I call the Real Housewives all sorts of mean names, from screech banshees to shriek harridans to feces-chucking monkeys, but basically they are all just monsters. They are awful molded flesh, plasticine, and filler wrapped around a dark core. They’re the opposite of a Scooby-Doo villain who looks like an evil sea creature but you tear off it’s head and there is a human underneath. They all (well, most of them at least) look like real people but when you gaze deep into their eyes or other orifices you see that there is just some gross squid mutant below, shucking and jiving its limbs in the blackest abyss. Yes, they’re all monsters, but the biggest monster I have ever seen was Vicki when her daughter announced that she eloped. It’s like she turned into Slimer from Ghostbusters just wobbling through the air and pelting everyone with green glowing globs of her all-consuming narcissism.
Vicki says that Brianna eloping was disrespectful and rude. She says, “You’ve taken every dream away from me. It robbed me…Hello, it’s not about them…I hate to make it about me.” Oh Vicki. You are like the cowpie stain on King Joffrey’s face. That’s what you are: Residual turds. Everything she has to say about Brianna’s marriage is wrong because, well, it is about Brianna and her husband. Their relationship is about them. It has nothing to do with you, Vicki. Yes, you may be disappointed and upset, sure, but you have absolutely no right to carry on like you have been robbed of some fundamental right. Driving your daughter crazy about the flowers at the engagement party isn’t in the constitution. It isn’t even in the covenants of whatever gated community you live in. It’s not even in your Bravo contract. It is some elaborate fantasy that you have cooked up for yourself so that you could find a way to shine through your daughter. Frankly, it’s pretty disgusting.
Particularly because we all love Brianna. She is, I suppose, the only real person who has ever inhabited one of these shows. She’s like an actual, rational human being, which is harder to find than a unicorn giving a ride to a straight Liza Minelli fan on the way to watch the Browns in the Super Bowl (the Browns are a family of football playing squirrels). That is to say that Brianna is unique and amazing and someone who I would actually want to be friends with. I would say that I would watch a reality show all about her, but it would probably just be scenes of her watching Grey’s Anatomy on DVR wearing her comfy sweats and on her third glass of wine, which would be fun but I watched that show for 18 years when it was called “Mom” and it was kind of boring.
This is all to say that the audience, of course, has Brianna’s back in The Great Battle of the Elopement. Oh, speaking of which, I love when Vicki was like “We never really fought,” and then the show brings up all this old black and white footage of years of the two of them squabbling. You can’t hide from the past when it’s so well documented, Vicki. You can’t run, you can’t hide, and you can’t reinvent. You can only be humiliated.
Next: What the hell is Wine By Wives?
Alright, I’m going to skip over all the stupid shit about Gretchen and Slade getting married (seriously, Gretch, if you marry him with all that debt and messiness then your head is emptier than Alexis’ prayers) and get right to the Wine by Wives party. First of all, what is Wine by Wives? It appears to be some sort of alcoholic ponzi scheme. It’s a Pinot Grift-io. I bet Brooks thought it up because, well, he is a flim-flam man. Anyway, Vicki and Tamra invite all their friends over to some penthouse in Irvine, the luxury capital of the state of California’s higher education department, to launch their liquid pyramid scheme. Actually, there weren’t that many people there. It was the Housewives and their attendant husbands (except Tamra got a special dispensation for her son Ryan so that he could leave the house and go to the party and his ankle monitor wouldn’t go off) and Alexis brought an alien. Oh, wait. That’s Jim. He just looks so much like a fat version of the Great Gazoo that I always get confused. There were like three other people there and they were all probably employees of Vicki’s.
Anyway, Michael, Vicki’s other kid who is never on the show at all because he must be boring as blob of Play-D’oh or just hates that his family is trotting it’s life out on the screen, show’s up at the party and everyone is all fancied up and gussy gloried to hell and Michael rolls in wearing jeans. “What up, dawgs?!” he asks, giving everyone deuces and making a face like someone just dropped said deuce. Vicki introduces him to Brooks, her boyfriend who is a criminal of some sort, and tells them to go off together and have a catch and sing a round of “Cat’s in the Cradle.” They go upstairs and Brooks is all, “I really love your mom. She’s so great, and I know I just met her two weeks ago but I have investigated her stock portfolio and I have decided that I will say whatever she wants to please her. Are you OK with that? So, what about your sister? Oh, and I have these time shares in Arizona and the great thing is you don’t have to sell them, you just have to recruit people who are going to pay you to try to sell them. It’s called multi-level marketing. That’s what I do. We can make a fortune.”
