By the end of last night’s episode of Mad Men, I felt positively exhilarated. After last week’s stumbling block, I predicted (read: hoped) that it would be smooth sailing until the season finale, and last night did nothing to assuage that belief. It was an hour of solid television, even if it did feature Lane more prominently than some people prefer. To make up for it, we got lots of solid Don-Joan time and very little Megan, for the Megan haters.

The sight of Paul Kinsey as a Hare Krishna did make me wonder whether or not Matthew Weiner spent the show’s entire 17-month hiatus dropping acid like Roger Sterling, but even if that’s the case, I’m ok with it. As long as this show continues churning out television like the kind that we were treated to last night. On to the recap!

As the episode did, let’s start with Lane. He’s having some quiet, desperate financial problems concerning back taxes owed to the British government, just as he’s had quiet, desperate problems concerning his frustrations with his wife and his general sense of ennui with his safe, boring life as a desk jockey. After a late-night call from his British accountant indicated that he owes $8000 in back taxes (which was a sum far more astronomical in 1966 dollars), Lane freaked out on his wife and met with the firm’s banker the next day to extend the business’ credit line by $50,000, clearly so that he could covertly pocket enough money to pay his debts.

Indeed, we later caught Lane in a darkened art department, using a light board to carefully forge Don’s signature on a check after he announced the $50,000 credit extension as a “surplus” (when Joan wasn’t around, you’ll notice) so that the rest could be doled out in bonuses to further cover his ass. Oh Lane, I liked you better when you were punching Pete Campbell in the face. How did a guy who’s always been so stingy about the firm’s financials get himself into debt with the Brits? The episode didn’t explain; maybe I missed the indicators in previous scenes featuring Lane.

At the office, Harry was trying to avoid Paul Kinsey about as much as Lane was trying to avoid the British IRS. Yes, THAT Paul Kinsey, who we hadn’t seen since the Season 3 implosion of the original Sterling Cooper. In fact, the last time we saw Kinsey at all was when he realized that he had been left out of the move because he is not a very good writer. Surprise! He’s still not a very good writer. Also surprise: he’s a Hare Krishna, complete with the robes and crazy haircut.

Kinsey’s always been an enormously transparent striver, whether he was trying to look interesting by taking on a black girlfriend in the middle of the civil rights movement or by penning cringe-worthy plays loosely based on himself for the office to find and mock. As much as he always wanted to be part of the counter-culture, though, he was just a mediocre ad man living in the New Jersey suburbs and riding the train in to work every day. SCDP didn’t take him on for a reason: Kinsey is unexceptional in almost every way.

Harry eventually found himself at a Hare Krishna prayer meeting with Kinsey, despite his best efforts to avoid it altogether and then leave once he realized what was going on. He was forced to stay, though, and both Kinsey and his new girlfriend, Mother Lakshmi, chanted right along with him. Harry actually got pretty into it, and at a diner with Kinsey afterward, confessed that he had had a vision while chanting.

Kinsey, of course, had never had a vision. Despite what he’s trying to convince himself of, Kinsey’s not even very good at being in a cult, in addition to being not very good at literally anything else he’s ever done. He ended up there because his career had been on a downward spiral (all the way to in-house at A&P) ever since the start of the new firm, and now he’s sticking around because he’s theoretically in love with Lakshmi, but mostly because he doesn’t have anything better to do and he already got the silly haircut. And, you know, maybe if he hangs around long enough, enlightenment will eventually find him, if only because he’ll eventually be the last person in the room who it hasn’t yet visited. The one bright spot in his life was a spec script for Star Trek that Kinsey wanted Harry to pass along to a contact at NBC, and Harry reluctantly agreed to read it.

Back at the office, things were actually a little bit brighter. It was Pearl Harbor Day, so Roger was entirely drunk, but not so drunk that Pete couldn’t announce to the group that they would once again be pitching for the Jaguar business. It seems as thought Mr. Gum In His Pubis was something of an all-around mess and had since been fired from his post atop the company’s American arm, and as a result, the firm didn’t have his wife’s hooker disapproval to stop them from potentially winning the business.

