joe is not Teresa’s Achilles Heel, and Melissa played the wrong card. She and her buddy Jackie cannot read a room. For the rest of the episode, Melissa looked like the wind was taken out of her sails. It sucks for this shit that you sowed to come back onto you. Remember Melissa’s season three “we pay our bills” coupled with a “bitch what” shrug? 😁 Why does Jackie feel the need to wear all of her clothes so damned tight? No one is interested in her tiny muffin top sitting atop a designer belt. Has she been acquainted with a three-way mirror in any of her many homes yet? Jackie is using her brother in a sordid way, as @ichbin pointed out. I did like how her told her to get over it, much like Gia told Teresa last episode. Getting over it would not fit Jackie’s narrative, so the only thing she will let go is what her brother told her. I wonder why Jackie won’t produce her sister, now that she is filming through a phone. They really should have taken out her solo scenes and taken her out of the opening last episode like they did to Aviva in RHNYC season six, when she refused to go to Montana. Hopefully she’ll go the way of Aviva... Two things no one on the cast were here for were Marge’s sex stories and Jackie. What is Margaret’s book about—being a latchkey kid who slept her way to the middle, and then cheated with the slouchy contractor? My only questions are whether it will be thinner than that book Joe Gorga “wrote” and if that’s even possible. Maybe Margaret is writing a book about her vagina, as Gina Liano speculated about Lydia’s book in S1 of RH of Melbourne. Jackie was not missed, and, to go all Marge, “by the way” that Lake George house was nicer and more inviting than Jackie’s tall, skinny, less than 2,000 square feet Westhampton Beach property from last season. Jackie is getting more and more desperate. I guess they didn’t teach how to apologize or analogize at Fordham Law (which, I’m sure is a lovely school, but for every rule there is an exception). Nor did they teach how to promote yourself without appearing shameless. When Jackie screeched at Melissa through the phone, my china shook. She is hanging onto her sanity by a thread. Everyone is reading the tea leaves, and, for all different and self-serving reasons, they’re all backing Teresa. I’m just going to do a running count, because it’s actually amazing what will happen if someone doesn’t stand up for themselves. Number one was Jackie’s aforementioned brother. Number two was Margaret at the coffee shop telling Jackie that she would have wanted to know about the cheating rumors. Jackie, with the rat’s nest head of hair from hell (at least The Marge had the good sense to wear a hat in the Jersey humidity) reacted in such a mature way. She reached over, took Margaret’s hand, said, “I can understand and sympathize, but I feel differently.” Oh, wait, no, Jackie desperately reminded Margaret that Teresa orchestrated the “assault” of Danielle on Margaret, and sarcastically jeered “I know you’re smarter than that” whilst violently rolling her head back in contempt. If Jackie would have paused for one moment, she could have looked into Margaret’s eyes and seen the dollar signs that had long ago replaced her pupils and realized that, at the end of the day, Margaret doesn’t give a shit what Teresa does, because Teresa keeps this show going, which allows Margaret to climb out of her bankruptcy. I guess they don’t teach how to know your ally/know your opponent at Fordham Law. Teresa is playing this game on a fairly high level, regardless of her IQ. She told Melissa she would talk to Michelle, the real estate agent, so she literally brought it up and blinked and nodded, all the while letting Michelle get her side out there to bolster Jennifer’s. That is cunning. What has anyone else done this episode—hell, this season—to show that they are game for this show, other than Jennifer giving Melissa a mildly scathing dress-down when Melissa’s foot soldier was too far away and emotionally devastated to answer for Melissa? Melissa in the Balmain shirt made me pause for thought about two things—can Melissa pronounce “Balmain”? And how is wearing a shirt that simply says “Balmain” anything but basic bitch 101? Wearing Balmain like that is not the same as wearing CHANEL, because Karl Lagerfeld, God rest his soul, made that his shtick, so I can low-key appreciate people who are in on it. This is just wearing a designer’s name to wear a designer’s name because she is creatively bankrupt. And this ho “owns” a clothing boutique that is named after one of the seven deadly sins. Go figure. The honeymoon is over in the Gorga marriage. Joe seems pretty happy-go-lucky and able to find joy in pantomiming Evan muff-diving on another lady at Evan’s second merry unbirthday party to Evan and his wife’s face, but Melissa has a puss on (no pun intended). Gee, who could have predicted that marriage would sour when the money officially ran dry? 🤔 Speaking of not knowing your opponent, did Jackie actually think Teresa was going to give a shit if she wasn’t invited to Evan’s second very merry un-birthday? Jackie, girl, I know you watched the show. When the twins invited Dina, but not Tre and Amber to their event in season six, Teresa fell onto Amber laughing at how obvious and boring their game was. Last season, Margaret tried to play hardball against Teresa by not inviting her to drag queen bingo (gee, who would want to miss that?!?) and all Teresa did was say one swear word to a trembling Margaret in the Hamptons. Jackie is still salty that she was not invited to the obstacle course last season, so she decided to enact her revenge by inviting everyone but Teresa to a restaurant that had corn hole. Shot taken, shot missed. Yet again. Ok, so when it comes to JoeGo, and Jackie has to face him, the Gia thing was “SUCH an analogy.” Interesting. I guess they didn’t teach superlatives at FL either. But what was great was that the stars fell from the eyes of two more cast members—Melissa and Joe Gorga—as cast members three and four who failed to back Jackie. It is too bad Jackie felt “so low,” but why, if it is was not just an analogy, but “such” an analogy? What happened to Teresa leaving Margaret’s house and Jackie saying to Margaret, “if she can’t see that was an analogy then I can’t help her” (paraphrasing, but not making up shit that wasn’t said, so sort of like Jackie, but not really). 😶 She needs to pick a lane. I’m so glad to learn that Evan is a big guy in finance. Is he like Big in Sex and the City where no one will explicitly say on the show what he does for some reason? Or maybe there is a pretty good reason. Maybe he’s not such a big deal on Wall Street after all. Oh well, that prenup will keep Jackie warm at night I guess. I will never not enjoy the irony that Joe is trying to stick up for his sister by telling Jackie and Evan that Teresa did this to “look out for” Jackie, all the while that Teresa feels no loyalty to Joe. But that is not the full story—all of the men on this cast, as I documented at length last week, seem to have a vested interest in outing Evan, so Joe said that for himself, not Teresa IMO. Good luck calling the dumb Joe Go “dumb” to his face, Evan. Check out how that worked out for Jim Marchese. Evan might remind himself that Joe Go is a pet of Andy’s, unlike Teresa, whom Andy hates. Excuse me while I gag at Jackie trying to kiss Dolores’s ass by telling her she looks so skinny at the Evan event. Jackie is taking this play right out of Melissa’s pathetic book in season three when Melissa was trying to cozy up to Jacqueline and Caroline to spite Teresa (history repeating itself) and Melissa told Jacqueline at the Posche Fashion Show that Jacq looked like “a stick!” It was bullshit then and it’s bullshit now. Neither Dolores nor Jacqueline were skinny sticks, though they have perfectly good figures, and no one is buying the ass kissing. Aw, poor Jackie! She is salty that Jennifer is cozying up to Teresa (though she phrased it in a way much more crass than that). Gee Jackie, maybe if you hadn’t spent all of last season trying to punish Jennifer and trying to extract apology after apology from her with a pair of tweezers, she would have remained your friend and stuck up for you the way she did in season nine. Jennifer is a good friend to have, but Jackie chose to alienate her because of her shortsighted self-righteousness and now it is coming back to firmly bite her in the ass. And Jennifer went against Jackie re Evan-gate, which makes the count of people who are not backing Jackie in this episode alone at a whopping five people, which is 83% the size of the full-time cast. Jackie, it might be time to start looking for a job. You’re not cut out for this. Just sayin. Ok, so the gauntlet has been thrown: Jackie has, once again, vowed on camera that she will never acknowledge Tre. Let’s see how that turns out... Those were ma’ deep thoughts. 😇

See, this is interesting, because the way I look at it, Tre (that’s what I call Teresa) allowed Andy to continue to have a show after she and Juicy (that’s what I call Joe Giudice) were found guilty and sent to jail. There was even that Teresa Checks In special that was filmed and aired when Teresa was in jail. So, Teresa found a way to line Andy’s pockets and keep him comfortable in his vices that run the gamut, not just before and after her incarceration, but during it. This woman starred in a New Jersey reality show through the phone from Connecticut. That was no mean feat, it’s unprecedented, and Andy is lucky he’s along for the ride IMO. If there is an argument to be made that Andy is bolstering Tre’s stardom (and not the reverse) out of a sense of benevolence, I would be keen to hear it.

