Quantcast
Channel: Paper RSS Feed
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 7783

Real Housewives of New Jersey Recap: The Island of Dr. V

0
0
Each Monday, Eli Yudin and Carey O'Donnell, authors of the very, very funny Twitter account @NotTildaSwinton, will be recapping the Real Housewives of New Jersey for us. Below, their next installment.

the-real-housewives-of-new-jersey-season-5-episode-508-01.jpgCarey: Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. We've returned that winter castle overlooking the grey lake, spotted with gold, half-dead sunlight, built atop some ancient, terrible thing. In case you missed it, the Gorga/Giudice/Wakile/Rosie/Bread/Bread/Bread/Bread/Wine/Bread/Bread/Bread clans have converged at a "retreat" house on Lake George in order to (according to Teresa) "heal holistically" as a family unit; to put aside their past rivalries and bad blood and come together as a giant, scalding calzone. At the end of the previous episode, the visiting "team builders" (aka Fake Ron Howard and 12-year-old Stephanie) had failed in their initial attempts to have the bickering fam-squads participate in team building exercises to break the very thick ice. After some CHOICE words between Teresuh and her baby bro, Joe (Gorga), Joe (Giudice) blew in through the doors of the castle ballroom, past Fake Ron Howard and 12-year-old Stephanie and said in a high pitched, excited voice, "HAY, JOE" and was charged at by his equally round brother-in-law, and a legitimate fist (and "biting balls") fight began. Melissa, caught in her husband's wake, was thrown against the wall, and then proceeded to shout in a genuinely panicked tone, "TERESA, HELP YOUR BROTHER." Naturally, Teresa ran outside into the freezing twilight, her boots plodding against the cobblestone of the castle terrace, yelling, "CALL THE CAHHHHPS! SOMEONE CALL THE CAAAHPS!" to absolutely no one. The fight ended with the two Joes huffin' and puffin, AND MY GIRL ROSIE KNOCKED OVER ON THE UGLY CARPET AS A CASUALTY.

Eli: The fight seemed to be based heavily on friction, or to inflict maximum rugburn on all parties involved. The only redeeming quality of it at all is that both Joe Gorga and Joe Giudice's bodies are so weirdly inflated that it sort of looked like a fight between babies, which is just adorable. I was grimly fascinated with Teresa's "take a lap" strategy while everyone is wrapped in a tight little ball of flesh. Steve-Ron Howard and Stephanie were unprepared for comped front-row seats to the Sad UFC, and watch blankly. Suddenly Steve-Ron's eyes roll back into his head and he starts to tremble. Stephanie holds him up as his head jerks impossibly fast. Suddenly, his mouth unhinges and opens impossibly wide. He lunges at the group, and encases all of them in his maw. Grotesquely bloated with the bodies of the fighting, he lies on the ground. "WOOOORKKKK ITTT OUUTTTTTTTTTT," he croaks, his jaw still not completely reattached. Stephanie sits beside him, brushing his hair gently, while the activity inside his belly slowly subsides.

the-real-housewives-of-new-jersey-season-5-episode-508-08.jpgCarey: Back in their individual rooms, the three parties recapped the extremely disturbing display of violence, and each noted that just about every person involved in the scuffle was covered in a strange tar-like substance. This sooty, sticky blackness coated their house sweaters and jeans. "What's this black s**t?!" Rich asks. The black s**t -- that same black s**t that seeped through the earth below the castle ballroom, hearing the vibrations of mounting tension above like moths to a dim lamp above the door of a barn -- hearing the pain, the anger, growing thicker, stickier, oozing through the ballroom carpet, onto the clothes of Joe, and Joe, and Teresa and Melissa, and Kathy and Rich and Rosie, passing through the sweater wool, onto their flesh, into their blood, their bones, starting a humming sound, first uncertain -- maybe some distant train horn beyond the hills around them, soon becoming louder and louder. Rich tries to unsuccessfully coax Teresuh and her bro into patching things up post-fight. Kathy maybe says the best quote of the night: "I was just worried about my nose job." Melissa says, "Saddam Hussein was someone's brotha, too!" to Joe Gorga (and I died), and then Teresuh and Juicy Joe Giudice take a bath together and some waiter with a ponytail who was probably found wandering around the castle grounds by a cameraman, comes into the bathroom and serves them rosé that Teresuh and Joe lick off each other's bodies.