Pete announced this information twice to essentially the same group of people, and he didn’t get the fanfare or appreciation he thought the news deserved either time. Pete is sort of a bizarro world version of Kinsey; he actually IS good at his job, as evidenced by the fact that he kept up with the Jaguar business even after all seemed lost and indeed won the firm a shot at it once again. Despite that, Pete has the same desperate air of striverdom about him, which means that he can’t even count his successes for what they are and he’s constantly looking for exactly the right outcome that will make him feel whole.

After the meeting was over, Drunk Patriot Roger Sterling and his Pearl Harbor-celebrating Hawaiian shirt sauntered over to Joan’s secretary, glass of vodka in hand, to do what Roger does best: flirt with secretaries. Even the secretary of the woman he knocked up last season! When Joan discovered him outside her office, she yanked him inside, at which point we discovered a few things. First, that Roger was indeed aware that the baby Joan had was the baby he fathered, which I had assumed but of which we had never received confirmation. Second, Roger had tried to do the right thing and pay the baby’s expenses until he was grown, but Joan had refused his help and sent all the money back to him. As suspected, Joan is not exactly pining for Roger anymore.

What was Don doing during all of this? Oh, you know, taking in a little experimental theatre with his wife, who somehow expected him to enjoy or at least appreciate watching a bunch of actors (literally) lay around on a minimalist stage and talk shit about his life’s work. Don’s look of revulsion during the play was priceless, as though he was just barely resisting the urge to both vomit and tell everyone who was participating how dumb they were. To his credit, he did neither. The play seemed to be fairly awful, but in that special sort of way that pretentious young actresses can’t detect.

Of course, the play was more than just a play; it was also a symbol of the increasingly tenuous ties that bind Don and Megan together. He took her departure from the advertising world personally, as though it were a referendum on all of his life decisions and the career that he had always loved. He tried to hide that disappointment, of course, and Megan apparently hadn’t picked up on the fact that she had insulted him. You’d think that she’d know better than to take Don to a play like that, though. I know Megan wants him to share her interests, but expecting anyone to sit through something like that when they have no theater background, let alone when they’re devoted to the very things that the play criticizes, is not very smart. It certainly doesn’t indicate that Megan knows Don as well as she sometimes seems to.

You who does know Don really well, though? Joan. Their scenes together are always an absolute treat, and they’re rare enough that when they come along, it feels almost as though we’ve been given a gift. Joan’s perhaps the only truly beautiful woman in Don’s adult life that he’s apparently never tried to sleep with, and not only that, but he genuinely seems to respect her. He always has, all the way back to when she had to fill in as his secretary after Peggy left and Lois the Dumb Secretary got sent back to the switchboard.

Don doesn’t respect many people, but as far as I can remember, his behavior toward Joan has always been exemplary. And it’s not just gentleman’s courtesy; I’ve always gotten the sense that he considers Joan an equal, which is all the more impressive when you consider that Don adds a silent “you dumbass” onto the end of almost anything he says to anyone, particularly in the office.

Anyway, I’ve gotten a bit ahead of myself in my Don-Joan giddiness. Why are we talking about Don and Joan? Because the next day in the office, Joan received some bad news. The receptionist out front accidentally let in the man that was there to serve her with divorce papers, and Joan reacted by literally throwing an airplane at the receptionist, who was being kind of insolent and didn’t apologize and probably deserved an airplane to the head. (I feel the need to say that I’m on Team Joan, but then I feel as though that might be redundant, because aren’t we ALL Team Joan?)

Don happened to witness her meltdown, and he did exactly the perfect thing; he separated her from the secretary that she was about to murder with her bare hands and almost wordlessly whisked her off into the city for a day of distraction. When they entered the Jaguar dealership to pose as man and wife and test drive cars, I might have actually swooned, not only because the gilded room filled with vintage Jag after vintage Jag was gorgeous, but because Don and Joan just have this electricity when they’re in a room together, and although it’s not exactly romantic chemistry, it’s something the audience can viscerally feel. Matthew Weiner does a great job of only giving us tiny doses of it here and there, because if we saw Joan and Don together all the time, it might suffocate the rest of the show.