Yep. Down the road a yonder, they directed me here if I wanted a place to rest my deep thoughts. Gets the job done, and the rates are quite reasonable. 🐴 👍

I’m not pulling any punches in this post, because all of their behavior this episode bothered me on some level, and the cherry on top will be that I will be able to demonstrate that just because I am Team Tre doesn’t mean I view her behavior with rose-colored glasses. I’m not taking prisoners, I’m calling balls and strikes... The women are starting in too heavy on the alcohol, the way it’s starting to occur on other franchises, like NYC and OC. It used to be that Teresa would have a glass of wine on occasion, Dolores didn’t drink hard liquor, Margaret didn’t drink at all (she just had that weed she would put on her puss 🤮), Melissa didn’t have an alter ego for when she was drunk, and Jen was the only one who turned into a lush when the party turned up. To see them all, as Siggy would say, “bubulah”, some at 11 am, is a little disappointing, not because I fear for their livers, just because it becomes boring and redundant when everyone is drunk all the time. As far as the conversation at lunch about the daughters and their boyfriends, I watched it again, and Teresa gives almost as good as she gets. Teresa started off the weirdness about her and Mel’s daughters when she said that she couldn’t imagine Antonia, or any 15 year old girl, “getting touched” by a boyfriend. Melissa hit right back, and harder, with her passive-aggressive bullshit by claiming that Milania told her that everyone has sex. Teresa’s body language in the immediate aftermath of that exchange showed me that she was not over it, that she was just filing it away for later, very much like Margaret’s “twenty-one” comment about Teresa in Jamaica last season. Same complaint with regard to the guys as it relates to drinking: I think the Joes (Juicy isn’t on the show anymore, so “the Joes” are now Joe G and Joe B) have a very distorted view of what makes a man a man, and it comes down to whoever can drink the most, first and foremost, with whoever can talk the most shit coming in as a close second. When I see the Joes “bonding” together, I can’t forget how disgusting it was in season nine when the two of them mercilessly double-teamed Marty for his grown-ass decision to marry Danielle. They were carrying on like obsessed mean-girls. I realized at the season nine finale, when Joe G attempted to get camera time by pretending it was his business to broker a peace between Joe B and Marty, when Marty said that no one would look at Margaret twice (after he was repeatedly provoked), Joe Gorga, apropos of nothing, jumped in between Marty and Joe B as if to stave off a fight that was only about to happen in Joe G’s little mind. These two men in particular seem to enjoy sowing discord and stirring shit, which renders them “little bitches” in my vernacular. Joe B is especially such a little bitch to tell his wife (the person who wears the pants in the family, clearly) on the phone that Teresa doesn’t get anything (not just vis a vis Jackie, but the implication was that Teresa doesn’t get anything about life at all), and then when he is not in the presence of his wife, he reports, through heavy innuendo, that apparently Teressa does get a lot of fucking things, because she had her pulse on what was going on between Evan and Jackie after all. As Dina said about Bobby in season six, methinks Joe B is a little too eager to be one of the cool kids, and it is not becoming. Can we talk about Frank’s involvement in this for a second? Frank the lawyer, former member of the New Jersey bar, really brought the guys’ conversation into the mud and, I think, orchestrated the whole thing by asking Joe B “what exactly” is the rumor, and after Joe B said a ton of incriminating shit, Frank suddenly wants to take a vote about whether Evan is cheating, and then Frank votes that there is a “ninety-nine percent” chance that Evan is not cheating. It was very clear to me that Frank was trying to keep his hands clean but really sending the complete opposite message, especially with Bill chiming in that “there’s always that one percent” and Joe G voting that Evan is faithful, not because he believes Evan is faithful, but because Joe is a “man’s man.” This right here is a subtly maneuvered take-down, of a much higher caliber than Teresa’s, and not one of those men is Evan’s friend IMO. Oh, and I like the fact that Frank “breached” the topic to Dolores, instead of “broached.” We’ve got ourselves a wordsmith! But the larger point I am making is that everyone seems to have it out for the Goldschneiders this year, not just Teresa, who is an easy target, and one can’t help but wonder why. One theory is that they are tired of pretending Evan’s infidelities don’t exist, so they are just outing him. This is what happened on RHNYC season two—Ramona was so tired of pretending that Luann’s DOA marriage was intact for the cameras that Ramona finally just said Luann is married to an old man and they fuck other people. I’m not going to begrudge someone for refusing to carry on with someone else’s lie. I just wish they would be more honest about their approach. Frank walks around this franchise as a confirmed cheater. I could see why it would yank his chain in particular to have to have a scarlet letter casually affixed to his face, while Evan gets to saunter around New York, wining and dining with the best of them, and getting clapped on the back for being a family man, when Frank had to suffer a divorce and indignity for the same behavior. Just a theory I’m floating out there that makes as much sense as any other I’ve heard. I think Jen and Nabil have by far the best marriage on this show. I am so glad that Jennifer—my RHNJ spirit animal whom I’ve been championing since season nine—is finally coming into her own on this show. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Joe G really hears that Melissa is going out and his reaction is “fuck you”? That sounds like the healthy underpinnings to a marriage if I’ve ever heard them 🙄Teresa also incites a lot of shit, such as going to the strip club with Joe when she knew Melissa didn’t approve of that. What happened to Teresa saying a bunch of seasons ago that the wife makes it better? I would think the corollary to that would be that the sister doesn’t make it worse...? When Teresa and Melissa punked Joe on that boat, it was one of the happiest moments I’ve seen of them together. Too bad it only took a man (a small man, but a man) having to be faux-cuckholded for this to occur. I guess these people either really do know or don’t know at all that one is the loneliest number. Melissa got a lot of screen time this episode and I am more convinced than ever that if she wasn’t Teresa’s sister-in-law, she would have gotten the boot from the show ages ago (if she’d even managed to get on in the first place). Oh, this was an unintentionally hilarious tidbit from Joe Gorga: “I have a stable marriage.” First of all, I don’t believe that’s true, unless merely tolerating each others’ presence is now considered “stable”, and second of all, what a ringing endorsement for your marriage—“stable”!! Ok, pivoting to what a hypocritical lunatic Jackie is, because it can’t not be said. It is so strange to me that Jackie’s goal is for Teresa to “let Evan know that it was total bullshit” about his cheating. I can’t recall the last time I thought I might have been cheating, and I was only sure that my hands were clean when a third party and someone I deemed a liar swooped in to reveal to me I wasn’t. In fact, I don’t recall it happening to me at all this calendar year. Jackie is a fucking two-face and that is why Teresa has had a fundamental problem with her almost from the beginning. Jackie says (though the phone) on the one hand she needs Teresa to dispel this untrue, nasty rumor, yet when Melissa suggests that Jackie might have to issue an apology to Teresa as a conduit for a return apology, thus clearing the name of this man amongst men and releasing her four perfect children of these trespasses committed against them, Jackie’s reaction is...”There’s nothing in the world I’m sorry about. I needed her to understand...words are so hurtful. She could have made it right; she just kept digging in.” Ah-ha, so there is something more important to Jackie than Evan’s reputation, and that is maintaining her faux-righteousness and “winning” against Teresa. Dolores is right that if Jackie really needed Evan’s name cleared, she would apologize to Teresa. Wow, everyone is hanging Evan out to dry—Teresa, then the men, and now Jackie. Interesting. What was hilarious was that, by the end of the phone conversation, Margaret (and, to an extent, Melissa) seemed totally over Jackie and her bullshit. Margaret was just like, “take it easy! Take it easy!” And then she hung up on her 😆 Jackie is really playing some 3D chess here—first she alienates her enemies, then she alienates her friends. Her strategy is so deep, so covert, that I’m not sure anyone is aware of what it is, up to and including Jackie herself. Jackie’s estranged sister is probably watching this and breathing a sigh of relief. I can only imagine how many Tums the deans at Fordham University School of Law are popping whilst plotting to create distance from this train wreck that has jumped the tracks. At the end of the episode, Teresa said something I thought was very interesting—Teresa said to the group that Jackie should have said “fuck you” to her regarding Evan. Teresa knows she did wrong. That was why she was so willing to have the sit-down with Jackie in the first place and hear her out. I think she may have been expecting some “fuck yous” to fly in the course of getting to a better place and to get higher TV ratings. Teresa was still hurt from last season, she was trying to get this season started, or both, so she did something immature and naughty at Evan’s party. And then she was willing to film a sit-down during which she and Jackie made amends. But Jackie brought a gun to a knife fight, and if I may torture this metaphor just a tad more, Jackie was subsequently fucking surprised that she shot herself in the face with her own gun when Teresa walked out with the high ground, knife firmly ensconced in boot. In other words, this “fight” was just another day at the office for Teresa, whereas Jackie was likely nursing herself with Prince Valium, dry martinis and Turner Classics under the covers of her big, expensive, “winning” “motherfuck[ing]” (thanks for the pithy words from last season, Mel) bed with her thousand count sheets. It’s not even game, set, match, it’s just...game, and then Jackie breaking down on the court like some kind of low-rent Serena at the 2018 US Open. Even though their shenanigans bordered on immature and mildly spiteful during this trip to Lake George, a fun time was had by all. I did not miss Jackie for one second. Can Jackie just film the rest of the season from her closet like Mary on RH SLC? And, while I am making requests that will never see the light of day, can we trade Lexi for that really pretty real estate agent Michelle? I will settle for relegating Jackie to a closet though and then having her take her (still-warm) third place chair at the reunion, hopefully to only ever be seen again at Teresa’s smaller out-of-the-way book signings. 😆

My reaction to this statement about Evan’s industry is that even if individuals acting on behalf of corporations in America are greedy, I’m not sure that is a harm that requires a remedy. Greed is just an intense desire for something, which can be harnessed for good or bad. This “greed” is the force behind all kinds of technological advancements that make people’s lives better and longer. My iPhone can be traced back to “corporate greed,” and I celebrate that. People like Evan wanted money, I wanted a smartphone without having to pay an arm and a leg, and we won-won that shit. Where the greed gets bad is in the event of an involuntary taking, and last time I checked, Evan wasn’t working for the IRS. As far as standards, I haven’t seen institutionalized abuse between boards and shareholders that has gone unchecked in quite awhile. Since it is voluntary, all parties are free to walk away at any time. If we’re talking about standards that have been set in place by a third party, such as regulators, that is the fault of the third party interloper trying to racketeer its cut off of every voluntary transaction, and those are the guys with no standards, not IMO Evan, or his colleagues, who are doing their thing to create wealth, while also getting wealthy themselves. In a scenario purely between buyer and seller, I fail to identify a victim. I think that Evan should not only have a clear conscience about what he does, I think he should feel proud that he’s helping people—many of whom are working class families—on a large scale. Now, the fact that Evan is married to that idiot stick figure with no soul is another story. That’s his cross to bear, and I would bet that Evan is most mad at Teresa for putting the series of events in motion that caused Jackie to stay home from Lake George, which most likely resulted in a full-scale attempt to monitor Evan’s activities for four days. Sounds like a blast! 😒

