On The Real Housewives of New Jersey, the subtext is now text. All of the subliminal symbolism is now laid as bare as Teresa’s abdomen in a Sizzle Tans commercial. Dolores, the woman from Paterson who plays Switzerland and is dating an Irishman, is the only person capable of getting the women together for a little trip to the Berserkshires so that they can spend the weekend in a house together airing out their grievances. Festivus came early this year! She finally finds the perfect space, one with enough bedrooms and a guesthouse where Teresa and Jen Aydin can stay, because they are so incredibly wrong about everything that their ignorance needs to be housed under a separate roof. Just as they’re about to go away, the house burns down. “Down to the studs,†as Dolores says.
That’s it. You don’t need an English degree; you don’t even need half a brain to figure out what that means — because even Teresa, whose brain is powered by an abacus missing its beads, knows what it is. “It’s an om!†she shouts. “It’s an om.†Then Danielle has to step in and tell her it’s an omen, and Teresa is like, “That’s what I said: It’s an om, man!†Now I guess Dolores will never get her “gumbaya†moment. Oh, you think she’s mispronouncing? Not for Jersey, she’s not. Just as the words have morphed into foccach and mozzarell so has kumbaya changed to gumbaya for all the residents of the Garden State. (Also, why didn’t Dolores call up Dorinda Medley and borrow her house? If there is anyone who is gonna get this bunch straightened out, it’s going to be the Lady of Blue Stone Manor.)
While the show now has the subtlety of Danielle’s daughter standing in the kitchen shouting the word boner, that doesn’t mean there isn’t still obfuscation, unanswered questions. In fact, there may be too many unanswered questions, and the action might be too deep into the cloud of all these women’s machinations to actually make sense — or for us to care.
The endgame of the episode starts when Margaret and Jen Fessler have lunch with the Bee Girl from the Blind Melon video. Jenf says that Teresa has invited her “side†over to her house to talk to her lawyer, James Leonard, a man who makes Rudy Giuliani’s hair dye running down his face look classy. Teresa wants them to hear the truth about Margaret “from the horse’s mouth.†The problem is James Leonard is not the horse. In fact, he has nothing to do with the case. We aren’t hearing it from the horse’s mouth; we’re hearing it from Teresa’s mouthpiece.
When Margaret finds out about this, she immediately calls Dolores and Jennifer right there from lunch. I have never been in such a predicament, and I have no idea what Miss Manners would recommend in such an event, but it has to be rude to make FaceTimes to others while someone is sitting there casually sipping on a chocolate milkshake and being totally ignored. The Tre Huggers and the ungenerous will think this is Margaret scrambling because she is about to get caught. That could be true, but I think we also have to take Margaret’s declaration at face value. She says it’s totally fucked up that Teresa would throw an event just so everyone could sit around and talk shit about her. I know that the women on all these shows talk more shit than fills all the porta-potties at Burning Man, but never that I can remember has there been an event for the express purpose of shit-talking. Marge is right: If my friends went to a We Hate Dame Brian Moylan Party, they would be my friends no longer.
Before Teresa’s big event, we get feuding guys’ nights at competing venues. Joe Gorga has John Fuda, Joe Benigno, and Frank Catania over for steaks, poker, and shots right out of the bone. Luis has his father, also Luis; his son, also Luis; Paulia Catania (not his real name), and Bill Aydin over for a measly salad. Nate Cabral and Evan Goldschneider were too damn smart to pick a side and went to the gym together and then lingered a little too long in the steam room (in my imagination).
Here at the Real Housewives Institute, we are firmly either Team Melissa or Team They All Suck, but you have to admit that Joe Gorga throws a much better guys’ night. Even with John Fuda having an allergic reaction to something — probably the synthetic fibers in the pajamas he wore over as a dig at Luis — even with Joe G. peeing in front of everyone during a medical emergency, even with the cops chowing down on steaks, it’s still a lot more fun than whatever was happening at Luis’s.
That’s the biggest difference between Joe and Luis. No matter what you think of him, that is who Joe is: He’s drinking too much, he’s toxic masculinity, he’s ball-busting — but that’s him. That’s his actual self. Luis is a guy who is trying to convince people of something that is not really him. He and his son are both wearing matching “Transcend†T-shirts on which the A is a keyhole, but they never explain what they are. They are either merch or they are from some kind of bogus male-empowerment retreat that no one wants to Google because it will ruin your Instagram targeted ads for the rest of your life.
Luis has the guys come over and then takes them to his “man cave,†a phrase so cringey that Bill Aydin’s testicles retreated all the way up to his Adam’s apple. Then he shows them his professional podcasting equipment, because if there’s one thing Luis is trying to do, it’s get rich selling shitty supplements on a podcast like he’s Joe Rogan with worse hair and a sunburn. Then he has them all film “devotionals†to their partners, talking platitudes about how much they love them. It all seems so fake, so phony. Just like Teresa’s stunt with the lawyer, it feels put on for the camera. Luis seems as though he’s always trying to sell a version of his life — showing off his pizza oven with Teresa and all the girls on the box — that plasters over all the bad parts. Luis is like an infomercial salesman selling a product that doesn’t work and people won’t ever use, except the product he’s selling is himself.
