The penultimate Housewives! With tales of rejuvenation and renewal, discord and disharmony. But mostly tales of women on the verge—about to pop or explode, to shit or get off the pot. How’d it go?
Oh, you know how it went.
Our story began with the shaking sound of broken glass in a cardboard box, a sound effect they use on radio shows like A Prairie Home Companion, but also the sound that Alex and Simon make while they rattle around Manhattan, their crow-like eyes scanning the horizon for bits of detritus—swatches of fabric, old posters of Alice Cooper, chandeliers made of bones—that they could use in their fancy new renovated house. There was also the lilting music of a Victorian carousel, so even those far off could tell; their daughters Johan and Eloise were with them. Now if you want classy stuff for your new classy house, what you’re gonna wanna do is go down to Zarin’s Fabrics. Because the orange woman who greets you with an ear-shattering nasal whine is sure to know classy when she sees it. Also if you can seek the counsel of an elderly gay house elf who sleeps in a small, dusty cupboard in the back of the store, that’s great too. With the both of them, you’re sure to go right.
So Alex and Simon consulted house elf and Jill, while the little girls made holy terrors of themselves, rolling themselves up in fabric, setting customers on fire, maliciously pooping in the elf’s tiny cupboard house. Jill sighed wearily while Alex and Simon did nothing, because they are powerless against these manic, magic cherubs.
Speaking of manic, magic cherubs, Bethenny went to go get her hairs coiffed and to “wash the gray out.” Which is a cutesy way of talking about getting one’s hair dyed. So she turned on the ol’ Frankel laughtrack and chatted up her big gay hairdresser, a loungey Frenchman named Alize or something who wanted to set her up on a date. Bethenny wasn’t really having it because dude was a model and she doesn’t do models. Instead she wants to marry the hairdresser if she’s 40 and still single and then they can have a kid together and live in the Hamptons and he’ll just go off and boff mens in his spare time. Alize sighed and giggled, doing a decent job of pretending that this was the first time he’d heard such a proposal. But lemme tell ya, Beth. Even ugly ‘mos like myself have heard this line a few times. It starts in college and, oh I dunno, probably ends when you’re 50. So, enough.
The date turned out to be horribly awkward, mostly because Bethenny just kept trying to make jokes that were only sorta funny, but lots uncomfortable. Some guy from Jersey or Long Island probably would have picked up on it, but this dude was a French model whose English wasn’t even that sound to begin with, so he just blinked at her and guzzled one of her Skinnygirl margaritas and time mooped on and I shrugged to myself and thought At least she’s dating. But Alize, be warned. It looks like you’re getting hitched in three years.
Over in the Fantasticastle on the Northern Edges of the Glittersad Realm, Queen Ramona Singsongy Bingbongy was strapped to a Canadian goose and taken to Dr. Eve Ensler’s Plastic Surgery Depository, where she would have a new face grafted over her old one, in the hopes of prolonging death. Because, few people know this, Ramona is actually 122 years old. She was born to itinerant yam farmers in the 1880’s and has just hopped the rails and stolen faces ever since. Once science caught up with her wicked desire for new faces, she stopped stealing other people’s and began getting Botox and Restalyne and Horsebutt Injections. Dr. Ensler told her about a new crazy thing where you give your armpit a sonogram to find out if it’s pregnant with sweat. If it is, you abort the Sweat Baby and then you don’t sweat anymore. Ramona stared at her, unblinking, and sad “could you stop my eyeballs from getting wet, too?” She also requested a new form of magic Botox (just typed BoSox there by accident, and thought it would be funny if Ramona had Kevin Youkilis injected into her face), that will not leave ugly little scar marks that Ramona has to cover up with her magic skin cream that she bought off an old witch near the edge of the Deep, Dark Wood.
So Ramona was happy because her looks are the most important thing to her, not her dwindling sanity, not her religious jewelry syndicate, not even her terrifying daughter Avery. Well, actually, Avery is quite important to her, because when she turns 18, Ramona will perform an ancient ceremony and transport her soul into Avery’s body, so she can be young again. And then she’ll never have to hang that “Out Chasin’ Faces” sign on her front door ever again. And everyone will be glad for that.
Alex and Simon, sensing that their beautiful home repairs were near complete, decided they would have a grand gala for all of their “friends” to show off their new domicile. “We’ll send the girls to their grandmother’s in the Deep, Dark Wood,” Alex declared. Simon said “Oh, yes, of course! And we just got them those lovely red riding hoods.” The only trouble with the party planning was that the house was still a shambles! There wasn’t any paint on the walls, the black teak wood was only half on the floors, there was still a small greasefire in Simon’s clothes hamper, and Alex’s false teeth and gotten up and chattered off one morning and they still hadn’t found them (I can hear them in the walls, Alex would think frighteningly to herself, lying awake in bed at night, Chomp chomp, chomp chomp, chomp chomp…). So cue the whirlygig sped-up Trading Spaces montage of stoves and paintings and Alex and Simon sitting alone in the middle of the floor on tiny red pillowseats. There was a problem with some huge steel doors and the rain, there was a problem with the oven, and, of course, the Floor People came back.
