Oh really, Danielle? REALLY? Exactly who will you be bringing with you, Ms. Wrong-Place-Wrong-Time-The-Lies-In-This-Book-Make-Me-Throw-Up-and-Have-Diarrhea? You're not making any sort of THREAT, are you? Because hmmm, I don't know, that seems to fly in the face of your indignant claim that you're an innocent victim who has been slandered by the evil Manzos.
Danielle honey, listen up. I'm about to talk shit and the only person you're going to bring to my door is Albie. NAKED. Got it?
Okay then. Here's the dirt on the finale of Real Housewives of New Jersey:
1. Dina visits Teresa for a tour of her new house. As we already know, Teresa is enormously proud of her "granite, marble and onyx" mansion. Each room is cavernous and every surface is shiny and slick--not unlike Teresa's oily bohunk of a husband. Apparently the house has so many rooms that they are designated for certain activities, such as a wine-making room, a wine-tasting room, a cut-off jeans room and a dead body room. (Okay, okay, I made those last two up.) I know Teresa was going for a French chateau look, but I think it is closer to a Saddam Hussein Palace look. Check it out:
Saddam's digs or Teresa's? You can't tell, can you? Spooky.
At the end of the tour, Teresa tells the camera that she wanted to have a housewarming party, but her house isn't finished yet so she's going to invite people out to dinner instead. I know, it totally doesn't make sense--why not wait until your house is finished and then have a housewarming party? Well, because Bravo needs a big FINALE, that's why. This fact is made even more clear when Teresa announces to Dina that she's going to invite Danielle even though she thinks she's a lying whore.
When was the last time you invited someone you loathed to a small gathering of close friends? Fakey, fakey, FAKE, Bravo, and I don't appreciate it.
2. Danielle is showing some of her modeling photos to her kids. The photos themselves were blurred, which kind of pissed me off. Was she nude? Because that would have upped the creep factor, which is already dangerously high. Maybe she was just holding a bag of Doritos? We'll never know.
Danielle tells the camera that the fact that The Book is on every coffee table in New Jersey has forced her to do some 'splaining to her kids. She tells them that she's made mistakes and learned from them, and it's all made her what she is today, which is a sunken-faced narcissistic skank with a really crappy eyebrow waxer. She does air quotes to the camera again, I can't even remember why, but it just adds to her shifty persona.
During this scene, the following facts are revealed: Danielle has two ex-husbands (the first one wrote the book), she was a stripper, she got arrested and she changed her name. She did not mention being a cokehead or a slut. An honest mistake, I'm sure.
3. Jacque's parents visit from Las Vegas in an RV. Mom and Dad have an astonishing amount of common sense that Jacque did not inherit. That's all you need to know.
4. Dina helps 12 year old Lexi clean the stuffed animals out of her room. This is where I would normally wrinkle my brow and say "what the hell?" but I happen to hang on Dina's every word, so it was bearable (no pun intended).
We also see that, unbeknownst to Dina, Lexi has been hoarding huge amounts of candy in a dresser drawer. Drool started spilling out of my mouth at the sight of it. I'll be accepting donations for my candy drawer as of right now.
5. Caroline gets a German Shepard "protection dog" who is a foaming-at-the-mouth, rabid, vicious animal. Nice try, Caroline. Nothing can keep me away from the smoldering heat that is Albie.
6. Jacque gives her spoiled brat kid the new car, just like we knew she would. There's some blah blah blah about "earning driving time" but ... oh, I'm sorry, I must have dozed off.
7. Moving on! Dina, Lexi and Caroline are out to dinner. Dina wants to quit her job and stay home to take care of her family, which I assume means her perpetually absent huz, Grandma Wrinkle (the cat) and Lexi. She says "those womens' libbers would wanna smack me right now." My eyes almost popped out of my head. Holy shit, Dina, "womens' libbers"? Seriously? Are you aware that this is not 1950? Why is her use of this phrase so endearing to me?
8. Finally, what we've all been waiting for--the Guidice "housewarming" dinner. We see the vainglorious Danielle getting dressed, gazing into a wall of mirrors and asking her daughters whether she should wear her hair up or down. (I scoffed at this, by the way, until I remembered that I recently was in a store and asked my four year old her opinion on which sunglasses I should buy. LOSER.) Danielle says she's really looking forward to the party. Translation: she's really looking forward to the shitstorm she's about to create.
At the restaurant, cocktail hour has commenced and everyone is laughing and having a grand time. Obviously, Danielle has not arrived yet.
Teresa debuts her new bubbies and Dina gives her some new lingerie from Victoria's Secret.
