#RHONY Recap -- Vodka Muddled Mint Club Soda Lime On the Side Straw Club Soda Ice to the Top: The RHONY S12 E1 Story
Hoo boy everything is terrible isn’t it? Remember how we all thought 2020 was going to be our year and then it was like LOL BITCH HERE’S SIX HUNDRED VIDEOS OF WOMBATS FLEEING FIRE ALSO WE ARE AT WAR WITH IRAN MAYBE IDK ALSO KOBE BRYANT IS DEAD AND NOW THERE’S A ~*DISCOURSE*~ YOU NEED TO SANITY-BLOCK ON TWITTER.
And that’s all before the actual apocalypse began her walk down the runway! So far 2020 is like a horror movie that’s actually scary and I would like to unsubscribe. I feel duped in a way similar to how I felt when I went to see Hereditary for some spooky Toni Collette shit and instead it was like “Excuse me this story of a mother unable to overcome the ravages of mental illness and impenetrable grief leading to a suffocating maternal guilt so profound she saws her own head off in an attic is not only CLEARLY based upon my own mother and I WILL be suing for ROYALTIES but ALSO I demand a REFUND because this is scarier than ANYTHING I HAVE EVER EXPERIENCED even the time Rufus Wainwright invited me onto his tour bus and I didn’t go because I’d never bottomed before SEE YOU IN COURT!!!”
I mean things have been so bad for so long and now NATURE is actively endeavoring to MURDER ALL OF US? Bitch sit down!
And yet amongst all this horror, like a parting of the clouds, comes a ray of salvatory sunshine. The other day I tweeted this
:
And I mean, that tweet flopped like most of my tweets, because a fun fact about me is that I have been on Twitter for 11 years and somehow have only amassed 1,200 followers, despite being one of the most brilliant voices in American arts and letters. It doesn’t make sense to me either! But while the tweet flopped, it is still true—I mean God is dead, but still: You’re telling me we ended up in an actual quarantine and all of a sudden it’s time for a new season of RHONY just by HAPPENSTANCE? I don’t think so Tim!
And so, given that I no longer have a job on account of *gestures at everything* I thought I’d entertain myself by gayscreaming my dumb opinions about RHONY into the internet and so here are those opinions! I will try to make them funny enough so that even if you don’t care about this terrible program you will still be entertained enough to give me money after here we go!
The B is Not Back
We open on all the women giving us their completely staged, totally fake shock reactions to one Bethenny Frankel quitting this idiot program to go do the shit the government won’t (literally anything about coronavirus). With the exception of Ramona, that is, whose reaction has to be sincere because there is nothing more Ramona than calling a billionaire quitting her job to save the world “an eff you, to me it’s an eff you.” What has Ramona Singer ever done for anyone besides make tacky jewelry and embarrass us with her dance moves?!
Anyway after everyone’s extreme “good riddance” vibes for Bethenny we go to the infamous taglines of the opening, and they’re all dumb and don’t bear mentioning but please spare a moment to absorb the execrable prose Luann came up with after TWELVE YEARS OF DOING THIS:
Oh wow SOMEONE paid attention in their freshman year poetry seminar at the community college! And this is as opposed to what? The shrinking violet that Luann has always been in previous seasons? The woman abandoned her entire friend group last season to go look at herself on a cabaret poster for Chrissakes!
Please just kill me with a knife.
A Connecticut Yankee In New York County Criminal Court
Speaking of Luann, we next cut to the New York County Criminal Court where Luann has just been taken off probation for becoming a dishevelled Floridian boozehound. No one has ever been so far up their own ass as Luann de Lesseps, a woman who insists upon being referred to as “Countess” despite having gone to actual jail for telling a police officer she will kill him. So what a dream to see her walking out of a courthouse like a common criminal. A blessing!
After leaving court, Luann and Sonja go to the park to chat about this whole ordeal and if you thought any of it has changed Luann in the slightest you are extremely wrong, because after two entire years of this entire group of women trying to save Luann practically the first thing that escapes her lips is, "What about ME for once," and to be honest that is the energy I'm bringing into whatever post-apocalyptic Waterworld-cum-Handmaids-Tale Ivanka Trump dictatorship we end up in after this pandemic. This level of oblivious and unearned self-regard is a fkng POWER MOVE and I live.
jkjkjk this is the actual energy I'm bringing into the post-apocalypse.
