Real Housewives and other awesome TV Reality Show Recaps

Can you believe that we’ve been through six seasons of Real Housewives of Orange County already? Last night’s premiere marked the beginning of the seventh season, and I couldn’t help but look back and think about all the housewives who have come before us. Jo, for instance. Remember Jo? I wish I didn’t remember Jo. Or how about Lynn Quinn? Cougar Lynn Quinn with the awful wigs? Yeah.

This season brings us yet another new housewife, Heather, who differs a little bit from the rest of the cast. First, she’s a brunette. Second, she’s actually rich, at least as far as we know. Third, she isn’t hauling around eight pounds of silicone in her chest. It’s a whole new world for our Southern California ladies.

In almost any multi-part Real Housewives reunion, there’s an episode that ends up being completely useless. In three-parters, it’s the middle episode; Bravo uses the good footage in the first and third parts draw people in and then tease them into sticking around for the entire thing, which is what happened with last night’s Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Reunion. It wasn’t nearly as interesting as the first part, and all of the interview footage with Kim is going to wait until next week.

What we did get was a good bit of Brandi being Brandi, which I always enjoy, and some more of Kyle (and to a lesser extent, Adrienne) being incredibly ineffective Mean Girls. Ladies, you’re just not good at it. You’re not quick enough! That’s not necessarily your fault. It’s probably your parents’ fault. You’re adults, though, so let’s have a little self-awareness about that fact and move on to another way to attract camera time. Maybe you can get a 2-for-1 deal on plastic surgery or something?

I’ve never been a great fan of Real Housewives reunions in general, so when I say that part one of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Reunion was actually pretty interesting, I mean it. Not everything that was talked about was particularly amazing, but the way that the other cast members systematically picked at Lisa was worth watching if only for how incredibly bad they were at doing it.

Taylor also gave some very frank answers about her life with Russell and the highs and lows of an abusive relationship, all of which sounded exactly like you would expect from someone who’s in intense therapy six months after the suicide of her estranged husband/abuser. I found them perfectly reasonable and satisfying, but as always, Taylor seems to be something of a human Rorschach test – people see in her what they want to see. As is customary for reunions, let’s talk about the things we learned last night after the jump.

As the Fug Girls so eloquently put it on Twitter last night, all of the crazy that was missing from the SAG Awards ceremony fortunately found it to the new episode of Real Housewives of Atlanta. For as much as this season has been boring so far, last night really brought the drama. Marlo didn’t cut anyone, but I think she was pretty close.

The episode consisted mainly of our ladies’ first day in South Africa, although other than a few minutes on the deck of a yacht, they spent the entire time inside cars, boats, hotel suits and the Cape Town airport, fussing at each other about god knows what. One day down, nine more days of international vacation to go. Hopefully this will be the only argument they have through the side of a staircase.

Well that was a letdown.

This season of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills has been incredible so far – dramatic, sad, contentious, sometimes a little bit scary. It made for great television, even if I felt a little guilty watching it from time to time, and we’ve all been trained to expect a season finale to take things over the top one final time. This one didn’t, though; for how good last week’s episode was, the finale was a bit of a snoozer.

Pandora’s wedding was kind of pretty, though. So..that’s something. The most interesting thing that happened the entire night was actually on Watch What Happens Live, wherein Brandi admitted to a week-long tryst with Gerard Butler because she still hasn’t learned to lie about things. Can we get Brandi her own show, please?

Last night on Real Housewives of Atlanta, we spent the majority of our time getting to know Marlo, our newest quasi-housewife, a little better. Like Brandi in Beverly Hills, Marlo has yet to get called up from the farm team for a full time spot in the big leagues of housewifery, but she’s trying her very best to put on for the cameras and get a job other than Professional Girlfriend. Unlike Brandi in Beverly Hills, Marlo seems to have few redeeming qualities.

I thought that last night’s episode might be our first one in Africa since last week was such a placeholder, but no, we’ll have to wait for next Sunday to see the actual trip. This time, we just lazed around Atlanta for a little bit longer, getting full-body wraps and trying on things we can’t afford. Except for Kandi, of course, who was pushing a truck tire around a vacant lot while someone yelled at her from the sidelines.

By my estimation, last night’s episode of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills was one of the only episode of Real Housewives to ever merit the additional 15 minutes that Bravo likes to tack on the end sometimes. Every other time that the network has done that (except for maybe last season’s Beverly Hills finale and the Great Christening Smackdown in Jersey), it’s been totally unnecessary, not to mention easy to pick out 15 minutes worth of footage that could have been tossed with no break in the continuity of the story or quality of the episode.

Last night, though, there was so much madness on so many fronts that we needed it all. In fact, I would have probably sat there and watched for another 15 or 30 minutes, had Bravo decided to extend the episode even more. Kim and Ken started to really unravel, Taylor showed up to the party with her therapist and a black eye, Cedric crashed Lisa’s restaurant opening, one of Brandi’s ex-husband’s mistresses was serving canapés. RuPaul showed up. When RuPaul’s presence is way down the list of interesting things that happened on an episode of a Bravo reality show, you know things were good.