Real Housewives of New Jersey: Prelude to a Diss
On last night's episode, Danielle spiraled further into madness while the other wives peered down the well after her. Well, Jacqueline's daughter jumped down in there to chase her, which is never a good idea.
Poor Jacqueline. She was wearing her little sailor costume and learning a dance to show her husband when he got home from work and making sugar pies in her playtime oven and everything was going nicely. Outside the boidies were tweeting (and texting and BBMing! hawr!) and the sun was still and bright in the sky and everything felt good. There was peace. She'd rid herself of the Danielle-bugs whole episodes ago, and now all she had to do was wander around her Peaches Palace and think nice things. Or did she. See the one thing disturbing Jacqueline's perfect, addled existence is this lump of clay that she gave breath to one day and named Bouffant. Yes her troubled teen daughter proved awfully troubling in this episode, in specific because of.... Danielle.
"Oh why must that buglady thrust her thorax into everyone's lives this way??" you're probably thinking. But lemme stop you right there. Twasn't Danielle that started this mess. Twasn't at all. It was Bouffant. It was Bouffant that flamed the Beast! See, here's how it went down. Do you guys know what Facebook is? Facebook is a tool for everyone, everywhere to stay in touch with everyone, everywhere. Facebook is a place — not a physical place, but a place of the mind, a place on the eighth intangible continent that the internet has formed — where we can say to the world, "Here I am! Look at me! I exist on Earth, heart and guts and bone and all!" It feels nice to say these things, to feel like people know who you are. But the problem is that it's not real. None of the communicating is real. It's all just fake clicks and whirs, and makes saying things you'd never really say, not in real life, so terribly easy to say. Facebook is a brave, bodiless surrogate, unafraid to express what lies in the deepest recesses of our souls. It's dangerous. And that's why Bouffant likes it.
Mostly she likes it because she can create Beverly Merrill/Danielle Staub/Frixi Chantrelle hate groups and harass the woman via private messaging. This has apparently been going on for some time, but we just now learned of it last night. Bouffant set up a Facebook group about hating Beverly Staub/Kiki Rhododendron and sent Danielle nasty messages and Danielle would fire back, because the best thing to do to a nineteen-year-old flaming you on the internet when you are 47 is to engage them. That was a wise decision on Danielle Merrill/Libby Baltimore's part. So anyway, this whole saga has been going on for some time now, back and forth, back and forth, and Danielle has finally reached her breaking point. She can't deal with the Facebook flaming anymore! So she called up her friend Sgt. Rico in Vice down at her favorite precinct and said "I can't do this anymowah. Arrest huh." But of course they couldn't actually arrest her because she hadn't done anything criminal. So Danielle decided to tell Jacqueline — poor goo-eyed Jacqueline — that Bouffant had threatened to kill her. The semantics of this were interesting* in that Bouffant said "We all, including God who really approves of what I'm doing, know that you are going straight to h-e-double-you-know-where," but Danielle was all "SHE SAID SHE WAS GOING TO KILL ME," bug eyes bugging out of her bug face. Those are not the same thing. Bouffant didn't really say she was going to kill her. But his is what Danielle told Jacqueline and Jacqueline said "The perfect way to deal with this is to go to a restaurant with my camera crew and Teresa and then call Bouffant on the phone and tell her I'm mad and have her come down to the restaurant." Remember when your mom would do that with you? When you'd hide a report card or dent the car? When she'd go down to a restaurant with her special needs friend and her camera crew and would then call you and have you come to the restaurant to explain yourself? It's just a classic parenting trick.
Anyway, Bouffant flopped down to the restaurant and Teresa was really busy with her placemat (there was a maze AND a word jumble!) so Jacqueline was able to confront Bouffant about the incident. Bouffant made that kind of teenage smirk-grimace that you always want to slap off kids' faces because it's just so obnoxious and Jacqueline just mouth-pooped out some words about "Did you do it? What did you say?" Bouffant claimed to be protecting her family and then above her left shoulder an image of Caroline appeared and crossed its arms and nodded its head. She was thicking her thieves or something, that's all. When Jacqueline said "But did you say you were going to kill her?" Bouffant threw up her Circus Peanut arms and said "Do I look like I could kill someone?" Which... uh... that's not really an answer to that question. Jacqueline wasn't asking if she did kill Danielle, I'm pretty sure. It was almost as if Bouffant was saying that if she could, physically, kill Danielle, or someone, she would. It's just that she can't, on account of her... I don't know. Hat-wearing. Killers typically don't wear hats. This is true.