It was perhaps one of the most visually beautiful scenes in the history of the show, and when Don wrote a check for more than the asking price of Joan’s favorite little red convertible so that they could take it out together without the salesmen, I may have swooned for the second time in three minutes. That sort of thing is the signature Don Draper Swagger that, even more than his movie star good looks, makes ladies want to sleep with him, and it had been largely absent since his marriage to Megan. It was great to see it back in action, and no one deserves a jolt of it more than Joan.

They ended up at a bar together, drinking and confessing things, like how Don had been terrified of Joan when he first joined Sterling Cooper and that Bert had told him that she was the one person he should never cross. Given how much Don’s respect for Joan has always been evident, the anecdote made perfect sense, but it was still kind of amazing to hear Don admit to fearing anyone, ever.

Joan’s one of my favorite characters because her dissatisfaction with life has always been more subtle and well-masked than most of her compatriots at SCDP. She’s of a slightly older generation than Peggy, and as Joan admitted during her slightly drunken conversation with Don, her mother had always raised her to be admired. That’s why she generally hides her emotions so well, and when they do escape, it’s almost always in a well-controlled takedown like the ones she laid on several writers last season. Now well into her 30s, with a newborn and fresh divorce papers, it’s clearer to Joan than ever that she’s been sold a bill of goods, but her reaction to that revelation differs so profoundly from those of Roger or Pete that it’d be hard to argue that anyone on the show has stronger character than Joan.

Don and Joan’s conversation was wonderful, from him quoting Bobbie Barrett from all the way back in Season 2 (“I like being bad and then going home and being good”) to Don, completely without judgment, encouraging Joan to sleep with the man down the bar who had been eyeing her all evening (and then leaving her with car fare so that she could get home if she decided against it). If either Joan or Don had had one more drink, it was clear that they probably would have gone home together, and Weiner did well to get us right up to that point and then not let it happen. Don and Joan sleeping together would violate some kind of law of the Mad Men universe, and ultimately, I don’t think I want that law broken, even if it would be a fun scene to watch. It’s better that there is someone off-limits to Don.

While Don and Joan were busy making my week before it even started, Harry was back at the office, trying to figure out what to do with Kinsey’s screenplay. It was awful, of course, as we all knew it would be. Remember the play of Kinsey’s that the staff acted out during the election party a few seasons back? He’s a hack writer, and Harry knew it before he even agreed to read the thing. It ended up being so bad that he made Peggy read it too, but before he could figure out exactly how to break the bad news to Kinsey, Lakshmi appeared at the office.

In a scene that was nothing short of bizarre, Lakshmi convinced Harry to bend her over the desk and have his way with her with almost no context. Because Harry is both a total horndog and also a dude that hardly ever gets any thrown his way, he complied with minimal protestations, and afterward, Lakshmi smacked him in the face and told him to stay away from Kinsey because he’s their best recruiter. Poor Kinsey. Cult Recruiter is the only thing he’s any good at.

Harry’s a coward, so I expected him to freak out for a little bit and then eventually comply with Lakshmi’s demands, abut instead, he did something that could either be construed as cruel or kind, depending on how you look at it. He met with Kinsey again and told him that his screen play was great, but also that he couldn’t sell it for him (cruel – false hope is always cruel), and then he handed Kinsey $500 and a plane ticket to go pursue his dream of being a screenwriter in California, but only if he’d leave immediately (kind – helping someone get out of a cult and away from a toxic romantic partner is always kind). As we already discussed, Kinsey’s not very good at being in a cult, so he took the money and the ticket, gave Harry a big hug and agreed to leave for California immediately. Kinsey’s the kind of person who needs a jolt of change, and although it won’t make him a better writer, sending him to California conveniently solved problems for both him and Harry.

By the time we were done with that, Don had arrived home, late and a little drunk, to a pasta-slinging wife that was more Megan-Betty hybrid than the Megan we’re all used to. After yelling at him for not calling her to say he’d be late, Don thought that perhaps this was another sex game, but it was most definitely not. Oops! Nothing quite so embarrassing as mistaking your wife’s genuine rage over your surely impending infidelity for an opportunity to have sex on the floor, amirite? Wordlessly, they sat down to eat what appeared to be plain spaghetti noodles for dinner. Or, rather, Don sat down to eat his. Megan’s were all over the floor approximately eight feet away.