Mount up, fellow bagel-loving depressives, we ride at dawn!
Tinsleah
Next we go to the woman so boring I once described her as “an anthropomorphized sheaf of 98-Bright Gloss Finish copy paper,” Tinsley Mortimer, and I audibly groaned when her title card came up.
Anyway here's a brief catch-up on Tinsley. She went to China to adopt *checks notes* fucking poodles, which makes absolutely no sense, and then guess what you guys, Tinsley is finally focusing on HERSELF "for once, or in a really long time"! Which is a bold statement out of the mouth of someone who literally does absolutely nothing whatsoever, including on this very program! Tinsley has gone to a kickboxing class with a friend, and the intimidating pile of discarded artillery in the corporeal form of a boxing instructor really hit the Tinsley nail on the Tinsley head:
After treating us to the experience of a rail-thin rich woman with visible abdominal muscles talking about how out of shape she is (a classic!) Tinsley and new girl Leah sit down to catch up and we learn that Leah’s the type of lady who has a boyfriend she has to confront on a transatlantic flight with the question, "What's going on with your divorce?" and when told it's on hold replies, "My pussy's on hold, too."
MA'AM! You can't just hit us like that this is basic cable! She also says, "I just find men useless" and wowowowow THIS is Change We Can Believe In Leah 2020!!!
More about Leah later, but I'm left with the impression that Leah is a full mess and I feel that I’m on board.
What Are You Doing Here Without Dorinda
Next we go to Dorinda Medley who quite honestly is probably the queen of this show now that Bethenny's gone right? Haters will say it's Ramona but she will never be Queen of anything except questionable breast enhancement decisions and inscrutable word-salad monologues.
Anyway Dorinda is making lasagna with her dry cleaner paramour John Mahdessian and I’m going to say something controversial here: I’m done with prominent New York City dry cleaner John Mahdessian. It’s enough. He’s a perfectly nice little huggie bear, but it has never been clearer that Dorinda is only with him because she doesn't want to be alone and the D is bomb, and by “D” I mean the dry cleaning. I've had it. GET RID. She lets him burn his damn hands on a hot pan! On purpose! Just fully didn't warn him and let him do it!
This is psychotic behavior! You can Woolite your delicates at home Dorinda, it isn't worth all this!
Anyway, the big headline here is that Dorinda thinks she and Luann are finally back in a good place and LOLOLOLOL that is our hint that this season’s main storyline will be Lu and Dorinda plotting each other's murder and the reunion episode will just be them screaming at each other about it for 45 minutes over Zoom.
Pissin’ and Ramonin’
Next we go to what frankly is the piece de resistance of this entire episode, at just 13 minutes in! Ramona goes to T-Bar and after ordering a drink using the patented "I'm going to make this a pain in the ass just, like, because" method used by every over-monied New York demoness I ever waited on during the seven years I worked in restaurants in that city (and from whence comes the title of this article), she joins her fellow over-monied New York demoness friends in cackling at the wildly unfunny jokes of some rando ancient gin-blossomed millionaire like a pack of divorce settlement-hungry hyenas and just when you think you're ready to barf so hard you dislodge the impacted fecal matter in your colon, it happens: Ramona launches into a breathless monologue about how lonely she is and then BAM! She is OPENLY SCREAMSOBBING IN PUBLIC. I mean, like, therapist-office caterwauling.
Or at least she’s pretending to, because let's play a little game! Look at this image and try to figure out what's missing!
If you guessed "tears" you got it right, good job!
As far as I'm concerned the ep could end here because this is the kind of unhinged Ramonian antics we don't typically get till mid- to late-season and my hunger has been sated! But there is more to do.
More Leah
Specifically, we need to briefly meet Leah again and get to know her better. So we watch her get coffee with her 12-year-old daughter Kier aka Kiki who--say it with me--is "her best friend" and eugh buoy. Here we go. Another one of these white lady terrors with completely inappropriate parent-child boundaries. Can't wait to see how Kiki’s childhood turns out!
Anyway, we learn that Leah is born-and-raised in New York and has a fashion line no one has heard of. So, you know, typical RHONY shit. Already a legend! Next!
