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The Real Housewives of Orange County Recap: Taco Bruise-Day

Season 17 Episode 11 Editor’s Rating3 stars ***

Photo: Bravo It’s not often, nearly two decades into the Bravo diaspora, that we see something truly new, but this episode blessed us with a fourth wall so shattered that I don’t know that we can ever re-plaster, graffiti over it, and pretend like it’s been there the whole time. Shannon and Emily have a fight over FaceTime in public, something I would never do but encourage everyone to try, especially if I’m in the immediate vicinity. Emily can’t figure out how to hang up the phone. She searches for the button, she shakes her iPhone 15 or above, she taps the screen repeatedly like she’s trying to close 17 different ads to earn a free life on Candy Crush. Finally, it’s over. God, can we bring back receivers? Hanging up on someone used to be both the meanest and also the most fun way to end a call. Now we have this, Emily struggling over a matcha latte in her yoga pants with a three-by-five brick of mysterium in her hands.

When Emily finally hangs up with Shannon, they both turn to their respective producers and start screaming. Emily is yelling about Shannon, and I wish I could tell you that Shannon is yelling about Emily for the sake of this sentence’s parallel structure, but Shannon is also yelling about herself because it is Shannon and she is, “Done! I’m done. I’m leaving. Don’t follow me with that camera. Take my mic. You know, I can’t say on TV that John’s kid hates me. Don’t you dare put that on TV. I’m done. I’m leaving. You can’t stop me. I’m going. I’m never filming again. I know I’ve said it before but this time I mean it. I’m done. D-O-N-E … Okay, so what time will you all be here for my party on Tuesday? It’s National Taco Day.”

What Shannon really says is something she uses often: “I didn’t sign up for this.” We’ve been talking a lot about reality-TV unions lately and a lot of people say, “They know what they signed up for.” I disagree with that. There are plenty of shows where people think they know what they’re getting into but, since they haven’t been on TV before, they’re then taken advantage of by producers, crew, and editors. However, this does not apply to Shannon. She has been on this show [verifies with Wikipedia] nine years at this point. This is what she signed up for and she knows it. There is no advantage-taking, there are no surprises, the show is exactly the same as it was for the past eight seasons. In fact, have the producers unionized? Because I need to make sure they’re getting hazard pay for dealing with women like this for a living.

Meanwhile, Emily is telling her producer, “I’m so sick of that bullshit victim mode, ‘I shared things with you and you betrayed me.’ You’re on a reality show! If it’s not that bad then talk about it.” I know I say all fights on the show are about this show, but now here is the show being about a fight that is also about the show. The show is now about the show and the snake is having its tail for dessert.

This illuminates exactly why everyone is really upset with Shannon: this fight is not about her relationship with John, it’s about the bad behavior of a coworker. This is about all of the women thinking that they air their dirtiest and darkest shit on the show and that Shannon wants them to play along with her plastering over all of the cracks in her relationship. They’re not mad at Shannon’s accusations, they’re mad that Shannon isn’t pulling her weight on the group project. (The group project is the show and also our entertainment so, yes, Shannon, get to m-er f-ing work.)

While Emily and Shannon’s fight might have been groundbreaking, I thought her beef earlier in the episode with Heather was much more exciting. When Heather arrives to talk to Shannon, they’re both still heated about Shannon’s blowup at the doppelgänger event. Heather starts and says she doesn’t want to get into the specifics of what Shannon told her about her relationship. Shannon then says, “Let’s talk about those specifics because you’re making it into this huge thing.” No, Shannon, you’re the one making this into a huge thing because you’re not letting any of the women talk about what you said.

Shannon insists that things aren’t bad, they’re just normal. Last episode she said they’re just “normal fights that leave me paralyzed for days.” Okay, that does sound bad. But the fights sound like normal relationship fights. John’s kid doesn’t like Shannon, she pays for everything, he doesn’t have enough money, they don’t spend enough time together. Gotcha. I have had every single one of those fights as well (except the one about kids because butt babies never live), but Shannon trying to cover it up makes it look horrible.