Don is capable of being incredibly thoughtful, though, and you needn’t look further than the cards he sent Joan the next day for proof. He signed them Aly Khan, who he had mentioned as one of Joan’s potential suitors during their bar conversation, which is really just the cherry on top, isn’t it? I’m betting Megan got no flowers, but then, she’s also not nearly as awesome as Joan. And, as Joan had noted about her potential suitor’s probable wife in an earlier scene, the only sin she’s committed is that of familiarity. For wives, it seems as though that’s the most damning one. Don’t feel too bad for Megan, though, because she’ll get half when they eventually get divorced.

Back at the office for the end of the episode, we endured one final bit of bad news for Lane, who seemed to tentatively have all his ducks in a row to steal the money we mentioned at the top of the recap and pay his debts before he got hauled off to the Tower of London. The mechanics’ strike that had been mentioned a few weeks back had finally hit Mohawk who, as a result, would be suspending all advertising activities, effective immediately. The partners met briefly to discuss the development, and despite Lane looking like he was about to pass out, they decided to forgo bonuses so that their staff could have a little extra dosh for the holidays.

When everyone was called together to announce that development, we got a glimpse at what’s perhaps set to come for the rest of the season: the old Don Draper is back, and he gave a speech about pitching Jaguar that was so rousing, so exhilarating, that I would have followed him directly in to battle in that moment if he had asked me to. That’s the same kind of speech that he gave when Sterling Cooper was getting ready to pitch American Airlines, and it was a bit of his personality – intense, focused, competitive, self-assured – that we haven’t seen since he remarried. Poor Megan. This can’t be good for her, but it’s most assuredly good for us (and for whoever Don nails before the end of the season).

Stray Observations:
• If Kinsey can reappear, will Sal ever rejoin us? Please say yes. I loved Sal, and he always seemed to be a fan favorite. Now that SCDP doesn’t have Lucky Strike, there’s technically nothing stopping his return.
• Joan has such a way with words – and with the truth – that I almost wish she had been born later so that she could have stood at a chance at being a copywriter herself. I bet she’d be brilliant at it.
• The bar scene with Don and Joan may be the sexiest thing this show has ever given us, and I enjoyed it so thoroughly that I actually put down my computer and just WATCHED it. I could write an entire recap about just what they said, there was so much in there. DON + JOAN 4EVA.
• That being said, I don’t think Don and Joan will ever be a REAL thing. Joan knows better, and I think Don respects her too much to inflict himself upon her.
• Roger’s Hawaiian shirt and messy hair were just…perfect. I’m glad that the writers found a way to yank him out of the funk that he was in for the first half of the season.
• I’d like to think that I would have recognized the Bobbie Barrett quote even if I hadn’t coincidently watched that very episode from Season 2 over the weekend while I was spring cleaning, but I guess I’ll never know. I think I’m one of the only people who actually liked the Bobbie storyline.

The beginning of summer may seem like an odd time to buy a backpack – after all, they’re most often associated with school, which is just now drawing to a close – but the season calls for bags that are casual, lightweight and hands-free. Outdoor music festivals, days in the park, picnics, maybe even a light hike: all of these activities would benefit from having your man well-equipped with a great backpack, if only so that you can leave your own accessories at home and spend the day truly hands free. After years of letting your husband or boyfriend put his wallet and phone in your purse, you deserve a bit of a respite too.

Thus, we present you with a selection of backpacks, starting at $35, that will serve you well even if your school days are long gone. And as always, the best thing about Man Bag Monday is that the pieces can very easily be enjoyed by women as well, so ladies, start planning your outdoor accessories accordingly. It’s only going to get more beautiful outside from here.

Epperson Mountaineering Large Climb Pack, $195 via Park & Bond

Last week, we rounded up the best accessory gifts for all the recent college grads in your life. In the comments, one of you asked us to make some suggestions for high school grads, and because we like to consider ourselves a full-service blogging operation here, we felt compelled to oblige. Almost any huge life change – graduation, moving to a new city, having a baby – impacts the way a woman interacts with the things that she carries every day, and I like to think that the best way to ready someone for a change like that is to get her the sartorial equipment she needs in order to settle in to her new life.

