THE VANDERPUMP RULES SAGA: CHAPTER TWO -- THE LUCKIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD

THE VANDERPUMP RULES SAGA: CHAPTER TWO -- THE LUCKIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD

When I was a little girl, one of my favorite bedtime stories was It Could Always Be Worse.  Basically a cautionary tale to prevent children from morphing into fatalistic assholes after suffering a minor setback, the story reiterated again and again that no matter how tragic things appear in the moment, one must consider the blessings that still exist and remain aware that the sky could always open up and toxic rain could fall upon us like unceasing tears so we’d better embrace the positives in life as often as possible.  Looking back, I realize that my parents were attempting to teach me the art of looking at misery through a lens of optimism, but now I think perhaps they would have served me better had they just whipped out their divorce papers and read me details about custody arrangements as I drifted off into a REM cycle.  While my sleep might have been less restful than that of the average five year old, perhaps the knowledge that sometimes it can’t get any worse would have better equipped me for my eventual exposure to people like James and Jax and Lala, human beings who manage to surprise me in the very worst ways each and every time they appear on my television screen.

As I’ve been raised to look at the bright side, allow me to say that the first episode of the season contained some minor evidence that these idiots have finally made the tough choice to periodically exercise some restraint when it comes to their capacity for terribleness.  Sure, James and Lala pointed at Katie in public and then announced that she’s fat, but I guess they could have just shot her.  And fine, Jax is the one going around starting rumors that his own girlfriend enjoys chomping box during her drunkest hours, but he could have convinced her to leave her entire life behind in Kentucky and move to Los Angeles and get a job at a restaurant you have to sign a release to enter and become friends with people like Kristen and…yeah, I can’t pull this one off.  Being with Jax has to suck entirely. But at least I attempted to look on the sunny side.  Unfortunately, I was not able to fully see those beams of brightness because I got sidetracked by the sight of James curled up in a fetal position because he’s in his twenties and his parents are getting a divorce. Thank goodness for Lala and the Range Rover her married boyfriend gifted her for no reason other than the fact that she is the most fun bitch on this or any other planet.  Gifts like that with no strings attached to them whatsoever show us there is still some good left in this world.

THE BLAME-DISAVOWING WALKING NIGHT TERRORS OF THE OC NEED TO BE VETOED IMMEDIATELY

THE BLAME-DISAVOWING WALKING NIGHT TERRORS OF THE OC NEED TO BE VETOED IMMEDIATELY

…Old English Sheepdogs, frozen Twix bars, fluffy chenille blankets, coconut-scented lotion, Tom Ford’s face, the stillness after a snowfall… Oh, sorry – I was daydreaming again.  See, since the abject horror of last week’s election (my recap, my opinion!), I have been attempting to soothe my ravaged psyche by reminding myself constantly of everything in this world that makes me feel instantaneously happy. Other things that have popped up on my Bliss List over the last few days include snuggling in the crook of the right person’s arm, the smell of a smoldering fireplace in the winter, that first cup of strong coffee on a Sunday morning, my puppy actually fucking sitting when I ask her to sit, and stumbling across a marathon of Veep.  What has not appeared on the list of things that keep me from hopping off the nearest tall building is anything even slightly related to Donald Trump or reality TV in general because I’ve begun to believe that these “stars” so many of us have giggled at or discounted for so long could very well have a rather large hand in ushering in the total denigration of civilization as we know it.

I have been guilty, too. After all, I write about – and therefore somehow glorify – reality television.  For about two years now, I have recapped some of Bravo’s silliest franchises while marveling at how poorly behaved grown adults are willing to be all in the name of infamy.  I have watched participants of these shows amass great wealth and so fully embrace the recognition they get when they walk into a boutique that they have convinced themselves that it’s a reasonable tradeoff to expose their lives to the world even though they have no say whatsoever in how any of that footage will eventually be edited and then exhibited.  I have been able to convince myself – almost – that there is no real power inherent in being a part of reality TV, but I’m just not so sure I can make that case anymore. I think part of what swayed me is that I recently saw an interview with someone none of us ever should have even heard from again after her brief rage-filled stint on The Apprentice all those years ago.  Remember Omarosa?  She was the lunatic who all but bit her competitors when she appeared on Trump’s show back when all of us watched it.  She was so nuts that producers didn’t even think of cutting her for a very long time because the carts of crazy she hauled around were the kind of thing networks tend to see as ratings gold – and we have all been complicit in completely validating that belief at some point over the last decade.  I hadn’t heard about Omarosa for a while and I just figured that meant she had finally been locked inside of some asylum, but I was very wrong.  Turns out, she was appointed Donald Trump’s Director of African American Outreach during the election, a job that must have involved smiling at herself in the mirror and maybe eventually shaking the hand of the guy who was pointed out to the crowd by the eventual President-Elect himself.  “Look at my African American over here!” Donald Trump actually crowed during a speech in Redding, California.  But Omarosa did way more than get one guy to a rally.  She also did a few interviews on behalf of the man whose show once made her appear completely unstable to the masses and I can’t really say that any latent sanity trapped within her became evident when she made these comments about her new boss:  “Every critic, every detractor, will have to bow down to President Trump. It’s everyone who’s ever doubted Donald, who ever disagreed, who ever challenged him. It is the ultimate revenge to become the most powerful man in the universe.” 

