Ever since they introduced the reboot of RHONY and the concept of RHONY: Legacy, I’ve been jokingly referring to it as RHONY: Glue Factory, as if this is where we take the ladies to squeeze the last drop of usefulness out of them before discarding them forever. I was hoping it wouldn’t be that. I was hoping that our ladies would come in with new fights, new drama, new grievances, and the same old charm that we’ve enjoyed since Juicy Couture was cool the first time around. Sadly, I did not get my wish, and it seems like Glue Factory is exactly where we ended up.
Based entirely on the first episode, we get a lot of the same old hits these ladies have been playing since 2008, and I don’t mean “Money Can’t Buy You Class.†Sonja still has the price tag on her hat, just like she always did with her bathing suits. Ramona wants the best room and finds a technicality — that two of the women will have to share — in order to weasel her way into the primary bedroom, even though there was a luck-based game that made the whole thing fair. Then Ramona can’t remember anyone’s names, especially the staff. Yes, she might recall the hot chef, but she has no recollection of the woman who does her hair. She says the woman’s name is Julienne, “But you pronounce it a French way. Can you say it again? Is it Brenda? Is it Joyce? Is it Gertrude?†No, it’s not Julienne or anything like that; Ramona has it all wrong. She can’t even remember Kristen Taekman’s name or that she hung out with her just last summer in the Hamptons. It’s just all the same.
The episode starts off as this thing should, with Countess Luann de Lesseps (née Crackerjacks) putting on a statement necklace and Sonja Tremont Morgan of the Nood Essentials Boob Tape Morgans saying, “I dress for the girls, and I undress for the boys. How about that?†There is some comfort in familiar things.
Take, for instance, every single thing that Sonja says throughout the entire episode. She pulls out a chicken cutlet from her luggage and is holding it in front of her boobs. “This I put on my boobs so I don’t get wrinkles,†she explains to Ramona and then points to some yellow stains on her white blouse. “This is eggs from breakfast.†In confessional, she says, “You’re talking to someone who is real because I will fart on your leg if I love you.†She asks Ramona if she should wear underwear of if she can go commando. When Ramona says to wear underwear because she just saw her crotch, Sonja says, “I needed to remind you who I am.†Oh, our favorite floozy need not remind us about how delightful she is on television. We never forgot, snatch guard or not.
While I was hoping this trip would be more than just a walk down memory lane, I did love when Kristen insisted that Luann tell them the whole story about “the pirate†from the last time they stayed in this very same villa on St. Barth’s. His name was Tomas, so should we call this story “It’s about Tomas�
There’s not much in the story that we didn’t already know. Luann says she picked him up at the bar while hanging with her friends. Carole Radziwill and Heather Thomson (RIP, RIP) were texting her that they were still awake, so she brought him home to hang out with everyone. She says the drama started when the producer driving her home told the women that Lu was coming home with a dude who was dressed as Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean. Then she tells us that is her only hot-mic moment, and, well, that seems to be true. Maybe I should consult Housewives historian and chronicler Kristen Taekman. She seems to know more about the show than I do, and I wrote a whole damn book about it.
Luann continues to say that she didn’t sleep with the pirate, even though Sonja did. I think Luann is acquitting herself on a technicality here. They probably didn’t P in the V, but there was probably some slap and tickle, as I like to call it, or, as Dorinda says, some “licky dicky.†I’m adding that to the lexicon.
Speaking of Dorinda, the thing that is the same about her, sadly, is the bullying. Just like her last season when she got Tinsley in her jaws and shook her like a bulldog trying to get all the stuffing out of a plush Vanderpump Rosé chew toy. This time she has set her sights on poor Kristen Taekman, Calabasas’s returning champion and the pop of color we didn’t know we needed.
The whole thing seems to stem from the pecking order of Housewifery. At the beginning of the episode, Luann says that they’re going to have to figure out how to get “the newbies†to fit into their OG squad. Sorry, but Kelly Killoren Bensimon was jogging in traffic when Dorinda hadn’t even been cast yet. Kristen might not have been on long, but she started in season six, also before Dorinda was cast. It’s not like they’re new.
