Last week, before actually important news saturated the airways (I’m speaking, of course, of the atrocities aimed at innocent civilians in Paris that shocked everybody and Charlie Sheen’s tragic medical diagnosis that shocked nobody), Bravo updates were appearing in the press constantly. For a few days there it was impossible to go online and not see that two new Housewife shows are heading our way like an Earth-shattering comet and that Brooks, the smarmiest man ever to walk the streets of the OC, admitted to doctoring the documents he waved in front of cameras on his I Have Cancer press tour in a misguided effort to prove (through falsified medical records) that he indeed has been stricken with a deadly disease. But before anyone can say anything, let’s just all go ahead and accept that fine, Brooks might have fabricated those documents, but he’s totally not lying about anything else and he obviously has a disease (I think it must be the disease that causes his unceasing smirk that I’d love to kick off his face with a stiletto) and if you believe anything else, you’re just an assh*le. Either that or you’ve got yourself some working synapses.
The thought of two new Bravo shows appearing on my television brought on a strange combination of excitement and terror and I think it’s because I’m starting to be aware of the lengths the participants of these shows are willing to go. In fact, I sat back and contemplated some of the craziest moments we’ve already been privy to and they include, but are obviously not limited to, the following:
o Kim Richards drunkenly proclaimed sobriety before being arrested – for public intoxication.
o The husband of one of the Housewives committed suicide and, before he was even embalmed, his wife wrote a book about the abuse he’d allegedly leveled her way before, during, and after production.
o A woman wearing a red sari crashed a White House dinner.
o An electronic-cigarette-puffing psychic sneered that she wouldn’t help someone locate an abducted child.
o A self-proclaimed MILF suggested that her son get a fellow Housewife “naked drunk” and then looked the other way while the two almost banged in a bathroom during a dinner party.
o A lawsuit was served over comments one Housewife made about the exact scent of another Housewife’s vagina.
o The Miami women made it through meals with Elsa, a woman whose plastic surgery makes her look just like the monster in Goodnight, Mommy, without desperately texting Dr. Terry Dubrow for help.
o A husband of a New York Housewife was exposed as an Ashley Madison client.
o A Housewife wrote a pilot called Life Twirls On inspired by her own life because, after all, she twirls and she’s nothing if not a star!
o One Housewife was hauled off to prison – I like to think of her now as “Theresa Incarcerated” so I can simultaneously visualize a woman born without a forehead and pay homage to the late Amy Winehouse – where she undoubtedly misses her family, her privacy, and her leopard-printed apparel.
o A violence-prone Housewife ended up on Broadway while another was magically turned into a magician’s assistant.
o A woman threw a party for her football player boyfriend of two whole months that culminated in her presenting him with a trophy for no good reason at all.
o Jill Zarin.
Just thinking about all of those moments, it’s clear that the newest Housewives are going to need to ratchet up the crazy and so are all the other cast members of Bravo shows if they want to make a dent in the already mangled Lucite coating that covers this network and its “stars” like a cheap condom. The reality waters, already crowded, are just becoming ever more populated. Shows about being below a deck or on top of a mountain or serving a platter of food to someone in a restaurant have to make their mark somehow. Since tables have already been flipped and on-camera evictions have already transpired, I think the Vanderpump Rules bunch is going to have to collectively commit to having no moral fibers whatsoever in order to even get talked about this season. And if their brainstorming session on how to be controversial ends in tears because thinking is hard, might I suggest that they all form a cult where every new recruit must be indoctrinated by sleeping with Jax and they all worship nightly beside a bonfire where one of the tees from Kristen’s awesomely profitable new line serves as kindling?
Since it’s really hard to select a guru from this group, I’m going to just sit on that idea for a while and focus instead on what our Pumpers are bringing this week. As I haven’t successfully blocked out last week’s coming attractions completely, I vaguely remember that this episode will explore Scheana’s husband’s drug problem and the fact that Lala the Fun Bitch takes sponsored trips, though unless they’re sponsored by the Taliban, I can’t imagine that anyone will actually care.