Allow me to be clear here: I would rather kneel before General fucking Zod than Donald Trump.  I’d sooner kneel in front of that guy I had one date with a few years ago who announced over appetizers that he didn’t shower before the date because he enjoyed having “a natural scent.”  (Our relationship didn’t make it beyond one drink; I enjoy things that don’t reek of testicle.)  I’d be more inclined to get on my knees in front of that hot CPA who recommends creepy Irish horror movies to me – though I think I’m getting off on a tangent here because I will totally end up on my knees with that guy and that’s really not the argument I’m attempting to make.  What I am trying to say is that announcing that anyone who publicly disavowed this man will now have to bow before him is the kind of statement that is so truly frightening in its embrace of blind power and, at this point, I’m not sure we should pretend that giving people like Omarosa or Vicki Gunvalson airtime is no longer any sort of big deal.  What I do believe in my heart of hearts is that Vicki Gunvalson is an awful human being and the world is a more repulsive place because she has been on our airwaves for eleven straight years.  But even after all the times I rolled my eyes at the way she pantomimed the crucifixion or announced the deepest darkest secrets ever told to her by a friend drowning in vulnerability, I still don’t think I realized how potentially far-reaching her hideousness can go. I now think someone like Vicki is inherently dangerous to the fabric of decency that’s already fraying in our society. This is a woman who has only shards of a soul left and she would happily sell any remnants to secure herself yet another season on this series where she would like to stay until she dies. (Then she wants to go to heaven so she can finally be reunited with a man who lied about having cancer.)  In the meantime, she might not become a member of Trump’s administration – though maybe we should just give it time – but I am rather terrified she will appear on some ballot in the very near future. And though I’ve never been one to threaten to move to Canada should an election cycle not go my way, I do hear the atmosphere on Mars is lovely and almost livable this time of year and I’m considering checking it out.

THE VANDERPUMP RULES SAGA: CHAPTER 1 -- FAT SHAMING THE BRIDE

THE VANDERPUMP RULES SAGA: CHAPTER 1 -- FAT SHAMING THE BRIDE

We really can’t blame the Mayans.  Back in those stark pre-Google/pre-proper hygiene days, they predicted the world would implode in 2012 and then they chiseled that prophecy on cave walls – or at least I figure they chiseled that shit, but I don’t really know for sure since I often cut Social Studies in high school and I think the unit on the Mayans might have been covered on one of the days I chose to go hang out in someone’s basement.  Anyway, my point is that they could not possibly have known back then what would go down during forty-eight hours in November of 2016.  Had they known, perhaps they would have pushed the expiration date of our universe forward four years.  But how could those sweet Mayans even have imagined that there would be two sequential days in late autumn that would singlehandedly illustrate the potential and total collapse of rational society as we know it?  How could they have even fathomed that on the second of those days there would be an election held in which a lifelong politician swathed in the scent of corruption would battle it out against a blustering-sexist-racist-non-taxes-releasing-blame-the-media-unless-that-media-is-covered-by-Alex-Jones-xenophobic monster?  In what universe that makes any sort of sense would the Mayans have predicted that the race would actually be close?  And even if they could have seen all the way into our terribly bleak present, could even the most cynical of all the Mayans ever have guessed that on the evening before this toxic waste dump of an election took place the newest season of Vanderpump Rules would premiere?

THE LONG DESPERATE CRAWL TO THE FINISH LINE

THE LONG DESPERATE CRAWL TO THE FINISH LINE

Full disclosure:  I hate recapping Reunion episodes of The Real Housewives of Fucking Wherever. Since that horrible day when some malevolent entity who works in the Programming department at Bravo decided there should be three Reunion installments, the entire process has become borderline interminable.  Besides, we know going in that the only thing that will transpire over three long hours of television will be three more long hours of the same exact misery that’s gone down all season long – and there still won’t be a proper resolution to any of it.   

As far as I’m concerned, there are only a couple of things this Reunion needs to cover in depth.  I could give a shit about seeing a segment about Heather moving from one ginormous house into an even more ginormous house and I also have zero interest in watching Meghan profess to the masses that her husband doesn’t hate her or the fetus growing inside of her.  And while I am amenable to a few onscreen moments of Tamra explaining exactly how she got herself that ass (I ate a lot of Halloween candy this year; I might need to listen to a woman tout the joys of consuming only massive amounts of protein and splurging every now and then on an unbuttered sweet potato), I don’t need a lot of other areas to be revisited.  In my opinion, only three things really need to be discussed by these enemies as they recline on tufted sofas with their iPhones shoved underneath a pillow just in case they have to whip it out real quick to ruin another woman’s life: 

THE RAIN

THE RAIN

It’s raining, and I gave away my umbrella to a guy who swore that he loved me. I’d be furious, but I’ve always been the sort of girl who prefers to dance in a downpour instead of running for some shelter.  Besides, I look really good wet.  

I used to be proud of being someone who routinely beckons the unpredictable and the mildly unattainable to inch closer to me, but now I find myself wondering: is the stability inherent in feeling warm and safe worthy of cancelling out the mystery I’ve never been able to stop myself from craving? There has to be a balance that exists between the embrace of the comfortable and the thrill of the unknown.  Sometimes I’m positive I’ve found it, but then a new hunger beckons and I tiptoe away from the light to see what’s crouching in the shadows and reflecting up at me from the puddles and I can no longer even pretend to deny that there’s something undeniably alluring about the torrential grey rain. The sudden exposure, the way it almost feels dangerous – how it soaks you so completely that it’s like you’re newly constructed, a different assortment of cells than you were before.  And there’s a wantonness that comes from being cracked open by all that water.  Your shirt is molded to your body and your hair drips down onto your shoulders and, even with lines of mascara running like indecipherable messages down your cheeks, you know nobody has ever understood you more completely than the way you’re understood during that storm. You also know you have never felt sexier or more alive.  