Jacqueline wasn't terribly satisfied with this answer but Bouffant was clearly not going to elaborate any further and Teresa had finished finding all seven tiaras in the unicorn picture (the last one was in the tree!! sneaky tiara!!) so she just let it drop. But she shouldn't have!! Oh lawd no, she shouldn't have. Later, much later, crazy Bouffant actually did try to kill Danielle. A sad tale.
Hey. Speaking of Teresa and sad daughters. You know what's the worst thing in the world? Teresa's daughter, Frizzante, can't tawk right. Yeah see T.T. is still on her never-ending quest to save her girlfriend make her daughter a big, bright, oily star in the film and television modeling industry arts. This is very sad because wee Bruschetta just doesn't have the chops. She's got weird eyes and a terrible case of mumblemouth, but Teets doesn't even notice. Or if she does, she doesn't care. She is convinced that her dawtah is going to be a stahhh. But because SHE wants it!! Ha Ha Ha. Teresa doesn't care. Whatever makes Boboli happy. That's all Teets is concerned about. Her dawtah's wishes. Teresa is not a stage mom. No siree. No Bob.
So they took the child to an acting class. They took her to an acting class taught by a sad old man who wishes that Joe "Nathan" Lane had never been born (in Jersey City, btw!) because he took all the parts the sad old acting teacher could have had himself. It's a very tragic thing, but all of art and creativity — and especially the theatre — are tragic, so that's how it works. While Orecchiette was busy doing her breathing and dance exercises, Teresa sat outside with the other hideous, slump-faced stage parents and compared notes. Well, the other stage parents didn't really say much, because Teresa was just whining on and on and on about how her kid is just so amazing and knew all her lines (inside, she did not know her lines) and she was just the best and biggest thing ever. Oh, yeah, Brunelleschi was auditioning for a movie starring... CHRISTIAN SLATER. Yes, the Christian Slater. What was it, Kuffs 2: Spelling's Revenge? What movies is Christian Slater making? It was very confusing. But anyway, Teets was very excited about this. This was Lunedi's big break. Christian Slater. Hold onto your butts.
She didn't get it. Flffff. Disappointment. Hands up. Hearts sinking. Gases bubbling blue and quiet. Disappointment. She didn't get it. What happened? Why? What'd she do wrong? Why doesn't Christian Slater love this anchovy child the way that he, and everyone, is supposed to? Well, as a very important agent in New Jersey (there are many important agents in New Jersey) told Teresa, it's because the little one has such a thick Jersey accent. This is a problem for people who go to movies and would prefer not to have their ears fall off. So she needs to work on it. So she will. So they called in a dialect coach.
I'm not sure about this, I didn't look it up on Wikipedia or the Altavista, but I'm almost positive that the dialect coach was just Sally Struther's in a painters cap and overalls. Can anyone else confirm this? I'm pretty darn sure that Sally Struthers walked into that room and just started flapping her cookie-jaw at little Bambola about accents and things. It was so sad. What is Sally Struthers doing in New Jersey? What is anyone doing being a voice coach in New Jersey? That's like me moving to Plano, TX to become a Don't Trick-Out Your White Pickup Coach. It's just such a losing battle. But oh well. That's what Sally Struthers has chosen to do with the rest of her life and we have to, against our better judgment, respect that. Caravaggia has a lottt of work to do, so it's gonna be a long haul. But she'll get there. Someday she'll be in that movie, Pump Up the Volume Part II: Samantha Mathis Needs a New Transmission.
Hmmm. What else. What else happened in this episode of wonders. Oh yes! Everyone was talkin' about fags. Ohhhhhh fags. Say it with me now: FAGS! It's a word everyone likes to discuss. Why? Well... remember last week when Danielle's friend Carrie Fisher the Mob Boss was all mad at the Brownstone because of things? Well when he was mad he called Caroline's younger son, Failure, a "fag." This is not good. This is really not good. Who is it most not good for? Danielle. See last season Teresa's husband Bulldawg called a dancing instructor "gaylord" or something equally childish and Danielle's almost mandibled him to death. She's a gay advocate, she declared last night! A gay advocate. So how come then when her dear friend Carrie Fisher said that awful word did she stand by him. Well, she reasoned, he didn't call a gay person a fag. Oh, I see. He was just hurling a general insult at a regular person. It's OK then. Because it really is an insult. It's just you don't want to hurt the freaks' feelings more than their feelings already are hurt and broken, so you can't call them bad words. But with straight folks? Sure, it's just another insult. Good thinking, Danielle. So if I call you an ugly, delusional reality TV star is it OK because you're not actually a star? Good to know, you fucking hack.
