Pardon me while I block that blinding spotlight with my sweaty Napalm.
I said I lost all the weight after getting the Lap-Band. Not a Lap Dance, you pageant moron.
Whoa. I don’t even have enough charge in my phone for all the texting I need to do after this is over.
Yo! Andy! Am I even in the shot? I didn’t get a new nose just to sit way over here on the end of some Borgata couch.
No. Seriously. Somebody needs to find my Blackberry right now. This is some cray cray good s*** going down right now.
Teresa. Stop it. You’re bad attitude is On Display. Which is still available on iTunes, by the way.
Napalm.
(nā päm) n. An aluminum soap of various fatty acids that when mixed with gasoline makes a firm jelly used in some bombs and in flamethrowers.
So there.
The Real Housewives of New Jersey.
(#RHONJ) n. An equally, if not more so, lethal combination of botox, fillers, glitter, stilettos and body oil that when mixed with Andy Cohen‘s boyish inquisitiveness can also blow your face off.
The More You Know.
And so The Real Housewives of New Jersey Reunion began. With an oily bang.
After the first ever back-to-back filming of two consecutive seasons of Joisey drama, it was finally time for everyone to reunite and to reignite all the explosive animosity that had been percolating while the rest of us got caught up with everything that went down in Season Four.
While TV Time made it seem pretty seamless, in Real Life Time it has been one full year since all the Wives gathered together under one roof. That would probably explain not only the sweat on Andy’s upper lip as everyone settled in for the first of three…count ‘em THREE…reunion episodes, but also why there were a few new hairdo’s and noses on the set. I guess Time tries to make everything prettier.
With Las Vegas hotel security on high alert and a S.W.A.T. team command center set up in the lobby, Andy welcomed everyone to the Borgata hotel, casino, spa and wrestling ring in beautiful Sin City and then got right down to bidnezz.
Like any good host, he attempted some smiley foreplay during the introductions by calling out everyone’s successes over the last year that they had been MIA.
Which is a great move, unless you are introducing people who haven’t really accomplished a lot since you last saw them. Then it just gets awkward.
Teresa Giudice, who had traded in last year’s Star Trek reunion gown (…with the disco ball breast plate…) was now pretty much popping out of a highly saturated, and equally oiled up, green gown. Knowing that as soon as she opened her mouth total chaos would ensue, I gave Tre the benefit of the doubt for starters and assumed that she must have been feeling under the weather, which could be the only explanation for why she had coated her fabuliciously boobilicious décolletage with so much Vicks VapoRub.
I know, right? Nobody would grease up their junk like that on purpose, right? You couldn’t even look directly at her breastesezz without squinting like Mama Manzo.
Despite the glare from her calzones, Andy managed to congratulate Teresa on 3 NYTimes best seller cookbooks before acknowledging sister-in-law Melissa Gorga‘s iTunes dance remixes.
As he moved on to Caroline “Yoda” Manzo, Andy already appeared to be running out of host steam because the best he could come up with was that he approved of her longer haircut. Nice save, AC.
By the time he got to the very end of the couch and cousin Kathy Wakile (…ouch…that location can’t bode well for next season’s casting announcements…) Andy was really grasping for straws. Instead of faking some success story though, he chose to simply just call Kathy out on a newly designed nose and overly injected lips before staging an impromptu one man intervention to try and put a stop to all the claymation before Girlfriend was totally unrecognizable on her DIY canoli box covers.
Andy had skimmed over Jacqueline Laurita because he wanted to come back to her for all the deets on why she skipped out on last year’s Reunion Show. You don’t diss the King of Reality TV without a really good note from the principal, if you know what I mean.
Jacqueline began explaining “The Incident” at the Posche Fashion Show where Melissa had been confronted by that skeevy bald guy claiming that she used to dance for him at a strip club. Being a self confessed texting tweetaholic, you’ll remember that Jacqueline’s cell was literally on fire that evening as everyone in Jersey was letting her know (…via text and/or 140 characters or less…) that Teresa was in on Strippergate the whole time.
I say she “began” explaining, because as soon as Jacqueline opened her mouth Caroline grabbed the wheel and steered the conversation right into Teresa’s shiny face, accusing Tre of setting up the whole thing to humiliate Melissa. Jacqueline couldn’t have agreed more, and swore she had a Blackberry full of proof while Mama Manzo’s patented ManzoHand flapped around like she was bringing in aircraft at JFK.
To which Teresa replied “Prove it, Bitch.”
And then it was on. Like Donkey Kong.
Jacqueline and Teresa went a few more rounds over the Posche Show and surprisingly got nowhere. But it did give me time to wonder out loud why these women keep going to this stupid fashion show if it always ends up in a throw down. I mean, really.
How many times do you have to get burned before you stop putting your face on the stove? Stay home and watch Project: Runway for chrissake.
Melissa and her newly lightened hair got into the fray for a few seconds as she tried to explain why she never RSVP’s to anything at Teresa’s house, and that she doesn’t just drop off presents at Gia‘s school and then run away like she’s the UPS man.
It all made sense when you watched it even though for the life of me I can’t remember how Strippergate turned into Gia’s birthday party. But trust me, it did.
Then it was back to Jacqueline again, and her hot mess daughter Ashley. Or Ashlee. Or whatever it is on Twitter now.
Having survived 3 days of gas leaking from a stove and never feeling any more stoned than she felt when she lived at home, Ashlee seemed to be maturing and growing into her new role as an adult. At least that’s how it seemed on Skype. And we know that the internet never lies, right?
The show then shifted into a bit of a downer for a few moments as Jacqueline and Caroline melted down over video of Jacqueline’s autistic son and had a good cry.
