Real Housewives of D.C.: Grape Me
Last night was episode four of our terrible case study in what happens when everyone's brains turn out the lights and naked, stupid id is allowed to run amok around the Capital region. What a mess.
I don't know guys. Hi. Are you there? Is anyone there? I'm so cold and sad and lonely. What did I do? I watched this show last night. Yeah, I did. And then... You know, I have been beginning these recaps with whimsical, John Hodgman-ripoff, made-up American history lessons, but I don't have the energy today. I don't know if I have the energy to do anything anymore.
I mean, just what the heavenly fuck is this show?
LAST NIGHT, I had a dream, I found myself in a desert called Cyberland various things happened and they were all terrible. Just terrible. Everyone died. Ohhhh sigh. No. No one died. Wouldn't it have been great if everyone died? "On their way back to their home planet, everyone on this show died." Oh that would make me so happy. But that didn't happen. The show happened. I don't know.
Lynda and Ebong made breakfast for Lynda's kids, three beet-faced beauties named Lyndo, Lyndy, and Lyndor. Lynda taught her daughter an important lesson about how in the South, the women serve the men food, which the boys laughed about, making silly faux sexist jokes, while Ebong quietly thought how glad he was that Lynda didn't say anything about other people who serve other people in the South. So that was nice: Lynda Breakfast. Lynda is so boring it makes my eyes go "zzzzzzzzzzz" all the time all over the place.
Oh there was a funny scene with Mary and Michelob where they were having a Celebrity Stylist party. Yeah, see, they know so many Celebrity Stylists. And they are all gay men. And these women are such shit-eating harpies, that they have absolutely no compunction in parading gay men around like property, like their favorite pets. Mmhm! This was on display when their Celebrity Stylist friend had a party to open his new Celebrity Salon in D.C. Mary was all "People say that Washington is Hollywood for ugly people, and I want to try to prove that adage true with absolutely everything that I do and say." Ha, no, she didn't say that second part, but she did say the first! Lordy loo, she did say the first. And it was so sad that tears of hot gravy came pouring out of my face when she said it, and somewhere far off, way in the distance, Aaron Burr turned his retriggered dueling pistol upon himself. OH MARY. Quite contrary to the ways that normal human beings do things. Anyway, she said that and we all farted with pity, meanwhile Michaele had arrived and slither-rattled her way onto the Celebrity Stylist and was kissing him and telling him "Oo, oo, I love YOU, I love YOU" and just being awful and weird. The Celebrity Stylist totally indulged her too! He was all "Oh girl, put on a show, let me see that outfit! Oooo! You are workin' it!" And she was not workin' it. She was workin' it like a skeleton doing a creepy bone dance in a graveyard in a Scary Stories book (ohhh remember those? remember when you were a kid and things weren't so difficult and frustrating and sad? remember when you had no idea what a Celebrity Stylist even was? ohhh I want to be nine years old forever). She is so frightening and not sexy and I wish that CS wouldn't indulge her. But he did, and you know what happened? Mary got SO MAD. Ohhhhhh heavens to Finnegan, Mary was mad. That was HER gay, this was HER party, and how dare Michaele the Pale come in and swoop up her gay party? So Mary went over to the CS and was like "Gimme a kiss" and the CS visibly flinched, VISIBLY, but he did kiss her finally, and she said "You know, when I came in here, you didn't talk to me..." Meaning, "When I came in here you didn't throw me one of your delightful fag fits and call me 'girl' and talk about my outfit, which you are required to do". Yayyy Mary. Also, Mary: Do you see those whirring things with glass lenses on them that are following you around all the time? Those are called "video cameras" and they are filming you. We can see you acting like a sixteen-year-old lightning strike victim. We can see that. Maybe take a different tack? I don't know. Or don't. Whatever. It's a free country. Up to you. I just think you look like a sack of Chili's riblets that's come alive and decided to marginalize gay people, but hey, that's just my opinion. Maybe someone else thinks you're fun and smart a real [snap snap] classss act. Maybe that someone has no eyes and ears. Maybe. We're a country of Maybe.
OK, I'm done talking about that part of the show. Let's talk about this other part of the show. Remember Michaele from the other paragraph? Well she has a husband whose name is Tragique and he is what would happen if you took a frog and glued gray hair onto it and then put it in the microwave. Not to explode it, just to make it warm. Tragique is a warm frog wearing a salt-and-pepper wig. I wish he was wearing a Salt 'N Pepa wig, but I never get anything I wish for. Anyway, they sort of own a vineyard? But sort of not. See, Tragique's mother is a horrible nasty woman who lives in a house on a hill and controls everything that Tragique does. "Mother..." he says, "I told you I was going to the movies this afternoon. No, Mother, it's not a smut picture. It's a cartoon story, about animals. No Mother, I am not a child pervert, I am not going to pick up little children at the movies. Mother, no, I'm not taking a girl. Mother! I'm not a queer. Mother... why won't you just let me go to the movies?" The sad thing is? There's no one talking to him. He's just doing it all bys himselfs. So Mother Dear technically owns the vineyard or something, but Tragique has a stake in it, and basically Mother took T to court because she didn't want him on her vineyard anymore, but T loved the vineyard, so eventually court decided that T could go on the vineyard if he wanted, the big stupid whiny Francis Buxton that he is, even though it was just pretend court and T was talking to himself because there is no Mother. So because of the court decision, Tragique and Michaele decided to have all the girls over for a traditional grape stomping. Oh what a treat! Don't you just love those The Court Says I Can Set Foot On My Vineyard parties? Those are the best kind of parties, next to I'm Legally Allowed To Speak To My Children Again parties. Ohhh what fun. What good times.