Thus, we present you with our picks for the best high school grad gifts. Leaving home for the first time is nerve-racking enough, but there are some things you can do to make sure your grad is prepared to take on college and hit the ground running. Not to mention, if you get her a nice overnight bag, maybe she’ll come home more often. (That’s a pretty good theory, I think. Write that one down.) Best of all, all of our picks are under $600.

Hear me out on the Marc Jacobs Quilted Key Pouch, because I can’t recommend it heartily enough. Entrance to almost all modern college dorms is done either by showing your school ID to a desk clerk or swiping it through a card reader, not to mention that school IDs are usually what gain you entrance to dining halls and school sporting events. At my school (UGA, Go Dawgs), you couldn’t even buy textbooks off campus without presenting that holiest of holy cards.

That means it’s important to have your ID handy at all times, lest you essentially lock yourself out of your own life without even losing your keys; attaching one of these pouches to your key ring keeps it with you. I’ve used one of these Marc Jacobs cardholders since my freshman year in college, and eight years later (yeesh), I still have the exact same one on my key ring. I had a cardholder from a different brand prior to getting this one, but it only lasted a few months because the zipper came loose and would slide open in my purse; this one locks in place, which is a much safer setup to hold ID cards. Buy through Barneys for $175.

Not long ago, I said that my feelings toward Thursday Friday’s line of bag-on-bag printed totes had “softened.” At that point, Balenciaga was the latest designer to have a photo of their work plastered on a canvas tote bag and sold for up to $90 apiece, and like Hermes and Chanel before it, Balenciaga is a huge brand with a huge corporate structure behind it to protect its work product. They can stand up for themselves, and although the Thursday Friday bags are certainly not my personal cup of tea, the combination of the chosen subject matter and the totes’ ubiquity had made me a little less opinionated about the whole thing.

Well. Guess what. This time, Thursday Friday has chosen to go after Proenza Schouler, a small New York brand that’s still in its relative infancy and that has yet to so much as open a brick-and-mortar store for itself. Compared to the Chanels of the world, Proenza Schouler is utterly tiny and a labor of love by the brand’s founders, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez. The success of the PS1 and the brand’s other accessories allow it to do some of the most beautiful and innovative textile work in modern fashion; clothes like that don’t often turn a profit because of the enormous expense associated with producing such technically complicated work in small quantities, so for Proenza Schouler and brands like it, handbags are a crucial part of the business model. But hey, who cares about all that? Let’s take someone else’s hard work, slap it on a tote bag and make some cash!

Picking on the big guys is one thing. Taking something iconic and asininely expensive and re-appropriating it to poke fun at the fashion establishment is a longstanding tradition in the industry, and not something I generally have a problem with it. In fact, I love seeing a few well-placed stones lobbed at the old guard; it’s good for our health, as a collective. The problem, though, is that Proenza Schouler isn’t the fashion establishment or the old guard; it’s a spunky upstart that makes a bag that’s been popular for a few years. With that in mind, Thursday Friday splashing Proenza’s work on a bag to fatten their own bank accounts seems crass and opportunistic. Picking on the little guy isn’t clever, and it’s certainly not something I’d ever advise anyone to spend money on.

If you’d like to buy a real Proenza Schouler bag, you can do so via the brand’s website. If you’d like to buy one of the Thursday Friday bags, I suggest you start Googling, because I’m not going to be providing any links to their “work.” If you can even call it that.

(If there were a way for me to drop the mic and stomp off stage on the Internet, this is where I’d do it.)

Generally I love anything that Balenciaga does with its much-loved Balenciaga Motorcycle Bags. I love them in regular leather, patent, prints, raffia…you get the idea, I’m a fan, and so is the rest of the PurseBlog team. In fact, the only trepidation I can remember expressing over Balenciaga’s bags in the past concerned the brand’s first foray into perforated leather, and I don’t think I like the Balenciaga Polka Dot Bags any more.

This design features perhaps the biggest perforations I’ve ever seen on a handbag, and I can’t help but wonder how that will play into the bag’s longterm wear. Cutting that many holes of that size into a piece of leather significantly changes how the material distributes stress and weight, which will likely lead to a shorter lifespan for the bag. Of course, if you’re buying a look this bold, you probably don’t want to wear it forever; a single season might do just fine. And now that I think of it, if you’re looking for a bag in which to carry your extremely tiny dog, these might be nice, breathable options. Check out more pictures of the bags after the jump and then let us know what you think in the comments.

