Last night was Episode 2 of this latest, undeniably worst Housewives franchise. What happened? Mostly people said stupid things and then everyone went home, back to the thorny wilds of Virginia, because only one of them actually lives in D.C.

Should we begin our recap, once again, with a history lesson? Yes, I think we shall. In the late summer of 1872, just after the Boxer Rebellion — a revolt of Chicagotowne's drunken Irish boxers — was quelled (some old-time Chicagotowners still call this period the Pugilist Purge), a young boy from the far-Western province of Kentuckahginia was standing atop his family's hill (in those days every pioneer family was given a hill, from which to observe things in the distance and, on high holidays, tumble down with glee) and staring off toward the Eastern oceans. His name was Churchill Derby, the son of a soapbox racer and Zelda Todd, Mary Lincoln's schizophrenic half-sister who, after giving birth to Churchill in Lexington, fled to the woods to live, until she was discovered by an Irish actor some many years later. Churchill gazed off over the hills, each adorned with its own family wishing well, and dreamed many dreamy things, the way boys his age who feel penned in by their small town lives tend to do. And then, suddenly, Churchill saw something. Some sort of galloping beast, its hair wild and sheenful, legs sinewy and muscled. It was running fast through the small valley between the Derby hill and the Kissen-Cousins hill, and Churchill was transfixed. Joyously, he tumbled down his hill to go tell his father that he'd discovered a new American land-mammal.

Of course this was a horse, and Churchill Derby was the official discoverer of the creature. The horse, of course of course, came to feature prominently in American history. It was a horse that dragged Mary Wollstonecraft through the streets of Concord after she was convicted of witchery. (Obviously she didn't practice witchcraft, she practiced wollstonecraft, but the people of the day couldn't tell the difference.) It was a horse that kicked out the teeth of a visiting dignitary from French Indochina, thus inciting the Foodcart Wars of the 1950s. And it was a horse that defeated Spiro Agnew in the Minnesota Republican senate primary, ensuring that Jack Bouvier would have a clear path to the chancellorship, a seat he held for nearly three decades of iron-fisted rule. The horse has become as American a symbol as the two-wheeled wheelbarrow or the manta-ray. Horses are the beasts upon whose backs this Confederate Semi-Representative Monarchy was built. To paraphrase and rearrange the famous Catherine the Great quote, "I fucking love horses!!!"

Why do I bring up America's horse history? Because the women on this television show are all horrible horse people. All of them are wretched horse monsters from the planet Horsebreath, a place that is dark and cold and full of terror. OK, Stacie isn't bad. She is the most decent one of the bunch. She's normal-ish. Sure she's socially desperate and did agree to be on this awful television show, but she also has a nice Aunt Frances who makes tasty food and is a good lady. And her husband is hilarious! OMG, Stacie's husband! Don't you just laugh every time you see him? Not because he makes volumetric penis measurers or whatever. That is so outlandish I can't even believe it happened, but that is not why Dorf (that's his name, I think) is funny. Dorf is funny because he wears thick, woolly turtleneck sweaters. He does! Ohhh he's so comfy in his turtleneck sweaters! He has a mustard one that he wore last night. Just Dorf, all toasty and cozy in his mustard turtleneck sweater, saying his Dorf things. Oh he makes me laugh. Stacie, you found a funny husband who wears funny clothes and makes funny facial expressions. Keep him! He is a keeper! You two keep on keepin' on, in your house in the woods that you swear is in the District of Columbo, but is clearly just in the middle of the woods. Have fun in the woods! Better bundle up! Put on a turtleneck sweater.

You know what else is funny and I love? Sometimes when they interview Lynda the Lizard she is sitting in a room with her two favorite things: Her solid gold chess set and her gong. "Oh hi Judy. No, I'm just hanging out at home, y'know, with my golden chess set and my gong. Yeah, just pretty typical stuff." I love her gong and her ornate chess set! It's perfect for Lynda. I actually don't mind Lynda that much either. She is a lizard queen from Lizardland (this is a country on Horsebreath) and, again, she did agree to be on the Real Househornets of Swaprey Island, but mostly I think she is OK. You know who is not OK? Her assistant/son's girlfriend. What is going on there? As a friend put it last night, "She got dragged by a bus all the way to work." Girl, you are on television! Clean yourself up! In one scene she was wearing full eye makeup and then nothing else. No lipstick, no rouge, no nothing. Her hair was a scraggly, wispy brier patch. It was such a mess. Especially considering that Lynda is one of the biggest high-class pimps in Washington D.C. Do not make Lynda Lizard cut a ho's face! Clean yourself up before Lynda cleans you up herself. You don't want that to happen, trust me.

Um... Lynda got in a fight sorta with Micaele about calling Micaele skinny or whatever. That was dumb. Lynda's boyfriend/number one employee Ebong picked her up and took her home to safety, where she sat in the formal living room all night in the dark, throwing solid gold chess pieces at her gong, the loud clanging drowning out her sobs and moans. Whatever. It's so weird that we are only two episodes in and already everyone is being horrible to each other. Just openly hostile and nightmarish.

