I can't with this show. I really just can't. I mean, these are people? These are people? Last night an alien was murdered while her friends watched, two teenage girls fell off a cliff, and then everyone died. I mean, that's basically what happened.

I don't even know where to start. So, using a fair and balanced deciding method, I'll just see who gets the short straw. And by "straw" I mean forehead, and by short I mean "has none."

Teresa. I'm talking about Teresa. May God Himself strike me down where I sit if I tell a lie. Teresa does not have a forehead. Teresa's forehead went out for a pack of cigarettes one summer day in 1986 and never came home. Teresa's forehead ran away with the circus while its Georgia onion farmer parents watched, all dusty and sad. Teresa's forehead went to Hamilton, maybe? Or was it Middlebury? Anyway, I don't know. They just lost touch. You know, time. Years. These things happen. Teresa and her forehead will probably see each other somewhere random—that's how those things work. On the street or something. Teresa's forehead. We all miss it.

I am being cruel about something a person can't help! Which is not nice. But if only Teresa didn't drag her daughter, Basilica, around everywhere making her be a pretty pretty model and actress, it would be a lot easier to be nice about her. Teresa and Maserati got in their enormous Jerseymobile and clunked it over into Manhattan so the littlest bitsywitsy could be yelled at by an old lady named Wilhelmina. No, this isn't another episode of Professor Fagtime's Fairy Hour for Lamegays Ugly Betty. Wilhelmina is a modeling agency that represents pretty people who'd like to stand in front of a camera and call it a career. Teresa is so jaundiced about her own daughter's only-sorta-cute-but-whooboy-fifteen's-gonna-be-awkward looks that she just barnstroms through and doesn't listen to the Wilhelmina ladies, except when they say "these photos are too pageant." More photos she can do. That she knows how to do. (She doesn't, incidentally, know how to pronounce her own last name. Her last name is Giudice. Which is pronounced "jew-DEE-chay", not "joodeese", T.)

Dina, the one who looks like an attractive and well-timed fart, went to a big bright furniture showroom with her gay brother, Paulette. Paulette simmers Fancy Feast on a hot plate for "celebrities" (one time he touched Marilu Henner, for serious) and calls himself a chef, and also Paulette wears a fancy apron and an artist's floppy hat and calls himself a designer. He does everything! So the two of them, from a big big family of eleven, seem close, which is nice. Dina, y'see, is a bigtime interior decorator, just like the Wakefields' mom, while Ned is off being a lawyer. Dina has eyes that are the color of the Pacific ocean and their brother Stephen plays basketball. Enid Rollins is probably a lesbo, Lois Waller is fat, and Bruce Patman may try to sex you in a pool in book number 3, Playing with Fire. So watch out, Dina! Anyway. Dina is designing a home for some huuuuge celebrity, so call in the gay cavalry and get some approval is what she did. It was a nice scene in which Dina didn't kill anyone, so that was good. Though, in the end, Regina Morrow died of a cocaines overdosage. Which was sad. Charlie Cashman cried at the funeral. Jerry "Crunch" McAllister did not.

Dina worries that her job is getting in the way of rearing her one child, which is a sad worry to have. I think you can do both. You can have it all! Just like Lila Fowler. That bitch is rich and pretty. I mean, c'mon. Who do I look like, Amy Sutton? I'm no fool. You can do both, Deenz.

Oh God, and then calamity struck. The poor childlike empress that is Jacqueline fell down a well and no one could get her out. "It's... It's OK," her watery, echoed cries came up. "I can get comfortable down here..." She was trying to be brave, but everyone knew that she was sad. Because being stuck down in a well, especially on your birthday!, is no fun at all. Poor Jacqueline. While she was down there, she had a conversation with her daughter, who looks like what would happen if Christian Siriano and Zak Orth had a gay buttbaby. The daughter, whose name I believe is Hippilotta Longstocking, doesn't ever go to school and when she does she's dumb, so she's failing Maths, Readings, and Histories. Which means she has to go to summry school, a fate worse than death, lemme tell you. When I was a boy, wearing shortpants and a jaunty newsman's cap, I had to go to two summers of summerschool not because I had to, but because my mother wanted me to. Yep! I took Latin! In the summer. And a typing class, which I oddly loved. Plus, we did plays and there was tennis. So I guess it wasn't so bad. But Hippilotta! You're going to poor Jersey private school summerschool! You're fucked like Tuck Everlasting! You're gonna be sitting on that boring old Ferris wheel alllll summer long. Sucks to be you! Guess you shouldn't have figured you were better than school because you're young and you've, um, got your looks (?). Life moves, girlie. And it ain't gonna wait while you get your shit together. Pretty soon you'll be 30 damn years old and working at the Lancome booth at the mall is going to start to feel like prison. Trust me, I know. One summer my mom made me work at the Lancome booth at the Chestnut Hill Filene's.