But after it stopped raining and the stove was compromised on and they had the old voodoo lady with the cat on her head over to exterminate, they were ready. Just in time, ’cause ding dong went the doorbell and it was horrible Kelly, very early and very confused. She said she had “no idea how long it would take to get to Brooklyn”, so she left really early. Which, I mean… oh for the love of God, come on lady. You can see Brooklyn from Manhattan. Like, very easily. This whole fancy pants “I never leave Manhattan!” bullshit is such a sad, lame joke. Alex made the good, if a bit annoying, point that it takes five minutes to get to Cobble Hill (for godssake) in a Town Car. Then Kelly, wearing her pith helmet and warily stroking her elephant gun, asked how where they live compared to “New York.” Simon haughtily replied, as I used to when I first moved to Bklyn, “you mean Manhattan, we’re still in New York.” So it was just a sad bit of urban anthropology or something, and god almighty is Kelly awkward and horrible.
The rest of the ladies, sans Ramona of course, showed up and they were all stunned into disbelief over the house. Jill bitched a bit about fabric choices and then gave herself credit for a lot. Bethenny called it “a little bordello,” which was being generous. It looked like David Copperfield’s sex dungeon. What I find funny and strange and a little bit scary is that, while they affect this bourgie “we go to the Met! and Sant Barrrthssss!” thing, Alex and Simon are also straight up freak nasty when it comes to meeting each other for sex on the internet, wearing leopard print dresses, taking nude photos, and decorating their apartment to look like the inside of Sharon Osbourne’s vagina. Part of me thinks they might actually be kinda fun, in a weird and off-putting way, if they just dropped that pretentious knickknackery half of their personality and just embraced the other bizarre side. But then I have to start thinking about a world in which I actually enjoy Alex and Simon, and lordy loo, that makes me want to go hide in the walls along with the missing falsies. Hiding there forever, there behind the set for that sadism-themed episode of Roundhouse.
After she left Brooklyn, all brave and exploring and noble, like a twice-baked Robert E. Peary, Kelly was invited by Countess Crackerjacks to a little downtown Sex and the City gals drinky romp-romp with Lunny and her two weirdo nieces. I say ‘weirdo’ because the minute Kelly sat down, one of the girls, we’ll call her Snowball, asked Kelly: “What is your perfect date?” It was creepy and sad, this girl thinking she had to ask this bland and hideous reality show question. Plus, everyone always gives a terrible answer (honesty: we go to a movie, get drunk, then go to bed). Kelly’s was “I like to do stuff so he should want to do stuff but nothing cheesy or lame.” Crackerjacks beamed at all of this, so happy to feel all sexy and downtown and young, with her two nieces and fried-out, flaking Kelly. And dear old Crackerjacks, didn’t it just break your heart a little bit to watch her in this scene? Especially when she said “I’m just living vicariously through you single gals!” and then realizing that she herself is now a single gal, yet again, yet another miserable time? Ah well. Had they asked her, had Snowball turned to Lunz and asked “What is your perfect date,” Cracky would have cleared her throat, lit up a GPC and smiled.
“Well, I’ll tell you my perfect date is not. Hah. It ain’t gettin’ popped in the back of your Crackerbarrel manager’s old brown Cressida. Tell ya that. And it ain’t waking up in Van Horn Tee Ex with your bits around your ankles in some dude named Lonny’s trailer, walking the six miles to highway 10 and hitching all the way to New Orleans, all the while you’re just thinkin’, I had six rolls of quarters stuffed down my pants when I woke up in Las Cruces yesterday, and now I got nothing. That, my dears, is not an ideal type of date. And it sure ain’t daisy-do perfect when you finally get to where you’re goin, in this case, in this particular month of May, it was New Orleans, and you find out that your one and only, a ranch boy you met dancing at The Boondoggler ain’t some rich Cajun prince like he told you after all, no he just sleeps in a fan boat and eats whole crawfish, raw, all day long. That is not a pleasant, ladylike Saturday evening, that’s for sure. But I will tell you one thing. One time. I was barbacking (no that ain’t what you’re thinking, Snowball. There’s no ‘e’.) at this place near Lake Powell, it was called the The Oceanview, on account of the lake bein’ there. And it was a real nice place, table cloths ‘n’ shit. Anyway. This one day, guy comes in. Danny. Blond hair, tan, ass like an apple turnover, just dressed real nice. Well he walks straight up to me and asks ‘When you get off?’ And I smile at him and I say right back ‘Right after you do, dimple dick.’ And man oh man, was he waiting for me when I got outside. And we just went for a drive, that’s all. Didn’t have to touch nothing of his and he didn’t try to touch nothing of mine. We just drove and parked and we looked out at that whole big map of stars, and we didn’t say much but I remember he did lean over once, real close, and he whispered ‘What are you doing here?’ And, you know, I just didn’t have an answer. But it was OK. ‘Cause at least he’d asked, you know? He drove me back to the house I was livin’ in with Dorine and I never saw him again. But I used to think about him every time I saw the sky at night, you know? That’s why I moved here. No stars. No Danny.”