Wow, Teresa got the anchor in the tag lines. I’m shocked! And Melissa is still trying to plug her shitty store with no customers thorough a lame play on words in her tag line. 😩 Check out Margaret setting the stage with a call to Joe to make it clear that her position on the Tre/Jackie feud is that Teresa is wrong, Jackie is right. Maybe Margaret is carrying something over from last season too—Teresa telling Danielle to pull her ponytail. I have been saying for seasons that if people think Teresa is wrong, they need to come for her. But they are all too worried about their pocketbooks to really take it to the house, so I’m not going to jump through hoops agreeing with them when they are too afraid to state a case. Give me a reason to turn on Teresa; don’t expect me to infer it—that’s literally why they have a show. HaHaHa on Teresa saying that she apologized to Jackie because she literally said “sorry.” Not for nothing, but the difference between what Teresa said and what Jackie said is that there is footage of Teresa saying “sorry” to Jackie’s face. 🤫 Dolores is so right that Jackie doesn’t have a real reason to be upset; she just wants to be outraged. I don’t know that Jackie has experienced a real problem. No one with a real set of problems gets that upset that Jen did an impression of them on Instagram. I wish Lexi would not speak. I wish she would not be there. Dolores looks so good this season, so healthy. She looked so good in that tie-dyed outfit; I want her tan! Everything she said about sex is how I feel—don’t put a number out there, whether it’s age you lost your v-card or how many partners, and the gold standard is marriage, so it’s not something to brag about loudly if one had multiple partners (man or woman, IMO—there is private or anonymous discussion on one hand, and there is shouting from the rooftops in a misguided effort to appear cosmopolitan on the other. Spoiler alert: not one person who has ever graced this show has been cosmopolitan). I agree with Jennifer that it’s not really an appropriate thing to put on TV when you have a spouse. I admire that Jennifer refused to discuss details of her sex life to Andy in the past. Melissa is so that bitch that wants to keep Joe from even looking at other hoes, but she can feel free to be Melissa Motherfucking Gorga and jump onto guys and hug them with both legs on her fortieth birthday. This happens a lot when there is a significant looks/intellect disparity in the relationship—the “better” partner thinks they can put the “worse” partner through the paces. And Melissa is only better in relation to Joe. She’s not a picnic by any other rubric. Nice Italian, Joe. It’s about as good as Luann’s French. 🙄 Why does Melissa always feel the need to announce, “I’m tipsy!” as if she just figured out the Theory of Everything? I hate drunk Melissa. She has been doing this from the beginning, when she was trying to cozy up to Teresa’s friends. She’d get drunk and try to bond with Jacqueline by screaming in Jacq’s face that she was a “Closet! Whore!” I weep for anyone who has to attempt to have a conversation with Melissa. Maybe she isn’t the intellectual better to Joe. I fucking hate that Bravo teased us with Teresa “telling” JoeGo that Melissa was flirting and then they did a whole segment on the fakery. This is just like season 7, when there wasn’t much going on, so they previewed Teresa calling Joe from the hot springs to rescue her from “that bitch Jacqueline,” when it was all only a prank the whole time. This is not a legitimate alternative to a storyline. It’s a cop-out, and if they do it much more, I will drop the show. Hahahaha, I love Jennifer outing JoeGo as a poser loser. Dolores was there for it in a sly way too. Aw, Evan didn’t show up to that pathetic guys’ night. I guess he was...at the gym? 😇 Joe Benigno is more of a punk bitch than Teresa—“the rumor” was that Evan’s got a girlfriend and “the rumor” was that it’s true and at any given point in a day there are 10 girls in his house and “none of them talk quietly”? That’s stirring the pot with real talk. That’s much more inciteful than someone with an axe to grind saying “I heard he does things at the gym.” I don’t care that Joe said this, because he’s on TV and he is being paid to talk shit, so he’s doing his job, but it is quite shady that Margaret is putting it out there that she is completely Team Jackie on the phone to Joe, but then, to keep the show moving, Joe goes to guys’ night and talks mad shit, and all of the guys subtly conveyed their support for the rumor whilst speaking the party line that it’s “99% not true” but there’s always that other “one percent”. It’s just very interesting at this point that all the guys are going there. Is Jackie going to demand a retraction from them too? I would pay good money to see Dorlores’s reaction if Jackie told Frank that she heard Frank Jr is doing PED’s in the bathroom at the gym. That would be witness protection time. If they continue to show guys’ scenes on a Housewives show, I’m also out. They clearly don’t have sufficient footage to bring a season to air, so I have a wild idea...don’t air it! Episode one there were so many flashbacks to shit that had been filmed that didn’t make it to an episode. Teresa kind of did everyone’s pocketbook a favor by kicking off the season and giving them something to film with the “rumor” bullshit that didn’t have an aura of truth until Jackie validated it with her reaction. Why does Jackie think Teresa needs to clear Evan’s name? If Teresa has nothing true to say, according to Jackie, if she has no evidence, what the fuck does it matter what she says about Evan? Why isn’t Jackie trying to get Teresa to apologize for disrespecting Evan at his birthday party? Why is it so important, instead, that Teresa “clear” Evan’s name? Why does Teresa have that much power over Jackie’s life? This all sounds very off to me. Everything Teresa said is true—Jackie has no backbone, she’s weak, and she may have an “inklinck” that he’s cheating. Teresa is being hypocritical, but she’s also right on these issues at this time. This reminds me of The Office, when Michael Scott was spreading untrue rumors around the office, including that Andy was gay, and at the end of the episode Andy asked Michael, “Michael, is it true? Am I gay?” Like if you need absolution from Michael Scott/Teresa, you’ve got a fucking problem. Jackie is too weak for Teresa, she seems too weak for Dolores, she’s took weak for the show, and she’s too weak for me. She should have been in Lake George with her “top quality fabric” from whatever that means in her tag line to defend herself and get all up in Teresa’s bid-niz the way Dolores would if Teresa ever talked about Dolores’s family or relationship. Jackie is a spineless creep. She should not have gotten paid for an episode in which she didn’t make a live appearance. I won’t watch WWHL—it is against my religion—but I saw it written across the screen when I was watching the show that Jackie will be on with Andy tonight. Bitch. Move. Jackie gets to duck out of the vacation, duck out of the episode, and duck out of her job because she’s afraid to square off against Teresa and lose to her again, but she gets to give her side to Andy (and with eight months to rehearse and reflect, which is the only thing she’s good at). Teresa, say what you will about her, is fully entrenched in this game. Jackie has forfeited. Team Teresa x1,000, because, to quote Lady Gaga, I “don’t want no paper gangster” who “don’t have no follow through.” Go big or go (stay) home. Lead, follow, or get out of the way and off my screen. She’s a succubus on this show.

