Real Housewives of Orange County: “What better than getting together with my hoes and my ‘mos and getting day drunk?”

I’m not sure where to begin because I’m not entirely sure that anything happened. I had a nearly impossible time paying attention to this week’s episode of Real Housewives of Orange County, and I’m not even on my post-surgery Vicodin anymore (well, every now and then, but that’s just between us).

Well, Tamra licked Simon’s face. That happened. God help us all.

Lynn continued to get kicked out of her house, Gretchen pretended to be a business woman, Alexis escorted her mom into her first plastic surgery procedure, Vicki was a hypocrite and Tamra drank a lot. It was par for the nauseating course in the OC last night, and I just don’t think it’s enough to keep me coming back for much longer.

As has become customary, Vicki’s involvement in the show was brief and toward the beginning. After last week’s San Fran Smackdown, she sought the alcohol-lubricated support of old friend and ex-housewife Jeanna, which was mostly hilarious since Vicki kicked her to the curb a few weeks back because she was poor and then had everyone else over to teepee her yard. But since all of our housewives are only slightly more self aware than your average Golden Retriever (and they also have the same hair color), it didn’t occur to Vicki that seeking out Jeanna as someone that wouldn’t be a “fair-weather friend” was more than a little ironic. These people do not understand irony.

Her daughter doesn’t have cancer, though, so good for her. And for Brianna. As Ramona from the New York housewives would say, kuh-dooz. They all had shots of Patron to commemorate the results, and to tell you the truth, I think that’s a pretty decent way to celebrate it.

Next in Real Housewives stereotypes, we have Alexis. Her mom was in town from Colorado or Missouri or wherever to have her forehead lifted and filled with industrial sealant, and I’d take this opportunity to make fun of her except that she was nice to the waiter at dinner, so I won’t say anything too terrible. I will say, however, that Alexis apparently looks like her dad, and that based on the pictures of her as a teenager in whatever flyover state that she came from, she has had substantially less work done on her face than I would have guessed. Color me surprised.

Even though I find Alexis terrible an objectionable in almost every way (talking to herself about her last, tiny bite of bread? What?), I did have one small moment where I completely and totally identified with her – apparently she didn’t want to walk to school as a child because it would make her hair smell like air. I HATED the way walking around campus would make my hair smell in college – like nature and dirt and the outdoors. I don’t like the outdoors. I like air conditioning and driving to places in my car. So, homegirl, I feel you on that one.

On to Lynn, who is still being evicted, still contemplating divorce, and whose daughters are still nearly too stupid to breath. Really no updates there, so…moving on.

Gretchen tried to launch her beauty line at some sort of women’s convention with lots of pink carpet and very few visitors, and I actually felt kind of bad. Objectively, a makeup line is a terrible idea since she’s not particularly famous and she always looks like she put on her face with a trowel and spackle gun, but Gretchen seems kind of sweet in a dumb way, and her booth actually looked great, and I felt bad. It was awkward, but also kind of predictable, but I have a hard time being joyful about poor, dim Gretchen’s completely foreseeable failure. I’m kind of a mensch that way.

And then Tamra. Ineffectual, frustrated Tamra. It was her birthday, she’s 42, and I actually would have pegged her more for 38 or 39, so I guess that’s nice for her. What’s not so nice for her is that her supposed good friend Vicki didn’t show up for her boozy birthday lunch, which looked like a lot of fun, but how did all of those drunk middle-aged people get home? Are there taxis in Orange County?

Anyway, I digress. Tamra and Vicki had previously gone on a little hike to talk about the Bayside Brawl, and things didn’t go so well, mostly because Tamra wouldn’t just shut up and go along with everything Vicki said, and Vicki gets all panicky and huffy when people disagree with her. As dicussed previously, Vicki may not understand irony but she does understand spite, so instead of taking an hour off to go to her friend’s birthday lunch, she used work as an excuse to skip it and sent her assistant with a gift that appeared to be still in the original shopping bag, plus some tissue paper. In the annals of passive-aggressiveness, Vicki is bucking for a spot on the Hall of Fame.

Not even the copious amounts of booze at her drunken lunch could distract Tamra from her relationships problem, and she spent dinner with him, alternately fawning, arguing, and encouraging him to get drunk. It seemed like every time they sort of had a sweet moment, Simon just had to have SOMETHING to say about what a saint he is for putting up with her, and even if she is sort of vile, he doesn’t get any extra credit since, you know, he was the one that picked her. If he didn’t want her, he shouldn’t have picked her. There are probably scads of dumb women out there who could have been convinced to marry him. That kind of says a lot about America, doesn’t it?

They eventually got on a gondola, even though I have no idea where one finds a gondola outside of Venice. The only thing that could have saved this episode would have been an impromptu capsize, but the boat stayed afloat and I stayed bored. Not even Tamra repeatedly licking Simon’s face brought me as much schadenfreude as it once would have.

Next week is the season finale, and it makes me wonder how the very first housewives will come back next season, or if they will at all. The bloom is off the rose a bit on this one, and without a brand new crew of crazy Californians, I’m not exactly sure where things go from here. Now that we have housewives that are far more ridiculous in other cities, I need more than Botox and an eviction to make me want to set the DVR.

Speaking of the other Housewives, we also have the NYC premiere next Thursday. Anyone excited? I’ll be recapping it, naturally.