The Real Housewives of Orange County Recap: Tea and Strumpets

By
Brian Moylan,
who writes Vulture’s Housewives Institute Bulletin

Do you know what is so great about Candy Crush? It’s so basic, it’s so easy, it’s so simple to win. Fighting with Alexis Bellino is like playing Candy Crush. It’s just win after win after win, the phone vibrating in your hand, the candies shooting across the screen, increasing your dopamine and making you feel like you accomplished something even though all you had to do to be successful was like ten short swipes of your index finger. That is what dunking on Alexis is like, and, much like Candy Crush in the middle of the 2010s, I am completely addicted.

Before we get to hating Alexis (like dessert, I’m savoring it for last), we have to finish talking about Tamra’s storm-out; sorry, I mean Tamra’s stumble out of Katie’s dinner party. After she tells Katie to ask Ryan about the FBI, Eddie leaves the party, hugging it out with Ryan on his way to the car, and they both apologize. Boys. They make every conflict so boring. The Lord Jesus messed up with my entire sex. Tamra tells us what she knows about Ryan and where she got all the information. “There is an account on Instagram that broke everything down,” she says. Oh, Tamra. The internet is made of porn and lies. If it isn’t one, it is the other, including this here recap that I basically invented. Don’t believe any of these things are in the show. Or maybe you should, and it’s porn. I don’t know what gets you off (and I don’t think I want to).

Back at the table, they ask Ryan about the FBI, and Emily Simpson goes right into interrogating-lawyer mode, which is the best of all Emily’s modes. No wait. I take it back. Emily’s best mode is when she is doing work for the Innocence Network, which helps wrongfully convicted people get out of prison. She meets with Anthony, an exoneree who is reentering society after spending 18 years behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit. That is absolutely terrible. I don’t think Emily and I would agree much on politics, but I think that everyone, regardless of their political views, can support getting innocent people out of prison. I commend Emily for her continued support of this organization. I’ll even send them some cash to help them fight the good fight.

Oh, wow. Sorry. I didn’t mean to be altruistic in this recap. Shall we get back to being catty about people we’ve never met but spend far too much time thinking about? We shall. Let’s start with Ryan, the only man on earth angling for a Malibu Rum sponsorship. He says that the FBI is investigating his friend Mike, a professional gambler who runs a bookie business. Someone at the table asks if bookies are legal, and, boy, they sure aren’t! Supposedly, Ryan is cooperating with the authorities, which is probably the best possible outcome, but maybe find some more upstanding people to hang out with — just a thought.

I agree with the rest of the ladies that Tamra can’t keep getting drunk, going after people, and apologizing later. Jenn says Tamra isn’t loyal to anyone, and that is correct (except maybe with the exception of her husband, her kids, and the plastic surgeon that so publicly destroyed her face). I love Tamra and I think that she is necessary for the show, but I can see how these antics would wear thinner than the dress that Heather gave to Alexis but that she didn’t give to Emily.

Speaking of which, can we lay this fight between Emily and Heather to rest? I love it when Emily finally explains to Heather how her mind works, where everything points to the fact that she’s fat. Heather tells her she’s crazy and that she looks great. But that’s the thing: Emily does look great, but she’ll never feel it; she’ll never see it. Why? Because there will always be the “fat Emily” lurking inside of her, telling her that she’s no good.

Usually, I would tell Emily that her body is more banging than a bunch of drunk monkeys in a bongo factory. I would put together a slideshow of pictures of her wearing one-pieces and slaying the house down boots yasss ma-ma. I would praise her up one side of the mountain and down the other (which also doubles as cardio). But I’m not doing that anymore because it will never get through to Emily.

What I will say is that we can do something about it. Emily mentions how she has been “called every name in the book.” She’s not talking about growing up or at the parking lot of the Ralph’s in Newport Beach; she’s talking about Housewives fans on social media. So, I’m not going to tell Emily that she looks great. Instead, I’m going to tell all of us to stop talking shit about the Housewives on their social-media accounts. You don’t have to like Emily or how she looks. You can think she’s fat as hell and you can even express it, but don’t do it to Emily’s face. Take a screenshot, send the picture to your friend, and say whatever you want to about Emily behind her back like the Catholic Jesus intended. We’re giving this poor woman a complex, and we can all stop it, so let’s try to be a little bit nicer to her.

This all goes down at Shannon Beador’s 60th-birthday party (which I believe was held at the same place as Victoria Denise Gunvalson Jr’s tea party in season 14). It is at a teahouse, and Shannon welcomes all of the women by giving them a tiny London phone booth with tea inside. (Warning to visitors: Never go in those phone booths. They are filled with nothing but urine and the ghosts of Victorian chimney sweeps.) Then she rips off her dress and unveils a sequined Union Jack underneath, and suddenly Geri Halliwell is standing before us, welcoming us to a very special screening of Spice World. She tells them all that they’re going to London and, whoo-boy, am I not ready for these lasses in my adopted home.

