ACCOUNTING FOR RIGHTS & WRONGS

Real Housewives Of Orange County: The Dirty Low-Down

By Karen Malmquist

GRETCHEN ROSSI DONS her nicest JC Penny sale section dress, putS on her biggest earrings, and has her best pageant hair done for the three-part Real Housewives of Orange County reunion. Sure, the other ladies are there, too, but the drama is orbiting directly around her. It’s gotta be the big hair.

Andy Cohen asks Vicki about her divorce from Donn. Or, in this case, lack thereof. She says they’re at a stand-still, which doesn’t make sense until she reveals that if she signs the papers, she’ll have to pay spousal support.

To answer the most important question we were left with this season, yes, Tamra slept on the bed Vicki had just peed on in Mexico. She says she just slept on the other side of said urine, and Vicki adds that all alcohol had exited her body.

After reflecting on the mercurial bachelorette party, Tamra tells Andy she’s going to throw Gretchen one in return, “but worse.”

The ladies are forced to re-watch Gretchen and Heather get left behind in Mexico, including Vicki’s “my plan worked” comment. Gretchen says she was hurt by what Vicki said, but Heather explains that Vicki definitely didn’t mean it in a premeditated kind of way.

Andy asks Tamra if she trusts Gretchen as a friend, and she says that right now she doesn’t. Although Tamra says she misses being friends with Gretchen, things aren’t good for them. So when Tamra says a “worse” bachelorette party, she means it, huh?

Then Gretchen says she would never say something behind someone’s back that she wouldn’t say to their face. Vicki’s not having it. In her usual wide-eyed fury, she loudly demands Gretchen to explain why she accused her of “sleeping with twelve men” when she was with Donn. Gretchen doesn’t really give her an answer, and instead opens her mouth and waits for Jesus to put the words in her mouth for her. It doesn’t work.

Tamra mentions Gretchen’s former fiancé Jeff, which more than ruffles a few of Gretchen’s feathers. She explains that Gretchen was seen around town with some guy named Jay, while Jeff was dying in the hospital. Or hair extensions, for that matter. Tamra says she saw Gretchen sitting on Jay’s lap at a hotel party, kissing him with her engagement ring in her purse.

Gretchen defends herself by saying she kissed Jay on New Year’s, and there was a picture of it. That doesn’t seem to convince anyone that it’s okay, especially when she says she kissed 11 other guys that night.

Lydia asks Alexis for her opinion, since she was friends with Gretchen at the time. Alexis hesitantly says that she saw them kissing on a boat once, but it looked like it could go either way.

Gretchen says she’s like that with all her guy friends. Again, this isn’t helping her case.

Tamra is mad because she thinks Gretchen is lying, so she pulls out a folder from under the couch pillows with pictures of Gretchen kissing other guys while still engaged to Jeff. Where she got these pictures, we may never know. My guess is she’s a private eye.

Andy asks Vicki if she gets joy out of watching the people she hates get hurt. Okay, this is question from Twitter that he’s just repeating to Vicki. Andy would never say “hate.” Gretchen says she knows Vicki once called her a C-word via text. Vicki repeats “I hate that word, I never use it” over 10 times, and insists that she has love for Gretchen and hopes her “business” does well. And yes, she used air quotes around “business,” because if you’re on a reality show, putting your name on something is a way to try and legitimize yourself.

Tamra starts screaming at Gretchen when she says that she never cheated on Jeff. Tamra’s high-pitched screeching drowns out whatever points she wants to get across, as well as Vicki’s. Gretchen angrily insists she and Jay were always “just FUH-RENDS-UH.”

Andy asks Lydia how she feels about people not taking her intelligence seriously, since people online seem to think she’s a bit of an airhead based on her quirkiness. She says she likes surprising people, and laughs that she’s a genius. You know, people used to say the same thing about Zooey Deschanel. I don’t know what that has to do with Lydia per se, but just because a girl likes glitter, it doesn’t mean she’s dumb.

Because Vicki needs constant reminding that she put her mouth on a candy penis below the border, the look back at Lydia’s first season includes Tamra’s whoop-fest of a bachelorette party. Vicki is shown watching on in horror. Me too, Vicki. Me too.

Another Twitter question asks Lydia why she seemed to downplay her friendship with Alexis when she first met Heather. She explains that she wasn’t super close with Alexis yet, and in her defense, Heather was practically shooting ice daggers out of her eyes when Lydia mentioned she knew Alexis. It was a life or death matter for her.

Lydia defends her and Doug’s decision to not put the Dubrows on the cover of Beverly Hills Lifestyle. She says they were putting Marilyn Monroe’s house on the cover, but Heather still doesn’t understand why this Marilyn person is somehow more important than she is. Heather says it was bad for Lydia to say no to the cover, but go and have her own 10-page spread.

Andy asks if Lisa Vanderpump has been on the cover. Lydia says yes, because Lisa has been a contributor to the magazine from the beginning, and she’s been on Dancing with the Stars. In other words, she’s more important. She then pulls out the magazine and shows everyone that Heather had a very nice, huge spread. If Heather wants to be on the cover of a magazine, she should just start her own.

Heather’s blog post about Lydia coming off as “judgmental” in Mexico, and apparently she thinks Lydia is hypocritical. Lydia sarcastically calls Heather “princess” when she tells Heather that she has “this air about her.” No kidding. It’s more like an arrogant smog, but Lydia’s too sweet to say that.

Lydia’s feistiness understandably catches Tamra’s heart again. Although she doesn’t speak up, there’s no hiding the look someone has on their face when they fall in love. I haven’t witnessed this firsthand, but I’ve sat through enough movie trailers to get it.

Ugh, it’s time for an unwanted look at Lauri’s unwelcome return to Orange County. We’re forced to relive her clawing her way back onto the show, which makes me wonder who at the network decided that Lauri was someone people cared about. Hint: she’s not.

Lauri accuses Vicki of trying to “ruin her marriage” seven years ago, saying that there is nothing more humiliating than the email Vicki forwarded to Jeana ages ago about Lauri’s husband, supposedly “ruining” his reputation.

Really? Lauri called up Bravo producers and begged to be on the show so she could publicly trash Vicki. At least, that’s what I think. However, Vicki also talked about Gretchen on national television. Everybody’s wrong here. Let’s move on.

Andy asks if Lauri thinks it’s fair to trash Vicki, even though Vicki let her under her wing careerwise. Lauri says that she never worked for Vicki. Listen, Lauri. If Vicki writes your checks, you’re working for her.

auri says that a lot of the things she told Gretchen about Vicki were just things that Tamra mentioned during last year’s reunion. Vicki starts yelling about how she owned up to her indiscretions, but Gretchen hasn’t. Gretchen makes what looks like little lobster pinchers with her hands and yells that she wouldn’t own up to something she never did.

Because Brooks was bound to come up at some point, Lauri talks about the “porn star” friend of her daughter’s that was seen hanging out with him last fall. She insists that she was only looking out for Vicki, but Vicki calls that bulls***. Vicki says she heard that Lauri was trollop-ing around the neighborhood with other men, so she’s got a lot of nerve coming at her like this.

Next time, hopefully Lauri will be gone, and we can focus on more pressing matters on the show. Like what kind of demon possessed Ryan at Vicki’s party.