That’s, you know, if they’d asked. But they didn’t. They just kept on blabbering on and Kelly’s sorta Argentinian boyfriend showed up and Crackerjacks got a little mad at first, because everyone just likes to get mad at everyone on this show, but eventually she softened up and you saw that same familiar, sad streak in her eyes, that look like she was seeing something entirely different than everyone else, some whole different picture, some whole different place, some whole different time entirely. But she shook it off and bristled her collar and after Juan Peron had left she said “I think it’s getting hot in here!” and Snowball and Misty and Kelly and everyone laughed but on the inside, our hearts were broken.
But it was not the time for sadness! It was the time for charity and work, on behalf of the Knobby Knees Charity for Broken People, which Jill is spearheading in honor of her daughter, an unhappy clam of a child whose bones ache almost as much as her suffocated soul. Bethenny and Kelly were the first to show up, which was all planned, because they needed to have the terrible round two to their terrible fight. Bethenny was righteous in her anger, sure, but really should have just dropped the damn thing because Kelly is an unmoving monolith of horrible skin and crinkly creases who will not listen to reason. Rather she will just pretend she is above it all, when in fact you are not allowed, never ever, to claim out loud or simply act as if you are “above” anything once you’ve signed the contract to appear on a basic cable reality television show about… yourself. Sorry Kelly, check your wig at the door, because you’ve failed. You’ve failed at pretty much everything you’ve done!, but now, especially, you’ve failed as a reality show star. Because you sincerely seem to think yourself better, and you sincerely seemed to think that you’d be shown in a positive light, because what possibly could be not so positive about you? Except everything.
Anyway, the fight. Bethenny said that Kelly was a bitch for saying that she was up Here and Bethenny was down Here. Kelly denied saying it, then tried to turn it back on Bethenny. All of the ins and outs of the tiff aren’t really worth going into because they’re stupid and circular and make little to no sense, so let’s just say that Bethenny slapped Kelly and then Kelly broke a vase over Bethenny’s head and before anyone knew it they were rolling around on the floor, grabbing items from Jill’s beautifully made-over tchotchke hut of an apartment—there went the O of the POP tables thudding down on Bethenny’s noggin, smash! went the mirror wall as Bethenny slammed Kelly’s raisin bran face into it over and over again, donngggg! went a candlestick holder as it went thwunking into Bethenny’s tiny abdomen, and kersplinkle! went a menagerie of figurines as Kelly went sailing into a decorative shelf. Bloody, bruised, and embedded with thousands of shards of glass, Kelly went limping off to buy wine, because Ramona was coming soon and if there wasn’t wine, the carnage wrought by these two broads would look like tiny potatoes. Roaaarrrrrrrrrr! would go the world as Ramona tore it apart seam by seam.
And there the episode ended, with blood and glass and tears and wine, as most parties end everywhere, as some parties begin, somewhere. No one really moved forward, did they? Alex and Simon still live in a dilapidated lean-to, now it’s just full of Donny Osmond’s darkest fantasies. Ramona is still stealing faces, but now it’s just from science, not from actual people. She still lives in the Sparkleplace, a slip of a realm between this world and the next. She still speaks Diamond and Dogbark, her ears still twirl at the sight of rain, her hair is still made of ghosts. Bethenny is still on course to marry her gay hairdresser. He’s still on course to never, ever actually do it. Kelly is as bashed-up as she always was, still having the same fight, still doing the same boyfriend bragging, still staring at that postcard she tacked up on the wall next to her bed when she’s trying to go sleep at night. Someday she’ll make it to this faraway, exotic place. When she saves enough, when the girls are older, when she can find the time. When she becomes brave enough. Queens, they call it. And it’s across the big yellow bridge that stretches out like it’s going to China. China is that way, isn’t it?
And LuAnn. LuAnn is still drinking and dreaming, plotting and scheming. She’s still wandering her house, running her hands along all the expensive wood, the impressive-looking books she’ll never read. She’s still sighing with the weight of giving up and moving on so very many times. She’s still thinking about Danny. The way he lightly touched her hair, the way he smiled when she smiled, the way he made her feel that love and life was not about giving yourself up for someone else to use. Rather it can be a series of frogleaps. He helps you, you help him, over and over and over again.
Until it’s getting dark out and it’s time to go inside for dinner, like when she was a little girl. The 50’s! she still thinks, alone in the study. The half-life of a century. The whole world spinning into dust, all of us disappearing, forever.
So that’s that! Unfortunately I’m on vacation next week, but the wonderful Joshua David Stein will be recapping the finale episode along with, I believe, the premiere of ‘New Jersey’! Thanks for reading these silly things. It’s been fun!
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