I didn’t catch Teresa saying she was good with Jackie, but maybe Teresa is like Lisa VanderPump and she has to be “really fucking good” to move on. 😳 I’m not sure that very many are making the argument that Teresa is “right,” as if it’s binary and only one person in a two-person argument can be “right” and the other one must be “wrong.” I think they’re both wrong, but Jackie more so, and I’m on Teresa’s side, which is not the same as asserting that she is right. I will explain why below. If the challenge is not to go back in seasons to defend Teresa vs Jackie and to just stick to the facts of this season...that certainly is a challenge, but I’m not going to take it, because seasons 9 and 10 are relevant to me with regard to how I view the principals in this battle. The thing is, I just rewatched the whole series for a reason—not to forget, but to put the pieces together and understand. As viewer and not as a proxy for Teresa, I am like a cop reading the Miranda warning: “Everything you say can and will be held against you.” I can’t forget, nor do I want to, that it came out at the season nine reunion that Jackie stood in line at Teresa’s book signing and fan-girled her (and then Jackie denied the substance of it, whilst admitting she was there, which is Classic Jackie). Most all of the people I knew since this thing began airing in 2009 didn’t watch it and didn’t care about it. Teresa was not Beyoncé, aka she was not someone that mainstream America reflexively wanted to come into contact with because she’s a part of pop culture. Teresa was a reality tv personality who flipped a table in a restaurant because someone told her to “pay attention.” Yet Jackie deliberately sought this out. Teresa’s first book, Skinny Italian, was published in 2010. So, a the very least, Jackie knew Teresa was a table-flipper when she waited in line to meet Teresa and get her book signed. She probably also knew that Teresa chased Danielle down at the country club, dropped Andy into a chair, and went for Danielle at the reunion, all of which we the viewing public learned summer 2010. So Jackie genuflected for Teresa after she’d exhibited the behavior Jackie claims to reject, scratched and fought to be on a show with her, and then as soon as Teresa didn’t act the way Jackie expected Teresa to act—as soon as Teresa acted like Teresa—Jackie went for Teresa more than once in an attempt to IMO take Teresa down as the queen bee and make herself that person. None of that sits right with me. So even if Teresa claimed to be “good” with that, I’m not. For me, “Team Teresa” didn’t occur in a vacuum. In the eleven months since this show went off the air and came back, the cultural milieu has changed dramatically. Since this show went into break after season 10, people have been demanding that I apologize, whether implicitly or explicitly, for just being me, for where I live, for who I am, for how I was born, when I didn’t do a damn thing wrong to any person, let alone an entire group, and I am completely fucking done with this apology culture. For life. So when I was rewatching the season 10 reunion just a few months ago, I assessed which one of these women were least likely to apologize for their “privilege” and all signs pointed to Teresa, and I decided that this is the horse I’m backing. This transcends spreading rumors about Evan at his birthday party in an outdoor parking lot. This is about taking a stand about where we are going and where we are going to come out as a society. And just as I am completely convinced that Teresa would be the last one to apologize for her “privilege”, I think that Jackie would be second (only to Margaret) to apologize for same. Jackie constantly slouching around looking for an apology (whether she deserves one or not) reminds me of a SJW, and I am just not going to buy into that. Maybe in early 2020 I would have, but not in 2021. I’m saying this in case anyone was earnestly wondering why people defend Teresa, which is what I was getting from the OP—a question seeking an answer. If I thought it was rhetoric, I would not have responded. This doesn’t mean I have defended or will defend everything Teresa did or does. Tom Brady is my favorite football player. If he throws an interception, I’m not going to go around demanding a flag for holding on the other side. I go into every episode with a fresh set of eyes, but I’m also carrying a metaphorical history book of what happened both on and off this show in my back pocket, and I don’t think that methodology is flawed. I think that is the only sane way for me to proceed at this time. I’ve thought long and hard about this, but it’s also a gut thing, so anyone can feel free to sling any arrows or straw man arguments my way (“so you’re on the side of a criminal because you reject apologist culture????”). In short, yes I am, and for that I make no apologies. 😇

I see what this is coming from, and I respect your interpretation, but i interpreted the bolded parts differently. Last episode Jackie put out the coke rumor about Gia without saying it was an analogy or metaphor. This episode, after the scene is over, after Teresa is driving away and not within earshot, Jackie tells Margaret, “It’s like me saying ‘I don’t know if it’s true, but I heard that Gia was snorting coke in the bathroom’ and can you imagine if I did that at Gia’s own party, like can you imagine?” Margaret says “no” and Jackie goes, “if she didn’t get that that was an analogy, then I can’t...” But this all happened after the dust-up. So there was time between the accusation “I heard Gia does coke in the bathroom” that Teresa heard, and then Jackie’s correction, to Margaret, after the fact that it was an analogy. I’m going to put an analogy out there: The difference between first degree murder and second degree murder in a lot of jurisdictions is premeditation. When I was in law school, I took a semester-long class called “substantive criminal law” and one of the major themes was, what causes premeditation to be premeditation? In a lot of jurisdictions it’s any time for reflection whatsoever, even a second. Thus, the requirement for “premeditation” in “premeditated murder” is literally as short as the time it takes for the defendant to have the thought to commit a murder. So, to take my analogy to Jackie, it’s hard for me to agree that she “immediately” said it was an analogy. For me, from what I was taught, “immediately” is, “I heard Gia snorts coke in the bathroom; I don’t know if it’s true.” That’s immediately. If it takes an amount of time longer than it takes the next breath, it’s not “immediately” to me; it’s shorty thereafter. And that might sound like it’s splitting hairs, but to me it makes a big difference, because it’s my opinion that as soon as Teresa walked out of that room having heard that Jackie is saying her daughter is a drug user—and then Jackie doing spin to Margaret and using different words than she used with Teresa in order to mitigate the impact of what she said (in an effort to look more reasonable and sympathetic to Margaret)—the factual scenario has changed. It’s different in nature from having said to Teresa’s face “I don’t know if it’s true,” which did not happen according to the footage. (I can’t second-guess the footage and theorize that the show may have deliberately spliced what they had in a misleading way, because that’s getting into grassy knoll territory, and if I can’t trust the narrative of what is portrayed on my screen, there would be no point for me to watch or comment.) In the same exact vein, it’s my interpretation that Jackie put something out there about Gia and then after some time had passed and Jackie’s audience changed, she walked it back, which is something very different from not having put something out there in the first place. To use another analogy, that the difference between a newspaper printing the wrong story and then printing a retraction versus the newspaper just getting the story correct in the first place. I don’t think this is a distinction without a difference. I think Jackie was holding “Gia does coke at parties” as her ace in the hole, I think Teresa was right in surmising that Jackie walked into that scene having already decided that if things didn’t go her way, she was going to say that about Gia (In addition to saying that she won and that Teresa wishes she had the life Jackie had), and when Teresa pushed that button by refusing to back down, Jackie hit her predetermined talking points. I think Jackie really thought she was going to get Teresa to back down, and when she didn’t, Jackie pivoted to trying to incite Teresa so that she would act out physically, in order to expose Teresa as a circus ape, and thus, Jackie would have won by default if she couldn’t win directly. I really don’t think Jackie thought out what the aftermath would look like if Teresa just called her a c*** and left. Now she’s caught with her pants down, because she knows Margaret is not going to co-sign “Gia” and “coke” in the same sentence and Jackie is going to look like the villain, so DJ Jackie immediately begins spinning as soon as Teresa leaves Jackie with her hat in her hand. The big difference here, to me, is that the viewer has no idea whether Jackie would have back-peddled and told Margaret “I don’t know if it’s true” if the situation had gone her way. One wonders why Jackie didn’t say “I don’t know if it’s true” in the initial altercation with Teresa if it was so inherent to the argument Jackie was trying to make. If I look even closer at Jackie’s words in the aftermath, “I don’t know if it’s true” is kind of a slippery “retraction” for Lawyer Lady, because she is still leaving it out there as a possibility, just the way that Teresa was leaving Evan’s cheating out there as a possibility right up to the end of the conversation. Wouldn’t Lawyer Lady say, “there’s no truth to it that I am aware of” if she really wanted to put to rest any idea that Gia was actually sniffing white powder off tiny spoons? Even in her “retraction,” Jackie is leaving the door open for speculation. I see you Jackie. Teresa said “I don’t know if it’s true” about Evan’s cheating. And, subsequently, everyone is mad at Teresa. But Jackie gets to say “I don’t know if it’s true” about Gia