For me, the barrage of rain has always brought forth a feeling of possibility.  There’s something about the wildness of that kind of weather and the scent it leaves behind that I’m drawn to far more than all those Clean Cotton candles lining my living room.  The patter of water hits my downstairs windows at odd angles and I recline on my couch with a cup of peppermint tea and I stare at the patterns made by the reverberation of the water and I become who I really am:  a dreamer.  And that’s a far more complicated thing to be than some rather fortunate people will ever know.

It’s interesting that a song titled after a body of water brings a question I’ve often wondered about bobbing to the mind’s surface.  In The River, Springsteen poses, “Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true, or is it something worse?” and I’m here to tell you that, from my perspective, a dream that remains unfulfilled is way fucking worse than a lie.  Those are the dreams that will haunt you.  They will invade your sleep and become the cause of your nightmares and they will reoccur time and time again until you begin pondering why your own subconscious is clearly plotting against you.  The unrealized dreams will stay spinning in your thoughts and they will warp your soul with shooting pangs of pain that whisper and hiss, “This almost happened for you…” while you wince and cower and proclaim to your bathroom mirror and to the most overcast of skies that you will never allow yourself to dream ever again.  You will not be able to keep that promise; it will be just another dream you’ve had that will not come true.

If you’re not entirely vigilant, the unfulfilled dream can end up becoming that which defines you – and that’s a very dangerous slope to teeter on.  What exists just over that jagged cliff is a sea of regret, an undertow of blistering anger that’s cut with a toxic dusting of sadness.  Simply put, it is loss you will be wading through if you allow yourself to fall and you will find yourself drowning in something that never really was.  You have to fight to regain your footing.  You must force yourself to remember what was real and what was just a candy-coated illusion.  Yes, just the idea of it tasted like honey and unbridled fucking delight, but it was never tangible.  You never actually held it with both of your hands.  There were times you had a good solid grip, but there were even more times you watched as it slipped away.  

But cautionary whispers and self-directed ruthless censure aside, I have to tell you that I heard an expression the other day that settled someplace deep inside my head in a manner that feels like it could maybe be permanent. A man was speaking about a friend he’d lost touch with and there was both wistfulness and sorrow lining the tenor of his voice as he described that person as “one of my favorite dreaming partners.”  And in spite of it all, I think if I could choose how some people remember me during those bleak rainy days when memories always feel heightened, it would be as a worthy coconspirator who listened and cheered and indulged their dreaming.  It would be as a person who had her own dreams.  And it would be as the girl who made them feel like they could and would accomplish anything and everything, even as the heavens opened and the rains fell down.      

 

Nell Kalter teaches Film and Media at a school in New York.  She is the author of the books THAT YEAR and STUDENT, both available on amazon.com in paperback and for your Kindle.  Also be sure to check out her website at nellkalter.com Her Twitter is @nell_kalter

 

THE SOUL-SUCKING LURE OF INFAMY

THE SOUL-SUCKING LURE OF INFAMY

It’s here!  The season finale of The Real Housewives of Orange County is finally upon us!  And do you know what that means?  Actually, it doesn’t really mean a whole lot of anything. The truth of the matter is that this show is not anywhere near over, what with three weeks of a Reunion still to get through and then one of those “Secrets Uncovered” episodes, which we all know is filled with clips of the shit that didn’t make it through the first edit.  I will not recap the “Secrets Uncovered” episode – I won’t even watch it – because I get offended when any network seeks to pass off their sloppy seconds to me like it’s actual entertainment.  Besides, I’m pretty sure I can live forever and prosper without seeing some sequence in which Heather petitions a zoning board to allow her newest mansion to have its own zip code or watch Vicki continue to announce that she is never the cause of her own suffering. As I am quite certain that she is the cause of my suffering, I prefer not to expose myself to the horror when it’s not necessary.

As for the upcoming Reunion, I’m already dreading it. Not a ton happened this season and there’s no legitimate way for Sir Andy Cohen to fill three hours of television by retreading the action, so what that means is the time will be clogged up with even more screaming – and, by this point, I’m not sure I have the strength to take it.  Very little of what these women are fighting about actually matters. I can certainly see why Shannon is apoplectic about Vicki spreading stories about David beating her because there are real stakes to such an allegation, but nobody really has to care that Kelly is a demonic moron who spouts profanity whenever she feels cornered and attacked – which is always.  These women can make the choice to never associate with Kelly again, or at least they could if they were willing to leave this show and the benefits that come with calling oneself a “Bravolebrity” without any irony whatsoever.

As for what they’ll eventually talk about during the Reunion, here’s what’s gone down so far this season.  I’ve divided the action up by Housewife – and if you’re noticing that there’s way more to cover in the Vicki and Kelly departments, it’s because they are insane people and I’m hoping my lengthy summations can eventually be used by the team of mental health clinicians who will one day surely study them so they can then write scholarly articles on the synergy that exists between psychosis and reality show participants. 