Michael, however is all like, “Um, I don’t really want to do this now. I don’t want to meet every man my mom dates. Also, I saw Glengarry Glen Ross and I think that you’re trying to pull a scam on me. What the fuck is wrong with you?” Michael is also a little pissed that Brianna didn’t tell him that she got married and he had to find out on Facebook. I feel your pain, Mike. My brother eloped and he told me by text message. He couldn’t even call? What a jerk! But I got over it pretty quickly, why can’t all of these Housepersonages? What is their damage, Dion?
Anyway, so Vicki calls all 10 people at this big deluxe Amway wine party and says she has a big announcement to make. Her daughter Brianna, that no good asshole, went and got married in Vegas and didn’t even ask her. “Here is a whip, if you will please step up and take turns lashing Mr. and Mrs. Brianna and her Husband!” Brianna comes out and everyone is all excited. Heather says, “I’m shocked!” Alexis says, “Praise Jesus.” Gretchen says, “I think I lost my blue cheese in this wine glass. SLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAADE, get it out!” Tamra says, “You are wearing my dress, you freaking cooze!”
Everyone is very happy but they all say that if their daughters eloped, that they would have a conniption fit. Get over it, people. When your child is 25 years old and makes a decision that makes her happy you just need to get over it and move on with your life. I mean it’s not like Brianna’s husband Ryan is some guy who abandoned his children in Mississippi so that he could go live with a lonely wealthy woman on a reality television show and has no describable profession and has been to prison for not paying child support. No, it’s not like that at all. He’s a nice young man who was in the Marines and served in Iraq and is as quick to laugh and easy-going as Brianna. Anyone would love to have him in the family.
Then Vicki tells everyone that she has a huge surprise for Brianna. “Oh, don’t say you’re engaged,” she mumbles. Vicki shoots a dagger out of her eye says, “No. It’s drunk Uncle Billy!” She says and a sozzled swizzle stick of a man comes sloshing down the stairs holding a bottle of Jack in one hand, his tie undone and his jacket full of boozy sweat. “Heya kiddo. Howth it hangin?” Oh, Drunk Uncle Billy.
After that big surprise, Vicki tells Brianna and Ryan that they have to sit down and talk to Brooks. She doesn’t want to. As she said before, no one knows anything about this guy or what he does or who he is and he just says everything you want to hear in his low twang like he’s Sawyer returned from The Island and aged 20 years. Brianna is right to be cautious. They sit down and Brooks is all, “I love you like a daughter. I love you like my own kids, which means I think you’re really awesome and everything, but I won’t give you a red cent. But you are the HTTP Colon Backslash Blackslash Dubya Dubya Dubya dot Bomb dot Com. And you have success in your genes, because your mom is so successful, so whatever you do, you are genetically disposed to be amazing. Now, enough with the flattery. A friend of mine told me about this bridge that is connected to Manhattan. Now, it seems like a sound investment and he said that he could sell me a few pieces of this bridge and it’s going to make a very lot of money. Would you be interested in loaning me some money for this business opportunity?”
Vicki cuts him off to let Brianna know that their relationships are the same. Oh hell no, Vicki. Brianna is married to a nice, normal, wonderful, loving hunk of a Marine and you are being swindled by Foghorn Leghorn. You’re just letting Colonel Sanders walk right into your henhouse and walk away with all the Chicken (Flavored Product). Brianna is this guy’s partner. You are Brook’s meal ticket. Don’t you see the difference?
After their meeting, Brianna finished off her stemless glass of champagne and got up off the Ikea couch to go. “Brianna, wait,” Vicki said, toppling after her into the hall. And that left Ryan an Brooks sitting alone on the sectional. Ryan was leaning back into the cushions, his arm up on top of them, feeling the void that Brianna just left. He put his hand on his leg close to his crotch. It was a defensive position, and Brooks rocked on his feet a bit as he sat hunched over with his arms on his thighs. He was looking right at Ryan and trying to figure out the thing he would say to him to win him an ally. Maybe he could mention something about the war or his time in the service. He hadn’t even served, but he could make something up, he was good at that. Maybe he should welcome him and let him know that his first mother-in-law didn’t like him either, which is why he sold her savings bonds and bought himself a jet-ski. Maybe he should just get him drunk and tell him stories about when he was a young pussy hound down in Bay St. Louis, taking the young windows of oil men from New Orleans to town and getting gifts out of them slowly, like pearls out of oysters. No, that was too obvious. Like gold from a mine. Nope, again, too on the head. Like those little bits of pudding out of bubble tea, one flavorful burst at a time flying up a fat plastic straw and into his mouth. That’s what he would tell him, his pussy hound days. “You know, Ryan….”
“No.” Ryan responded, not moving or flinching. Definitive. Succinct. “Don’t.”
Follow Brian Moylan on Twitter @BrianJMoylan
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