after the fact, and that’s not shady? She has a reckless mouth. She even had the same tone when she said she heard Gia is doing coke in the bathroom as she did when she said to Teresa two seasons ago, “Would your husband be in jail if you could control him?” She throws statements out there for shock value and then has a sit-down with either Dolores (in the “jail” scenario) or Margaret in this scenario, where she reverts to this quietly reflective and flummoxed person who is suddenly all, “How do I navigate Teresa/how did she not know that was an analogy?” like she is some babe in the woods. To tell Melissa, during her damage control tour, “my intent was not to hurt [Teresa]” was just an out-and-out lie. Now Jackie has a track record. Now she has an MO. Doesn’t mean Teresa is not wrong or that she didn’t play her own part—Teresa has her own serious accountability issues. But Teresa’s out there on front street being completely messy and embarrassing. Jackie is trying to spin this like she didn’t get into the muck and mire with Teresa, and that is the part I am not going to forget or unsee because now it’s a question of who am I going to believe, Jackie, or my lying eyes and ears? Jackie did everything this episode to be the victim, to be the poor, misunderstood party. Why didn’t she take an ounce of that energy and walk onto the bus before it headed to Lake George and just say, “first, Teresa, I just want to address the elephant in the room—I stated in a moment of anger that your daughter does drugs. I made it up in retaliation and I’m sorry.” Then she would have the moral high ground and she could have gone on the vacation with everyone having her back. After the Gia/drug thing wrapped up, Jackie could have addressed the cheating rumors about Evan on the bus in front of everyone, and Teresa would have no place to hide, because every woman on that bus held the opinion that Teresa was wrong in some way, shape or form. Teresa would have no wiggle room, and she would, in all likelihood have issued a counter apology, because otherwise no one would have been talking to her. That is how you play this game as a boss bitch. Cowering at home and hoping people take up your cause (the one you’re too reluctant to fight yourself) doesn’t even work in the real world, let alone on this dog eat dog show. Oh, this is a new tidbit I picked up on rewatch—Jackie is “tying to distract” her kids from the tension between Jackie and Evan, because Teresa brought up “his name” and “Evan is still so angry.” Wouldn’t a normal, healthy marriage or partnership (the kind that causes Jackie to “win”) be based on empathy and compassion and wouldn’t the couple in question (both of whom signed up for this show) join in solidarity against Teresa regarding these supposedly untrue rumors? I don’t know from a world where my frenemy says my husband is cheating and my husband gets mad at me. Methinks there’s something rotten in the Goldschneider residence. I didn’t see anything remotely untoward about Frank and David going to the target range. It’s a very mainstream form of stress relief/hobby. I don’t see any contradiction between David being a doctor and firing a weapon. The paper targets rarely sustain injury. 🤠

I came out of retirement from boycotting the season after a bout with insomnia during which I watched the last quarter of the season and I come up with really unpopular, but strongly held, opinions. Fact: Jen and Whitney gossiped in a salacious way about Meredith’s marriage. I have no idea why Jen was the only one on the hook for that, except for one throwaway line from Whitney that Whitney talked crap about Meredith because she was just getting to know her. Oh, that’s how you get to know people, by pulling your cousin aside and telling her you have to update her on the infidelity that a “new friend” is allegedly committing? Jen has just been apologizing over and over, unequivocally, and no one on left couch (or Andy) wants to give her an inch, and I don’t respect that. I’m not talking about race. That was a cop-out. But maybe she went there because no one was listening to anything else she had to say. I can’t fucking stand Heather. She is such a try-hard cringeworthy bitch who is so happy to be sitting next to Andy that she will say anything to stay in his good graces. I am appalled at how she just kept talking over Lisa time and time again. What was that? To me, that’s a sign of the end of civilization when only one person is allowed to speak and the other gets silenced. Lisa seemed to be awake for the first time this season at the reunion, she was making sense, and Heather couldn’t handle that. Lisa at least got to be heard on that one point at least. I think Heather is really smelling herself. Is she a Mormon or is she not a Mormon? She can’t even get that straight. She is vacuous. Since she is sitting next to Andy, she wants her children to get wasted and have multiple partners. If some “over six foot tall” perfect Mormon guy came into her life and wanted to help her raise her kids and keep her in tacky Chanel, the trick would change her tune in an instant. I hate people like that. Stand for something. Meredith was checked out to an obnoxious level. It’s like she prides herself on not paying attention, as if this reality show TV thing is something that was imparted on her without her consent, and she is just there by dint of fate. I don’t need her or her raggedy/perpetually hung over husband or her shitty kid back on my screen. Whitney was a nonentity. Got to slide by with everything under the sun, which is all fine and good at a reunion show. She fell under the protection of her don, Heather. I find her husband quite porcine and unattractive in the face. I’ll say it for the third and last time that it’s utter bullshit that Whitney got to skate on the gossip about Meredith’s marriage. It’s so unfair. Jen acted like a complete ass the whole season, yes, but does that make her responsible for everyone else’s sins, every single thing that went bad or wrong this season and everyone else gets to be Pontius Pilate and wash their hands? I came out swinging against Jen well before that was a popular opinion, and I still think this pile-up is bullshit. I loved Mary’s eye makeup. I had my makeup done exactly like that at MAC one time, and I got a lot of positive attention for it on social media. I liked her wig, and think that color is flattering on her. I think she’s a very attractive woman. But I don’t think she should come back, because she is not articulate. At the beginning of the season, I said her “mumble-stutter is maddening” and I stand by that. I also think she’s a very troubled woman, but there is still something I like about her. She thinks outside of the box. This is going to sound odd, but seeing Robert Sr’s teeth, in HD, made me more horrified than the fact that he is her step-grandpa. Lisa was alive and finally speaking about her church and opening up and making points, and she reconfirmed herself as my favorite. Not that I am dancing in the streets about any of them. Lisa was a good friend to Meredith—a very good friend—and I think Meredith gave her the cold shoulder at the reunion, and that was highly disappointing. I know mileage varies, and that’s ok, but, to me, Heather is the clear villain of this franchise, and I think that will become more apparent next season. I don’t think Heather is inherently mean or spiteful, but I think there is something about her divorce that permanently shook her confidence and now she is a toxic people-pleaser, stealth mean girl (because she’s hurting, jealous and insecure, not because she’s evil) and confused and confusing about her identity. Her true colors will show next season, either as she fights to the death to retain her place next to Andy, or when she gets a man to wife her up, and then I think she will snap back to holier than thou so fast it’ll make our heads spin. If Heather is so “good” and “secure” (based off of one DM from Rihanna—that sounds self-sustaining 🙄), why is she so threatened by everyone, especially Lisa? I think Heather is jealous of Lisa, because of Lisa’s looks and figure, Lisa’s (oft-misplaced) confidence, and Lisa’s intact family, and as boring as they are, they actually seem happy, and how dare someone be happy when Heather is over here still bleeding over the Mormon church and a marriage that ended how many years ago now? She was seething that she was the only one on that stage without a husband, like it was a slight committed against her instead of a circumstance in her life in this moment. I liked that the husbands who couldn’t be there in the flesh had to show up on zoom, and I just wonder why they don’t require that on all reunions, especially RH of Potomac (which I also quit, so moot point). I think that Coach Shah speaks a really good game and really knows how to make a case for himself, but I am completely convinced that he is not the person underneath that he was pretending to be at the reunion. Mark my words—and I know the only way I can be proven right is with time—he is not this person behind closed doors, this earnest person who says, “man” and “baby” and “I’m gonna pray on it” and “God willing brother” a mile a minute. I think he knows exactly what he has to stay to remain in good public favor, and I think that in private he is aloof, detached, possibly single-minded about his career, and I think he very subtly gaslights Jen. I’m not saying he’s responsible for her crazy, but he is not the choir boy he tried to portray. I’ve seen this persona a thousand times. Doesn’t mean I don’t like him. Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want to hang with him. I just think he is playing chess. This is probably moot for me, as they said season two is coming soon, and I have no intentions to watch, but I think they should cut Meredith and Mary, keep Heather, Lisa and Jen (if only so that Lisa can finally get her point across about Heather without being cut off over and over) and Whitney is on the bubble. One part of me says to keep her, again, just so she would have to be accountable for her behavior, but another part of me thinks she is utterly dull and can go the way of Meredith. Conclusion: Team right couch all the way and they’re all kinda gross.

