Watching Jackie on this season of the Real Patterned Carpets of the Brownstone Catering Hall reminds me so much of reading Frank Bidart’s poem “Ellen West,†which is based on the life of a severely anorexic woman at the turn of the last century. It’s compelling, uncomfortable, revealing, and brilliant, and I feel the same way about Jackie’s performance this year. One of my favorite things about these shows is when the façade cracks, and we get to see these women’s real, tortured psychology. Thank Kim and Kyle Richards for screaming in the back of a limo. That happens less and less now that the women on these shows have become savvier, but Jackie is giving a masterclass on how it’s done.
However, the difference between Jackie and the Sisters Richards is that Jackie is doing it intentionally. She’s talking about her eating disorder frankly and openly on the show. I can’t begin to imagine her motivations — to help other women? For the audience to hold her accountable? Because she really is tortured and knows she needs to get better? All of the above? — but the result is something that we haven’t seen before. I actually look forward to her scenes with her psychologist, which is usually something I would fast forward were it not for my duty of care as a Real Housewives chronicler.
The scene with her going to get ice cream with her children is just like something in “Ellen West,†where she’s confronted with whether or not to eat a slice of orange off the floor. She orders cake batter ice cream in a cup and when she sits down, she says, “Oh, there’s pieces of cake in it too.†She tries to put a smile on her face, but you sort of hear it as, “You want me to choke down a vomit soufflé, but you didn’t tell me there would be pieces of turd in it as well.†She tells her kids that it’s so good, and they’re like, “Do you really think that?†because she doesn’t seem genuine.
But she did it! For whatever reason, she ate the ice cream and tried to have a “normal†experience with her children. (Like Jackie, I hate the word “normal.†Not only is it boring, but it’s a standard I never wanted to be held to. Just because something is “normal†doesn’t mean I should do it.) We don’t fully understand her feelings until she sits down with her therapist. She says she thought about the ice cream all day and that normal people would then not eat something because they had the ice cream. Her therapist has to tell her, “Actually, most people would not do that.†Oh, Jackie. You don’t even want to see my food diary. It took me a bag of Mini Eggs and a peach seltzer just to get through writing this recap, and I’m about to have dinner in about 20 minutes.
This just shows how disordered her thinking is and how hard it is for Jackie to give it up. When the therapist asks about her challenge for this week, she offers, “How about taking the kids for pizza?†The panic that strikes Jackie’s face is like lightning hitting the ocean far on the horizon. I wish that were my homework. I wish that my therapist would be like, “You go get some pizza. Enjoy!†Lots of people do, but for Jackie, that’s torture.
I don’t want to make too many jokes about Jackie’s struggle. (Though jokes are what I’m here for. Well, jokes and hating Teresa Giudice.) The thing about an eating disorder is how food is so integral to our lives, both physically and socially. Jackie talks about taking a lot of food at the buffet at Marge Sr’s 75th birthday party, knowing she will not eat any of it. What was really striking, though, was that, probably for the first time, she was jealous of Jennifer. “I’m looking at Jennifer, and she just doesn’t care,†she says in confessional. “She eats what she wants. To me, that is so crazy a concept that people can just do that, and I can’t wait until I can just do that.†Same, Jackie. We can’t wait for you to do that too. And you’re welcome over to my house for pizza and ice cream any time. Yes, both. Maybe even at the same time.
The rest of the episode is standard Housewives fare, if not a little boring. Melissa goes to watch Antonia train at the gym and sits there the whole time in her faux-vintage Pink Floyd T-shirt, talking about her. Even I was like, “Mooooooooommmmmmmmmmm, can’t you go wait in the car.†This is the second year in a row that Melissa has used Antonia for her storyline. Poor Antonia, where Missy G’s original face lives on for another generation. She better be getting quite the allowance for giving her mother some relevance. When Melissa talks to Traci about all this, Traci says, “She’s going through normal teenage issues.†Yeah, exactly. I guess it’s relatable and all for all of you out there who are nurturing the acne-faced rage monsters that are teenage girls, but do we need this on our Housewives?
The other big story is the birthday party Margaret throws for Marge Sr. It is nice to get to know more about her history, coming from Hungary at ten and how her family struggled to make it in America. It is very inspirational, and Margaret’s speech to her mother brought a little tear to my eye. It is all very sweet, though I can’t believe Margaret let them through this party at the Superfund Site where they had RHONJ’s famous Christening Brawl. If anywhere on Earth is the nexus of all evil, it is here. Buffy should move there. It is the real Hellmouth.
Shockingly the tension isn’t about the women getting along because Teresa isn’t invited, and she’s the only one who isn’t on speaking terms with anyone. The drama is about the dudes because it’s the first time that Bill is going to see the guys since he walked out of guy’s night. While they’re getting ready, Jackie asks Evan if he and Bill are all good. “Yeah, we texted. It’s cool,†he says. Then they show the text, and it is just Evan saying, “Hey man, I’m sorry,†and Bill responding with the okay fingers emoji. It must be exhausting to be a straight man.
The same sort of thing happens when they all meet up at the birthday. Joe Gorga is like, “We all good?†And Bill is like, “Yeah,†and then it’s kind of over. Well, it is a bit more complex than that. Joe says that after he and Melissa got thrown out of his house, he should have called and told Joe that even though the girls were fighting, they were cool. Umm, couldn’t Joe have made the same call? His wife was just as responsible for the mess at their house as Jen was. Why is he laying this all at Bill’s feet?
While the guys all bro-hug it out and then do shots of appletini that Frank brought them, I also think Bill missed an opportunity to talk to the boys. He left the boys’ night because Joe and Evan said his wife was a bad person. Just like they’re all like, “We don’t get in fights like the women,†they still need to set boundaries. Bill needs to be like, “Yeah, we’re cool, but don’t say my wife is a bad person. She’s my wife.†This is why Joe got so violent at that Christening. These guys tamp all this stuff down, pretending they’re good, pretending they can all get along while it’s just festering under the surface to come out looking like roid rage another time. At least the ladies can be honest about their feelings.
Teresa isn’t at the party; she is at home going through all of her sausage packers and steel rabbit tchotchkes in her onyx mansion that she is leaving behind for good. Gia and Milania, the two who love the camera the most, accompany her on a tour around the house of moments from the show. Here is Gia’s prom, here is Joe Giudice giving a toast, here is the most iconic moment of all, Nonno boiling a squid on the stove. Each of these events is haunted by the sepia ghost of when we first saw it, a lifetime and several prison sentences ago.
The girls are sad to leave the house because that is where all of their memories with their dad are. That’s where Melian called him an old troll, and Gia and her sisters ran through the echoing halls for the first time, each with various elasticated flowers strapped to their heads. But it’s just a place. It’s just a house. Moving for the first time can be traumatic. They tell you that you can’t take it with you, but they lie. Those moments are transportable. They’re in those pretty heads of theirs, reined in by all of that elastic training. Wherever they go, bam, the memories are there. This is just a place, just a shell. You’ll always have your past, and if at any time you forget it, all the episodes are streaming now on Peacock for $5.99 a month.