THE METAPHORICAL DOOR SLAM

THE METAPHORICAL DOOR SLAM

A bunch of years ago, my best friend was muddling her way through a long and tedious stretch of being single.  It wasn’t that she was dying to be part of a couple just then, but she was starting to feel like she was slowly being driven mad from all the cavorting she found herself doing with sociopaths and psychopaths as the sun went down, to say nothing of the emotional kleptomaniacs she associated with during daylight hours.  Making matters even more trying was the way her vacant relationship status somehow managed to weave its way into every single conversation she had during every single meal she shared with every single member of her rather large family.  It happened time and time again.  She would arrive home from THE WORST FUCKING BRUNCH IN ALL OF HISTORY (EVEN THOUGH THE WHITEFISH WAS REALLY GOOD) and, emotionally mauled, she would pick up the phone and call me. As a friend, I made it my business to be supportive.  I tried to offer her solutions to her very real problems.  I suggested, for example, that she put herself up for adoption and maybe find a family that prided itself on its patterns of withholding.  I volunteered to take pictures of her twisted into that yoga pose where her ankles end up tucked behind her ears and then post it online because I was certain she’d land a boyfriend in less than an hour.  But in the short-run, I encouraged her to maybe keep her dating experiences to herself, to not share them with her mother unless the story involved a guy who might actually end up looming large in her future.  I also told her to stop being wooed by the lure of bagels and lox, that she could purchase that shit herself and then enjoy a quiet meal where nobody asked her to pass the cream cheese after guesstimating exactly how many seemingly perfect men she’d allowed to get away from her during her twenties because she’d prioritized sexy stubble over basic human decency back in those hypercrazy days.

Since I too have made several romantic choices that were based almost entirely on some guy having the kind of scruff that caused my knees to buckle whenever I caught a glimpse of it across the room or gazed up at it while I was reclining between his open legs, I maybe wasn’t the best person to turn to for advice.  Still, I wanted my friend to be happy and I knew that sometimes she wasn’t even looking for advice or answers; she just really needed to decompress and talk through her stress.  I recall particularly how our conversations after holiday dinners tended to be especially long since as she would recount every insane comment her mother made over the entire evening. (Passover was always the worst, what with all that time spent at the table before even a fucking bit of food is served.  And the Israelites thought they had it rough…) But probably my favorite comment of all time was made by my friend’s mother during one particular Seder and it’s when she asked her daughter, “Aren’t you proud of me for not even bringing up that you’re still boyfriendless?  Aren’t I handling your loneliness so well?”  To this day, I cannot believe there were knives and electric turkey carvers on that table and nobody ended up in the hospital or in prison.

THE EXORCISM OF KELLY DODD

THE EXORCISM OF KELLY DODD

Ed Gein was the kind of guy who liked to keep salt, pepper, and a cupful of human noses on his kitchen table at all times.  In the (quite literal) dead of night, he often went tromping about his vast Wisconsin property, his cold breath releasing puffs of misshapen mini clouds from his mouth while the skins of the neighbor he’d recently murdered or dug up from the local cemetery flapped against his body.  (I’m guessing those extra skins served to keep him slightly warm, much like that light nylon jacket I love, the one I try to keep wearing until I break out into the sort of shakes and shivers that remind me it’s about to be November in New York.)  But back to Ed Gein.  Allegedly, he was only able to recall killing a couple of his victims – like the lady from the hardware store he disemboweled in his kitchen – but he claimed that most of his other atrocities were committed while he was steeped in a heavy haze. 

Many murders have occurred over the years, but few have settled into the collective unconsciousness with the same gritty resonance as Ed Gein’s bloody rampage.  This, after all, is the murderous man who helped inspire the stories of Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs.  And just as Gein enjoyed picking apart the different body parts of his victims, the writers and filmmakers who eventually crafted visceral stories of psychosis selected the pieces of the Ed Gein tale that would best bolster their scripted nightmarish narratives.  In real life, Gein apparently liked to wear one set of human skins more than any other – and it turns out his favorite epidermis ensemble was crafted out of the skins of his own mother.  Psycho eventually borrowed some of Norman Bates’ fashion predilections from that particular thread of the story.  The creation of an outfit from the skins of victims is also used prominently in The Silence of the Lambs as Buffalo Bill crafts himself his very own “woman suit.”  However, unlike both Ed Gein and Norman Bates, Buffalo Bill never found himself in a hazy stupor.  No, he knew exactly what he was doing every single step of the way, including during the moments when he advised his trapped and terrified victims to slather themselves with lotion because that kind of conditioning would make their skins far easier to work with once the sewing portion of the horror got underway.

As for Leatherface and his cannibalistic clan, the décor of the stark house where most of the movie’s travesties take place is modeled after Ed Gein’s home. It wasn’t a sectional from Ikea or West Elm that furnished Gein’s living room; he upholstered his chairs with human skin and he kept the eviscerated faces of the tragically unfortunate stapled to one of his walls. Gein applied rouge and lipstick to those torn-off faces to make them look extra pretty.  He had several pairs of human lips dangling from strings throughout his house.  His bedposts were adorned with real skulls like an Ed Hardy creation gone berserk.  In his closet was a belt with human nipples sewn upon it.  He kept stacks of human organs inside his freezer, all carefully wrapped except for that one human heart found in a pot on the stove that was floating there when the police finally closed in.

