“The Real Housewives of Orange County” delivered something unprecedented in recent memory on the episode that aired Wednesday.
Not some new body part pixelated into a suggestive blur to protect the children who shouldn’t be watching this anyway.
Not Housewife Kelly Dodd deciding to swear off swearing, dang flabbit!
No, what we witnessed near the end of the episode was something entirely unremarkable outside of the heightened “reality” of “The Real Housewives,” but extraordinary within it.
Braunwyn Windham-Burke and Gina Kirschenheiter sat down for a round of tea lattes, talked through their past differences like adults, sincerely apologized to each other, and vowed to do better by each other going forward.
I know, right? Please, take as long as you need to gather yourself.
Braunwyn and Gina had a big blow-up over the previous two episodes, in part because Braunwyn this season acknowledged she’s an alcoholic, and Gina — who the show left in the dark about this — went at her over a bit of gossip in the middle of Shannon Storms Beador’s housewarming party.
Went at her hard.
In the aftermath, Braunwyn invited Gina to attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting with her, which, as Gina noted earlier in the episode, was no big deal since her DUI bust the previous year mandated she do so already.
We saw them drive up to the meeting before the cameras went dark — thank you, AA, for providing a safe space into which reality TV series cameras are not welcome. Then to Milk & Honey in Costa Mesa where we learned that Gina had no idea that oat milk is a thing.
“Thank you for the most awkward playdate ever,” Braunwyn said as they broke the ice over tea.
Gina told her she was impressed that Braunwyn, as leader of this particular AA session, chose the topic of anger to speak about, as well as how Braunwyn had said in front of the entire meeting that her own anger had led her to act hurtfully toward Gina.
“She didn’t have to do that, and that meant a lot to me,” Gina said to the camera.
“I need you to know that I was trying to hurt you, and I’m sorry, and I won’t do that again,” Braunwyn told her on the patio of the restaurant.
Gina looked moved, apologized herself, and told Braunwyn that at her upcoming vow renewal ceremony in Palm Springs she would not drink in solidarity with Braunwyn.
“If you’re struggling or something, you’ll have a safe place,” Gina told her, completing a 180 from where she started the episode, telling Emily Simpson that she hoped she didn’t get into “a (gosh darn) fistfight in AA.”
Reader, I might have felt an emotion in that moment, which strangely much of the rest of this episode echoed in some ways. High and low lights of the episode included:
— Braunwyn and her family helping 14-year-old son Jacob explore his interest in the drag life.
“I asked him, ‘Is it pageantry, is it identity, is it your gender,’” Braunwyn told the camera. “And his answer was, “I don’t know.’ What he does know is that he has a family that loves him any way he is.”
— After two seasons as a name without a face, viewers finally see Gina’s ex-husband Matt on screen. It’s their daughter Sienna’s 6th birthday and she and her new boyfriend Travis invited Matt and his new girlfriend to come.
— Shannon is now the new villain. That’s right, with Vicki Gunvalson and Tamra Judge now gone, the maleficent mantle falls over Shannon’s blonde mane.
When her 18-year-old daughter Sophie mentions the latest on the book she’s decided to write about the experience of a teen going through her parents’ divorce, Shannon’s response is to ask, ‘What’s it going to be called, ‘How My Mom (Bleeped) Up My Life?’”
Shannon is annoyingly judge-y, too. When she and Gina are invited to the beachfront home of newest housewife Elizabeth Lyn Vargas, she tries to one-up Elizabeth on some things and put her down for other things, such as sniffing imperiously over the partly pre-made meal Elizabeth picked up at Pavilion’s.
“Not the kind of luncheon I would throw, but ‘A’ for effort, Elizabeth,” she says.
Someone call Emily Post and find out which fork you wave at someone who says “luncheon.”
— Elizabeth, in contrast, is now the nicest housewife. She pushes back a bit when Shannon and Gina do a bit-of-Braunwyn-bashing prior to the AA reconciliation.
“There’s a lot of judging going on,” she tells the camera. “It’s not nice, it’s not fair. To each his own, I just think (Gina) should be a little more sensitive.”
She’s also very caring with her family, many of whom are visiting her — mother, brother, a couple of nieces — and is brought to tears when she talks about her younger sister’s battle with drug addiction.
“I set them all up with million-dollar trusts,” she says of the kids the childless housewife treats as her own. “They don’t know it yet because I don’t them to murder me.”
In which case, sure hope you hid the remote from the kids this week.
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