Balenciaga City Polka Dots, $1645 via Balenciaga

If you’re a regular BagThatStyle reader (or a Brit), you’re probably long familiar with these two ladies, but if you’ll allow us to indulge ourselves a bit, I’d appreciate it. I’ve become slightly fascinated with Petra Ecclestone Stunt, the 23-year-old handbag designer (really, she is) and new owner of the famous Spelling Mansion, and her 27-year-old sister Tamara Ecclestone, whose resumé seems to include going on lots of fabulous vacations with her boyfriend and wearing every dress Herve Leger has every made. The most important thing that you need to know about these two women, though, is that their handbag collections are absolutely sick.

The Ecclestones are relatively unknown on this side of the Atlantic, but these heiresses have quite the pedigree, not to mention the bank accounts to back it up in a way that Paris Hilton never could. Their father, Bernie Ecclestone, is CEO of Formula One racing and has a net worth estimated at $4.2 billion. Their mother, Bernie’s ex-wife Slavica, is a former model known mostly for her work with Armani (and for being a full foot taller than Bernie) and whose 2009 divorce settlement reportedly made her a billionaire as well. These girls have money to burn, and it looks like they’ve chosen to burn a significant amount of it on handbags, particularly those from Hermes. Petra even loves bags so much that she’s designing her own line of ulta-luxe clutches, which you can check out, along with some of the most lust-worthy bags in both their closets, after the jump.

In general, Petra likes to keep her Hermes bags neutral…

When a handbag becomes a hit, you can always bet that you’ll see its details morphed into new shapes without much delay. Not only does it make sense to capitalize on the original design’s popularity, but remaking a tote as a shoulder bag or a satchel as a crossbody is a great way to capture the interest of additional customers who like the original but don’t see it as relevant to their structural preferences. Thus, we present the Yves Saint Laurent ChYc Shoulder Bag, born out of the success of the original Cabas ChYc.

At first I wasn’t all that jazzed about this bag, but when I started to imagine the shoulder version in some of the lovely colors that the tote comes in – turquoise, magenta, red raffia – everything became clear. At 35″ long, the bag’s strap is juuuust long enough to allow the bag to be worn across the body, and in a punchy color, this roomy, relaxed design would make a great everyday bag for someone who likes to stay hands-free. At this point, I’d beg and plead for more colors besides black and cranberry, but I feel pretty certain that they’re already on their way. Buy through Bergdorf Goodman for $1495.

As Real Housewives has started to decline a bit over the past year or two, it’s always seemed to me that the show would be more interesting with fewer episodes that contained more actual plot. If I had to re-edit this season, last night’s episode would be one that I’d keep almost entirely intact, which is about as good of an endorsement as I can give at this point. Now, on to the recap.

We started at Alexis’ house, where she was planning a Puppy Princess (or Princess Puppy, as she calls it, because she’s a creative person and can’t be hemmed in by others’ expectations) party for her twin girls’ fourth birthday. The essential element of the party preparations that we saw was the in-home spray-tanning which, thankfully, wasn’t applied to her pre-schoolers. I watch Toddlers & Tiaras, so when the tan tent was being erected in the kitchen, I started to get a little nervous. For once, perhaps the only time, this show didn’t sink quite as low as I thought it might. Alexis still smeared all kinds of makeup on the twins’ faces in advance of the party, of course, but I’ll take my victories where I can get them.

Elsewhere, Slade had invited Heather to a jewelry store to help him pick out a ring. And, I mean, there are so many questions: Why Heather, who barely knows Gretchen? Why did Heather know specific things about what Gretchen would want in an engagement ring? Why are this show’s seams showing so much lately? Am I the only one who hates the canary diamond/yellow gold combination? Anyway, as we all know, Slade is broke, so after looking at a few rings that cost zillions of dollars, he asked how much it would be to have a fake diamond made in the image of one of those rings. If the jeweler had had his way, the Earth would have opened up and swallowed Slade right there, and I don’t think any of us would have been particularly sad. Not even Gretchen.