One of the reasons his crimes hadn’t been found out earlier is because Ed Gein lived alone and nobody saw the mayhem as it unfolded.  Before his mother died, Gein already lived an almost hermetic existence. He was allowed to attend school, but he was prohibited from socializing.  His fanatically religious mother spouted daily decrees that girls were essentially instruments of Satan who existed to beckon pure boys like her son towards the Dark Side, so Gein turned away from society and came to rely on his mother almost totally.  When she passed, he continued to keep her bedroom immaculate, even as the rest of the house fell into a dusty decline.  Finally nabbed for one of his murders, Ed Gein was carted off to a psychiatric institution.  He admitted early on that he was guilty, though he had a hard time remembering the details since much of his memory was cloaked in a heavy mental static.  As for a motive, Gein’s was really quite simple:  he liked to take things apart and see how things worked and he wasn’t satisfied doing such a thing with model airplanes or transistor radios, so he decided to use a local woman instead.  He swore that not all the body parts decorating his home (in what I’m imagining was the foulest smelling feng shui imaginable) came from people he killed.  He insisted that a lot of those skins and lips and nostrils were from his frequent grave-robbing excursions.  

In 1984, Gein died in a hospital for the clinically insane. He was, by most accounts, seen as “harmless” by the hospital staff and his body was buried in an unmarked grave to keep the darkly curious at bay.  But his staggering levels of depravity remain as part of our history and the imprint of his time spent constructing a loveseat out of an inner thigh can still be seen in horror movies today.  As for the reasons that explain our enduring curiosity about a human being of this sort, I believe it’s because there’s perhaps nobody scarier than a person who appears somewhat normal on the outside but is so psychologically warped on the inside – and that brings me to O.C. Housewife Kelly Dodd.  I cannot possibly be the only one wondering what psychological ailments might currently be ravaging Ms. Dodd.  She looks relatively sane on the outside – as long as you don’t concentrate too hard on that ferocious way her eyes and teeth flash, animal-like, when she gets angry – but internally, this appears to be a woman who is in the process of losing her entire mind.  She continually allows herself to believe that spouting out hellish comments in the throes of anger is a socially acceptable practice and that her momentary skyrocketing fury should serve as a valid excuse so the person who felt the wrath of her words will simply shrug and say, “Oh, Kelly didn’t really mean it when she called me ‘a dumbass twat.’  She was just angry!  I totally forgive her for every heinous thing she has said to me.  After all, we all get mad sometimes…” 

AMBUSH!

AMBUSH!

It was just the other day when I found myself in the middle of a totally peculiar conversation with a kid who recently transferred from another district.  Having to change schools at any point can be an anxiety-ridden exercise in pure misery, but I think it’s probably the most difficult when you’re about to begin your very last year of high school.  I want this student to feel welcome here – comfortable – so part of my morning routine now involves chatting with him during those flurried few minutes before the bell rings.  I often attempt to bring other kids into our conversation and then I gently walk away once I’m certain this newbie is happily interacting with some guy or girl he didn’t know before last week.

As the first month of the academic year flew by, I was able to witness things falling into place socially for this student.  He was starting to feel at home in a brand new place.  He was beginning to make friends.  I’d see him walking down the hallway as part of a small group.  He wasn’t always alone anymore – that made me really happy – but other things I started to notice after interacting with him every single day began to cause some concerns: 

1.    Every single time we read from any form of any text, he always begins and ends up on the wrong page.  And it’s not the next page he accidentally ends up on – it’s always some random distant chapter of the book.

2.    He has to be prodded repeatedly to take notes because he often falls into a brief bouts of what I’m really hoping are simple narcoleptic episodes because otherwise I seriously fear for the kid’s health since he appears to lapse into a fully comatose state every few minutes.

3.    He left a notebook and a textbook from another class in my room for over a week.  When I asked him if they were his, he shook his head.  No, he insisted.  He’d never even seen those books before.  Then I opened both books and pointed to the place where he’d printed his own name on the inner covers and he just shrugged and shoved them into his bag, still having not the slightest memory of ever owning those books in the first place.

4.    Right before the entire class was scheduled to meet with Guidance to discuss post-high school plans, I found myself in the hallway with him (this is the discussion I was talking about) and I asked what he hoped to do after graduation.  “I’m going to play basketball for Duke,” he told me with a smile.  “That’s amazing!” I responded.  “Have you been in contact with the coach?” He had not.  “Has the coach come to see you play?  Has he watched footage you sent him of yourself?”  Actually, he’d never spoken to the coach in any form.  “Are you on the basketball team here?” I asked then – and when he told me no and then also shook his head when I asked him if he’d taken the SATs, I could feel my eyebrows shoot all the way up my forehead as tends to be the case whenever I find myself thrown into a scenario in which I am contractually unable to utter a sentence like, “Do you understand that what you’re saying makes zero fucking sense?” 

After that bizarre conversation that had no beginning and no end and nothing that could be even be constituted as half of a middle, I had an inkling something wasn’t right when it came to this young man and the way he processes information. I did some research and found out his IQ falls somewhere between DOLTISH and TROGLODIYTIC on the official scale that measures empirical intelligence.  He’s a very sweet person; it’s an absolute shame that he’s so mentally vacant, but at least the school district is now aware of his limitations and we can get him the services he needs to hopefully graduate on time and eventually carve out a future plan that both makes sense and somewhat inspires him.  My rather cynical guess is that his future will probably not involve being a star athlete at a competitive university, but then again, stranger things have happened.    

