The stars of “The Real Housewives of Orange County” are an accomplished bunch. They have reality TV stardom, beautiful homes, and glamorous outfits.
And as we learned this week, all but one of them is housebroken.
Jenn Pedranti organizes a nice get-together for the women. She’s got a bartender mixing frozen margaritas with the housewives choice of salt or tajin on the rims. There’s a taco bar.
And there’s a fun game, too, with giant Jenga bricks on which the housewives are invited to write truth or dare challenges.
Uh-oh.
“Who do you hate?” is the truth that Alexis Bellino draws. Surprisingly, she does not say Shannon Storms Beador, the former girlfriend of Alexis’s boyfriend John Janssen.
“I hate the devil!” Alexis screams, launching the message and the brick it’s written on into the fireplace. “You’re going in the fire!”
“Of course, I get this one,” groans Gina Kirschenheiter as she reveals a brick on which is written, “How big is his (ego)?” “It’s big enough,” she replies.
Heather Dubrow gets off easy with a dare to bark like a dog. “Yip! Yip! Yip!” go her high-pitched barks. Of course, Heather would be a perfect little froufrou doggy.
“Show me your (wazoo)” is the dare Katie Ginella receives, and after groaning for a moment, she does, in fact, show her bethonged bottom to Tamra, who, of course, wrote that one.
Tamra, in turn, is challenged by her brick to drop her drawers and pee in the yard. Will Tamra do this? How can anyone who has ever seen Tamra on their telly not know the answer to that?
Tamra squats, not in the yard, but on the pool deck, and delivers, as the other housewives scream and scatter.
“The dogs know not to pee on the cement,” Jenn tells the camera as she wrinkles her nose in disgust.
“She’s clearly not housebroken,” Emily Simpson adds.
That’s the high point of the party, which ends in the angry, tearful way most of their ‘dos do.
Emily is still feeling hurt by the fashion show planned by Heather on the previous week’s episode. Of all the housewives, she was the only one asked to bring her own jeans, and standing on stage at the finale she realized it was because the designer did not have pants that fit her fuller figure.
Emily has been rightly proud about her dedicated efforts to improve her health by working out and losing weight. But she also felt singled out for her size at the event.
“I’m so sad that you feel that way,” Heather tells her. Had the conversation stopped right there, things might have been OK.
“But you want to keep coming after me,” she continues.
Alexis, having heard her name, decides she needs to insert herself into the argument, but Emily is not having any of that.
“You shut up!” she tells Alexis, who arrived at the party wanting sympathy for how hard her life is. “You’re a wackadoodle. You’ve been a wackadoodle all night.”
“Could you be quiet for a minute?” Heather asks Emily.
“No, (bleep) off!” Emily replies.
“I’m already broken,” Alexis says, though nobody seems to be paying any attention at this point. “I’m a broken bird.”
Elsewhere this week with the housewives:
— Gina’s outfits are usually quite classy but she arrives at Jenn’s joint wearing metallic silver pants that make her look like a pan of Jiffy Pop, Jiffy Pop, the magic treat. If she sat any closer to Jenn’s fireplace, who knows what might happen?
— Shannon and former housewife Vicki Gunvalson fly to a St. Louis comedy club to perform as Shannon and Vicki in the wake of Tamra quitting their showbiz trio the Tres Amigas. “We’re selling out shows like we’re Adele,” Vicki declares while somehow maintaining a straight face.
At the club, Vicki orders a pre-show tequila and soda, while Shannon has a vodka and soda. They then go onstage and try to practice shooting T-shirts into the still-empty club. The T-shirts fall on the floor, flip behind them, and go anywhere but where they are aimed and intended. It’s a miracle neither of them gets hurt doing this.
“I was just at Adele’s concert and she did it with this big powerful gun,” Vicki says, revealing the depths of her obsession with the singer.
Alas, we don’t get to see any of their comedy routines, just Shannon acknowledging her well-known 2023 DUI arrest, and a final tapdancing routine that suggests Adele won’t have to worry about this competition anytime soon.
— Katie and Tamra have an outing with their daughters Kaili and Sophia, and Kaili tells them about a recent date.
“And then he gave me COVID,” Kaili says.
“He gave our whole family COVID,” Katie adds.
It’s been a nice moment for the two mothers and their daughters. But then, Tamra.
“It’s better than an STD,” she says.
Katie and Kaili have nothing to say to that.
“That (stuff) never goes away,” Tamra says.
