Gina, Emily and Noella arrive at the sweat lodge in Cabo for a ceremony that none of them seem to understand as the girls’ trip to Mexico continues on this week’s episode of “The Real Housewives of Orange County.”
They change into swimsuits and then each take a turn as their guide to the temazcal ceremony walks in a circle around each of them, dousing them in the smoke of incense made from the copal tree.
“I’m going to clean your soul, and I clean your heart,” their host informs them.
“Maybe do two laps with this one,” offers Gina Kirschenheiter with a nod toward Noella Bergener.
“We’re going to reborn today,” their host tells them, nodding toward the igloo-shaped adobe sweat lodge door. “We’re going into the mother’s belly.”
Emily Simpson, of course, knows that you’re not born, or reborn, out of the mother’s belly, and makes sure everyone else knows the proper anatomical term, too.
“Present yourself to this mother belly and tell it what is it your intention to make here,” the host continues.
Flash forward a few minutes and we’re inside the sweat lodge where the temperature is 102 degrees. Noella is weeping. Emily announces that “sweat, tears and snot” are pouring out of her. Gina, well, she’s still Gina.
“I’m just trying to survive the moment,” she says. “I thought we were going to the spa.”
And then, in one of those rare moments when reality TV gets real, Noella keels over in a faint. The production crew rush in and carry her out of the sweat lodge and into a nearby room, where she sobs.
“I’ve got a bangin’ headache,” she mumbles.
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All three of them are bright red from the heat and moisture, and as Emily describes the experience as surreal, as “every trauma and everything that hurt me just bubbled up and came out,” Gina seems to be crying and laughing at the same time.
“This whole thing is a lot for me,” she blubbers. “My spray tan sweated off. My eyelash is hanging off my face. I’m so sad for all you (ladies).”
Noella is revived and all three agree they should just back to the villa they’re sharing with Heather Dubrow, Shannon Storms Beador, and Jen Armstrong, and eat lunch and lounge by the pool.
Cut to an hour later, Emily and Gina are snoring gently in the twin beds in their casita, out as cold as possible given the high 90s temps outside.
Here’s what else went down this week:
— Shannon notes at dinner that her daughters have yet to meet Noella, but predicts “they’re gonna flippin’ love you.” Noella dubs herself “Auntie Psycho Pants.”
— Gina, who’d been tasked by Heather to keep an eye on Noella on the trip, is increasingly frustrated with the job.
“I’m trying to help Noella because I care about her,” she says in a confessional. “You see a puppy in the street, I’m going to go up to that puppy and go, ‘Oh my God, I feel so bad for you, puppy!’
“And if that puppy turns around and bites you I’m like, ‘(Bleep) you, puppy; figure it out yourself!’”
— While sweat lodgers are off at the ceremony, Heather invites Shannon and Jen to accompany her on a scouting mission for the Cabo home she wants to buy or build.
First, they stop at an oceanfront mansion with 26,000 square feet of air-conditioned rooms that cost maybe $13 million or so to build.
Next, they stop at an acre lot with frontage on both the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Cortez which is listed at $8 million, and would only take another $7 million or so to build the modest 15,000-square-foot getaway Heather envisions.
— Back at the villa, Emily spills the beans to Noella that Heather only invited her on the trip after Gina pleaded with her to do so.
“It was important for Noella to know what Gina did, and what a good person she is,” Emily says in a confessional.
“What the (bleep), Emily?” Gina says to her own camera later.
“Somebody had to do it,” Emily continues.
“What the (bleep bleep bleep)?” Gina says. “What the (BLEEP!)?”
“My name is Emily Simpson and I’m an (awful person),” Emily says, smirking.
— Jen, who has to work out regularly to avoid excruciating pain from the removal of a bone tumor on her leg years earlier, didn’t get to the villa’s gym early enough, and is in tears on the elliptical machine when she calls home.
She just wants a little empathy or validation from her husband Ryne, and Ryne whiffs spectacularly.
“This is what I want you to say,” Jen says after Ryne mumbles it’ll be better tomorrow. “I want you to say, ‘I’m sorry you had to be in pain all day. I wish I was there to protect you.’”
Ryne’s response will probably be a case study in marriage counseling school for years to come.
“I understand, yes,” he answers. “Yes, dear. I wish all that stuff.”
— At the final dinner of the trip, the inevitable blow-up comes when Noella blasts Heather for not wanting her on the trip, and Heather counterattacks that Noella gave Heather’s 17-year-old daughter a card game with wildly explicit adult themes, as Heather describes it.
They argue back and forth until Heather whips out her phone and reads some of the text from the game.
“Insanely inappropriate,” Noella gasps and puts both hands over her mouth. “I am horrified.”
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