Eli: I must assume that J.J. Giudice's strategy was to drink the rosé in some sort of sexual way, but what results is about 10 seconds in which I believed that Joe Giudice was literally teaching himself how to drink out of an open-mouthed glass. Maybe up until this point in his life he strictly drank out of sippy cups, which are changed to more age-appropriate drinkware after the fact. Whatever his intention, he gets rosé all over himself and it's gross and disgusting. Also, taking a bath isn't a very flattering look when your body type is "garlic knot."

the-real-housewives-of-new-jersey-season-5-episode-508-15.jpg Carey: The best part of this episode was the transition shots between scenes, with a shot of one of the castle's many towers and fast moving clouds above, like you're watching a blend of Requiem for a Dream and a Henry James story. The morning after the fight, Teresa enlists Caroline to come up to the lake and try to tawk some sense into her bro. Caroline pretends to be like, "Oh my god whaaaat why" but is secretly so, so happy that Teresa is asking her for help. SO HAPPY. She runs into her secret room inside her walk-in closet where she digs another tally mark into her "Times I've Helped People" wall, throws on a Sherpa sweater and heads upstate. As her SUV charges up the Northeast Extension, Kim D the crow flies above, trailing her, making sure she finds her way.

Eli: The conversation between Caroline and Teresa may seem innocent at first, but is complex with undertones and twists that make sure Teresa's built herself a nice little buffer zone of pity. Also, at this point, the first words Teresa says to anyone who addresses her are "hecalledmescum," the same way a small child might tell you her age. Caroline also seeks the counsel of her daughter, but is unhappy that she doesn't think it's a good idea. After all, if she's going to achieve sainthood, she has to keep doling out her specific brand of misguided psychiatric evaluation.

the-real-housewives-of-new-jersey-season-5-episode-508-17.jpgCarey: Meanwhile, another guest pulls up to the castle. DR. V, the therapist! Dr. V is a therapist from L.A. She was also seen on another Bravo show, LA Shrinks, and of course, The Real Housewives of OC, where her legitimacy as a therapist was in question. ANYWAY! She's JUST in from L.A., give her a break. She tells Teresuh she's "Italian" where it matters, and puts to her crotch. Okay. They sit on some couches and talk loudly and Dr. V cusses, cause she's a real loose cannon! And from L.A.! I do have to say, though, that she does make some coherent points, especially when talking about Teresuh's possible wrongdoing with the rumors that Melissuh was a strippa. At breakfast, Dr. V tries to get Melissuh and Teresuh to have an open dialogue about it, and they yell s'more. V-dawg invites Joe Gorga for a private therapy sesh, away from the riff-raff.

Eli: I will admit, when they first showed Dr. V getting out of her car, dressed for a long night of Saudi oil magnates sucking her toes, I doubted both her credibility and if she was wearing underwear. But, as Carey mentions, V-Nasty does make some very salient points to Teresa, who seems steamed that she didn't hire a doctor who would agree with everything she thinks. V for Ven-Doctor V, in her private session with Joe, hears him out, and when he says he just wants to cut ties with his sister, she agrees, and fetches Her Darkness.

the-real-housewives-of-new-jersey-season-5-episode-508-22.jpg Carey: The real good stuff happens when Teresuh and brudda Joe sit down together with Empress V to talk it out. Joe flat-out tells V that he wants to leave this retreat weekend and never see his sister again. The good doctor is sort of like, "Ya that's prob a good idea," and then she tells Joe that Teresuh was used to taking care of him when they were young, and has been struggling to let her baby brother go into the arms of another caretaker/woman. Joe agrees. Then V FINALLY says, "That is kind of f*cked up, Joe," and the collective viewership breathes a sigh of relief that someone has finally said it out loud. However, when Teresa joins them, V suggests that the two of them need to spend some time alone together, away from their spouses, and for whatever reason, she completely changes her mind in agreeing that Joe should leave the castle.

Eli: These reasons being "the producers," "season 6," and "syndication rights."

Carey: She isn't sure herself, why she changed her mind so abruptly. Perched outside the window, Kim D the crow looks in, her beaked coiled into the closest resemblance of a smile a crow could have. V excuses herself to use the restroom, and saunters into one of the libraries, standing before the large window that looks across the property, now buried in snow.

The lake was motionless, and something about the still water made V believe that the lake was pretending. Pretending to be still, silent, as if hiding from something. Something that hadn't yet come, but was making its way slowly over the hills, and fields, and frozen streams, the empty backgrounds, winding until they reached the stone relic she stood in now. She was afraid, but at the same time, felt some relief that she was supposed to be where she was. Maybe she would never leave this place. Wouldn't that be something?, she thought. She looked down at the sleeves of her black sheer blouse, and her wrists, now covered in that same black tar that covered the others the night before. Across the lawn, on the shore of the lake, she saw herself looking back at her, barefoot, with a faint grin, walking steadily into the lake until she disappeared below the grey water.







Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 7783

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images