And speaking of very strange things and the limitations involving human behavior, Kelly Dodd is having the kind of inaugural season that makes me wish I could check out her IQ numbers because perhaps there’s some form of mental deficiency that causes her to behave like a fucking lunatic while cameras record every slurring sentiment she spits out in a huff of tequila-scented fire.  In case anyone is looking for some stats (forgive me – I’ve got Duke basketball on the brain), so far Kelly has managed to call Shannon “ugly,” “a cunt,” and “Mrs. Roper.”  She chose to elect Vicki Gunvalson to be her Life Coach, an election Vicki won by a fucking landslide since her opponents – Adolf Hitler and Ann Coulter – were both too busy helping Donald Trump to campaign against The Whoo Hoo Goddess.  Then Kelly sat back and listened intently as her brand new guru encouraged her to stay with her verbally-abusive husband until the very end of time so she would never have to feel even a pang of loneliness because everyone knows loneliness is way worse than having your soul and your heart roasted from the inside out.  As for her illustrious husband, Kelly has fought with him on camera and announced frequently to the masses that he’s a narcissist who takes sadistic pleasure in threatening to strip her of her custody.  She has been drunk almost constantly since we’ve met her.  (During one of the few times she was sober, however, she made sure to inform her husband that his own brazen intoxication humiliated her.)  Then, after jetting off to Ireland with a bunch of women she’s already belittled and insulted, she quickly downed some shots and instantly morphed from Happy Drunk to Asshole Drunk in two shakes of a fluffy lamb’s tail whereupon she made sure to bellow that Tamra is a complete fucking liar and that’s probably the very reason Tamra’s daughter refuses to have even a single thing to do with her own mother.

The most disgraceful part of the entire scenario, of course, is not even that Kelly said such a thing about Tamra and her daughter.  Sure, that was a cruel comment formed by the lips of a walking piece of dribbling horseshit, but c’mon – nobody actually cares about Kelly Dodd’s opinion on parenting.  The real issue is not what Kelly said, but how desperate she is to prove that saying those words should have absolutely no consequence because she was the one who was made to feel sad first.  And why did she feel sad?  Because Tamra told her the poke-you-in-the-nose game was getting annoying so Kelly retaliated by lobbing The Custody Grenade.  Yes, Tamra dirtied the waters a bit when she shot out that she has been such a good friend to Kelly that she hasn’t even divulged all those secrets Kelly told her, like the juicy one about Heather being poor. That was an asshole move by Tamra for sure, but it did not deserve the vitriolic retribution it received.  And even now, even in the aftermath of the battle when things should start to become a bit less fuzzy and begin to make a bit more sense, there still appears to be no awareness whatsoever on Kelly’s part that saying the most devastating thing you can articulate will absolutely lead to the ratcheting up of stakes in a manner that will not easily be resolved, especially not when you subsequently deny any complicity in the manner and your sociopath of a husband encourages you to do anything and everything besides apologize.

I do not care if Kelly ever achieves personal contentment or inner peace.  At this point, I’m pretty sold on the idea that she’s a horrible person who causes problems everywhere she wanders.  I do not care in the slightest about whether or not she stays married to a man who appears to be just as damaged as she is.  And I certainly don’t care that Vicki hasn’t come to Kelly’s defense with the same idiotic force with which Kelly sought to defend Vicki’s tarnished honor earlier in the season.  To even allow herself to believe that Vicki was invested in her life for any other reason than the fact that she’d been blackballed by every single woman in Orange County and she needed someone to drink with on a Tuesday was moronic. Vicki will not be coming to Kelly’s aid in Ireland – or at least she won’t until everyone remembers just how much Vicki sucks and turns against her again and Vicki immediately requires a new best friend who is too foolish to go running for the ruins in the distance.  But for now?  For now the only person Vicki really cares about is herself.

I’d love to spend the rest of this Bravo-sponsored tour through the hills of Ireland with only Shannon or Heather.  It would fucking thrill me to pieces to scream “Fare-Thee-Well!” at Meghan as she goes tromping off to discover her heritage and I suppose I wouldn’t mind watching a few more seconds of Tamra hyperventilating into a paper bag, but I’d be quite happy to pretend Kelly and Vicki do not exist. I would like instead to enjoy the zaniness of Shannon dressing up in emerald green sequined outfits while Heather drains yet another glass of champagne and does it without walking into even one wall or calling another woman a cunt as someone who looks a great deal like Jamie Dornan sings Danny Boy in the foggy distance.

Unfortunately, Bravo editors are clearly conspiring against me. They did not heed my very specific requests for exactly what it is I want to see, so this week begins with Heather calling Vicki to get the rundown on how Vicki and Shannon bonded drunkenly the evening before.  Their rickety friendship is starting to be pieced back together – at least while they’re in Ireland and everyone is currently hammered and filled with hatred for Kelly – and they shall celebrate the resurgence of this already-broken bond by spending a day on a farm!  Not invited to frolic with animals in the vast countryside is Kelly.  She is asshole-non-grata at this point and maybe part of the reason for such a distinction can be traced back to the fact that she still cannot understand what it was that she did to make people so angry.  The lady is a moron and she will be punished for being this much of an idiot by having to walk the streets alongside a pregnant woman and stop each passerby along the way to find out if anybody might be one of Meghan’s distant cousins who can provide both food and shelter should Meghan eventually come to her senses and leave her douchebag of a husband.

Now that the rest of the women are free from Kelly and her haze of horribleness, it’s time for them to meet in the lobby of the hotel so they can listen to Vicki discuss how she vomited all morning and how she might actually be pregnant.  (Wait.  Didn’t we all secretly get together and take a vote that Vicki’s uterus was to forevermore be used for nothing except the storage of tight shirts with cutouts near the cleavage area?  Could that have simply been a dream?)  In any event, nobody seems all that upset that Kelly is nowhere around, not even Vicki who cannot accomplish a task so simple as opening a trunk without making it into some stupid show, one I can’t believe hasn’t been canceled yet by either Andy Cohen or God.

