As soon as the pandemic ended, this season of O Real facial shields from Dr. Fauci Memorial Boulevard. We no longer have to worry about COVID. The vaccine is here, the hospitals are empty, everyone in a mask worked all the time, and everything went back to normal. Haha. I tricked you! Oh, wasn’t it a funny joke?
Yes, the coronavirus is still with us, as well as the 900 rolls of toilet paper that Shannon Beador accumulated when the world collapsed in March. Housewives, after this week, unfortunately will not be. (Well, except for RHOD and RHOA and also Southern Charm and then Summer house in a few weeks, and …) I have to say, I’m happy that this season is coming to an end, and this final episode just highlighted how strange, fuzzy and perplexing the season ended up being.
It all started with the dramatic irony of women working on their petty disputes knowing that in just a few weeks, the fact that Shannon would call Ginny’s house sad and depressing would no longer matter when they were all trapped in their homes. In fact, that meant that the sadness and depression of Ginny’s house mattered even more, because I would rather be stuck in a rented mansion with a basement nightclub than in a two-bedroom duplex with six kids, but you know what I want tell. So we started to deal with COVID from all this and relive our fears of those early days through the Housewives. It was great now.
Then, in the final stretch, we tried to hold on to any trace of normality that we could find. The women tried to take a trip, but he was lame and affected and not everyone could go because two of them had COVID. Then they tried to go out with each other and go back to the uplifting meanness of meddling in the arts and sciences of television, but it just wasn’t the same. It was not enough.
Just like that, this season has come to an end and I haven’t been able to gather many emotions for that. While watching Kandi’s daughter, Riley leave for college in RHOA just this week i was a mess crying. But I couldn’t muster the same emotions for Shannon’s daughter, Sophie. Yes, we had the same retrospective montage – complete with a special appearance by your band LOCK, Ladies of Rock – but it did not reach the same, as the children say. Maybe it’s because we haven’t shared so many years with Sophie, we haven’t seen her complete journey.
Or maybe I’m sick of Shannon Beador. I applaud the editors for providing us with a dozen different squares with Shannon talking about her different anxieties about her daughter going to college, but even Shannon’s anxieties irritate me. That’s because everything about Shannon is about herself. Even worrying about her daughters is a way of reflecting the world back to her. It is a way for her to distort her daughter’s experience and make her totally over herself. At Sophie’s farewell dinner, Shannon toasts her and says, “I can’t wait to watch outside and see what you can get.” Waiting on the sidelines? Please. Shannon will referee every game that Sophie plays. She will also be the coach, the goalkeeper, the defender and the defender of the right. (Is that how sports work?) Shannon will never let her daughters just do what they want, she’ll be there micromanaging them like Nurse Ratched handing out medications.
Shannon’s big plot in this episode was her confrontation with Gina. She is upset that Ginny was talking about her relationship with John, but didn’t pick up the phone to call her. I loved Gina’s line, “All relationships with Shannon are one-sided, and now she is accusing me of not doing that side well.” Ginny and Emily are also annoyed that Shannon calls everyone drunk talking shit about John, a three-legged labradoodle who just wants to itch his belly, and then when they call her in the morning, Shannon just pretends it’s the same fairy tale ever.
Shannon offers a good defense for this, saying that her marriage was so bad that when she found happiness with John she thought it was magical and didn’t want to spoil it with fights. But Emily and Gina know what it takes to stay in a relationship (and when to give up) and Emily has been with Shane, a subreddit about niche RPGs, for over a decade, so she really knows that all relationships come with fights. Now, knowing all this, I hope she is not so angry with Ginny.
This fight, and honestly all the arguments in this episode, is like trying to socialize after the block: we all remember how to do it, but everything seems strange and affected. All the fights were over phone calls or text messages that we didn’t see and their few responses. The discussions were about who was calling whom and who was calling back. If someone accused the other of not staying at Zoom long enough, I would do a PCR test on my TV and lock it in a closet for 14 days, regardless of the results.