Anyway. People were all whisper-murmuring about this word and this incident and Danielle's friend Debbie Reynolds had had enough. Don't you feel so vaguely bad for Debbie Reynolds on this show? There's her own estranged daughter calling her son's best friend a fag. It's such a weird muddled mix of people and things, isn't it! Debbie was auditioning for the part of Endora in a local stage production of Bewitched and so was getting her hair beehived, when who should walk into the salon, but Dina Manzo, of the Brownstone Manzos. (Or someone. Was it Jacqueline? It was Jacqueline. Whatever. Just go with it.) Debbie tried to talk to her about this whole incident and Dina just shook her head. She was done, couldn't hear anymore about this. Debbie frowned and thought "Ohhh poop." She then went off to go talk to Danielle about it at Danielle's birthday party. Because that's a really good time to confront someone about something bad. So all these feral idiots were milling about, drinking enormous glasses of wine and interrupting each other's toasts, and Debbie said to Danielle: "I love you, but I don't like you choosing my daughter Carrie Fisher the Mobster to be your escort." Danielle couldn't deal with this. She started sobbing and talked about how friends don't play each other like this, esse. Come on, homes. This is her fuckin' bday bash, yo! Why Debbie Reynolds gotta be all up in her grill talkin' about some maricón, huh? Come on, Debbie Reynolds. Just be cool! The whole thing was just a trundling disaster and the birthday party was effectively ruined, though they tried to awkwardly soldier on and continued interrupting each other's toasts to talk at each other about personal things from across the room. These women are all beautiful shining rays of humanity sent from heaven to enrich and enlighten us. Carry on, you belching chimeras.
I'm almost done with this. Basically what happened is that Danielle took Carrie Fisher to buy a suit (he tried to take off all of his clothes in the middle of the store, because what did he care, but Danielle is a proper lady, so she stopped him) for some sort of court date presumably and her phone rang. "Warm face, warm 'ands, warm feet..." her ringtone sang. She looked at it. A number she didn't know (or was pretending to not know). She answered. "Huhllo?" she grunted. It was DINA. Dina Manzo, of the hair salon Dina Manzos! Yes, Dina's run-in with Debbie Reynolds (that I made up) had made her think. She doesn't want to do this Danielle hogwash anymore. So she was going to have a dinner or a drink or just a sit with Danielle to tell her this. She invited Danielle to a very fancy black banquette showroom and told her they needed to tawk. Danielle was scared. What did this mean? Carrie Fisher put his hand on her shoulder and said "I'll help you. You're my only hope. I mean, I'm you're only hope." Danielle smiled and part of her cheek fell off and as she bent down to pick it up she said "Just wait in the car." So that's what Carrie Fisher did. He sat in the parking lot of the banquette warehouse, stroking a pistol. He was also holding a gun! Hi-yooo! Jokes that don't really work!! Frizango!!
OK, so, Danielle assumed that Dina was going to apologize for her nephew letting Carrie Fisher call him a faggot and ruin a cancer baby charity fundraiser, but obvs Deenz had something else in mind. A formal parting of ways. So when they sat down and Dina said "No, I"m not eating, this won't take long," Danielle's entire face fell off she was so disappointed. This was not what she'd wanted to happen! But it was happening. And Danielle was determined to make herself heard. She declared that if Dina tried to shush her, she would just start talking louder. Because Danielle is a new, empowered faggot hunter and she wasn't about to let anything stop her or get in her w—
And then the episode ended. The curtain fell. Danielle stood up. "That's it?" Dina looked around. "Guess so." "Huh." "Yeah. Should we get some cawfee or something?"
And then Sally Struthers burst through the wall, dressed as a drink pitcher, and said "IT'S PRONOUNCED 'COFFEE'!!!"
To be continued...
*No they were not.