Grey Gardens and Gas Pains: The Sonja Morgan Story
Next we're at Sonja's new apartment which... okay look, far be it from me to judge anyone's financial situation because I'm the type of bitch who recently said, "Let me work 60-70 hrs a week in an Uber car for six months while doing irreparable damage to my back so I can take a totally undeserved vacation to France to see Madonna and come home the week before the apocalypse with $157 to my name.” Society is going to collapse sooner than any of us thinks and when it does I am DEFINITELY going to be sucking dick for pork and beans at the loading dock of the headquarters of The Dreaded, the armed gang that controls the local economy from inside what was known as a Whole Foods Market in the Beforetimes. Glass houses and stones and that! So forgive in advance.
But Sonja’s new “luxury apartment” is a room at a Holiday Inn Express meticulously concealed by clever camera angles and I will not be convinced otherwise or taking questions at this time. Thank you.
Anyway Ramona comes in with her dog Coco and, naturally, Sonja's dog Marley starts fucking Coco in the ass while Sonja talks about how she has to fart and this is the greatest show in the history of television.
Party in the NYC
So now that we’ve caught up with everyone individually, it’s time to get them all together at a party so they can fight, but first it’s time for Dorinda to drag every one of these bitches to absolute filth with a precision worthy of a retrospective at the Paley Center.
“Let’s face it,” she begins, “I really am the entertainer of the group. Not that the other girls don't throw parties.” And from here, it’s best to show and not tell:
911 WHAT IS YOUR EMERGENCY YES HELLO I'D LIKE TO REPORT A MASS MURDER!!!11!!
The party kicks off and Dorinda has had a haircut and now looks like the power-lesbian of your dreams and I am extremely here for it.
We also meet this galoot that Ramona is apparently fucking because of course she is.
What a legend. I am, what, an eighth of Ramona's age and the only men I attract look like Mitch McConnell. God bless her!
I mean honestly look at this dude.
That is the ideal body. There is nothing hotter than being awakened by something hard nudging you in the ass and by "something hard" I mean the kind of weird muscle-gut this guy has. And I know in these woke times half of the five people reading this are getting ready to @ me about fatphobia and emotional violence but I’m not even making fun! I'm wet!
Anyway, Luann arrives and two things must be said:
1--Luann fucking hates Dorinda's new hair
And 2--Luann looks amazing
Like she might've had the car painted, know what I'm saying? She may have had a kitchen remodel if you catch my drift? What I'm saying is this bitch is 97 years of age if she’s a day and has the face of a 32 year old social media marketing executive named Asheileleighghïêgh and it can't possibly be surgical because there isn't enough time between seasons so whatever alchemy her Botox and fillers lady is practicing is beautifully dark-sided.
Still More Leah
Later in the party, we find out the truth about Leah which is that she got into a confrontation with a police officer, who bashed her face into the sidewalk and knocked her teeth out, whereupon she sued him and used the settlement to start her own business and now she's a millionaire.
And that's just fucking it! I’ve had it! I don't trust her, and I intuit she's a mess, but she fought the law and the law DID NOT WON and then she laughed all the way to the bank. What’s more, as my friend Melissa put it, “She looks like a Lohan and acts like one too” and honestly, truly, can we ask for anything more?
I sense I’m going to loathe her but in the similarly satisfying way that I loathe Dorit from Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, and that shit is life-giving. And so it is hereby decided that when it comes to Leah, we are completely and utterly DEVOID of any RECOURSE except to whole-heartedly and indefinitely STAN. *bangs gavel*
By way of an epilogue, the episode closes with Dorinda chasing Tinsley around her own party to scream at her and honestly why is Dorinda bothering because WHO CARES. I mean I wrote an ENTIRE THING about how she is a sentient sheaf of printer paper does nobody READ ANYTHING ANYMORE?!
Anyway, imagine being in a TELEVISED ARGUMENT and the best line you can come up with is this!
SHUT. UP. AND. GO. BACK. TO. THE. SHELF. AT. STAPLES. YOU. CAME. FROM.
However: Dorinda screaming insults while chasing a bitch around a party she’s hosting? Icon shit!
So there you have it! One episode down, 27 or something to go, who knows!
If you enjoyed this stupid piece of shit I just put in your eyes you should consider subscribing! I definitely write about more than Real Housewives, don’t worry!
Also, this part frankly makes me want to bleed out in a warm bath but if the Young Millennials and Gen Zs can do it without bursting into embarrassment flames then so the hell can my destitute Old Mill/Young X ass:
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Okay thank you extremely much everyone, talk with you soon bye bye!