As they trudge around the city, Meghan and Kelly look nothing short of fucking asinine as they accost every person they see to find out if any of the people trying to avoid them have the last name O’Toole.  Yes, they’re basically cold-calling people on a street and Kelly apparently decided to dress like Bonnie Parker for the event and they’re achieving just about nothing in this producer-driven endeavor.  Meanwhile, the others arrive at a lovely farm and are promptly informed that they will be helping to milk some cows.  Obviously – because she’s the fucking worst – Vicki immediately begins shrieking at the sight of cow shit and then the entire group dons Ghostbuster-looking suits to ready themselves for the milking.  When it’s Vicki’s turn to milk the cow (who I’m just gonna go ahead and call Brooks), the cow tries to kick her.  I’m going to need to take a second now so I can quickly browse online for a gift to send Brooks the Cow because I really appreciate his effort.  Do cows like those Harry & David pears you’re supposed to eat with a spoon?

Also:  Meghan maybe-sort-of-could-have found someone she’s slightly related to after a day of harassing strangers on the street.

Also:  Tamra knows the only thing that will get her through being near Kelly at this point is Jesus and I really hope he’s not too busy combatting famine and genocide to help out an Orange County Real Housewife because things could get ugly on the farm.

Also:  Vicki’s wants her nipples to be “where they should be” and she declares her vagina to be beautiful.

Also:  I am positive I can see a swarm of locusts riding a fleet of frogs somewhere near the horizon. 

Arriving at the farm, Kelly feels uncomfortable.  Meghan informed her earlier in the day that she should immediately apologize for saying such a terrible thing to Tamra, but as Kelly herself is a terrible thing, she is thereby not fully able to follow normal advice.  She sits quietly for a while, fully believing the rest of the women are part of a hateful clique that’s targeting her for no reason at all, but then – like a ray of sunshine beaming through the clouds – a teensy bit of humility overtakes her and she announces to the table at large how sorry she is for saying such awful things about Tamra.  “It was just something that came out of my mouth,” Kelly attempts to explain while Heather mumbles safe words to herself to keep her head from flying off.  See, Heather has heard this pathetic excuse from Kelly before.  We have all heard her apologize for hissing nasty words out of anger and, frankly, I don’t see how it’s possible for anyone to believe things will be any different going forward.  This is a very sick human being gracing our TV screens and unless her husband locks her in a dungeon, I have no doubt she will be back to cause even more trouble next season.  As for how Tamra took Kelly’s apology, well, she sort of didn’t.  Her eyes flooded with tears, Tamra simply nodded as Kelly rhapsodized about what an excellent mother Tamra is, but when Kelly walked over later to thank Tamra for being so forgiving, Tamra coldly and evenly replied that she is not talking about this matter right now.  A bullshit apology by a monster in a beret is sometimes just not enough.

Once they arrive back at the hotel, Meghan stops by Tamra’s room so she can try to convince her to forgive Kelly, but Tamra is way too angry to even entertain such a notion.  Kelly Dodd, after all, is the one person walking this fucking planet who causes Tamra to question the Lord’s teachings and all Tamra can do to get through it is try to stay as far away from Kelly and her sharp teeth as is humanly possible.  The rest of them are not so lucky.  Heather knows she can deal with Kelly’s presence by treating her like she’s nothing but generic air and that’s her mindset as she, Shannon, Vicki, and Kelly hop on some bikes to tour the bucolic countryside.  The gorgeousness of the vista is immediately compromised by Vicki’s incessant posing and shrieking, but I suppose she could be doing it all while topless, so look at that – I found me an upside to this bullshit. 

The group eventually bikes to some glorious castle and they spread out on a blanket for a picnic.  Kelly waves away the alcohol she’s offered because wringing out her liver in the hotel sink that morning wasn’t as effective as she had hoped.  Still, everyone is somewhat optimistic that their last dinner in Ireland will be calm and enjoyable and that of course means that the meal will be a Technicolor nightmare.  There’s no way Tamra is going to get through a meal with Kelly without lunging at her and even Heather might grip a steak knife really tightly in her hands for a second because she’s already grossed out by what Kelly said about Tamra’s custody issues – and that shit is nothing compared to the shirt she saw Kelly wearing while she played croquet.  White, filmy, and far too complicated in its detailing, Kelly’s shirt looks like the kind of item Luann’s pirate would have tossed on right before he asked the Countess to pay him his regular fee for his services.  I mean, that shirt is not the ugliest thing about Kelly.  It’s clearly her personality that is her single most awful quality, but that shirt did her no favors.

Arriving at the dinner Tamra has already coined “Kelly’s Funeral,” Shannon suggests the group order some alcohol, but Kelly announces she will not be drinking.  No, she’s too hurt that Vicki didn’t stand up for her when everyone else attacked her just for bringing up the fact that Tamra’s daughter wants nothing to do with the woman who birthed her.  But Shannon clearly doesn’t care all that much about Kelly’s wants or needs and she goes ahead and orders some tequila for her.  Maybe Shannon thought the alcohol racing through her bloodstream might cause Kelly to loosen up.  Maybe she secretly hatched a plan to poison Kelly’s tequila with cyanide.  I really have no idea about Shannon’s motivation on this one, but Vicki thinks she knows what’s going on and I seriously hate to say this: I think Vicki might be right.  See, Vicki believes that Shannon is trying to get some booze into a lunatic’s body so the monster will be unleashed and she’s pretty sure Tamra is behind this evil plan, but Kelly is the kind of all-knowing seer who understands everything that’s happening around her.  She believes these women are setting up an ambush, but rather than get up and go back to her room and order room service and some light porn, Kelly stays put and readies herself for the next war. 