In the umpteenth plastic surgery scene of the season thus far, we then joined Tamra in Dr. Heather’s Husband’s office, where she intended to have her wedding tattoo physically cut off her body if she could stop fear-pooping long enough to let it happen. She said that she was doing it because it bothered Eddie so much and he would get her a ring if she had it removed once and for all, and all I could think while Tamra was talking was that I would have thought she had already learned her lesson about altering her body in permanent ways at the behest of a romantic partner. Wasn’t that how she got the tattoo in the first place, not to mention the gigunda breast implants that she had yanked out earlier this season? I can understand wanting to get the remnants of the tattoo removed, but Tamra, please don’t do it because you think it gives you some sort of guaranteed outcome with a dude. You’ve been making so much progress!

Tamra is sticking to her guns about not moving in with Eddie and the kids, all together, until she has a ring, though, so that’s something. She’s also realistic about the kind of impact that moving in with her kids might have on her relationship, which is more forethought and realism than I would have previously assumed Tamra was capable of. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is New, Improved Tamra, but I’m still cautiously optimistic. Now that I’ve said that, she’ll probably participate in the removal of a dead body from Vicki’s house next week, just to prove me wrong.

Speaking of Vicki’s and her house, she and her brother Billy were there, still dithering about Brianna’s marriage. Mostly they were complaining about how the whole ceremony and party that Brianna had promised to have for her friends and family wouldn’t mean anything, but what meaning, exactly, had Brianna deprived them of? They were still saying vows in from of their friends and their chosen religious figure, so what’s the real difference? Not to mention that marriage has never seemed to be so utterly sacrosanct to twice-divorced Vicki in the first place. I simply don’t see the harm in letting the kid do the legal ceremony by herself if that’s what she feels like she needs to do, particularly if she’s still promising to participate in the Vickifest that the wedding will almost surely turn out to be.

Meanwhile, at Heather’s house, she and Gretchen were discussing the architectural decisions that they had made when they had the house built, including the ultimate, most important luxury – his-and-hers bathrooms off the master suite. In my mind, if you’re building a custom home and you don’t include two bathrooms off the master, you are not very smart. Heather, despite her attempts to play up some unpleasant parts of her personality for the show’s sake, is quite intelligent. Her bathroom choices tell me so.

After the bathroom talk, the two of them got down to business – Gretchen and Slade’s relationship. Gretchen still doesn’t want to get married, which seemed like the first time that Heather had heard that. Remember, Heather is an actress by trade, so of course it seemed like that. Bravo expects us to believe Heather and Gretchen have discussed the particulars of engagement rings in great detail but not Gretchen’s actual thoughts about getting married in the near future, but I’m not actually willing to suspend that much disbelief. Gretchen actually got a little emotional about the fact that she may never be able to marry Slade, which is the most I think we’ve ever seen her care about the whole issue. She does know that she wants to be knocked up by 36, though. That’s for sure.

At Alexis’ house, the party for which everyone had gotten all tanned and makeup’d had commenced. Alexis made a big speech about how she had nearly died trying to deliver her twins, which was perhaps a little intense for a bunch of four-year-olds, and she followed that up by telling all the children that the puppies they were all playing with needed good homes. Great! Because explaining the realities of birth and death while trying to pry a scared puppy out of the hands of a crying child who has already named it is exactly what a parent wants to do at a birthday party on a sunny afternoon.

Back with Heather, she had just found out that she hadn’t gotten the role that she had auditioned for a few weeks prior, and refreshingly, her attitude about the whole thing was positive. Unfortunately, it did get her talking about the dumb restaurant idea again, which is something that I really had hoped not to hear about for the rest of the season. Heather is more interesting and relatable when she’s trying to carefully unravel Alexis’ brainless lies, and I’m worried that the restaurant may cut into her interrogation time.

We then visited Tamra and Eddie, who were out to dinner in perhaps the worst location ever (right next to an active train track!) to have a very serious conversation about the future of their relationship. As we mentioned before, Tamra’s afraid that moving in with her and her kids would overwhelm Eddie and ultimately drive him away, which is probably a reasonable fear to have. Eddie’s younger, never-before-married and without any kids, and he’s taking on an older woman who has tons of baggage, which is a situation that would be difficult for any couple. He seems pretty game for the whole thing, though, and so far, I don’t have any huge problems with him.

