Vicky Gunvalson, You Suck. Also, Fake Work+Fake Weddings+Fake Boobs = Fake Entertainment

11Apr11

Ah, the first ladies of Bravo, the series that launched the franchise… the faux ladies of Orange County.  I miss Jo De La Rosa!! And yet, we begin with Grandma Gunvalson.  Did you guys know that Vicky “works?”  We see a montage of her family members (except Michael, who has the honored distinction of being both work and blood ‘family’—I’ll let you guess which ranks higher in Vicky-town) complaining that she is never home and she is always at work.  If I married this woman or if she was my mother, and she wanted to be gone all of the time … “working” (aka buying golf shirts with the logo “Coto Insurance” on them)   I would encourage this habit.  I would never want this woman around.  Brianna and Don, as I have long suspected, appear to be decent people, way better than me, so the idea of Mama Martyr sitting in her strip mall office with her fake plants all week to pay for the fake boulders and waterfalls around the pool I would be lounging around (think vintage Michael) all day, does not appeal to them.  They, for reasons I will never understand, want to go on a boat ride with this woman… a boat where you can’t walk away… a boat so small you have to listen to her talk… so they do what anyone would do in that situation. They drink a lot.

While she is talking about why hobbies and interests, like fishing or listening when other people talk, are stupid, Vicky’s whole family gets too drunk (does she watch herself on this show? Has she seen herself slur her way through her high school reunion and hit on every.single.man.that.is.not.don in the cities of Seattle, Chicago, and Cabo?) for her taste.  She makes some inane comment about how a boat with the title “Victoria” needs to be hers, because her name is on it.  It’s a good thing the world doesn’t run on this logic, because if it did I would have to name my next kid “Coto Insurance” and repossess her bougetto (thank you, Kandi) office. Don (as usual) rightly makes some inaudible comment in response to Vicky’s stupid, and she gets ANGRY.  She declares her work family her true family and explains that she is so much happier at work because people there respect her (cue scene where she gives acne scarred kid $20 for cutting up bagels for their meeting and then scene where she actually SPANKS her employee… I may have to set up Coto Employment Law on the other side of the highway).

Vicky sets the stage for her divorce in this episode because Don took her and her biological children on a boat ride, treats her daughter like his own, and had the audacity to come interrupt minesweeper or solitaire or whatever the hell it is that she does at that “office” to pick up his beloved “family” dog.  After yelling at her family about how much she loves her job… she tells the camera people she has no choice but to “work” all of the time because she is trapped by a mortgage… Hmmmm, if you love your job so much… why would you care?   ENOUGH! Vicky is BORING!!! She has believed since Season 1 that she is too hot, ambitious, and successful (wrong on every count) for a “simple,” “uncomplicated” (read- not wealthy at this point in time) man like, Don, and now she is getting ready to dump him.   I hope the world of available men that are interested in self-obsessed, “workaholic,” women over fifty, with THE WORST WARDROBE and MANNERS EVER gives Grandma Gunvs everything she deservesJ

Next, Tamara and her new gay boyfriend travel to Espana!  1) He is a “very successful business man.”  I am not the only person who wants this explained. 2) I give him credit for speaking Spanish.  I liked how he did not make a huge deal of this, Guidice-style, and actually tried to plan a nice and comfortable trip for his old-lady beard. This brings us to 3) He is gay. Was anyone else not surprised he did not notice a pool surrounded by topless European women sunning themselves?  I wasn’t.  Did anyone else notice that Tamara pressed the 37 year old man about his own desires for his own biological children, and then acted SHOCKED by his passionate “yeah, maybe? I guess so.” She told the cameras “I need more children like I need a hole in the head” and I think children all around the world raised their sippy cups in agreement.

In another absurd yet boring storyline, Peggy (is that even her name? I can’t remember she’s so boring, I thought I would start calling her Deshaun Snow-white, but that takes too long to say for the amount of time she’s on camera) is getting new fake boobs! I LOVED that she said something like “I need this as a treatment for my post-partum depression, so I can, you know, feel good about myself.”  Another real cause taking a real hit by one of these harpies getting behind it.  We are treated to the intimate moment where Peggitha’s husband goes into the operating room to adjust the plastic being placed inside his wife’s body soooo iis jus how he likes iiit.  When she wakes up from her “surgery,” she is presented with a fake velvet rose (I thought that would have been clever, so of course that wasn’t the point) which cased two giant diamond (or cubic zirconium?) earrings.  Not for the two children she gave birth to… for the two new “babies,” as Mama Alexis called them, she had implanted on her chest. I hope they (both sets of overpriced purchases) looked good at the impound lot when the Bently got re-poed!

Alexis was almost not here this week, (Bravo and Jim share joint custody, so I assume she was with him) but she was here long enough to cast moral aspersions on her cast mates for their ZANY MACE JOKE! (I thought there had to at least be something approaching humor for it to be considered a “joke”- but I guess these crazy women, like Camille with her manners book, call “Bringing Passively Aggressively Rude Shit To My Friends’ Parties” jokes).  She tries to tell delusiono-Gretchen that the mace was like her “voo-doo hat” (she meant the evil eye hat, a Middle Eastern symbol having nothing to do with voo-doo – for everyone who was confused).   She showed up to allegedly go for a walk with Gretchen wearing black underpants and a toddler’s tee-shirt (if toddlers are lame enough to shop at Bebe).  That was it. Alexis. Oh and she brought Peggitha food… classic anorexic behavior… and she plugged the plastic surgeon she works for…. Then Jim got out of the car and started yelling at Bravo that it was his weekend…. HIS WEEKEND… and we didn’t see any more of her.

Last and least, we have the (not so) great Gretchen wedding storyline!  She goes above and beyond, for the first time since we met her, to “do something nice” for someone besides herself.  And by “do something nice” I mean ‘surprise’ her very creepy parents with a fake re-wedding in a desperately transparent move to keep her story about “whether or not marriage is the answer to ‘Gretchen’” alive (it is on life support Gretchen… it is so far from a spin-off series of your own you should be calling that questionable priest back to bless it ).  Weddings weddings weddings— flowers, dresses, churches, cars, and scary priests plus Slade, her dad and her mom, (the entire population of people who think Gretchen getting married is interesting), giving us some deep introspection on marriage: “we have had laughter and tears… but by the joy in our smiles you can tell it has been good” (WHEN DID MOMMY GRETCHEN HAVE TIME TO WRITE NEW SURPRISE VOWS?) Sigmund Slade offers us the insightful opinion that Gretchen is acting out her own wedding fantasy by planning her parents’ anniversary party, and Gretchen- I-Want-My-Own-Show-So-I-Don’t-Actually-Have-To-Work-Just-Like-Bethenny-Frankel denies it and returns us full-circle to her pile of Slade about “leases.”  All, I can hope is that next week is as good as that preview makes it seem… the previews… I want so much to believe, but I’ve been burned so many times…

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