Ahoy, Mateys!
Last night, we followed all of the Real Housewives of New York City besides Aviva to St. Barths, an island we learned you need a small plane to get to. Carole hosted the getaway at a house it took her a few scenes to recognize as the same place she stayed when her late husband was still alive, which was a little weird. She also got to use her Lady D.J. headphones on the flight, because Carole’s best friends, John-John and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, died on a small plane years ago. Following? Good!
Once the ladies arrived to Carole’s deja-house-vu (Do you like my seamless integration of that word within that term?), the women chose their bedrooms. Ramona and Sonja decided to sleep together and wear each others’ rings on their wedding ring fingers, because that’s a completely normal choice for two straight women who menstruate constantly. Then, Heather walked into a plate glass window, but because this show is not The Newsroom, we didn’t get to see it.
Soon it was time for Ramona and Sonja—a duo whom Heather cleverly coined “Ramonja”—to get drunk and act inappropriately. And do that, they did! The ladies all got into swimsuits and sarongs and Ramona yapped at everyone and no one at once about pool noodles and where they were. Then, Luann—who owned this episode—dove into the pool in her bra-style bikini top, serving positively Christie Brinkl-ian ‘80s realness when she poked her head out of the water, end of Vacation-style. Also, during this part of the show, Carole was wearing white cowboy boots with a patterned skirt that cut her legs at an odd length, and that was distracting and unpleasant, especially since I find her to usually be quite fashion-forward. Ha! I just said “quite fashion-forward” in a sentence. Does this mean I’ll never get a show on Spike TV? DO YOU PROMISE?
That night, Luann changed into the black dress she bought at the bathing suit shop and Sonja hooked a pith helmet with dueling rosé bottles to the top of her head so she could die of alcohol poisoning before the appetizers arrived. There was some Sonja/booze-provoked clamor around the Toaster Oven Shoot Incident, which Heather deferred and Ramona got into, and that soon got so messy that Luann, then Carole, and finally even Ramona, had to get up and walk away from the table. Sonja was sauced, and it was sad.
Then came the news that Carole’s boyfriend, Russ From Aerosmith, would be making a cameo appearance—not to play his parts from “Ragdoll” without his charts in front of him, but instead, to meet a few crazy drunk ladies, then fuck Carole. Ramona, trying her best to seem sober and normal, said the following thing robotically when meeting Russ, and it made me laugh really hard. “Russ-it’s-so-nice-to-meet-you-we’ve-heard-so-many-wonderful-things-about-you-from-Carole-and-we-LOVE-Carole.” She bleated that pleasantry in the same way a hostage forcibly tells her husband on the phone that she is perfectly fine and safe. Her eyes didn’t blink once. I rewound this part a few times.
Aerosmith’s Russ enjoyed the attention. Then, he serviced Carole and left before dawn. Look—somewhere, in some stadium, “Sweet Emotion” wasn’t going to play itself!
The next morning, Ramona was catty about Russ showing up in Carole’s vacation house, as, according to her, there is some kind of “The Berenstein Bears in NO BOYS ALLOWED” rule in effect whenever these chickens go away together on holiday. Ramona tried, unsuccessfully, to tease Carole about it, but Carole is so high-status that Ramona’s B.S. is dust off her shoulder. Furthermore, whatever nonsense poor Sonja was dribbling out the side of her mouth loosened as it was not eight hours earlier with wine from the vending machine, dissipated into the morning dew. I think she was trying to support Ramona’s point of their trip being a husband-free zone, but from where I sat, it sounded like a second Siamese cat trying to do the “We are Siamese if you don’t please” parts with her bullying twin, only clocking in a beat behind.
Soon it was time to go to a beach on St. Barth’s that is so fancy, it necessitates that one put body makeup on one’s stomach in order to gain access to its golden sand. So once the girls gussied up their respective midriffs with the perfect balance of tanning pastes and sculpting rouges, it was off to the beach. And while the other ladies settled into beach chairs like normal humans, Ramona complained of having “shpilkes” as she spazzed around her station like a pollen-drunk bee, then, finally waded backwards into the ocean to execute some bizarre “welcome to the sea” gestures with her arms to the ladies on the shore. All the while, Ramona sucked in her perfectly fine stomach, like anybody gives a shit what she looks like in a bikini. Also, I know that commenters have speculated on Ramona’s Sapphic leanings, but I don’t buy her lezzie shtick for a hot second. Sonja’s bi-curious after a thimble of Zin, sure—but Ramona’s interest in her co-star’s bodies lies squarely in her competitive spirit. In Ramona’s mind, she’ll always be the fitness queen in the photos from her magazine days she showed Bethenny. Her giggly stuff with horny Sonja only exists to approximate intimacy—to pretend she can amicably connect with another person. And Ramona has no interest in tapping Carole’s ass—she is just ogling it for fuel.
After the beach, Sonja convinced the ladies to spend an evening in what she swore was her favorite St Barth’s hot spot. And I swear to you, this place looked like Dirty Dick’s Crab Shack in the Outer Banks of North Carolina if it had been bought by a couple of Eurotrash investors looking to fuse the stupidest parts of the burlesque scene with the lowest common denominator element of a really rundown Planet Hollywood. At the risk of lapsing into hyperbole, I will simply say that I have never seen a scuzzier, less appealing, more low-life-ridden shit shack. The “Turtle Time” bar from Scary Island had more panache.
