The Real Housewives of New Jersey Recap: House Lukewarming

This is the season’s best episode yet. Why? Because Teresa Giudice and her husband whose face is the same color as a butcher’s apron were barely in it. But while I didn’t have to see that Encyclopedia Moronica on my screen, she still found a way to let her stupidity seep into every argument throughout the episode. Her hairbrained talking points come mostly from Jackie, a woman I used to like and defend who is now a reason-sucking succubus just floating in midair, the ghost of her reasonableness littering ectoplasm all over Melissa’s new porch.

The episode starts with the end of the Fudas and the Ruelas’s fight, as John and Rachel storm out to their car and a still-silent Luis stews, like raw meat marinating in the juices of his own ridiculousness. The next scenes, though, are a bit of a surprise. We see Teresa and Luis having a barber over for Luis’s son, Nicholas, who clearly has special needs even though we don’t know what they are. At the Fuda homestead, Rachel puts her 1-year-old daughter, Giuliana, in her walker because she’s having a difficult time with her gross motor skills. I think the point the show is trying to make is that these sides have way more in common than they think they do, things that they could possibly bond over if they weren’t so hung up on the petty insults about being a “drug dealer” or whatever the hell they’re fighting about.

The rest of the episode is taken up by Melissa and Joe’s Amalfi Coast–themed housewarming party where guests are greeted by a cardboard cutout of the statue of David with Joe’s face pasted on its head and a lemon pasted on its willy, even though Juvenile Joe draws an even bigger one with a Sharpie. It’s giving Donald Trump fixing the hurricane trajectory. The house looks nice, if tastefully bland, though it comes with Melissa’s glass coffin of an office and a glam room that should be a little bit larger to accommodate the cameras.

Rachel is one of the first guests to arrive, and it seems like she went home from the confrontation with Teresa, got changed, and then showed up to the party later that evening. (When was that scene with her daughter? The Fudas had a busy day.) Rachel tells Melissa that Teresa had a present for them but they left it on the bar. Melissa says she’s glad the Fudas didn’t bring it because it was probably bugged. If I were Melissa, I would have thrown it right in the trash like Teresa did with her tray of sprinkle cookies.

Though Rachel didn’t bring the bottle of Johnny Walker Blue, Teresa gave it to Dolores to deliver and everyone treats it like the cursed tiki totem from The Brady Bunch. No one wants to touch it. Dolores delivers it to Joe and says it’s a nice gesture because that is what their father used to drink. Joe says that their father would be ashamed of how Teresa was treating them. There’s a card with the bottle as well, but Joe throws it in the firepit in the backyard.

NOOOOO! Joe! How could you! We wanted to know what was in the card. We wanted to know what Teresa said so that we could pick it apart and make fun of it. Now we’ll never know. The thing about this gift is that it was always a trap, most likely sprung by Luis because this is totally his M.O. This way they can say, “Well, we sent a gift to his housewarming and they rejected it!” As Melissa says, why are they sending gifts when they don’t even speak? Joe adds that if they really want to extend an olive branch, then come and talk, send a text during the offseason, don’t send a gift through an intermediary on-camera so that you can look classy even though there is no genuine feeling to back it.

Jen Aydin arrives at the party, and before she can even enter the front door, she mutters, “I have valet parking at my party.” Her attendance is as “disingenuine” (as Teresa would say) as that bottle. She’s only there to talk shit about Melissa and get more ammo for the next time she and Teresa go in on her. She has no intention of making amends and is ripping this party before she even gets there.

Luckily, Jen doesn’t have an altercation with the hostess, though she does get confronted by Danielle, who wants to know what is going on with them after Jen hosted Lina at her house for the express purpose of talking shit about Danielle. Jen says that if she agreed with how Danielle had behaved, she would have defended her against Lina. I can see that, but if that’s the case, why invite her over to tell this story? There’s also looking out for your friend by keeping that on the low or talking to her about it and getting the full story. Instead, Jen just lets Lina tell this story with no one to challenge it.

The way Danielle explains the night is that she had a charity event and there was a VIP section just for her, Dolores, Teresa, and Jen so that they could have a bit of separation from the fans. It was crashed by all the friends, family, glam, and other hangers-on who were at the event, including Lina. Danielle says she had security clear it because it was becoming a safety issue. Also, Lina was trying to bring in Laura, Margaret’s ex-best friend who is the one who told Jen that Marge spread rumors about Melissa.