Now listen, I figured there would eventually be a few causalities, but I did not expect to see text pop onscreen that indicated something massive happened five hours earlier without a camera crew recording the crazy.  We almost never – and I mean never – hear a producer’s probing questions on this franchise, but the last segment begins with a producer asking Meghan about what happened after dinner.  Seems Vicki and Kelly knocked on Tamra’s door during the night.  They were trying to get Tamra to go out drinking with them, an invitation Tamra declined by not answering the door.  And that’s when things get a bit confusing.  Shannon apparently came down the hall and demanded to know what Kelly was doing and Kelly somehow made the choice to go back to her room and go to sleep.  With her gone, Heather, Tamra, and Shannon headed out to get a drink and they sent texts to Vicki that she should come join them so long as she left the unbalanced one back in the hotel room.  As she has no loyalty to anything or anyone, Vicki ditched her new best friend and hustled her way downstairs.  Firmly reunited with Tamra, Vicki then whispered into her soul-sister’s ear all of the dastardly things Kelly has said about Tamra, to which Tamra responded by snapping a picture of herself wrapped around Kelly’s Life Coach that she then sent Kelly’s way, along with a lengthy text that informed Kelly that Vicki had told Tamra everything. 

It’s hard to believe things escalated after that text was sent and the women were stuffed with alcohol, right?  But escalate they did and Heather captured the entire thing on her phone.  Kelly cried in a hallway and denied and then denied again saying anything terrible about Tamra and eventually all of the women and their resentments and their imminent hangovers boarded the shuttle to return to the airport.  But if you believed Kelly would just sit quietly in that van and fantasize about being a different person, you would be very incorrect.  Instead, Kelly mumbles that she has never done anything to anybody and then she turns around and stares at Shannon and calls her “a drunk.”  (Um, pot filled with cheap grain punch and desperation and tears?  You’re black.)  Then she continues by demanding that Shannon shut her mouth – and just because she’s not shown herself to be despicable enough, she follows up with a comment about Shannon having hairs sprouting from her chin.  The whole thing is captured with the scuzzy tint of night vision and it ends when Heather sort of scoffs and announces that Kelly is nothing but trash.

Do I think these women were trying to bait Kelly?  Probably.  But to loosely paraphrase our next President, perhaps someone so easily baited should not live such a public life.  The woman needs to get off of reality television for the sake of her sanity and she needs to do it immediately.  And if she finds that she’s bored after quitting this show, perhaps she can go play basketball at Duke.

 

Nell Kalter teaches Film and Media at a school in New York.  She is the author of the books THAT YEAR and STUDENT, both available on amazon.com in paperback and for your Kindle.  Also be sure to check out her website at nellkalter.com Her Twitter is @nell_kalter

WHAT COMES BEFORE PART B? EVEN MORE ASSHOLE BEHAVIOR.

WHAT COMES BEFORE PART B? EVEN MORE ASSHOLE BEHAVIOR.

Let us ponder for a moment, shall we, some of the monumental and soul-crushing events that have already taken place during THE ANNUAL REAL HOUSEWIVES VACATION TO AN UNKNOWN LAND BECAUSE WATCHING THESE WOMEN FIGHT ON THEIR HOME TURF HAS BECOME TEDIOUS:

1. Stranded on a boat in Amsterdam, Lisa Rinna actually formed and then said the words, "You're a winner, Kim Richards!" because she was painfully aware that Kim Richards hated her enough to set her on fire and then snort her ashes to make all the evidence go away.

2. While surrounded by water and therefore rendered weaponless (besides the knives that live in Bethenny's mouth), the New York crew bore witness to Kelly Bensimon gnawing the heads off gummy bears, not figuring out how to open a door, and eventually losing her entire fucking mind in a stunning bipolar episode that she decided to then call "a breakthrough."

3. Reclining in a hot tub in Colorado with Kyle and her own scarily-jutting clavicle, Taylor alluded to the physical abuse within her marriage. Then she crawled into a suitcase right before she almost committed murder because her mascara was missing.

4. Though she tried with all her might to make it nice, not a bit of Dorinda's formidable hostess prowess could stop Bethenny from explaining to Luann all of the many reasons why she's a giant whore in a kitchen somewhere in the Berkshires.

5. At some winery where he hid in the vines so the call from his probable mistress could be more private, Joe Giudice forgot to take off his mic but remembered to call his wife "a cunt." I know, but at least he didn't grab her by the pussy. 

Anyhoo, even with all of these terrifying precedents lining their collective histories like spikes made out of night terrors, our OC ladies are still thrilled to climb aboard a giant flying tube together where there will be nothing but booze and barely-contained resentments to pass the time. They're off to Ireland under the flimsy pretense that Meghan is researching her family lineage and nothing would make such a profound journey more comforting than traveling with a bunch of women who fight every twelve minutes like someone set a fucking egg timer. You'd have to lobotomize me (twice) to ever get me on a plane with Vicki Gunvalson while there's still the remnants of a hickey near her tit, but that's just Reason #357 of why I should never be hired for this franchise. The Housewives who are currently under contract to Andy Cohen – that evil genius – are far less discriminating about who they spend their time with because they just like to be wherever the cameras are.