Last night’s episode of Real Housewives of Orange County was so boring that I may or may not have had a quarter-life crisis during it. (Or a third-life crisis, because let’s face it, my liver isn’t making it to 100-plus.) Which of my life decisions had lead me to that place, where I was willfully sitting through an hour of manufactured drama, except that the producers didn’t even have the common courtesy to make it actually dramatic. And if I could identify the choices I had made that lead me to watching that episodes of Real Housewives, would it be too late to go back and change them? The episode mercifully ended before I came up with any answers, but I did come up with a recap.
1. Husbands who are used to childcare aren’t great at pitching in, even if they mean well. Just ask my mom, who came home one day during my toddlerhood to find that I had crawled up the stairs and was eating a sponge in her bathroom. I think my dad was watching a baseball game. At least Terry didn’t let any of his kids eat foreign objects. (Don’t get me wrong, my dad is great.) (But that actually did happen.) (He got better at it.)
2. Lauri! I always liked Lori. Or at least I think I did, because it’s been about 800 years since her seasons of Real Housewives were on the air and I only vaguely remember her. She made perhaps the most graceful exit from Real Housewives ever, though – she got married to a super-rich guy, to whom she is still married, and she left to live a life of leisure. She and Tamra got together to gossip about Vicky, apparently, but mostly I just spent that time ignoring them and trying to remember things about Lauri. All I came up with was her Austin Scarlett wedding dress.
3. Lydia’s mom might still be a pothead, maybe. That shouldn’t come as, like, a huge surprise to anyone who saw her a few episodes ago, but instead of the conversation being light-hearted and funny, it was a little somber. Growing up with a mom who’s constantly on anything, even something as relatively benign as weed, has to be a bummer. But then again, jeez, Lydia, quit harshing your mom’s mellow.
4. Alexis isn’t good at defining words. In her defense, everything her acting coach was saying to her also sounded totally made up. Forrest Gump didn’t become Tom Hanks. That’s idiocy. Also, Alexis’ “interest” in acting only exists so that she can have a storyline even though no one will hang out with her, so I refuse to dignify it with a response.
5. I forgot Gretchen was on the show. Was she in the episode last week? Did I totally space on her existence? Until that (leased, natch) Rolls Royce came around the bend, Gretchen hadn’t crossed my mind once in the entire episode, which is probably bad news for Gretchen.
6. No one can name a single thing that Heather has ever acted in. Despite the fact that Tamra and Lydia both had ample time to look at Heather’s IMDB profile, neither of them bothered to. Hell, I’ve had a year to do it and still haven’t. WWHL did feature a clip of her on Married With Children, though, so there’s that.
7. Are television tapings a party? I ask because it seemed strange that everyone got dressed up and took limos to LA to see Heather film a guest part in a cable show. On the upside, the entire cast managed to behave themselves and sit in their seats for the entire thing, except for Gretchen, who chose that exact moment to learn how to use an iPhone. While I always appreciate good behavior, having such a large part of the episode hinge on an event where most of the cast was required to be silent for an extended period of time was probably not the best idea that Bravo producers have ever had. We don’t tune in to watch these women sit silently and applaud politely.
8. The good behavior did not spill over into dinner. It never does. Never! Tamra and Vicky calmly called each other names with fake smiles on their faces and Gretchen claimed Slade had bought her a Rolls Royce when he had actually just leased it. By normal Real Housewives standards, though, the entire thing was pretty tame. Just like the episode as a whole.