What is even going on with this show anymore? It’s like fucking Game of Thrones with all of these tertiary characters with overcomplicated wigs that I can’t keep track of. How is their story tied to the main plot of the show? Whose side are they working on? Which house are they from? I have no clue anymore, but if this is going to be like GoT then we’re going to need a lot more dragons than just Margaret.

When it really goes crazy, though, is when Jen both insinuates that Danielle didn’t donate all the money to charity and instead paid herself back with some of it, and also says that Danielle could have put “Aydin Plastic Surgery” on her step-and-repeat. Why? Did she ask for this before? Did she make a big, fat donation so that she could be a sponsor and get that treatment? Were their other brands on the step-and-repeat? We know nothing, but for Jen to say that Danielle should have voluntarily just put the logo up there out of gratitude for Jen arriving is an idea so stupid it had to have come from Teresa.

The biggest fight of the night is between Evan Goldschneider’s arms and the straining fabric of his dress shirt. Mmmmmm. Biceps. Wait. Sorry. I got distracted. The biggest fight is actually between Jackie and Marge, but it’s really between Jackie and sanity. When Marge finds out that Jackie said that Rachel and Teresa wouldn’t make up because Marge and Melissa are in her ear, she goes to confront her. Melissa is curious why Jackie got upset with her at the Boujie Brunch when she brought up that Teresa spreading rumors about big-armed Evan cheating caused her to have a relapse with her eating disorder. Melissa says that information is in Jackie’s book and they talked about it on Melissa’s podcast. Jackie says she was mad because the book wasn’t out yet. Wait, so Jackie is upset that Melissa leaked info from her book that wasn’t out yet but was already printed, but she’s not mad at the woman whose lies caused her eating disorder to return? Make it make sense!

Marge stays nice and calm, for a change, while talking to Jackie (which is also a tactic, I know), but Jackie just ends up looking unhinged. She says Marge insinuated Jackie only had a book deal because of her and made jokes about her relationship with her mother. When we see the tape, it seems like Marge did nothing of the sort unless you take the most unkind reading of what she said. Jackie is now interpreting things like Teresa, taking innocuous comments out of context for ammunition. The stupidity goes all the way down, apparently.

Then Jackie says, “You’re mad that I’m friends with Teresa, and too bad. This is a big fucking waste of my time and I’m walking away from you.” Jackie already decided why Marge was mad at her and has no interest in getting her side of the story. This is a waste of time, and it’s because Jackie made up her mind for a story line and to stay on the show, and she doesn’t want to hear any reasonable evidence why she shouldn’t be friends with Teresa.

However, what Marge does next is some dastardly Housewives behavior, and while it is a bit below the belt, I loved every damn second of it. Marge tells Dolores that Jackie was upset that Dolores posted a picture from their charity softball game and tagged everyone but her and Evan, which Dolores says was an accident, but Jackie thinks is intentional. Marge tells Dolo she had to talk Jackie down from that ledge.

Jackie goes over to talk to Dolores, and Dolores says that she heard Jackie was mad about the picture tagging. Jackie admits that she was, but as they’re talking, Marge takes a screenshot of her texts with Jackie and sends them to Dolores. Joe Benigno then gives Dolores a sign from across the room to check her phone. When she does, she sees the text from Jackie calling Dolores a “fucking slob” for not tagging her.

That is low and dirty and stupid, almost as stupid as Jackie saying she called her a “slob” because she means her behavior is juvenile and petty. There are a million ways to say that without calling someone a slob, which just has a totally different connotation. She could have called Dolores an asshole, a jerk, childish, or just gone with petty and juvenile. Instead, she went with slob, and now she’s caught red-handed and trying to walk it back. Jackie says that Marge says even worse things about her, but doesn’t put it in writing. “Then she’s smart,” Dolores says. Dolores knows. Unlike the others, Dolores is wise. She knows the ways of the world. She’s been friends with Teresa long enough to not get mired in her idiotic schemes. Here is Dolores talking to Jackie, trying to school her, trying to educate her on one of the wisest things we’ve ever heard from one of our sagest elders: “Say it, forget it. Write it, regret it.”