Ok, that didn’t take long for Jackie to begin her spin tour by telling Margaret that she told Teresa vis a vis Gia, “I don’t know if it’s true, but...”. FICTION. Or, as the Red Menace used to say, “LIE!” If I had a dollar for every time the word “analogy” got tossed around on this episode, good God. It’s reverberating now to Melissa and Marge Sr. For the people who think the analogy was implied by virtue of Jackie’s tone—which I could see—wouldn’t it be so much more honest of Jackie to say just that? Because Jackie is making it sound like an unambiguous analogy, and that part simply isn’t true. I’m a reasonably intelligent person, and I struggle with it. If Jackie wanted to be even more honest and go another step to show us that she how evolved she is (as opposed to Teresa), she could go the extra mile and say that she was trying to set Teresa off with the “analogy,” rather than trying to get Teresa to see the light, because that part is clear to me. To err is human, to pretend you don’t understand what you did is bovine. Jackie is never going to look at Teresa again or spend any more time with her? Sure. Is this like on RHBH when they went to Amsterdam, Kim said “let’s not talk about the husband,” Lisa Rinna broke a glass at the table and went for Kim’s throat and later told Kyle that she would never spend time with Kim again, only for Rinna to literally have a sit-down with Kim in Kim’s hotel room in the same episode? Is there a different space-time continuum on Real Housewives? The only way Jackie will not be amongst Teresa again is if she quits the show. Hmm. Teresa is lying or at least being hypocritical when she says that Jackie isn’t strong if she can’t take the rumor about her husband cheating. Has Teresa met herself and the 90 seasons she spent trying to put a lie—with violence—to the cheating rumors about Joe? All the glasses that Teresa has broken over the seasons stood up and voiced their objection to that one. Good job, Margaret, season nine, casting aspersions on Jennifer’s brother’s “mail-order bride” now that he is married and has two beautiful children. Maybe Margaret should worry more about her own family. Dolores is being passive-aggressive with David, I think, as he is being with her. She came on the show with a broken engagement to a guy who also couldn’t commit. Frank has said in the past that he’s not with Dolores because he’s not 100% sure he can be faithful. What is going on with her? Is her picker off? So Dolores’s and Jennifer’s parents are separated? Jackie’s parents live separately. Marge Sr dates married men. And Melissa’s dad used to “go out for milk” for days at a time, leaving her with a potential half-sister. What is going on with these parents and do they deserve their own franchise? OMG, Teresa has unhung oil paintings of herself in her bedroom!!! She is like Suzy on Curb Your Enthusiasm. “Wow, Melissa, maybe if I was a mirror, you would greet me.” -Jen. She is gold. Who else would have ever had the balls to say that, other than maybe season 6 Dina? Margaret is an interesting one to tell Teresa directly to her face what Jackie said and didn’t say to Teresa when Margaret wasn’t even in the room. Last season when Margaret said that Jennifer’s husband sleeps in his girlfriend’s bed, it took her about 2.4 seconds to realize it was time to apologize because that was out of line. Margaret is free to tell Teresa that she thinks Teresa owes Jackie an apology, but it’s not for Margaret to say that it was an analogy when she didn’t hear firsthand and Teresa did. Oh, we have to do that Housewives thing where they have to pretend there is a reason they’re going on a trip other than for the show? Yawn. Ok, Teresa has a crush on Evan. This is clearly schadenfreude. Teresa’s excuses for saying Evan was cheating were so lame. He is a swa-vay guy and Jackie doesn’t give him blowjobs? Not the best evidence. Doesn’t convince me he’s cheating. What does convince that he’s cheating is Jackie’s reaction. I don’t know whether I’m happy she skipped the trip or if it would have been great fun if she’d been there. Frank looked scary in that picture with his injuries. He looked sad and droopy in the face like a post-deportation Joe Giu. If there has to be a guy scene on a show about housewives, I’m at least grateful it doesn’t involve either of the Joes (Joe B or Joe G, can’t stand either one). Catania has really good manners in restaurants (I’m a former server, and I pick up on those little things), and I like that about him. Party of one, maybe, but I don’t enjoy drunk Melissa aka Melissa Motherfucking Gorga. She is just a sloppy drunk. If she has something to say to Teresa’s bullshit, she would have looked like so much less of a wuss if she’d done it sober. She’s afraid of Teresa too, she’s just not first in line. Teresa is blaming tequila? Again? That’s what prompted her to urge Danielle to pull Margaret’s ponytail last season. Maybe it’s time to put the bottle down for a beat. Teresa’s last, best hope is to say her gossip about Evan is revenge for Jackie’s talk of Teresa’s cheating last season, and even that excuse is flawed. But nothing else can be said that is remotely defensible, and Teresa should just stick to that one line of dialogue. Jackie cutting hair in the driveway with her shitty posture and nervous tics? Ok, Teresa pissed her off, but what did we do as viewers to be subjected to this? It makes Jackie’s underwhelming birthday party for her kids last year look like Marie Antoinette at Versailles. Can we go back to Frank and David please? Nothing is more important to Jackie than her family? Is that why she didn’t talk to her sister for 15 years? And you don’t have to be friends with anybody you don’t want to be friends with? Then why was she so flabbergasted last season when Jennifer announced that Dolores doesn’t consider her a friend? Get your shit together FL Jackie (that’s Fordham Law Jackie to us peons). Jackie’s complaining that she didn’t “get to” go on vacation with her friends? Who stopped her? Did she need permission to leave the state, the way Teresa did a few seasons ago? Vag up, Miss Lady, and go to Lake George if you’re such a boss. Why let Teresa stop you? Lexi...just no. I don’t think she’s going to last, the way Barbara K didn’t last on RHNYC. We’ll all always look back on this as the season that Margaret’s weird worker friend Lexi was on. Hopefully. Teresa’s white dress with the black bow was working for me in Lake George. Everyone else looked kind of slouchy. Just to be fair, Jackie looked good in her pink dress last episode. It was tailored well to her body. I don’t believe Melissa that she doesn’t use a vibrator. This is part of her season three “be a lady in the parlor and a whore in the bedroom” shtick. She’s not putting out on a regular basis. Anyone who bought her book should get their money back. Teresa clearly wanted Jackie to be there so that she could mind-fuck her. She should have something else going on. Despite this, solid episode. It went so fast. I really enjoy Melissa vs Jennifer when Jackie is out of the equation as Melissa’s wingman. Melissa knows she can’t hold her own against Jennifer, so she looks like she’s caught in the deep end of the swimming pool with a quickly deflating floaty swan. Someone asked on last week’s thread if anyone wants to talk about anything besides Jackie and Teresa. Yes, I do! I want to talk about the quiet feud between Melissa and Jen. This has the potential to be very interesting. Jennifer will get a bitch together with her mouth faster and more thoroughly than Teresa can hurl a glass.