Melissa teared up as well and did that soap opera tissue dab thing that I guess you’re supposed to always do if you’re wearing too much eye liner.
It was hard to tell what was going on with Kathy’s new face, but she seemed a little moved, too. But I can’t swear to it.
Teresa on the other hand, with that unexplainable gift that she has, somehow managed to turn a young boy’s battle with Autism back onto herself again and Caroline blew a nutty.
An industrial, Manzo-sized nutty.
Caroline called out Teresa for her F***ing Christmas Pageant dress. Teresa called out Mama Manzo as an Old Hag. I called my cable company to find out why even though I set my DVR to record Bravo TV I was somehow watching a TLC Show about bratty kids who scream and yell and throw things until one of those overseas Nannies comes to America and spanks them.
These are grown women, right?
And speaking of TLC. And Honey Boo Boo Child. Love. Her.
Did anyone notice that Bravo TV stole a few Redneck Reality tips from the Boo and started subtitling conversations that are already in simple English?
I mean, yeah. The Wives were whispering. But I could still hear them talking smack about Teresa. But subtitling what you can already understand is cool now, thanks to the Boo. There’s no escaping the power of the Dolla Holla.
Redneckognize it, bitches.
Then Andy got it all back on track and gave us a Jacqueline and Teresa’s Friendship: The Early Years montage.
After a few snickers over nuts in a chocolate ball and a sex tape that will hopefully never see the light of day, it was clear that these two women don’t stand a chance of ever getting back to where they were before everything fell apart. Not a chance. You heard it here first, folks.
Jacqueline finger pointed her accusations that all Teresa cared about was exposing Melissa and Kathy even before they joined the show. Forget the fact that Melissa was, or was not, or maybe still is or will be a stripper. Teresa seemed more horrified that it took Kathy 40 years to get her first designer handbag.
I know, right? You can get a pretty decent one at Marshall’s. No excuses, honey.
Teresa made it clear for the bazillionth time that everyone on Earth is jealous of her and that everyone wants to be her. Or at least that was the implication after a few more screaming matches and another In Touch magazine cover story.
Gah. We get it.
Next up, Andy decided to bully the bully for a few minutes and cornered Caroline on her behavior this season. He schooled her. And she owned it.
And then she made room on the couch for the new and improved Lauren Manzo 2012 model. But she didn’t have to make as much room as she used to, because daughter Lauren had lost over 35 pounds with a simple Lap-Band procedure and was now a sleeker, slimmed down version of the mopey girl we suffered through all season.
Baby Manzo looked pretty good in her leather dress. I’ll give her that one. And now that she doesn’t use her mouth for eating, it apparently allows her more time for yelling and swearing as she unleashed on Teresa. Granted, Tre asked for it by tossing Lauren a low blow about the Manzo boys never working before the discovery of the Blk Waterfall, but screeching “Dick Head” tends to make you a little less of a lady. Just saying.
Que the next Manzo nutty. A split screen nutty, so you knew it was gonna be good.
Teresa went off on Caroline’s previous tummy tuck and how she couldn’t help but notice that Caroline had brought 3 new, pretty hefty fat rolls to the Borgata for the Reunion Show.
Caroline proudly owned those fat rolls. Just like she owned her filler-free face, which probably unintentionally caught Jacqueline in the crossfire, considering that she had just pointed out her new Laurita cheekbones to Andy a few minutes earlier.
Lauren almost burst the seam on her new skinny dress as she compared Teresa’s manic behavior to high school bullies who raise the nation’s suicide rate, and then made a pretty smooth segue into Teresa not writing her own blogs.
By the time Lauren tried forcing Teresa into giving the definition, correct spelling and proper use in a sentence of the word Napalm, Andy had to finally step in and send Lauren back out to the craft service table for some solid food.
Then it all just fell apart.
Melissa told Teresa to turn around and look at her, because she was tired of talking to her weave. Oh, snap. I’m totally gonna use that at the office.
Which in turn caused Teresa to call out Melissa, on national television no less, for wearing last year’s glitter eye shadow. Last year’s! The glitter eye shadow that Teresa had already worn to the Season 3 Reunion Show.
Yeah. She went there. Bitch Stole My Look. A year later.
Then it careened into Teresa whoring out her kid Gia in a celebrity gossip magazine article. Seriously. Is it any wonder I spend so much time at CVS with all this good cash register reading out there? Inquiring minds, and all.
Moving on to stealing recipes that have been around since Italians discovered Italy, Teresa slammed Kathy a few more times. She even let everyone know that she had created a book report outline listing all the times that Kathy’s husband Richie had made fun of her, mouthed off and/or laid his hands on Teresa.
An outline? Like on paper?
Right. Spell Napalm and then we’ll talk.
Finally, I guess the two things that you’re not supposed to drag into any Housewife fight are kids or dead parents. You might want to write that one down in your own private outline for future reference.
Because after Kathy called Teresa’s Mother a F***ing liar, Teresa bit back with a slam against Kathy’s now deceased Dad, and then all the wheels on the Crazy Bus fell off.
Let’s just say that Part One ended with loads of Honey Boo Boo subtitling as Kathy’s sister Rosie Pierri went certifiably whackadoodle backstage after Teresa spoke ill of the Dead. (Damn those Green Room monitors!)
Whackadoodle to the point where she threatened to (bleep) the (bleepin’) tongue out of her (bleepin’) mouth and began trashing the back of the Borgata like Butchzilla terrorizing a Japanese Pride Parade.
I’ll say it. We loooove Rosie. But she’s scary when she’s mad. Really scary.
As the hotel went on lockdown and Andy tried to uncork one of the gigantic keggers behind the couch, Rosie toppled a lighting tripod, stepped on two tourists and headed towards the couches.
To be continued…