Noella Bergener arrived at the reunion for “The Real Housewives of Orange County” in fuchsia. Jen Armstrong wore chartreuse. Heather DuBrow was in lavender.
They, along with Emily Simpson, Gina Kirschenheiter and Shannon Storms Beador, looked like nothing more than a half-dozen dyed eggs in an Easter basket. Which I guess made Bravo’s Andy Cohen, there to interview them about the 16th season of the show, the Easter bunny in their midst.
So what did we learn in the first of the two-part reunion on Wednesday?
There was more to Noella’s relationship situation than we saw during the season. Heather is still kinda mad at Shannon for tattling tales early in the season. Gina and Emily are still the most delightful BFFs on the show.
As for Jen Armstrong, well, she barely made a peep, which is totally on-brand for her.
No, seriously, Andy asked Jen at the start of the show what’s been going on in her life, to which she replied she’s selling her Newport Beach house and is looking for a place in Laguna Beach.
Jen’s relationship with husband Ryne got rocky during the season, so naturally, Andy asked if he’d be joining her there. “Time will tell,” Jen replied, and that’s the last we heard from her with most of the hour to go.
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No worries, though, because Noella was there to field questions about her love life, including her new guy Bobby Schubenski.
After enduring some questions about the ending of her marriage, Noella brightened noticeably when Andy asked her about her new beau Bobby, who is the millionaire owner of a clothing line.
Bobby also comes vetted for reality TV approval, having appeared in the past on E!’s “Total Divas” when he was dating and engaged to WWE wrestler Rosa Mendes, with whom he has a child.
How well are things going with Beau Bobby? Within weeks of knowing each other, he bought Noella a company, she said. An adult toy marketplace company, she added, because of course that’s what the former mistress of a sex dungeon would own.
“It was my Christmas present,” she said. “What can I say, I’m good.”
Other highlights of the first half of the reunion show:
• Remember when Heather Dubrow threw a $36,000 dinner party that unraveled in spectacular fashion before the fancy sushi got served? We learned that the sushi bill was $30,000, but that it didn’t all go to waste. Noella and Jen and a few others stuck around after the fireworks to slurp it down and take doggie bags of leftover sushi home.
• The season-long argument between Heather and Shannon got a lot of airtime. To recap, Shannon told Emily and Gina that Heather’s friend Nicole once filed a lawsuit against Heather’s plastic surgeon hubby Terry. When they told Heather about it, she exploded at Shannon, who tried to deflect all the blame onto the BFFs.
“You know what you did? You pulled the pin out of a grenade and handed it to Gina and me,” Emily told Shannon.
• Heather revealed the Housewives Code, or at least the part of it that deals with topics that must remain off-limits, in her side of the argument with Shannon on the reunion show.
• “You broke the code, Shannon,” Heather told her. “No careers, no kids. This isn’t a little side hustle. I’m not making trucker hats. This is our bread and butter. You want to bring up some lawsuit that could have been potentially damaging to my husband’s career? Are you out of your mind?”
• Gina Quote of the Night: “You did too many ding-dong things this year and now you’re having to pay the paper,” she told Shannon, as the senior member of the cast took one more round of heat from her castmates.
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