Johnny-Depp-in-Pirates of the Caribbean-looking Tomas, the maître-d of the Shit Shack, escorted the ladies to their table, where they downed tequila shots and then, at one point, were mysteriously whisked away only to be dressed up at a moment’s notice like slutty pirates, then ushered toward the stage by Captain Jack himself. The girls got sloppier and sloppier and shook their tushies underneath all that ridiculous pirate drag—but none of their carrying on made me laugh quite as hard as when Ramona and Sonja were boogie’ing around the mirror hours earlier, getting ready, and Luann DANCED INTO FRAME, like she was Sally Kellerman in Back to School entering Rodney Dangerfield’s kegger with swagger. That was another moment I rewound a few times to enjoy. WHO WILL GIFT ME WITH A GIF OF IT? Please title the file EnterDancing.gif!
But back at the Shit Shack, Luann was gradually losing composure. Which is always fun to see, because the Countess NEVER drops her guard. So with her midriff bare and her inhibitions diminishing as the night pirate’d on (Ha! See what I did tharrrr), Luann disappeared into the crowd with Tomas. And we knew, based on the previews for tonight’s show, that there was an excellent possibility that Captain Jack would be getting her high later that night.
Cut to the next morning! Oh, RHONYC! You’re not Big Brother, are you? Julie Chen doesn’t host you, does she! It? Them. They! My point is that we were not treated to any sneaky, nanny-cam-esque footage of the goings on in Luann’s boudoir later that night. No! It was just wham, bam, let’s get some coffee in Luann! No telling what she and Tomas did in her nook with the terrace.
But in the A.M, The Countess was hung the fuck over, and possibly a little saddle sore—THERE IS NO WAY OF KNOWING DEFINITIVELY. Also, she had an eyepatch stuck to her ass. I KID! It was in her pussy.
Luann woke up with two goals: to spread a story around that she had run into some Italian friends last night that came home with her; and to speak in French whenever she referred to the fact that she actually brought home only Tomas. You see, French is a language that only Luann knows—it’s like gibberish, twinspeak, or gooble gobble. It’s a secret code that nobody else in the world has ever learned. So she can speak it all she likes and no producer will ever be able to translate her confession and consequent cover-up of her late night rendezvous with Tomas to her French friend on the goddamn phone. A perfect plan!
If only she hadn’t been foiled by lousy Heather. Heather, who was already acting sanctimonious with her tea and breakfast berries after bragging about how she came home early the night before to crawl into her “delicious bed”—a phrase somehow more cringe-inducing than her ubiquitous “HOLLA!”—took it upon herself to be extremely concerned about Jacques’s feelings once she put it together that Luann had come home with Captain Sparrow the night before. And the approximate time of her putting those facts together was around 3 AM, when Luann and Tomas came into Heather’s room, stinking of rum and perhaps even a little bit of Yo-Ho-Ho.
After her dumb berries, Heather promptly put her espadrille to the gossip pedal and told Carole, who squealed. Soon Ramona and Sonja were on the scent of Luann and The Late Night Secret Vistor, and, within moments, Ramonja alchemized something confidential into something confrontational.
They did so in the context of Aviva. You see, the ladies had recently learned, via Skype, that Aviva would be joining them on the island after all. The only catch? She’d be bringing Reid. And as Ramona rolled around with bed hair in a towel like a dog with an itch to scratch, lolling over various ways of telling Aviva’s husband that he was unwanted, Luann casually contributed to the conversation a polite example of how to make him feel like he was unwelcome at the guest house. They were basically just brainstorming ways of excluding Reid—it was ADORABLE. And Luann’s two cents provided an easy in for Sonja and Ramona to tease Luann about what they’d heard about the Johnny Depp-looking guy she brought home the night before.
“Oh no, no, no,” Luann cried. Ramonja must have been mistaken, she lied terribly. In fact, Luann lie-splained, she came home late with men AND women—Italians, all of them—and that was why people heard two voices, one male (although, good one, Carole), speaking French. You know how much Italians like speaking French, and morphing from several bodies into two? That was Luann’s story, and she was sticking to it.
While the other girls seemed titillated by the gossip and Lu’s flimsy alibi, only Heather seemed DEEPLY HURT by the possibility that the Countess had maybe cheated on Jacques. Like, a little too concerned. As in, what the hell business is it of hers concerned. Am I being a lout? Am I coming off as anti-fidelity? I am not! I’m just a little confused as to why Heather cared as much as she seemed to about Luann’s extra-curricular vag-tivities. Besides being woken up, which sucks, what business is it of hers? If anything, Drunk Sonja from a few episodes back should be in tears over it—remember how invested she was in Jacques marrying Luann? WHAT OF THEIR NONEXISTENT CHILDREN? My POV, admittedly biased as it is, as Luann makes me laugh more than anyone, is Give the Countess a break. She’s on vacation! I am only sort of joking. However, according to Luann’s Twitter, she admitted to lying about the Italians, but claims nothing happened with her and Tomas back at the house. Fine by me, either way. I like butter AND olive oil, do you catch my drift? Well then, please tell me what I just insinuated. I have a feeling it’s filthy!
Using French as her invisible voice-ink, Luann made a phone call to her French pal Cat, telling her about Tomas and how the other girls mustn’t know he came by. And then Tomas and Cat came over in person for gazpacho parfaits or whatever, and that was awkward, especially since Luann was wearing a necklace made out of arteries at the time. Who can be prepared for a drop-in from Captain Jack and his French gal pal? Precisely no one.
What did you think of the episode? Are you excited for the Aviva/Ramona showdown next week? What are your thoughts about husbands or lovers in the sacred “girls’ vacation” space in general? Did you like Aviva’s Skype-in’ Glasses? How about the George-like insinuation that the poor help give Ramonja another “squirt” of wine? And is it a given by now that Sonja’s daughter will change her name and possibly her identity? Let me know in the comments below and I’ll see you next week for more St. Barth’s fun in the sun!