This was the week “The Real Housewives of Orange County” turned into “The Real Middle Schoolers of Orange County Go On a Field Trip to Aspen.”
Seriously, nearly the entire episode revolved around the kind of hurt feelings that most of us learn to get over by the start of high school.
And it had started out so promisingly, by which I mean, the housewives, after disembarking Heather Dubrow‘s private jet, were shuttled to their mansion.
And there they were served IVs and oxygen to help them acclimate to the altitude, and champagne, well, just for fun.
You know, normal people stuff.
But first, a mansion tour, led by the two concierges – conciergi? – that came with the house. First, here is the indoor swimming pool.
“Now that’s what I call a water feature!” exclaims Gina Kirschenheiter, carefree once more after last week’s exorcism.
Now, the bowling alley, built into a mineshaft that was left in the mountain when the mansion was built, according to Concierge No. 1. The tour moves on, but Gina, like a good Long Island girl, grabs a ball and rolls a quick strike.
Oh, look, here’s the master bedroom!
“I mean, my dad did just die, so it’s not like I’m trying to pull rank or anything like that on it,” Noella Bergener says.
Oh, but it is just like that, Noella, and your nemesis Heather, is not going to let this pass unremarked upon.
“What does anyone say to that?” Heather asks the camera. “I mean are we going to compare tragedies to see who gets the best room? My dad died, which bedroom do I get?”
Gina and Emily Simpson decide to share a bedroom, and a bed, because that’s just how they roll, and are gleeful when they realize they scored the only room on the same floor as the kitchen.
“So many snacks!” Gina giggles.
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We reach the second master bedroom and this time, Noella tries a different tack – she stays up later than anyone else, so she’ll be less bothersome if she has this out-of-the-way room.
Heather gives up and takes a room in the basement, not missing the opportunity to take a jab at Noella, by pointing out that the mistress of a sex dungeon in her Orange County home would have been right at home in this windowless room.
Also: Heather never gives up, as we will discover later after the housewives get to drinking at the fancy Aspen restaurant where Matt Damon is on the menu. Like, literally, there’s a cocktail named after him.
Emily decides they should play a game called Tell Me Something About You I Don’t Know. Heather offers up the fact that she has ugly feet, which Emily rejects as already a known fact. Tough crowd!
Gina, though, knows how to play more games than bowling. She tells the story about the time she was on a date, or maybe just a hangout. They stopped to pick up a third friend, and when Gina tried to move to the backseat, try as she might she could not pull the front seat forward to slip into the back seat, as one does in a two-door car.
Then her date told her: Um, Gina, this is a four-door.
If this isn’t a perfectly Gina-esque story, it’s about as close as you can get.
Jen Armstrong, though, wins the game, when she blurts out, “I was engaged seven times.”
“SHUT UP,” Heather says, which is the correct response. And then: “Did you get seven rings?”
Jen did in fact get seven rings, some of which she gave back, some of which she still has.
“Seven times,” Heather says to the camera. “Maybe this was just a jewelry haul.”
But then, like the arrival of a plate of deer and parsnip bark, an actual appetizer at this Aspen joint, things take a turn.
Heather starts parsnip-snipping about the call Shannon made from her dinner party weeks earlier to Heather and Gina on their trip to New York City.
Heather is still miffed, she tells Shannon, that the call was not to see how Heather’s live podcast show had gone but to try to show Heather and Gina that she, Emily, Jen, and Noella were having more fun back in Orange County.
Noella, who had been doing just fine until then, decides to stand up for Shannon.
“I find a lot in Shannon that I relate to,” she says. “She’s got a big, juicy, yummy heart.”
Noella, having lowered her deflector shields, is now taking proton blasts from Heather’s defensive cannons. Heather, you see, is still simmering on high over something that Noella says she saw Heather do, which Heather says never happened, and that Noella then reveals she didn’t see but someone told her.
There are unmet demands for an apology before Heather storms off.
Back at the house after all that, Emily and Gina are like a Greek chorus recounting the evening’s moments.
“She’s (upset),” Gina says, noting that Emily kinda stirred it all up.
“If there wasn’t so much (stuff), I wouldn’t have anything to stir,” Emily admits to the camera.
The Aspen trip continues next week, and in the preview we see six housewives go for an archery lesson … and we hope that no one gets a target taped to their back. Stay tuned….
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