Speaking of openly hostile: Cat! OMG Cat. She is just terrifically awful. She was right to act mean when she went to Micaele and Tareq's ridiculous horse golf camp for idiots, because that whole thing was just so dumb. But she was not right to be mean at Aunt Frances's! When she opened the wine and then wouldn't drink it because she is an awful bitch? That was so painful. I wish that Aunt Frances had gotten out her enormous Aunt Frances gun and blown Cat off the porch. But Aunt Frances isn't rude, like Cat, so she didn't. She just smiled and dripped a little poison into Cat's collared greens. (Not that it mattered, because Cat didn't eat them.) Yes, Cat is dreadful. Cat was even too dreadful for the sad, sad, sad (sooooo sad) Mary, who is sad and sometimes, when she feels like it, even sadder. Cat had sad lunch with sad Mary (she is also proud, but not in the way you think) and Mary talked sadly of her sad things: her daughter, Ida, is home from having a boyfriend and she brought her boyfriend, a dog, with her. Her boyfriend/dog sheds all the time so sad Mary has to speak sad Spanish to "Rosa" (Andy Cohen in a wig and rented maid's outfit) to tell her to clean it up. It is so sad! Cat heard about this and then gave the daughter grief at the restaurant, where the girl is a waitress. Cat then said that Mary's sad tip was too big. Cat probably wouldn't leave anything! Because she is just so, so mean, all the time.

Poor Mary must have gotten some sort of face lift or cheek sucking operation right before the show filmed, thinking perhaps that the swelling would go down before the cameras rolled. But it didn't! Oh god, it didn't. Poor Mary. She is a dreadful swamp creature for sure, but I also feel so bad for her. It's fitting that she lives in McLean. The madhouse of Virginia. Where Kaysens and Marys go to clear their heads. Mary, being on this reality television program will not cure the sad fuzzies that live in your insides. You know, all those little tufts that your soul sheds. They will not go away as long as there is a camera crew in your face. Poor Mary. So sad.

I don't know. What else? This show is terrible. You've done terribly, Bravo. Just terribly. Micaele and hoosie. Oh lawdy tawdy, are they awful people. After the horse golf tutorial, Micaele skibbled her bones over to a hotel/restaurant to talk with the people there about a birthday party she was planning for a dear stylist friend, Cheetara from ThunderCats. Cheetara wants a big fun party and for some reason he looked at Micaele and thought "big" and "fun", even though neither of those things are true of Micaele. So yeah, that was that. Micaele was planning a party, riding around town on her new horse, Sparkle. Yeah, Micaele got a horse for Christmas or whatever and she mounted it and Tragique was like "What's its name?" and Micaele stared off into the middle-distance and said "Sparkle." If they'd let her go longer she would have started saying other words that sprang into her mind — "Elbow." "Tumor." "Hartford." "Wizard." "Boot." "Horse." Tarsem would have nodded his head and said "OK, here's our house, Lady Sparkle von Hartford Boots, level three wizard." Because it would have sounded fancy! And Micaele and Tarpaulin love their fancy stuff.

Then it was time for Cheetara's birthday party. He got his mane blown out while Micaele and Target were getting into a white limousine and hiring a police escort to take them. Yes, a police escort! How do you even make a joke about that? The joke is right there, in an awful way. Micaele and Tarmac are loveless, crazy people who just enable each other's insanity. Remember when he sabered that champagne bottle at Cheetara's birthday? That was insane. He didn't even do it right. Remember when Micaele wore those jodhpurs and said "If I'm the wife of a horse man, I gotta look the part," the shiver of false marriage rippling over her body? The only good thing that Micaele has done so far is cop to how old she is. "Most people think I'm in my 30s [no, no they do not], but I'm 44." Good on you, babe! Too bad everything else about you makes me want to feed myself to horses to end the gut-burning misery of watching you on television.

I don't know what else to talk about. This show is poop. Aunt Frances, take me away! I really wish there was a show that was Aunt Frances and Dorf, puttering around a house, saying things. Dorf in his turtleneck sweater and Aunt Frances often reaching for her enormous Aunt Frances gun whenever Dorf gets out of line. "Dorrrrffff," she'll say, one hand on the massive gun, as he launches into some Dorfy monologue about penis calculators. ("Results: You. Have. A. Penis." "That robot is magic!") That is a television show I would watch. I would mayyyyyyyyybe watch a show called Cat's Cradle, about Cat driving around the country saying snide things to babies, but only mayyyyybe. I would watch a sci-fi show about Cat fighting crime called Cat O' Nine Tails, where she uses her genetic mutation, nine spiky tails, to kill bad guys. That would be fun. But I would not watch a show about Cat being vaguely racist and mean, and nothing else. Because that is already this show, and this show is badly made. It is a bad show.

Death and horses, that's all that's left. Neigh!!

Nay.


Note: This is satire. Obviously, nothing stated herein is intended to be read as the literal truth.