Speaking of dumb people and makeup, Caroline Manzo took time from her busy murdering people for opening their dumb stupid stoolie mouths schedule and yelled at her daughter about jobs. See, Dr. Giggles wants to do makeups, but wants to halfass it. And Carrie Manzo will not tolerate halfassery. If her beautiful daughter Dr. Giggles wants to do makeups, she's going to own her own Makeup Spa. A primping station for all the lawds and ladeez of Jersey to get in their finest before hobbling up to play courtiers at Versailles. "Let them eat funnel cake!", Caroline is often heard yelling on balconies, brandishing a pistol. And if there's one thing that spa owners have to do, it's do waxing. Because there are no young, impressionable Chinese ladies with families back home to feed who are willing to do that for you. There is no such thing in America as that. Dr. Giggles can't stand the idea of waxing, but if she attends the prestigious Madam Bovary's Refining Makeup School for Ladies (and Bartending Academy), as her mother wants her to, then she has to do waxing. Life is all about hard choices. Life is about doing things we don't want to do, because they'll help us in the long run. For some, that means joining the military to pay for a college degree. For others, that means working two or three jobs so the kids will have dinner on the table. And for some, for the bravest and most humble of all, it means putting hot wax on people's giners and then pulling it off.

That sound of olive oil sluicing through cheesecloth isn't being made by Wendy from accounting making one of her trademark healthy salads in the breakroom. (No, Wendy died in a car accident this morning. I'm sorry.) That sound is actually coming from last night, when Teresa the Pest took her daughter, Puttanesca, to a new photoshoot so her big modeling pictures wouldn't look pageanty so Wilhelmina won't get mad again. Basically it was a horrorshow in which America's youth all fell over dead and then Wendy drove by and while she was gawping at the heinousness she plowed into a tree and now she's dead and who will send out those cute Christmas e-cards this year? Will anyone??? I can't really talk more about the fashionshoot because at one point little Fiat struck a pose in a doorway that could only be described as "come-hither" and it makes me sad to think about it. So please let's just move on.

Ohhh holy Toledo. Gabaranzo had a party. Garbanzo had a party and everyone came. Why someone would voluntarily look like an insect is beyond me. But Garbanzo wants to look like an insect, features wise, and so she does. A bug. Bzzt bzzt bzzt. That's Garbanzo. Garbz had a party that was basically like being invited to the filming of a snuff movie. Everyone—even archnemesis Dina!—came over to sit in a circle and watch in abject terror as a crazed Marathon Men-esque doctor performed bizarre procedures on Garbanzo's face. Dina kept making bitchy quips about how she could never, ever get Botox. And, um, either her face naturally looks like a Fruit Roll-Up or her husband is sneakily injecting her face with horse disease while she sleeps. Because, um, dag. But whatever, Dina bitched anyway. "It just looks so weird," she remarked as Dr. Mengele lowered the circular saw onto Garbanzo's mug. The creepiest thing of all was that Garby's daughters were there, watching in curious horror as their mother had an Eyeball Dampening and a "face tuck," which involved six orderlies, a pneumatic nail gun, and a reading of the Magna Carta.

Later everyone heard a whimpering coming from under the porch and we all realized that poor Jacqueline had gotten herself stuck under there, the dear creature. "Someone get a broom or call the fire department," Caroline huffed, bending over and peering into the narrow space, barely able to make out a bit of Jacqueline's dirt-covered face. "Goddammit, who left the screen door open? I told you this would happen. It happens every time." After the fire trucks left and Caroline gave her a stiff hug and said "Yeah, let's get you some water, huh? It's scary under there, isn't it?", Jacqueline chirped the tale of Despereaux, her daughter Hippilotta. See Hippy just shouldn't get anything new because her grades and all and—oh holy cats, what is that driving up in the front driveway? A fucking white Jeep Grand Cherokee. For Hippy. See, papa Jacqui bought it because you're only an eclair-faced youngster but once in this ultimately-fatal merry-go-round ride, so why not have an unearned automobile. Just steer clear of where Wendy drives when she's been drinking. Poor Jacqueline got sad so she tried to run to Caroline's master bedroom and pee in the same corner of the walk-in closet that she always pees in when she's upset or startled by lightning, but Caroline grabbed her by the collar and swatted her behind and said "No! No! You do your business outside." Later Caroline felt bad so she let her have a piece of porkchop, having her eat it in the mud room. "It's good, huh?" she cooed, stroking happy Jacqui's glossy hair. "Yeah, it's good. And you're good."

