I don’t get it. I seriously, honestly, incontrovertibly do not understand what Shannon and Gina are fighting about. They’re gathered in an Aspen department store, and they’re about to break into a yell over what? Gina doesn’t think Shannon wants to be her friend, and Shannon thinks that Gina doesn’t want to be her friend. Yes, there are some allusions to Gina’s arrogance and Shannon liking Noella more than Gina. There’s a lot about Shannon’s “core four†(which sounds like a 50-percent-off version of 8-Minute Abs) and how Gina once said she had no friends, but otherwise, what is this mutual fedoraed insanity.
This is just two women who either don’t care to or can’t figure out how to be friends. They both say they want to be friends, so what is keeping them from doing it? Nothing. This is such an odd fight. It’s like two girls on the playground mad because another girl stole their Bop It or something.
But this is it. This is the fight. After a whole 17 episodes where we started off with Nicole, the grifter without a face, we had Noella’s divorce and vagina stack (or pussy pile, as I would call it), we had Ryne and Jen being crazy and wastey together, and we are left with two hungover women letting their emotions get all ajumble while Heather Dubrow overpays for a leather jacket with shoulder pads. The depths we have sunk to as this finale drags itself, amputated at the knees, across the finish line.
Everything about this episode is weird and off-kilter, and I don’t like it one bit. The only redeeming thing is when Gina wakes up with a hangover so bad she believes that it was given to her by demons. The day before, at the mines and on a ghost tour, Gina heard about the Tommyknockers, which is not the name of the lead singer from Mötley Crüe’s fan arm but subterranean demons that are basically like leprechauns but from England instead of Ireland. (That means not only is their food somehow worse, but they are also the worst of all colonizers.)
Gina decides the only way to get over her hangover and her meltdown the night before, where she said the word Tati more than James Charles in all of his apology videos, is to leave an offering for the Tommyknockers. She and Emily go into the kitchen and get the help of a butler, an assistant party planner, a chef, a part-time oyster opener, and some guy who is just hanging around with a can of bear spray to make up a little gift hamper for these gnome-ass motherfuckers that Gina wants to placate. They leave the basket in the mine, and Gina, who just got rid of her demons and had them thrown into Emily’s car idling in front of her house, tells them they can not take residency in her soul. What did they leave? A bottle of Veuve, two Diet Cokes, some chocolate, and some matcha-ginger wellness shots. Yes, that is just what the spirits of dead miners want. Diet Coke. Could Gina put a steak-and-ale pie, two pints of mead, a bath in lukewarm water, and a freshly bathed prostitute in a basket? Then the miners might actually be happy and leave her alone.
As cockamamie as all of this sounds, the only thing more ludicrous is Noella, who is back at the ranch having her chakras deloused by a wellness coach who doubled as the group’s bluegrass band singer the night before. Noella is crazier than a Tommyknocker if she thinks that all of her problems can be cured by a little bit of sage and some essential oils. Wait, has anyone ever met an inessential oil? Canola? Grape seed? Cod liver? Are those essential?
The trip ends with Gina and Shannon’s shopping fight, a lame dinner where the most eventful thing is some fans buying the women shots, and they all crowd onto a sprinter van and a Spirit Airlines flight home so they can get ready for Shannon’s Rack and Roll party where they plan to eat ribs and dress like rock stars.
But first, Emily One-Piece Simpson has to have a reshoot of her wedding photos, and, okay, fine, it does warm the cockles and mussels of my heart. Her husband Shane never really proposed to her, and they got married in Vegas, so they didn’t have any wedding photos. Instead of renewing her vows, which comes with a curse so powerful that even Gina couldn’t ward it off with an offering of 12 cases of Diet Coke, Emily decides to finally get her wedding pictures taken.
It seems like a stupid idea. You can’t approximate the moment. You still won’t have any pictures from the actual ceremony. But in reality, it is a really sweet idea. She puts on an amazing dress with a cape that is also a train, has Shane and the kids all dress up, and takes the amazing pictures she wishes she had on her big day. This is essentially like one of those old western photo booths at the state fair but with thousands of dollars of clothing, loaned jewelry, several stylists, and four very patient children. This is Emily’s fantasy photo shoot, and I am here for it. I already ordered the harnesses, neon-colored jockstraps, and 18 cubic tons of butterscotch pudding I will need for my photo shoot. Sadly, if anyone gifts me three rings at my photo shoot, like Shane did to Emily, you will not want to know where I put them all.
Onto the Rack and Roll party. I am going to go out on a limb and say that this is the dumbest, stupidest, idioticest, boringest, sleepiest, snooziest, inconsequentialist party that has ever been featured on a Real Housewives program. And it even features a song by Richard Marx, who, while great, is no Kandi “No Scrubs†Burruss. My first problem with this party is that some of the ladies did not dress like rock stars. Gina as Gwen Stefani, Noella as Jimi Hendrix, and Emily as some rock-inspired babe are all fine. I don’t know what Shannon is dressed as, but it is giving me rock. Dr. Jen, however, comes as Pamela Anderson, who isn’t even a rock star, she’s just a Tommy Knocker. Her husband comes dressed as Tommy Lee, but you can’t tell because with bad tattoos, a scrawny goatee, and an A-shirt (that’s what we call the garment that used to be linked to domestic violence), he looks more like Eminem.
The biggest problem is Heather Dubrow, who comes as Posh Spice. First of all, you can’t go as Posh unless you have a Becks, and there is no way that Terry Dubrow could dress as him, particularly because he uses this as an opportunity to wear one of his 1,783 leather jackets. He has more cowhide in his closet than Nixon has pills (as my mother would say). Posh Spice is not a rock star. She is a pop singer. Even worse, she is part of a girl group. You don’t go as one Spice Girl. You have to get everyone to go as the Spice Girls, and even then, it is not rock and roll. Maybe I could buy it if she was a Robert Palmer girl. Maybe. But we know that Heather just wanted to stay on theme and wear a pretty dress and couldn’t be bothered.
Nothing happens at this party, not even anything funny. So they’re going around the table, and everyone is getting their little title card at the end of the season, and we’re learning nothing new, and then we get a performance of a song I hope Richard Marx wins an Emmy for because it wasn’t bad even though it sounded like some Tommys were knocking it out of these women with their mine-stained boots. Then that’s it. That’s the episode. We see no reaction. We see no applause. We see nothing, just a weird ending to a weird year that was front-loaded with action and petered out like a bottle rocket that lost its will to live.