Aww...shucks. I’m so flattered! Would that I could, but if I spent any more time bullshitting online, I’d be headed for divorce 😍!

I’m surprised at how this word “analogy” got so deeply enmeshed into the conversation. I tried to quote everyone who posted that it was an analogy, and there were too many quotes to quote, so I just figured I would put it out there for posterity what was said, because I only go off of what I see and hear on the episode, and I want to be clear on what Jackie said come reunion time. She never mentioned that she was making an analogy. She didn’t allude to it either IMO. MMV; I’m just trying to get the words into the record, because they matter to me: [show returns from commercial, where beginning of coke conversation is replayed. Nothing was said or alluded to about coke prior] Teresa: I did not spread a rumor; I heard a rumor Jackie: Ok, well you know what, I heard that Gia snorts coke in the bathroom at parties, ok, I heard it, I don’t know where I heard it from, I mean I heard it from somebody— Teresa: You’re a f[bleep]ing bitch Jackie: I mean, but it’s the same thing, so how is that not the same thing— Teresa: You’re a [bleep]. Now you’re a [bleep] Jackie: How is it not the same thing! Teresa: [inaudible] [bleep] you—go f[bleep] yourself Jackie: [inaudible] how is it not the same? Teresa: F[bleep] you Jackie: Same. Thing! Teresa: you should never go after the kids— Jackie: you want to throw something at me, throw it Teresa: you’re a [bleeping] [bleep] Jackie: I’m living the life that you want to live. I. Win. Teresa: No you don’t. That’s why your husband’s cheating on you. That’s why you’re crying, because you [bleep]ing know it. [At a point toward the very end of the exchange, Margaret repeatedly asks what happened, Teresa curses some more, says Jackie brought up her daughter, Teresa leaves] Jackie: I said it’s the same thing as me saying that I heard that Gia snorts coke in the bathroom [Nothing else is said by Jackie. Teresa uses the c-word some more outside and the show ends] At no time did Teresa say that it was untrue that Evan was cheating. She just said she heard it, and if Jackie and Evan don’t believe it’s true, they shouldn’t care, and she said it because married men have been propositioning her. At the end, as I quoted—and it took me a hell of a long time to get those quotes accurate—Teresa reiterates that she thinks the cheating is true. So, for Jackie to be hollering over and over “it’s the same thing,” she is not saying “you’re admitting it’s not true, so it’s the same thing as me saying Gia does coke in the bathroom. It’s an untrue rumor.” She never says, “I am making an analogy that hearsay has no value, so take back your words.” All Jackie did was double (and triple) down on the fact that she heard that Gia does coke, and since Teresa was steadfast in her belief that Evan was cheating on Jackie, Jackie’s insistence that “it’s the same thing” means that Jackie thinks it’s true that Gia does coke. That’s how I read it anyway. Any damage control she may have done after the fact is just spin and bullshit IMO. Teresa is saying that it’s true that Evan cheats, or at least that it’s not untrue, so Jackie saying that Gia’s doing coke is “the same thing” means, by virtue of logic, that it was her position at the time that Gia is using cocaine. Jackie has reminded us in this same exact conversation that she is smart and she is a lawyer, so I hold her responsible for the words she said a few breaths later, not words that she may wish she had said a few breaths later. That’s not how any of this works to me. I understand that we all have our opinions and that is fine—at least one poster that I quoted said that it was her opinion that Jackie was using an analogy, and I accept that, even if I don’t agree with it. But Jackie did not say, directly or indirectly, that it was an analogy, so I’m not quite sure that I would give her the benefit of the doubt on this one (or really anything, going forward). I am quite confident that Jackie is going to try like the dickens to spin this, and the word “analogy” is going to slowly enter her vernacular as the story gets told and re-told, and I think it’s important not to let the actual words that were said slip away. Jackie took a shot and she missed. She needs to take an honest inventory about what she said and apologize if that’s not what she meant, but this doesn’t get spun away into a hypothetical, because that was not how it was intended IMO.

Too funny! He does this shit to himself. He should either walk past Mini Coopers only, or cross the street if there’s an Escalade and a camera on at the same time. My husband was watching an old episode with me and he remarked that Melissa’s daughter didn’t seem to inherit her mother’s plastic surgery. (Nothing wrong with the way the girl looks, and was more of a comment on the head transplant Melissa seems to have gotten after season 3). Also, it’s on Melissa that the inevitable comparison is going to be made if she keeps promoting her daughter as a sex symbol, the way she has the past few seasons. (Caroline Manzo never insisted that Lauren was rail-thin, thus no one came out of the woodwork to point out that she was not). Regarding the cackle, I was too busy looking at Melissa’s ass in see-through sweatpants (Klassy!) and Joe in the bedroom of their 15,000 9,000 square foot home, pretending to hear the girls laughing at boys from the other side of the house to hear Antonia screech, but I will just say Antonia’s mom is not doing her any favors playing this character on TV. I think it is somewhat more genuine coming from Teresa. Both women are in their forties, though, and both may wish do disabuse themselves of that inhuman-sounding yelp that, I guess, they think makes them seem feminine, delicate, and attention-worthy 😆. Ok, if I am a betting man, Evan was cheating. I’m not saying I have proof, but it seems highly likely from a few factors: Jackie’s desperation to keep it off the show, the fact that Jackie does not seem like an easy woman to stay faithful to, and Evan’s major weight loss. I’ve heard it a million times that the guy who becomes a gym rat out of nowhere likely has a reason: He’s starting to look David Beador skinny. Now, check out my theory: Dolores’s first storyline when coming on the show was that Frank was giving her a few gyms to operate (presumably to make up for the child support that was going to end soon). Teresa said Evan was fucking around at the gym. Jackie’s assertion is that they all live in the same small town, ergo Evan’s gym is likely in the RHNJ’s collective (imaginary) town. Dolores is unhappy with David, and is getting all this cosmetic surgery. Is it possible that Dolores is Evan’s side piece???? I would watch the hell out of a show where Dolores replaced Jackie as the Goldshneider matriarch and started issuing old school decrees like, “because I said so!” In Jackie’s self-described “liberal” home, leaving Jackie to quiver in the basement of one of her many (though she won’t say how many, because that’s déclassé) properties, nibbling on an almond, while she types up one of her navel gazing columns about whether this is the product of having a spoiled husband. (I kid, I kid. I don’t like to see marriages break up. On the other hand, if it had to happen, I’d like to see this play out on my screen.)