It was mealtime then, and so most people grabbed their S.O.'s and trotted off to Varka, a fancy Greek restaurant, to have dinner with friends. Like something Donald Margulies would write when drunk and trying to make Naomi Iizuka laugh (they hang out, I'm sure of it), the conversation eventually devolved into Garbanzo being weird about her boyfriend, Bergdorf, who was sitting right next to her. And... OK. Bergdorf is supposed to be 26-years-old. And, my birthday is on Sunday and I'm turning 26 and I don't care that he's balding or what have you, but fool is NOT 26. Fool is like 34 on a good day. Everybody's all pretending that "ohhh, Garby got herself a younger man" and whatnot. And, yes, he's younger. Garby is a 68 years young, and Bergdorf is 41, so there is an age difference. But if one more person tries to tell me that that asshat is 26-years-old, well then I'm just going to kill myself the day before my birthday. Because I don't want to look like that come Sunday.

But the point is: Garbz is having trouble with the boytoy, mostly because he's not very nice to her. That he doesn't squish her underfoot like most people would do to a bug that shows up uninvited for dinner is, in my book, generous enough. But I guess the G wants more, but more she shall not shan't get, nay. So a day or two after dinner, in a fitful teary state, she called up Teresa and Jacqueline because she needed to talk about breakups. When to do 'em, how to do 'em, etsetrah. No one in the whole world understood why she felt it necessary to bring her kids to Jacqueline's gigantic house, but she did, so they were sent off to dig for old coins in the backyard while the grownups had a young adult conversation. Teresa tried to offer some advice, but Garbs just struck her down, because really she just wanted to hear herself talk, nothing else. Teresa took this as an opportunity to tell us, the people playing at home, that G's 48-year-old boyfriend Bergdorf is only in it for the BJ's. No, Garbanzo is not a member of an economy-sized foodclub. I'm talking about fellatio. No, not that restaurant in Ho-Ho-Kus (although that place is fabulous). I mean that David Crosby likes to go over to Garbanzo's house, unzip his trousers, sit in a chair in the foyer so the girls can see, and then Garbanzo walks in, puts on some Vitamin E lip balm, opens her leathery mouth, and... They all sing a song! That's what happens! La la la. That is it. Nothing else. Ohhh for the love of Trudy Styler, that's all that happens. I'm shivering right now. I'm so very, very cold.

So the world died and dried and shriveled up when Teresa said that thing that she said, but then it brightened a bit and bloomed a little when T went back to Wilhelmina and Old Lady Looks was nice and called the terrible new photos not pageanty and so everyone was thrilled. On the way home, Teresa said "we just have one more stop..." and she pulled up to a dilapidated building where a weathered sign hung in the window, saying "Private Investigator." Teresa sat down at the PI's desk and opened her purse. She smiled sadly, politely. She took a manila envelope out and slid it across the desk. "I need you to find this," she said softly. The PI opened the envelope and saw that it contained one photograph. He looked at it. It was a picture, taken some years ago, of a forehead. He leaned back. This case was gonna be a doozy of a dingle. "OK," he said finally. "I can do that. But it's gonna cost you." Teresa looked hopeful. "I'll pay cash."

At the end of the episode, everyone started to figure out that Garbanzo is a weirdo and a liar and that maybe there is something awful and wicked that she's keeping secret. Caroline, being the feistiest and craftiest and most-connected of the group, decided that she would get to the bottom of this thing. She might not like what she finds, but at least she'll know. Maybe Garbs is a Colombian drug cartel's moll. Maybe she's an informant. Maybe she's just emerged from her pupal state and we should all cut her a little slack. Maybes upon maybes! If wishes were maybes, we'd all be at Rocky Point Park. But wishes aren't maybes. Maybes are other things. They're small and flat and brown. You could skip a maybe across a lake forever.

For now we'll just have to wait, while the sun curls around the Jersey pines and our hearts fill with the particular knowledge that— Hey. Hey! Hold on a sec, it's that damn Jacqueline. Hey! Get outta there. That is my garden and I will not tolerate. Hey! Hey! I swear to God, hold on I have to go over there. Hey! Stop that! Shoo! Hon, call Mr. Laurita and tell him Jacqui's back. Shit, c'mon, get outta there! Goddammit. Goddamn Jacqui.. Hey! Hey you! Why don't you cut that out...