The Real Housewives of Orange County was built out of a desire to give an unscripted voice to the women leading lives of quiet desperation all across the country. Twenty years later, those women are still desperate as ever, but there’s nothing quiet about it.
Long the land of disturbing marriages and disastrous fashion, Orange County reunions are best defined by women going to the gutter at glass-shattering octaves while slandering each other’s images. Within the first minute of tonight’s episode, Tamra embodies the spirit of Felicity Huffman to cry and scream, “For so f---ing long, you’ve been coming after me! You’ve been going after my husband, you’ve been going after me, you’ve been going after my kids. I don’t talk about you!”
From there, the ladies launch into another round of brutal in-fighting that’s exceedingly ugly, convoluted, and wonderfully juicy. Joined by the newest Househusband, the Real Housewives have melded the old and new to argue over 15-year old incidents in the form of Naked Wasted, while Chat GPT rears its ugly head into the fray, once more. Should we be surprised that Gretchen, who once said that Chat GPT loves her hairdo, might use AI to craft apologies for racial insensitivities? Eh. Perhaps not.
It’s not really a surprise, then, that nothing will be resolved at this reunion. The Real Housewives of Orange County have enough hate in their heart to burn down any environment, and the only thing that can withstand their fire is this synthetic set.
The main topic of tonight’s episode is what Gretchen did (or didn’t say) the night she had dinner with Jenn, Katie, and their partners a year before returning to the show. That’s the same story that led to Katie’s demise within the group, while Gretchen’s own discrepancies—saying that she went to the hospital in one breath, while denying she ever did in the next—soiled her credibility with most of the audience and a good chunk of her castmates.
It’s best assessed by Emily, who says that the whole story snowballed from years of hyperbolic re-tellings, while assuming the truth is as Gretchen (now) claims: She never went to the hospital. The second Gretchen realized Katie was telling the most dramatic version to Housewives hanger-ons, she popped on her shake-and-go good Christian belle wig to shake off the sins of her past while running right over her newest friend.
Matt Ginella enters the fray all on his own, as Slade and Ryan have declined reunion invites. Whether or not it’s enough to save his wife’s slot depends, as there’s a long history of abrasive husbands ostracizing the wives from their castmates, whether in the form of Jim Bellino, Brooks Ayers, and of course, Slade.
Matt, of “My Spicy Asian” fame, stands by his wife’s story, claiming Gretchen and Slade re-told a story of Tamra drugging her, while Slade made dozens of calls to Matt during the New Orleans trip to get Katie to “hold the line.”
Of course, everyone stands by “their” truth: Gretchen implied, but probably didn’t outright say, the damning things about Tamra; Katie read between the lines and spread the story around, because good gossip is good gossip; and Jenn heard what she wanted to hear (birds chirping in her head).
Where the story gets interesting, though, is the swerve into what else was said that night: “You probably don’t want to bring up a conversation that you had that night at dinner,” Jenn says to Matt, before Gretchen steals the baton: “Oh, I’ll go there.”
“You were the first person that said, ‘The second that I met Eddie, [I knew] he was gay.”
Obviously, this is a major deflection, and sorry to say, it’s a good one. It’s so brazen for Gretchen—of allegedly liking homophobic and transphobic content fame—to dive into these waters, but hey. When your boat’s sinking, you might as well take everyone down with you. That’s what reunions are all about.
After all, the past is the past. Naked Wasted has been re-litigated dozens of times in dozens of ways, and it’s time to lay it to rest. Moving the story forward is imperative, even if Eddie Judge gay allegations are also a decade old, and quite redundant, at this point. It’s not so much about questioning his sexuality, but revealing that everyone at that dinner eagerly engaged in loser behaviors, poking holes in Tamra’s newfound alliance with Katie that’s as flimsy as it is surface-level.
The juiciest development of all comes behind-the-scenes, as Jenn gets a call from Ryan. Apparently, Ryan’s friend who was convicted in the Shotei Ohtani fraud case was on his way to prison when his wife spilled that Katie met with them the night before, unprompted, to dig up dirt on Ryan, while urging the wife to try and get cast on the show.
That, sadly, does not get mentioned on the reunion stage in Part 2, but it’s part of the interesting dichotomy of the Katie Ginella experience. She spends most of her time with the women quietly stewing, making some sassy comments now and again, but rarely diving deep to the extent that would justify the women’s disdain. Yet, we always hear of her behind-the-scenes machinations, ones she often admits to when confronted, and that’s where it gets tricky.
On the outs with just about everyone, Katie has two choices: She can either burn it all down, or grovel her way back into the group. Her performance at this reunion is neither, never quite going scorched Earth, but making little attempt to build a bridge back. This alleged confrontation of Ryan’s shady friend is both insane and juicy, and a better Housewife would’ve brought this woman on camera at some bash mid-season, just to shake things up a little.
When Tamra wanted to go after Brooks and Vicki for the cancer scam, she had a “psychic” lay the groundwork that the whole thing is fraudulent so she could go in for the kill. Katie just doesn’t have those killer instincts. Gretchen actually does, given the eleventh-hour pivot to these allegations against Katie and Matt, but that’s not saying much.
The truth is both of them are sinking either way, and the only musketeer who can save herself is Jenn, sitting in the first chair with the most blissful ignorance known to man. Almost all of Jenn’s conflicts are so simply suburban. Even as she and Tamra duel for the umpteenth time, it doesn’t go anywhere near the gutter. It’s a discussion of “Did you buy a house on my block and try to steal my hair?” and “Did you cheat on your husband twice, or just the once?,” and it’s funny.
One day, Jenn will be equally soiled as the rest of them, but a beauty of the Housewives experience is watching someone get further and further into the gutter in order to survive the toxic wasteland. She’s the kind of Housewife primed for a brutal fall—one she might already have undergone, if you’re more aligned with Katie.
Once upon a time, fans saw Gretchen as the sweet new girl being bullied by the rude ladies of Coto de Caza. Then she cozied up to Slade, ditched Alexis Bellino in a ditch, and spent the next decade lobbing every accusation possible at Tamra. Heather was once viewed as the classy newbie who rises above all the mean girl antics. Shannon, well, she’s ping-ponged between a few images.
The Season 19 reunion may not be a place of resolution, but it proves these women are fighting on even ground, perhaps learning a thing or two from that tactical training course. Each Housewife is ready to soil the other for a place on the cotton candy stage, and that sets the stage perfectly for Part 3.
As we head into the conclusion, Katie has one last chance to save her sordid slot, while Gretchen will try as best she can to prove she doesn’t hold the bigoted views she’s accused of, all ending in the reveal Tamra has colluded with bloggers. The Real Housewives of Orange County is burning to the ground before its 20th season, just how it was always meant to be.
