The Real Housewives of New York City just aren’t much for subtlety or tact, are they? Last night’s episode was all about messages delivered badly, and when these women screw something up, they go whole-hog, so to speak.
Whether those messages came from soulless gossip bloggers, toothless psychics or Alex, blinded by rage and on a kamikaze mission to humiliate Jill publicly, they were all delivered with a lack of finesse that would have been more startling if only we didn’t already know these awful people so intimately. And, for once, none of the verbal diarrhea came from Ramona. In that regard, last night’s episode probably counts as a minor miracle. Someone get the Pope on the phone.
There was no stupid dog poop scene to start this episode, so the drama began immediately. Bethenny’s pregnancy, which had been a secret so far, was outed well before the end of her first trimester by soulless, sniveling gossip merchant Perez Hilton. One could make a very convincing case that he is among the worst people on the face of the planet and you wouldn’t find much in the way of disagreement from me, so suffice it to say that I was suitably horrified (but not at all surprised) that he would do something like that.
Bethenny isn’t exactly 25 anymore, and any pregnancy is at risk before the end of the first trimester. That risk only increases as the mother gets older, and it’s positively cruel to announce a woman’s pregnancy before she’s even comfortable letting the baby’s father tell his parents. Not only does it violate her privacy, but it sets her up to have a public miscarriage. If there’s an afterlife, he will rot and he will deserve it.
I’m not sure how he (I don’t even like typing his name, we’re going to try to stick to pronouns) found out, but my completely random, unsubstantiated, speculative theory is this: we know that members of Bravo’s production crew knew about Bethenny’s pregnancy because they filmed her taking a pregnancy test, and from there, it’s not unfathomable that one of them either might have tipped him off or mentioned it to someone that did. Like maybe someone else that they were filming. And who do we know that’s buddy-buddy with Perez? Well, all you have to do is think back a few episodes to answer that question. And also, who broke the news to the other girls by getting a Google alert that somehow no one else happened to get?
Speaking of Jill, she wants to have a party. A holiday party! With ice-skating. I can’t wait until this party actually happens because I already have the best picture EVER to use for the recap, but until then, I guess I just have to tell you what’s going to happen at said party: Iceskating. Pigs in a blanket. Lamb chops, but only so that she can feed the extras to her dog. Chicken fingers. Cupcakes that she’ll strong-arm someone into giving her for free. Jill is so classy. In order to prove that fact even further, Jill later went to a talk that LuAnn was giving about manners and heckled her from the audience.
Also exuding class is Sonja, of course. Her on-camera visit to a plastic surgeon to remove an objectively tiny “pooch” made me think that there must be some sort of contractual obligation that requires all new housewives to appear at a plastic surgeon’s office early in their first season on the show. We saw Alexis getting Botox in her second episode as an OC housewife, and Tamra got her boobs re-done in her first season as well. I guess until they have established personalities, the new women are required to perform stunts for the cameras in order to get camera time.
Among Sonja’s stunts was a visit with a psychic named Roberta. Roberta may or may not have had all her teeth, and, uh, I’m going to err on the side of “may not.” Sonja loves her because she feels like Roberta doesn’t take advantage of her in the same way that, like, plumbers and lawyers do, because psychics are always on the up-and-up and it’s totally safe it give your money to one. In fact, Sonja offered to get her a deal with her surgeon for a boob lift, but did not do the obvious and offer her, you know, some false teeth. Also, if she’s psychic, why didn’t she know that her teeth were going to fall out? That is only one of the many questions that I’d like to ask of the toothless psychic.
Wait, wait, we’ve gotten away from the point of this episode (to be fair, however, the episode got away from the point of the episode for a while. Not my fault!). Bethenny’s baby is the point. Given the opportunity to share a bit of the glory, Jill apparently commented to the press about the rumors and Bethenny found out about it, which pissed her off since they’re not even friends anymore. She called Alex to let her in on the “secret” and vent her frustrations with Jill’s media-whoring, and also to ask Alex to give her a message. The message, unsurprisingly, was that she’s done with Jill forever.
I’m not sure exactly why Bethenny felt the need to reiterate that message, particularly since Jill’s idea of mending their friendship involved making sure Bethenny isn’t invited to an upcoming charity event that LuAnn is throwing, but whatever. Sshe asked Alex to do the honors of delivering it at an upcoming event, and from that moment on, Alex was like a woman possessed. She would do her duty and she would do it well! And publicly! And it would sting.
Alex delivered Bethenny’s message in the most horrific and awkward way possible: in front of all the other housewives (and half of Kelly’s butt, since it was hanging out of the bright orange underwear that she was wearing as shorts) at the launch party of Ramona’s skincare line. Alex delivered the line so loudly and with such build-up and fanfare that I thought she as going to require Jill to play charades to figure it out. Knowing what was coming, I started to feel bad for Jill for like a second and a half, but then I didn’t, because it’s physically impossible for me to feel bad for Jill anymore.
If you’ve been following along at home, however, you know that Alex’s delivery of Bethenny’s message had a lot more to do with Alex than it did with Bethenny. Instead of the aside that Bethenny intended, it turned into a public evisceration because Alex hates Jill and her fake-niceness and passive-aggressiveness and behind-your-backness as much as all of us do. Not only that, but Jill has insulted her children, so a little bit of rage is probably merited. It didn’t make Alex look great, but I get the idea that Jill has pushed more than a few people as far as they need to be pushed, and she’s one of them. I’m glad she grew a backbone, even if she grew it in an way that was probably a little unfortunate.
Come to think of it, that’s probably the best word for this entire episode: unfortunate.
