Well, Real Housewives Of New York is back with a vengeance! Did you guys miss them? More importantly did you miss me? Cause I haven’t written a Housewives recap in about a month and I’m worried I’ve lost my touch. Be kind, be gentle — love me. Treat me like production treated Jill Zarin last night.
Anyway, I don’t know if I like the choppy editing and zoom confessionals with bad audio, although I did love how Leah McSweeney just went full quarantine vibes by wearing a sweatsuit.
Speaking of Leah she goes out to dinner in China Town with her baby daddy Rob and their daughter Kier. This is so Leah can emphatically prove over and over again that she’s a real legit New Yorker, not some uptight upper east side wannabe maven.
Right in front of Kier, who is at the impressionable age of 12, Leah complains to Rob about how annoying her mother is for judging her drinking and all the unresolved baggage she has from being kicked out of the house in her teens. Then she tells Rob that they’ll probably both be single forever because her mother considers him a son and will never accept anyone else Leah brings home.
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Kier looks bored of this conversation which she’s definitely been hearing for the last 10 years and is probably her first formative memory. This all but guarantees that Kier will turn into Dorinda Medley‘s daughter Hannah as an adult; constantly propping her mother up with false platitudes over greasy food and greasier tears.
Dorinda apparently cries mayonnaise. Dorinda and Hannah go to a diner for burgers and Dorinda tells us all about how she loves condiments more than food. This says so much about Dorinda’s approach to life. The toppings matter way more than the substance. In Dorinda’s interview segment she literally blends in with the neon drapes and looks like a floating head in some acid trip nightmare. It is way spookier than anything happening at Luann de Lesseps‘ voodoo Halloween party.
Hannah tells Dorinda that she’s inspired by her and that this is the most well-adjusted and secure Dorinda has ever been. Does Hannah have Stockholm Syndrome? Is she just trying to become some instagram life coach guru? Cause … fast forward to Luann’s party and we see a glaring example of this ‘happy, secure, supportive Dorinda.’ I believe this was actually footage transposed from an episode of Snapped?
With Tinsley Mortimer gone everyone is turning their hairy eyeballs towards the antics of Ramona Singer. Oh Ramona … never a more clueless woman was there. Ramona meets with her matchmaker to bemoan that after years of employing her she’s still single. Her most fruitful relationship was Red Scarf Guy, who also dated both Bethenny Frankel and Carole Radziwill. Men are the only thing Ramona ever shares though, and she’s completely self-absorbed in every other thing. It’s bizarre.
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Ramona tells Rory, the matchmaker, that she values love more than money and wants a best friend – a best friend who isn’t jealous of her $5 million dollar apartment and respects her prowess as a real estate maven, and one who can keep up with her hob-nobbing, jet-setting lifestyle as the worst witch.
Meanwhile Sonja Morgan meets Elyse Slaine for nachos. The editors are really trying to make Sonja look like Augustus Gloop this season and every scene is her scarfing something at an unflattering angle. Is this subliminal messaging that women aren’t supposed to eat?
Elyse is super irritated because Ramona used her when she needed someone to listen to all her problems, but is now dumping her for trendier friends. It’s unclear if Elyse is even invited to Ramona’s birthday party with 60+ of her best girlfriends. Sonja is annoyed because Ramona constantly belittles her and pretends she’s just trying to help, but whenever Sonja tries to tell Ramona anything, Ramona “unsurps” her, and tries to one-up her. So does that mean Ramona is gonna join the Countess’s cabaret show? No, because it’s called The Countess & Friends, and Ramona is certainly no one’s friend.
Across town Luann, Dorinda, and Leah go shopping for Halloween costumes to wear to Luann’s party. Dorinda is furious that she was dragged out to Long Island to be used as a promotional prop for Ramona’s wannabe party planner, and forced to endure hours of the sound of Sonja’s chewing on stale cookies while Ramona talked about her “coming out” party. I do not think Ramoan understands what that means, but anyway… if she thinks she’s a 60-year-old debutante, so be it.
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Luann and Leah are unsurprised by how selfish Ramona is because duh – it’s Ramona. As Elyse said the roads in Ramonaville are always a one-way street.
Luann has decided that the treat everyone deserves this Halloween is a reprieve from her cabaret, so she will be sparing everyone the true nightmare of having to sit through another performance. That’s reserved for Christmas gifts.