I especially loved when Heather tells Shannon to her face that John isn’t a private person as she keeps saying. Heather then tells us in confessional that Shannon has confided that John likes the limelight and Shannon worries that’s the reason he’s with her. Also, he is no longer with her so why are we even fighting about this? Well, because I can’t figure out how to get the GOP debate without tuning into Fox News, that’s why.

Then we find out what the real problem is, and it’s the same reason Emily blows up at Shannon and calls her a Jekyll and Hide, which is the name of the laser tag place that Jim Bellino just opened up next to his trampoline park. Shannon gets wasted, calls people on the phone and runs through her rosary of complaints, and then doesn’t remember or want to talk about them the next day. Shannon is upset at Emily, Gina, and Heather saying that they’re the ones spreading information about her relationship. Um, not quite. She’s the one doing it. It’s like Shannon slammed her car into a tree, stumbled out, pulled the glass out of her weave, and then said it was Heather or Emily or Gina behind the wheel. Sister, you have a fucking BMW logo implanted into your forehead where it hit the steering wheel!

Since she’s now beefing with everyone, Heather, Gina, and Emily all decide to skip out on Shannon’s taco extravaganza, featuring Señor Noodles, a man with a name that makes no sense at all. It’s like having sushi prepared by Sensei Baguette. While at the dinner, Shannon starts talking about how she saved Gina when she got her DUI, and if she hadn’t intervened she would have been arrested and her children would have gone with CPS.

The craziest thing about all of this is that Gina had nothing to do with any of this talk about Shannon’s relationship. In fact, Shannon is the one who is saying that if she talked to John about her ex the way that Gina talks to Travis about hers, then she would be shown the door. Okay, this is literally coming for someone else’s relationship, which is what Shannon accused the other women of, when all they did was repeat things she had already said to them. There is not enough room in all of the Nobus in all of the world to hold this level of hypocrisy. Jenn sure knows it because she runs right to Gina with a full report so that Gina can sharpen her talons for the next time Shannon darkens her doorstep. They have doorsteps in casitas, right?

I’m sure we’re going to be feasting on this fight for the rest of the season, so let’s talk about what else happened in this episode. Jenn nursed some cats and talked to her adopted son about adoption and both were horrible and please don’t make me try to like Jenn because she has already been fired in my mind. Emily did a lot of talking with exonerees from the Innocence Project and I am glad that Emily is taking her time to make sure this organization gets the attention it deserves. Emily has worked with the toothless, she has worked with the homeless, and she knows that even they can be convicted of a crime they didn’t commit.

But what I really want to talk about is one Heather Dubrow, the last face you see before you die of a sorority hazing incident. Did you see that new house? If there was ever a house where Dana Pam’s $25,000 sunglasses deserved to live, it is this one. She asks her very straight son if he knows who Roberto Cavalli is. Um, Heather, do you know how to play Fortnite? Yeah, thought so. Also, for reference, you know the first season of RHONY when Alex and Simon go shopping in St. Barts and she wears a bunch of tacky dresses? Most were Cavalli.

She tells us that this is the only house in the U.S. that he has designed and that is because no one wants to live in a Roberto Cavalli house unless they are in the cast of the Real Housewives di Napoli. (Yes, it exists.) What would a Roberto Cavalli house even look like? Would it just be, like, animal-print thongs hanging off every available surface? No. It turns out that it has a gaudy table embossed with his initials, suede on every door, lots of doors and with horizontal lines through them, and a bar that looks like a Chanel bag. It’s the sort of anodyne, antiseptic luxury that you could find in any Nordstrom. It’s like living in a Mandarin Oriental, which wouldn’t be uncomfortable, but also wouldn’t be exciting, it wouldn’t show off any inpiduality or taste. It just shows off money, and I think that, and apparently Shannon’s relationship, are all that Heather Dubrow really cares about.

The Real Housewives of Orange County

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