Sometimes I feel like I’m running a new publication called Teresa Is an Idiot Weekly because every week, I have to get on this here internet webpage and tell you all that she is dumber than not being able to make ice cubes because you lost the recipe. The crazy thing is that I think her being so dumb used to be good for the show. It made for some fun arguments and a bit of comedy. However, as she became more and more the alpha of the group, less worried that they could do this here program without her, it became a detriment. Now I only enjoy watching this when she is not around to drag us all lower than her hair.
This is on perfect display during the second half of the fight between her and Margaret at the ropes course, which they can’t even finish because Teresa is having such a temper tantrum. We briefly go over why the fight started, with Jen coming out and saying that after Jackie and Teresa’s fight at the beginning of last season, Teresa called her and asked, “Who do we know in Tenafly?†Jennifer called up Serena the Mystical and Unseen, and that is the digging that she has been accused of and took the fall for when it was all at Teresa’s instigation.
Because this raises the specter of Teresa talking shit about Jackie and Jackie using an analogy about how Gia does drugs, Teresa has to relitigate everything that happened last year. “If she didn’t want to hurt me, shouldn’t she have said it was an analogy?†Teresa asks. No, Teresa. That is not how language works. Maybe for her, because she can’t grasp simple sentences and has to explain, “That was a joke. Ha. Ha.†No one else does that, and all of the women say that you should know where there is an analogy. But Teresa does not, and since this is her stage, we have to engage in verbal, linguistic, and logical gymnastics just to keep her simple train on the monorail.
Her other problem is that she just can’t understand that Margaret and Traci bringing up the allegations against Luis is not the same as them making those allegations. Teresa says that Margaret says that Luis is abusive. “No,†Margaret tells her. “All of the exes say that.†That is the ultimate read, but it’s as over Teresa’s head as the ropes course instructor who decided to eat his bologna sandwich up in the treetops, far out of the splash zone from this fight.
Teresa thinks that these women are trying to burst her “love bubble†when they’re not the ones finding these things. Either the women are coming forward, or reporters are digging this up and then publicizing it. The women are just asking about these things coming up in the press, things that Teresa should be concerned about. It’s like a dog is shitting on the carpet, and Margaret is asking Teresa, “Hey, what about this pile of shit?†And Teresa accuses Margaret of taking a dump in her foyer.
Teresa seems to want to have her love bubble but doesn’t want to deal with the consequences of being a public figure and trying to have a love life. Yeah, I get it. It’s hard to put it all out there for our amusement. But she could also, I don’t know, try to find a boyfriend who doesn’t set off as many alarms as a California wildfire. If he didn’t have disgruntled exes whom he possibly abused, shady business dealings, and insane videos proposing on a beach to find, then no one would be able to bring it up and talk about it. Maybe the problem isn’t the women or the press, but, um, Luis. That’s the problem with the love bubble. In this instance, I think it deserves to be popped.
Teresa then confesses that she didn’t even want to be there but then leaves everyone clothes from her new workout line so that they’ll wear them at the next event so that she can make even more money. She even has the audacity to text Marge and Traci, the eight minutes you wait for another life on Candy Crush, to make sure they give her free spon-con at their next event even though she was so rude to them even the poison oak in that New Jersey forest was like, “Bitch, you toxic.â€
I want to give Jackie another big fat shout-out for continuing to show her struggle with anorexia on television, which is so real that it is fascinating but maybe too real that it makes me very uncomfortable. Usually, I hate when people have their therapists on because how much work can they be doing if they’re on camera, but her meeting with her new therapist, Ilene, literally left me in tears. I don’t know if I was tired or just put my DivaCup in my booty hole wrong (that’s where it goes, right?), but I shed actual tears watching RHONJ. I don’t want Jackie to only go on four-day vacations because she can’t control her meals. I don’t want her to ask her husband if it’s okay that she gain some weight. And, for God’s sake, I don’t want her not to eat ice cream when she goes out with her kids.
OM to the G, imagine if your therapy homework for the week was to go get ice cream? I know this is terrifying for Jackie, but something most of us are trying to do less frequently, she has to do for the first time. How do you even start? Do you have to try every flavor? Usually if you ask for more than one sample at Salt and Straw, I want to give you the electric chair, but how does Jackie even know what she likes? I want an Instagram Live of this trip to Cold Stone Creamery (which is gross but feels very Jerz).
The big final scene for the episode is a softball game that Dolores organized between “our group of friends†and the team of doctors at Maimonedes Health Center to raise money for breast cancer. We often see the women holding fundraisers, but this one is rare because it shows them explicitly being Housewives. The draw for this event is for fans to come to see them play live in Coney Island, and you can tell it is full of Bravo fans because I haven’t seen this many women in that stadium outside of the Mermaid Parade.
Other than a tiff in the locker room about which woman will wear Teresa’s leggings so that she can sell more “for charity,†this is just a cute event where everyone seems to get along and have a good time. At the end, Jennifer even says that it feels nice to belong for a change now that she hasn’t pissed off everyone in the group. See, Jen. Not being an asshole all the time sure has its benefits.
This is a great ending to the episode and a great refresher in a season that has been pretty backbiting and dividing the cast into teams. Here they all are laughing at Jennifer falling on her face trying to run to first base in Louboutin sneakers. Everyone curses Jackie, who played softball in high school, for missing an easy pop fly. They all celebrate when Luis throws out a batter at first. Say what you will about him, but that man has a good arm. It is so fun to laugh with the ladies and their husbands, whether it’s Joe Gorga showing off his guns in his modified Jersey or Tiki Barber saving the day and winning the game with a diving catch in the seventh. As the klieg lights over the field flickered on, zapping millions of tiny insects and turning their charred corpses into bits of smoke, the summer evening faded into so much stale beer and so little dew settling on the infield. Everyone hops in their cars and returns home, having done a good deed and played a good game. The stars rest easy in the sky that night and the globe slopes away towards its poles, except at Teresa’s, where the world is still flat, and the sun not only revolves around the earth but around Teresa herself.