So Elizabeth sent Braunwyn a long text message about how proud she was of her sobriety, but she got mad because Braunwyn just replied “Thank you”, but then apparently Emily called Braunwyn and called her a liar and said she was using your kids to have sympathy or something. I do not know. I didn’t hear the conversation. I only heard about it in the 17th hand, as if it were a story about Ferris Bueller falling dead in a 31 Flavors. (I spell with U now. I live in England.)
All of this comes up at the big party on the beach that should be the final party of the season, but all the discussions around the table don’t seem to be based on real events because they are not. It’s not about interactions that women have, it’s about impressions – from their phone calls, from their texts, from their social networks. These are not things of iconic moments, they are things of petty disputes that we already have with our friends. If I wanted, I could stay at home. OH WAIT, I have to stay at home because everything is closed. Nevermind.
The only really interesting interaction was between Braunwyn and Kelly Dodd, who found himself to be a surprisingly skilled ping pong player. It all starts with all the women accusing Braunwyn of being fake and they having no idea what’s going on with her. Luckily for us, assistant district attorney Emily Simpson was interrogating the district attorney and went straight to the heart of the matter. “Are you in love with Sean?” she asks Braunwyn.
“I love him.”
“Are you in love with Shari?”
“I love her. She doesn’t sleep in my bed. We’re not going to have sex, if that’s what you’re asking.” Yes, that’s what we’re asking for. That’s what we want to know. Are you a lesbian or not? In the end from the episode, she says yes, and we learn that she has a much younger lesbian that I chased on Instagram and is a dead character for Ruby Rose and I’m incredibly jealous because she’s hot. We also found out on the final title card from Braunwyn that she no longer talks to Shari. Accccccuuuuueeeeee Me? What happened there? We need more of this story. Shari was jealous? Is she now Sean’s girlfriend? I’m dying to know all about it and if anyone has any information, please send me a smoke signal.
Women are asking Braunwyn to define what is happening to her now, and she says she doesn’t even know and is trying to find out, which is fair. Fortunately, Emily has more questions and gets somewhere good. Braunwyn says that she and Sean are working on their marriage and lists the things he needs to do to maintain it. However, she doesn’t list the things she has to do for him and says she doesn’t want Shari to move yet because she “needs her now”. Ugh, this is just awful. I know the closet fucks you, but Braunwyn is using her sobriety as a club to do what she wants.
Emily asks Braunwyn if this is selfish and she says, “I need to be selfish now”. This is not something that a person who is not single and childless should say. If you want to be selfish, focus on your career and sleep around without being in a relationship, do so, as long as you are sincere about your intentions and don’t hurt anyone. However, if you decide to have a relationship or have children, you can never be selfish again. There are other people to consider and, no matter what your circumstances, they need to be considered. There is a way for Braunwyn to sober up without sacrificing her husband’s needs and happiness. Sorry, there is. Maybe she just doesn’t want to see it. She also says that she is in no hurry to find out. But do you know who it is? Sean! He’s walking around with all those immunity necklaces without having sex while his lesbian wife presses him to stop sending emails all day so he can pay for the house she lives in and the tuition for her to go back to school. Poor Sean.
When the episode ends with Kelly and Braunwyn yelling about whether or not she has to live in conservative Newport Beach instead of the liberal Mecca Laguna Beach (also one of my favorite shows, because I’m basically Madonna with a fake accent now and spelling it all out with We), I just wanted this to be much more and much less. I was wondering if Elizabeth and Jimmy were finally having sex or not, and not only that, if sex is good and better, since they’ve been waiting for two months. I was wondering what Shannon’s problems are with John, not just that they’re having problems. I wanted someone else to yell at Braunwyn for being completely irrational and excusing everything about his recovery. I was wondering why Kelly didn’t invite any of the other women to her wedding. (I’m assuming both security concerns and because everyone hates her a little bit.) I wanted everything. I wanted everything, which is how I feel from my couch, watching TV for another day, another hour, more housewives, more forgetfulness, because we hope that our normal will return, but we know that you are swimming deeper in the ocean, like a lake of dolphins, leaving this coast dotted with sun forever.