Eddie’s never tried to parade any of his personal business ventures in front of the camera or insert himself into any of the show’s plots that don’t concern him (hello, Slade), and although he’s had a couple not-so-great arguments with Tamra, he doesn’t seem malevolent in the same way that Simon always did. Importantly, the Internet hasn’t dug up any truly awful things about him in the two years that he and Tamra have been dating, so I’m guessing that he actually is a fairly normal person. So, you know, maybe those two crazy kids will make it. (Tamra also “revealed” her tattoo removal in a way that wasn’t at all believable, so let’s just pretend it never happened, shall we?)

And then, of course, was the main event. I actually didn’t take any notes during Vicki’s conversation with Brianna – it was THAT compelling. Normally I can watch this show with my head in my computer the entire time, but listening to Brianna clearly (more or less) and succinctly verbalize all the concerns that both she and everyone else have about Brooks required my full attention. Vicki and Brianna appear to have been in some therapy together at some point, because as soon as Vicki tried to change the subject by trying to pick apart Brianna’s husband (who seems to have no skeletons other than being previously divorced), Brianna called her out on it and shut her down.

Amazingly, Brianna was able to not only mention all of things the Internet had already found out (Brooks is a deadbeat dad, he has four kids by three women, he’s had at least one DUI, he’s a hanger-on that drives Vicki’s car around Orange County while she works, etc.), but also something that it theoretically hadn’t: Vicki and Brooks have been “friends” for a long time. She plainly said that she had seen evidence that Vicki had been emotionally unfaithful to Donn before they decided to get divorced, and although Vicki weakly denied it, she seemed like she was mostly aghast at being caught and confronted.

No matter whether Vicki tried to belittle Brianna by calling her a child even though she is grown or tried to change the subject to talk about Ryan’s sins (none of which she could name specifically), Brianna stayed the course and didn’t yell even when Vicki raised her voice. She did do the thing she did to Brooks where she cocked her head to the side and stared off into space while Vicki shrieked, which seems like it’s probably a coping mechanism that she developed to deal with Vicki’s loud-mouthed insanity at an early age. Ultimately, though, Vicki seemed frantic and indignant that someone was actually saying what everyone was obviously thinking, and I’m genuinely interested to see how the situation continues to unfold. I can’t remember the last time I was genuinely interested in anything the Real Housewives did, but I think it was circa Beverly Hills.

Just like we predicted, the iconic Fendi Baguette is suddenly everywhere. From Sarah Jessica Parker extolling its virtues in the Financial Times to a retrospective coffee table book slated for release July 3rd, the world’s first It Bag is having a bonafide renaissance. If you were too young or too financially strapped at the time to get in on the first wave of Baguette popularity (or, on the other hand, if you’d just like to revel in a little nostalgia), you’re in luck.

Over at Moda Operandi, the site’s Fendi Resort 2013 presale is your first chance to pre-order several of the collection’s new embellished Baguettes, as well as a nice selection of the line’s other bags (and shoes, too). We’ve included pictures of our favorites after the jump, but if you’d like to skip straight to shopping, you can score these pieces through May 22 via Moda Operandi.

The J.Crew Edie Bag has been a fan favorite since its debut. Not only does the bag have a chic, Mad Men-era retro feel to it without being costume-y, but it’s also a solid everyday bag priced at less than $300, which is a combination that’s difficult to duplicate elsewhere. J.Crew’s style profile has risen sharply over the last five years, and it seems as though the company’s bags have stepped in line with that new tradition quite quickly.

The J.Crew Edie Attache Tote is the newest edition to the line, and in my mind, it’s also a significant design improvement. Something about the finish of the original Edie meant that it never ranked too highly on my personal must-have list, but this sleek tote version ticks all the necessary boxes. Plus, who can resist this shade of green?

Now that I think about it, I don’t have a bright green bag in my collection. I have hunter green and lime green, but a true, preppy green like this eludes me. There’s not better time to add a shade like this than spring, and on a classic, sharp, somewhat conservative shape like the Eddie Attache, the green doesn’t look too trendy. Plus, for less than $300, I doubt I’ll find a better option anywhere. You can buy this bag for $288 via Net-a-Porter in green or via J.Crew in three other colors.