After this, the party is interrupted by a delivery of flowers, including an actual olive branch, and they are from Alexis Bellino, saying she wants to extend this olive branch to Shannon and wishes her blessings from Space Jesus or whoever the fuck she believes in. This is the second instance of a Housewife sending flowers to an event she wasn’t invited to this year. The first one was Margaret Josephs sending a funeral wreath to Teresa Giudice’s house when Teresa invited all the women over to shit-talk Marge. This was a genius Housewives move. Why? Because Marge knew they were trashing her, she was being excluded unfairly, and it annoyed Teresa to no end.

What Alexis does is a total flop. Why? Because there is no reason for her to be there, there is no reason for her flowers to be there, and no one is being wrongly accused. Alexis’s flowers are like punching someone in the face and then wondering why they didn’t buy you a diamond ring afterward. Once the flowers arrive, Shannon tells the ladies she crafted a text message to Alexis. “Hello, Alexis, it’s Shannon Beador,” this devilish missive begins. “I am hosting a trip to Europe with my friends and I just wanted to make it clear that you are not invited.” Is this text message an English person on holiday in Spain? Because it is a sick burn.

Instead of sending it, Jenn and Katie decide they should go over to Alexis’s house and explain it in words that even Alexis, who is baffled by the plot of most episodes of Bluey, can understand. They arrive and tell Alexis to get her phone to read the message. She goes upstairs and asks John where her phone is. This chicken is in the house and he won’t even come down to talk about this on-camera. I know we got mad at Tamra and Ryan for calling people “little bitches” last episode, but if I were to ever use that term, I know the only person I would apply it to.

I would like to refute all of Alexis’s arguments about the text one by one. “Hold on. Why?” Alexis shouts about not being invited, standing up and stretching her arms to the heavens like she’s Moses about to accept the tablets. Easy, because your boyfriend is suing Shannon maliciously, and she would rather not ruin her entire trip. “I’m extending an olive branch, and I’m always getting shit on,” she says. Correct, but the olive branch was entirely ceremonial and in Alexis’s best interest. She has no interest in making amends with Shannon, and everyone knows it. And I don’t see how she is being shit upon, especially when she acts like this and people still want her around.

“I want peace in this group. That’s all I want,” she says. Well, if that was the case, she would have approached Shannon on the first day of filming and said, “Hey, I know things are crazy between us, but let’s try not to talk about John, try not to bother each other, and maybe we can at least get along for work purposes.” No, that is not what she did. She showed up, picked a fight with Shannon, humiliated her in front of her friends, used her canned line about “there’s the door, Shannon Beador,” and then pretended like she’s somehow the victim. Also, if she really wants peace in the group, convince your boyfriend to stop fucking suing Shannon Storms Beador!

“What is she so hung up on?” Alexis asks. Um, the lawsuit, you freakin’ dummy. She offered your man all the money he wanted, and he turned it down. John finally comes on-camera in a confessional — so that no one can confront him — and says that the statute of limitations was running out so he had to sue Shannon. Oh, he had to. She offered him a check! He could have just cashed it and let everyone move on with their lives.

“This is all caused by her actions. If she didn’t borrow the money and paid it back, we wouldn’t be in this situation, would we?” she asks. Well, Shannon didn’t think it was a loan, but once she realized it was and they threatened her with releasing unflattering videos about her, she said she would pay it back. The reason we’re here is that John wouldn’t settle because the lawsuit is not about the money, it’s about humiliating Shannon, which he couldn’t do if he settled.

Alexis finally says that she won’t be around the group, and, you know what, I’m totally fine with that. I can’t believe Katie and Jenn, the two people Alexis knows the least, are the ones who had to tell her and are trying to convince her to stay. After Alexis says that, she walks to her front door and silently opens it and just waits for Jenn and Katie to leave. She then slams the door behind them. She couldn’t even nicely say, “This is a lot for me to handle. Do you mind if we talk later?” No, Alexis is convinced the show is done with her, so she is not even going to pretend to be nice to these ladies.

Katie and Jenn stand in the driveway, dumbfounded. They look up at Alexis’s house, and it stars glowing a bit around the edges. The ground starts shaking, car alarms go off, and the light intensifies. Now it’s coming out of all the windows in giant bursts, through the blinds, through the curtains, which are blinking like a million eyes, strobing the whole block. Then, the light comes from the foundation, from the front door, from the garages as the house takes off into the night, sailing up like a balloon let go by a 4-year-old, heading to the heavens but in an uneven trajectory. Jesus Juggs is finally going to her eternal reward, and I hope that, on the third day, everyone tells her she’s dead and she finally decides to lie down.

Real Housewives of Orange County Recap: Tea and Strumpets