Leah brings Rob to Luann’s party because she wants all the ladies to meet him. Why, is unclear. Sonja brings her three best friends vodka, soda, and extra shot. Ramona has purchased matching Maleficent costumes for them, becuase Ramona claims that’s what the internet told her voodoo is. Clearly the internet is conspiring to embarrass Ramona just as the Housewives are.
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Ramona shows up an hour and a half early, dragging along Tom D’Agostino‘s ex-girlfriend Missy and that weird Lurch man from the final drinks with Tinsley. Ramona calls Luann demanding to know why she’s late to her own party only to be told she’s super early. Ramona did this on purpose because she really wants to go to another – better – party at Omar’s. I doubt Omar is paying Ramona to be there, and if she wants to keep that jet-setting lifestyle, woman needs a j-o-b. At least until she meets a billionaire! That’s what the debutante birthday ball will do — announce Ramona’s marriageability.
Elyse is surly because Ramona excluded her from the matching costume convention, and also ditched her the other night claiming she wanted to go out with “her girls” and Elyse clearly isn’t one of them. It’s unclear if Ramona was referring to fellow-Housewives or the contingency of her 60+ best girlfriends in all of New York. Ramona dismisses Elyse’s concerns as her being jealous because she’s not popular enough to have over 100 best friends.
If Ramona is so popular why is Missy one of her only friends, and when is she going to stop trying to ruffle Luann’s feathered headdress with this same old schtick?
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Elyse tries to confront Ramona about this at the party, but Ramona is in not mood to hear it. There’s a crown covering her ears, after all. Sonja decides to use visual illustrations by taking a voodoo doll called “Ramona Stinger” and smashing it with a stick in the crotch and the ear. Ramona doesn’t understand primitive languages either. Something about seeing a stick triggers a traumatic childhood memory and she has to run to the nearest private dining room.
I personally thought Luann’s party was sublimely decorated, it was the guests who were the gross factor. Luann and Leah get ready in a neighboring hotel room and go all-out on the voodoo them with Leah arriving in a see-thru mesh bodysuit. Also Jill brings Gary, her new fiancé, and is so low-key and lackluster I actually thought they had hired an actress to impersonate Jill. Badly.
While waiting for Luann’s unceremonious arrival, Ramona tries to talk to Dorida about what’s happening with Elyse and Sonja. Ramona erroneously believes she’ll have a sympathetic ear here, but the voodoo doll already got to her ear… Dorinda instead wants to complain about the trip to Long Island. Ramona scoffs that she’s waisting her time talking to Dorinda when she’s drunk, and Dorinda loses it. Dorinda insists she hasn’t even had one rink at that point — it’s just raw rage propelling her, later mixing with a potent cocktail of future alcohol consumption.
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By the time dinner finally arrives Ramona is ostracized and sitting in the corner in her wrong costume next to Missy, who everyone just completely ignores. Luann doesn’t even pretend to be bothered. Which was the right and perfect response. Even when Dorinda tries to rile Luann up about it, Luann doesn’t care. She’s more concerned about a drunken Leah ripping apart her seafood tower.
As it turns out Ramona is Dorinda’s bone to pick. Literally! When Luann stands up to make a toast, Dorinda completely interrupts her to roast Ramona as a bad friend, a selfish asshole, and a loser for calling her an alcoholic. Ramona sits there, stone-faced and silent, with her back turned to Dorinda as everyone stares her down. The whole thing is so mean and awkward that Luann and Elyse went from being legitimately angry at Ramona’s bad behavior to feeling sorry for her. And this is the woman who dragged Luann’s philandering ex-husband’s ex-girlfriend to the ex-wife’s party without previously informing the hostess.
Elyse even comes over to try and talk to Ramona, and explain in a calm way why her feelings were hurt, but that she still considers her a friend. Ramona in turn projects her anger at Dorinda onto Elyse and snaps at her for trying to make this all about herself. Then Ramona leaves to go to Omar’s and no one even says goodbye. Meanwhile Leah is destroying the centerpieces again, and tells Sonja she should sleep with Rob because he has an enormous dick. Rob is mortified and announces that he’s going to leave. Maybe he wants to go to Omar’s too?
TELL US – ARE YOU HAPPY RHONY IS BACK? WAS DORINDA TOO MEAN TO RAMONA OR DOES RAMONA DESERVE IT?
[Photo Credits: Bravo]