RHOC: “Where do people go to shop, or to Nordstrom?”

Amanda Mull

16 Comments

Jul 12, 2016

Real Housewives is, at its core, a show about small but abject suburban horrors. Real Housewives, at its core, is a show about the strange, petty, and deeply specific anxieties of suburban luxury.

First, the most horrible of the episode’s horrors: the notion of being trapped in a car for 21 hours while driving through the literal middle of nowhere with Noted Nutcase Vicki Gunvalson, two small children who still need to use the bathroom constantly in spite of a complete lack of bathrooms in the desert, and a post-surgical bacterial infection that has left you in incredible pain and is potentially threatening the use of one of your legs. That’s the nightmare situation in which poor, sweet, real-life decent human Brianna found herself for most of the episode, and if you wanted to pick a good word to describe how it felt, you wouldn’t go wrong with “harrowing.”

Even when an episode is mostly transitional, it can still feel full of the kinds of small domestic catastrophes that turn a normal afternoon into a crisis: too much driving, too little patience, and far too many people trying to manage one another’s emotions. It meant leaving her husband halfway across the country to settle his retirement from the Marines and sell the house before joining her, but Brianna has proved to be nothing short of an incredible daughter in the ten years we’ve been following her, even if her dedication to Vicki is often to her own detriment and occasionally requires her kid to take a dump on the side of the road.

Being stuck in a car for hours with Vicki, two small children, and a serious medical complication is less a road trip than a stress test. Despite Brianna being more or less doubled over in various sorts of discomfort and unable to fully use half her limbs, Vicki then left her at home with two small kids and no help and went to the office. After all, tacky McMansions for every member of the family don’t buy themselves.

The episode makes clear that Brianna is dealing with real pain and real exhaustion, and that her decision to return to Southern California is driven by more than convenience. Heather, having completely run out of other luxury goods on which to spend money, went to the Fancy Outdoor Appliance Store to demand a pizza oven which she would neither operate nor enjoy, as well as the largest, stainless steel-est grill available, because who knows what her personal chef might need in order to assemble her daily bowl of arugula and quinoa? Those are details for someone else to work out, someone who gets paid an hourly wage to operate machines that create fire and then, eventually, grilled chicken breasts. She is trying to put herself in the best position to get care, while also carrying the familiar burden of being the family member who holds everyone else together. ) Heather was just there to take inventory of her new stuff and write the check, a skill at which she is long-practiced and quite adept. She then turned her attentions to the acquisition of hexagonal ice cubes, which are for sure a thing that someone invented with the express intent of draining some extra money out of rich people. Brianna leaves her husband behind to finish his transition out of the Marines and deal with the house, but the emotional work of the move seems to fall, as usual, on her.

We discussed Meghan’s renovations last week, so this week, we were treated to her confronting her worst phobia in the world, by herself in her cavernous bathroom, on home video, jabbing a needle in the only morsel of fat on her entire body while chanting about the baby she wants to have with her husband’s preserved sperm. Even when she is visibly unwell, she is expected to keep the family machine moving.

Tamra already has a house and some babies, so instead of procreation or renovation, she set out building both her body and her relationship with Jesus. Luckily for her, she’s found what strikes me as a particularly Southern Californian combination: a woman named Mia, who is both personal trainer and Christian spiritual adviser. By the end of the trip, the situation is serious enough to send her to the emergency room, and the episode doesn’t soften the reality of how vulnerable she is once she gets home. ) Although, I have to admit: Tamra is never going to be sane, just like the rest of the people on this show, but she seems a lot less like a little blonde powder keg than she did before she found both Jesus and her abs.

Vicki should say a woohoo prayer for that and thank her lucky stars, because when it came time to have the episode’s requisite Emotional Non-Apology For Totally Not Lying About Helping My Boyfriend Fake a Cancer Diagnosis, this week’s was given to Tamra while at Kelly’s otherwise-inoffensive beach party. Heather, whose version of restraint remains deeply relative, heads to a high-end outdoor appliance store to select a pizza oven and an oversized grill. Why do the others love brocade so much? The point is not that she will necessarily use these things herself, but that she can order them, approve them, and move on. But first she mentioned casseroles again, as if she wanted to subconsciously remind us that she is completely nuts. (Casseroles are definitely a horror in most cases.