So all the girls decided to go, except Lynda who was too busy serving Ebong food and being insanely boring, and they all piled into a Tareq-brand limousine and headed off to the crazy hillbilly mountains of Virginia, where Tareq has built a pretend vineyard. While they were in the limo, one of their other gays, I think he is the Celebrity Colorist (because we live in a time when people think that you can say that on a television program as if that's a thing, a real job, a true vocation, rather than what it is, which is gobbledy children's tea party pretend frosting-covered bullshit), told a verryyyyyyyyyyyy interesting story about Target and Michaele. Basically: Colorist was invited to the Congressional Black Caucus dinner, high in the Caucasus mountains. M&T were all "Hey, you there, little yippy gay creature, come to our partyyyyy." So Colorist was all, "OK, can I bring my other gay thing," and they were all like "Totes, more doggies!" So they all went to the party and then Colorist looked at the invitation and was like "Umm.. this says it's only good for one person..." but Michaele hoarsely laughed it off and basically they sneaked in. And basically they sneaked back in after they were told to leave by security. TERRIFIC. All the girls in the limo (including Rudiger, who was wearing, YES YOU GUESSED IT, a glorious turtleneck sweater — oh gosh do I love that man) laughed and laughed and said "Mmmhmmm." T&M are total jokers, they'll all quickly realizing. Then to make matters worse, Tarfleck called and was like "Heyyy! What's happenin'! So, no big deal, but Mother has called some press to distract this wonderful event and I've hired security to protect you from my ghost mom, so just walk into the vineyard one specific way or you might be killed by my mom ghost or by a bubble like in The Prisoner. Just that, no biggie, it's going to be a great afternoon." Oh sure. That's a normal thing to do. Sometimes you just have to tell your not-friends that your no-vineyard is under attack and that they should still totally come, they just might be killed when they get out of their RicketyLimo™. Normal stuff.
So that happened and everyone was all "Umm...", but the limo pulled in and the guards swarmed and everyone was OK, including the corpse Tarbleck had propped up in a rocking chair and set on the porch. So the grape stomping could begin! And you know what happened? The grapes? HA HA omg it was too perfect. The grapes... were like... from a supermarket. They weren't wine grapes. They were just regular, raggedy ass seedless grocery grapes. YESSSSSS. Isn't that the most marvelous thing ever? Ohhhhh for their classy Gourmet magazine photoshoot grape stomping party, they had to go to some sad supermarket and buy some foolish red grapes. I love you, Tareq and Michaele. I love you because you are so fully crazy that you don't even realize you are being crazy. You are in this thing so deep that I don't think you even remember that you're in something. It's like how we could be, all of us, in a black hole right now and not even know it. T&M are in that black hole, and it is big and black and it is dark. GRAPE'D. Oh god.
As funny as that was, and as stupid and embarrassing and annoying as Tardick and Michaele are, Cat was being simply horrid. Just loud and bitchy and rude and awful. Were any of these people raised by anything other than swamp rats? I mean honestly, I know most of them (except Stacie, who's fine) were raised by a pile of swamp rats, but was maybe one of them not? Like, is this how people behave in various parts of America and I'm just not aware of it? Because damn. People were grape stomping and no juice was coming out (the juice on this show is nowhere near worth the squeeze) and Cat just stood off in a field with the Colorist and made Colorist commentary in loud, bitchy fashion. After she'd stomped some fake grapes (you know, the delightful plastic kind that are hollow inside and make satisfying squishes when you squeeze them that they have at old, dusty Italian restaurants) Mary came over to Cat and Cat said more bitchy loud things and Mary nodded and then Cat got up and she and the Colorist went home. Yay, manners.
After she left, Tarfeck and Michaele had everyone into their root cellar to drink tiny glasses of wine and talk about being friends. Of course a fight erupted between Mary and Michaele about how Cat is a bitch, and then about how Lynda is a bitch, and then about how everyone makes fun of Michaele. The creepy thing about Michaele is that she wasn't mean or yelling. She was nice and calm, and to me that doesn't make me think she's a decent person, it makes me think that she is so insanely crazy that we don't even know what the depths of her crazy look like. Poor Stacie and Rudiger sat there all sad and confused, Rudiger especially, his sad wonderful head down, face pointed at the tablecloth, beautiful turtleneck sweater fuzzing brightly. I love him! I want to watch his television program. It's him and Tareq's mother's corpse solving mysteries. Rudiger's patented moves are raising one eyebrow and saying "Lady, you're dead" and also pulling his turtleneck sweater up over his head when he's scared. Thursdays this fall on ABC Family. "Lady, you dead."
UM. Oh, yeah, the stupid fight about stupid things kept going for some time and Tareq sat there simmering. He hates the sound of women talking meanly, because it reminds him so of Mother Dear, the way she used to stand in the kitchen washing dishes and berating him. "You'll never find a girl if you keep eating those candies. And keep your wrists straight, you look like a pervert. Oh heavens Tareq, you'll be blind before Christmas with all that nasty fumbling you do with yourself every night. You think I can't hear it? I'm just one room away and these walls are thin. Paper thin. Your father was a cheap, cheap man and he bought a cheap house. Oh stop staring at me with those cow eyes. Go do some exercises, you're looking so flabby these days. Just like your father. Just like him." Oh she was horrid! Horrid! Who knew that all it would take would be a heavy frying pan one day when you are 37 and can't take it anymore to end all that awful noise? Who knew it was that easy! And that hard. And that hard too.
So he was thinking about all of this while Mary said mean, dumb, puff-faced things and finally he snapped. "I got something to say!" he yelled and everyone GASSSSSSSPED and the episode ended.
Up on the porch, on the hill, a light breeze fluttered the corpse's dress, and the corpse was all of us, with the dried leaves crunching like animal bones and the sickly thin sun falling into the earth behind us.
BYE.