Finally, everyone arrives at Teresa’s to sit down with her lawyer and get the big reveal. James Leonard sits Gia, Dolores, Jackie, Danielle, and Jen Aydin down and says he wants to fill them in on what Teresa “has been going through.†No, that’s not what happens here. “Going through†connotes suffering from events beyond your control — a death, an illness, an accidental injury. Teresa and Luis are not experiencing anything that isn’t a result of their own actions. James says there is someone in Luis’s life he can’t talk about because of gag orders who has been making his life difficult from before he even met Teresa. It seems as if Luis and the ex were suing each other quite a bit back and forth. It sounds messy.
James Leonard, Esq., says that in 2021, the ex started talking to Margaret and that Marge was subpoenaed to testify about her involvement with the ex and she refused. Then Teresa preps everyone for a revelation that will “make your head spin.†James tells us that because Luis can’t talk about the ex and the ex can’t talk about Luis, Marge was imparting info for the ex and getting it on the show. The one example she points back to is the video that emerged of Luis in which he looks like a crazy cultist at one of his men’s retreats. As she tells all the women, instead of their jaws dropping to the floor, they all respond with the NeNe Leakes “Okay†GIF.
It’s not the smoking gun that Teresa thinks it is. As Dolores points out, Teresa has been saying this for years, even though Margaret has always denied it. The problem is that we don’t know how much or how often Marge talked to Luis’s ex or what information she received. As far as I can tell, Teresa and Jen got more information out of talking to John Fuda’s contentious ex than we’ve ever heard from Margaret about Luis. If I remember correctly, the video showed up on Reddit and Marge wanted Luis to talk about it to set it straight. That doesn’t mean she told everyone about its existence; she just pointed out something the internet already found, because fans of the show are sleuths who like to dig this shit up. And every negative thing we’ve learned about Luis — the video, the angry exes, the business lawsuits — we learned because it’s publicly available information. It’s not as though Marge is out here saying that Luis has pimples on his ass or something only an ex would know.
There are a few scenarios here, none of which I’m mad about. Marge could have never talked to the ex, and Luis’s attorney subpoenaed her because paranoid Luis and Teresa made him. Marge could have talked to this woman once just to hear her out because she’s curious and then never did anything with the info. That’s no worse than what Jen Aydin and Teresa did when they cozied up to Marge’s ex–best friend, Laura, and used info from her against both Marge and Melissa. Even if Margaret was in constant contact with the ex, getting updates about Luis, that is like what Teresa and Jen did with John Fuda’s ex. Sure, Margaret denying she talked to the woman, if she really did, is shady, but this is how these women play the game. These are the tools that they use against one another. If Teresa is upset at how Marge acts, maybe she shouldn’t be employing the exact same tactics. This is a game of mutually assured destruction, and the only people who benefit are us.
These tactics are what differentiate Jerz from the rest of the Housewives. It’s all about ex–best friends, ex-lovers. It’s about lawsuits and gag orders. It’s about warmed-over rumors from people we’ve never met who definitely have axes to grind. It’s about bringing someone to a party just so they can offer testimony about how horrible someone on the other side is. It’s about questions of information and authenticity that we, as viewers, can’t judge because we don’t know where they’re coming from; we don’t understand the complexities of the context; we haven’t read all the text of the lawsuits. It’s down and dirty — in fact, dare I say, it’s a little grubby, and I don’t think I want to go that far into the muck. I want to fight about Larsa Pippen telling everyone Guerdy Abraira has cancer on Miami. I want to fight about whether Kyle Richards is keeping her lesbian relationship secret on Beverly Hills. I want to fight about whether Jenn Pedranti can pay her bills on Orange County. I don’t want to fight about whether Marge was deposed in a restraining-order lawsuit brought by Luis’s ex who can’t be trusted, as told by Teresa’s lawyer, who also can’t be trusted, for a case that the judge dismissed because everyone had the absolute worst of intentions going into it. This is the road to neither clarity nor enlightenment.
As we’re way down there in the muck, below even Ursula the Sea Witch’s worm farm of lost souls, Teresa’s doorbell rings. It is a funeral flower arrangement with a card that reads, “Dear Teresa and James. Sorry for the loss of your dignity. Love love love. Marge.†I don’t need to tell you how I feel about this because Danielle offers my reaction perfectly: “This is the most gangster move I have ever seen in the existence of my life.†Yes, exactly. This is Housewives. This is petty bullshit. This is stunts made for the camera that I can appreciate because I have seen every part of it; I know everyone’s motivations, and I appreciate an excellent prank. This is everything the show has needed, and if this is what Marge is bringing, then I don’t give a shit who she’s been talking to, even if it is the dark lord Satan himself. But we know Margaret isn’t talking to Satan, because she and Teresa haven’t been in the same room all season long.