Luxury, on this show, often means delegating the actual enjoyment of the thing you just bought. She didn’t seem to realize or understand that she had hit on something important, but it’s a notion that, if expanded and explored and made into narrative, might just be the only way for her to gain forgiveness from the other women without admitting she knew Brooks was lying about having cancer, if she indeed did. (I still think she knew, for what it’s worth, but I tend to assume longtime reality TV stars are pretty craven. Heather’s taste is less about functionality than about the performance of having everything exactly as it should be. Vicki had bumbled her way into the key to the whole thing, even if only because she had already tried all the other keys on the ring.

It’s anyone’s guess to see if Vicki even knows what came out of her mouth that caused the change in Tamra’s attitude toward her, but if she can find it and hold on to it, she might be able to mend fences with her cast mates. There is something almost comic about the idea that a household needs hexagonal ice cubes, but that is exactly the point: this is a world in which expensive objects exist not because they are essential, but because they signal a certain kind of taste, one that is equal parts self-regard and consumer excess. The episode ended with a literal “to be continued…” though, so the producers seem thirsty to ensure us that there will be even more drama next week. Shannon’s own house-hunting storyline barely gets enough traction to matter, which only makes the contrast sharper.

Your title had the funniest line of the episode. They are driving through the desert, not a house in sight, and Vicky is wondering where people shop???? Some women are building empires of convenience; others are still waiting for their plot to catch up.

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Yeah, I really thought it was going to be a disaster, but the party looked so nice and chill and her house is beautiful too? And they didn’t make her out to be nearly as annoying this episode. In one of the episode’s most awkward scenes, she faces her fear head-on while dealing with fertility treatment at home.

Why do we have to read about this dumb show on PurseBlog? Please don’t pollute this blog with such idiotic television program.

The moment is intimate, anxious, and highly controlled, which makes it all the more revealing.

I love the recaps! This is the kind of storyline Real Housewives often treats as both sincere and theatrical at once: real emotion filtered through the show’s taste for extremity.

I used to love this show but after last year …. And this year isn’t looking much better.

Tamra, meanwhile, is building a different sort of renewal. We wanted to bring it back to see if people were still interested. We still have plenty of great handbag and accessory content for you all!

With houses and babies already in place, she turns her attention to fitness and spirituality, which the show packages into a distinctly Southern California hybrid: a trainer who also serves as a kind of faith-based adviser.

Totally agree, she always makes me laugh after the fact!

I totally agree. Who cares? Can’t stand reality tv!!

It is an arrangement that suits Tamra, who seems to function best when she has a project, a plan, and someone telling her how to optimize her life. For those of you who are looking to work simple freelance work for several h /day from your couch at home and earn solid payment for doing it… Try this job

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She will probably never become serene, but she does appear somewhat less combustible when she has both a workout regimen and a moral framework. I have never EVER seen an episode were Brianna is not bitching or crying or nagging about her terrible hardships. I assure you that Brianna’s husband is ecstatic that she’s moved back to OC ahead of him. At a beach party that is otherwise pleasant enough to make her drama seem even more absurd, she begins edging toward an explanation that sounds less like an admission of specific wrongdoing and more like a confession that she failed to see what everyone else saw. And Mehgan’s IVF drama is going to be excruciating boring this season. She’s the worst of them all. If Vicki cannot bring herself to say plainly what she knew, or when she knew it, she may still be able to talk her way toward some version of forgiveness by framing the whole thing as the result of desperate love and bad judgment.

I think Megan will rub people the wrong way with her IVF storyline. It is not exactly exonerating, but on this show, nuance can sometimes do the work of truth. She was really lucky to get pregnant with her first round, which is awesome for them! I’m just saying I know so many people who go through so much and if she whines as much as they are showing, she may not get the sympathy she thinks she will. Her reaction softens when Vicki lands on the emotional center of the issue, even if she does so awkwardly and without total clarity.

And I guess she posted a lot on instagram of her injecting herself and freaking out about the needle, etc. and that’s so annoying, she’s so annoying. The episode suggests that Vicki may have stumbled onto a usable version of the truth, one that acknowledges the damage without requiring a fully explicit confession.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE your recaps. Please do more! “Melania sharpening her knives in the corner” is still my most favorite quote!

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