Someone, I think it is Teresa, asks Albie and Chris whether Caroline's bubs are real. Albie and Chris are properly GROSSED OUT, which I was glad to see, yet it was still LOL. It's all good times until....
Danielle, dressed like an aging hooker, struts in ready to do battle. Surprise, surprise, she's seated next to Teresa's husband Joe, whom she hates. (Another transparent attempt at finale drama; thanks, Bravo.) Everyone's being nice to Danielle even though it's obviously awkward because they all hate her guts.
To lighten the mood, Teresa starts telling a story about how her husband Joe wanted to have sex with her on the way home from getting her breast implants. Everyone is gasping for air, they are laughing so hard, except for Danielle, who has to piss on everything by saying something along the lines of an unsmiling "well you didn't have surgery down below." This part was clearly all edited up, but Danielle came across as a major biatch.
Then, during a lull in the conversation, Danielle whips out that book and drops it right on the table.
Everyone averts their eyes and is all "ooooh shit," except for Danielle, whose body language can only be described as aggressive. When it becomes clear that no one else is going to acknowledge the book, she melodramatically announces that she brought the book because it's been haunting her and she needs to clarify some facts. She starts talking and Dina realizes that she is the target of this "clarification," aka ATTACK. Dina says, "can I interrupt?" and Danielle turns a steely eye to her and says "No. You. Can't." And now it's ON.
Teresa jumps in and valiantly tries to divert Danielle's attention. She does so by telling Danielle that the story was going to come out eventually, and that, as a friend, she should have told everyone about the book in the first place.
Danielle shouts, "When I am finished you can lay into me all you want sweethot, but right now I have the floah! How dare you interrupt me when ahm trying to say my piece!"
What a lovely guest.
Teresa sees where this is going and asks that the kids be taken out of the room. Danielle freaks out about that too. Her kids want to stay, and she lets them because she loves making bad decisions.
Caroline tries to moderate and says threateningly to the whole table that Danielle has the floah and that "we're all adults and we'll act accordingly!"
Danielle talks about throwing up, diarrhea and that she KNOWS Dina revealed the book at their hair salon, Chateau. Dina denies, and Caroline utters her menacing (and now infamous) "Let me tell you something about my family!" line. Then, out of nowhere, Caroline states that SHE was the one who took the book to Chateau. Danielle says nooooooooo, she heard it was Dina. Dina denies,
Jacque pipes up and calls Dina a liar,
and now those two are screaming at each other.
Teresa says to Danielle, "well, something in this book has to be true," and Danielle UNLEASHES on Teresa. Teresa in turn starts making guttural noises, calls Danielle a "fucking stupid bitch" and upends the table:
(thank you, Brilliant Asylum, for this priceless gif)
All I am thinking about at this point is Albie, and how I hope that the flying glass does not mar his gorgeous face. (and to the anonymous commenter who asked if I would friend Albie on facebook and get a photo of his penis--I am working on it.)
To summarize: this whole debacle boils down to two issues 1) who took the book to Chateau and 2) whether the book contains any truth about Danielle. I can't really get worked up about it because the whole thing could have been resolved neatly by 1) calling the fucking hair stylist on speakerphone and asking him what happened, and 2) a defamation of character lawsuit brought by Danielle years ago. That book was apparently pretty damning and not something you let slide. Clean up your mess, Danielle, or LIVE WITH IT. Or change your name again. But stop blaming other people for your problems.
Here is my opinion on the Jersey housewives:
I have developed a deep and abiding affection for the Manzos and Teresa. I am slightly ashamed of it, and I can't begin to explain it, but I want to be friends with them (which probably won't happen because of my lecherous feelings toward Albie and also because I likened Teresa's house to that of a murderous dictator).
However, I feel that all of the drama on this show was contrived. Are we really supposed to believe that the book just happened to be discovered during the filming of this show? Why did Teresa have a housewarming party at a restaurant? Why was Danielle invited?
I'm not saying that the situations in OC, New York and Atlanta are 100% real, but the illusion of reality is more present in those series. Bethenny and Kelly--they do not like each other on or off camera. If they were forced to sit next to each other on the Today show, you would feel the tension. Not so with Danielle and Teresa. They giggle and walk out together.
This Housewives series was edited within an inch of its life, and I just couldn't ignore the unnatural and forced situations. I wish I could, my darlings. I wanted to be captivated by New Jersey, but I wasn't.
What do you think? Where do you rank New Jersey among all of the Housewives series?
Tuesday, June 23, 2009 