But I take her point. Ramona and Luann have been there since the beginning. Sonja joined in season three, and Dorinda had a solid run during seasons seven through 12. They all live in New York and they’re all close, though Sonja only shows up when the cameras are on and the checks are getting cashed. But I think Kelly and Kristen are the cast members we needed to get things going. The rest of the ladies are so used to Dorinda that they don’t even question her bad behavior anymore. Same with Ramona. They all just go, “Oh, that’s Ramona,†when she stands up at lunch and says, “Ding, ding! Lunch is served!†as a message to the house staff that she’s ready to eat. (The staff does not respond kindly.) I don’t agree with Aviva Drescher, our favorite unijambiste, that Ramona is white trash, but she is acting rather classless at that moment.
At lunch, Dorinda brings up that she was put on pause, not fired. When Kristen makes a comment about it, Dorinda says, “You were fired. I was put on pause. So after you were fired and I was put on pause.†This is a semantic distinction that only Dorinda makes so that she can feel better about herself. She was fired. She might have been brought back to RHONY eventually, but we will never know because the show, at least as they know it, never existed. It’s like if you’re on the waiting list for a reservation at a hot restaurant and it goes out of business before you ever get your table. Sure, you’re still technically on the waiting list, but it’s not like you’re ever going to get your seat. Even if Dorinda was paused then, she’s fired now. The only opportunity left to her, at least right now, are these Girls’ Trips.
And, I have to say, I don’t particularly like watching Dorinda on them. After lunch, Kristen is in the pool and is trying to make small talk with Dorinda, the Mouth from the Mountains. “You were going to make a play for me at the table,†Dorinda says. “We’ll let that one pass, but if you wanna play, we can have a lot of fun.†Kristen asks Dorinda why she’s so sensitive about the distinction between being fired and being paused, but Dorinda just keeps railing at her, saying that she wasn’t part of the group and people can’t wait to get to know her after being gone for so long.
Dorinda accuses Kristen of “pulling her tail,†which is another way to say â€poking the bear,†which is my least favorite concept in all of the reality television arts and sciences. Dorinda is saying that she can’t control her emotions and, because of that, no one should try to hold her accountable because, if they do, they’re going to get what they deserve. No, this is not a Kristen problem, this is a Dorinda problem, and if she could address it and get over it she might find herself, much like Lisa Barlow, not having a pause button and being on play all the time.
When Dorinda storms off, Luann tells Kristen that this is something they don’t bring up around Dorinda because she’s so sensitive about it. Luann tells Kristen, “You’ve been gone for eight years, and you have some big cajones coming back.†She does? As Kristen says later, she got the same phone call as everyone else. They asked her to be a part of this; why should she feel bad accepting? Why is that a challenge to the rest of the women? Yes, she was only on two seasons instead of the 13 that Ramona and Luann were on, but she held an apple. You can never take that away from her. And maybe if their friend Jill Zarin didn’t demand so much money, they would have cast her instead of Kristen.
At dinner, as Luann says, we’re getting into real “she’s startin’†territory with Dorinda. Kristen asks if the two of them are good, which I think is a legitimate question, but Dorinda won’t even take the question or Kristen seriously. She asks, “What do you need me to say to make this go away?†When Kristen starts responding, Dorinda starts copying her like an eighth-grader. This is the Dorinda that I hate. She won’t fight fair, she won’t listen to others, she just mocks and teases until they eventually give up. But she still has that spark, our Dorinda. “Eagles don’t fly with pigeons, so get your bread crumbs and talk to me tomorrow,†she tells Kristen. It’s a great line. Already a classic. But, man, what did we have to endure to get it?
She’s essentially calling Kristen a fan, which, okay, sure. But she’s a fan who was on the show. She’s a fan who deserves to be there and has just as much right to be there as Dorinda. Earlier in the episode, Dorinda got upset that Kristen insinuated that she and the others “needed†to be on the show. Kristen isn’t wrong. Sonja was very candid about how she needs the money and misses her regular paycheck. I bet Luann is in a similar boat, or she at least needs to be on TV enough to keep selling cabaret tickets. Kelly needs this to show that she has grown since Scary Island, and hopefully that can stop haunting her much as it haunts us. Dorinda needs to prove to herself and the world that she’s worthy, that she’s employable, that she was never fired. They all need this. Kristen didn’t seem to have much of a problem with obscurity; she’s still married to a hot jerk and lives in America’s toniest suburb. Kristen’s life seems fine to me, and she seems ever better that she is unbothered.
But all this squabbling about the show and who was fired and what they did on the trips is not the show I wanted. I wanted our old girls back in their old habitat, showing us that they’re still as vital as ever. Instead, we’re taking a stroll through the poppies of the past, and it looks like we have all just stepped on Dorinda’s tail.