It’s Labor Day weekend in the Hamptons, the end of the summer season and the beginning of the third season of the Real Housewives of New York. A year has passed. We open with the main characters on a yacht Ramona has borrowed from a friend. Well, most of our main characters: Bethenny is not invited, Ramona says, because she and Jill were having problems, and Ramona “didn’t want to have drama.†Of course, as we already know, when a Real Housewife says she doesn’t want drama, it only serves to invoke drama. Almost immediately, the air is thick with tension and swirling with questions. Will there be food and will it be good enough for Jill? Does Ramona have ulterior motives in showing off her jewelry line to the group? What did Ramona do to piss off her friend Joni? Meanwhile, the boat is plunging dramatically through waters that seem unusually rough, giving us even more of a sense that something big is going to happen. Will the ladies have a Perfect Storm moment? Will a sudden and terrible storm divert their ship to a desert island, where they will have to fend for themselves, like Tom Hanks in that movie where he makes friends with the soccer ball?
Of course not; there’s just a giant fight. Ramona’s husband, Mario, referred to recently divorced Countess LuAnn as “Countless,†and instead of thinking that is hilarious, LuAnn is deeply and hugely offended. Ramona can’t take it — criticism of Mario is criticism of her! — her eyes pop out of her head, and her head spins off of her neck and into the ocean.
Not really, but she throws a doozy of a fit, the first of what promise to be many on this season. While we’ve been away, the ladies have done some scheming. The hive mind has clearly decided that Bethenny needs to be cast off like a pasty whose adhesive has dried up in the summer sun. LuAnn picked a fight with her, the other girls heap abuse on her behind her back, and in a dramatic turn that was actually sort of genuinely upsetting, she and Jill had a dramatic off-screen falling out. Since Bethenny is, traditionally, our favorite character, this makes us a little wary about the season to come. As much as we like her new boyfriend and her adorable dog (which clearly has some sort of problem with the boyfriend), watching the three of them alone together for an entire season will not good television make, and her personal happiness does not bode well for her chances of winning episodes, which is, in our opinion, what Real Housewives is all about. Life, on this show, is a competition.
So who won last night’s episode?
Photo: Courtesy of the CW