When Pierre Antoine Lepardi Jourdan lost his New Orleans mansion in a poker game in 1814, he, rather than leave the home he loved, took his own life in a room in a restaurant he haunts to this day.
At least that’s the legend told at Muriel’s New Orleans, where “The Real Housewives of Orange County” arrive for dinner on their first night in the Crescent City.
After eavesdropping on the housewives, though, poor Pierre surely gave up the ghost, haunted by the things he and Joe the waiter overheard as the housewives got down and dirty.
Things start off innocently enough with Jenn Pedranti asking Shannon Storms Beador what she would put on her vision board to create the ideal mate.
“For me, No. 1 is a kind heart,” Shannon replies as Joe, their stone-faced server, clears the dinner plates away.
“Would you date a short guy?” Emily Simpson asks, prompting laughter from the others and a quick flash of her husband, Shane on his tiptoes to kiss the tallest housewife on their wedding day.
“Terry wears lifts,” offers Heather Dubrow, outing husband Terry Dubrow as her short king. “He’s got those shoes with the thing inside.”
Then Shannon explains that the men she met on “Love Island,” a recent Bravo dating show, like spending time with her, but don’t want to be intimate with her.
“I can’t imagine being single,” Katie Ginella says, setting off the kind of conversation that Salt-N-Pepa had in mind when they wrote “Let’s Talk About Sex.”
Off they go talking of techniques, positions and TV sets.
Emily announces that her preferred encounter provides a clear field of vision of the television so she can, well, multitask? She’s asked what she likes to watch during the deed and tells an off-camera producer she likes the reality series “My 600-lb Life.”
“If I could add snacks in there at the same time,” she adds, her voice drifting as she smiles at the thought of sex, snacks and television and maybe even husband Shane.
Also, it’s been a while since I’ve consulted the Kama Sutra, but I don’t remember it having TV sets or cupholders in the diagrams. Maybe there’s an updated edition. (An episode of “Seinfeld” had a storyline in which George tried to have it all: romance, TV and a deli sandwich.)
“You answer the question, Dubrow,” Shannon says.
“This is going to come as a big shock – ” she begins.
“She’s on top!” Gina Kirschenheiter shouts. “She likes to be in control, she’s on top!”
“Thank you,” Heather replies, clearly pleased with herself.
When it’s Tamra’s turn, she provides a demonstration, lying down on the floor of the haunted restaurant, after first placing her napkin on it, with Emily spooning her as they both start to wriggle around.
Joe the inscrutable waiter keeps doing his job.
We can’t see Monsieur Pierre Antoine Lepardi Jourdan – he’s a ghost, duh – but if I had to bet the mansion, I’d wager he drifted down St. Ann Street to Jackson Square and drowned himself in a font of holy water at St. Louis Cathedral.
Elsewhere in this week’s episode:
— The show opens with Gina throwing a housewarming party for the new place she and boyfriend Travis have recently moved into. It devolves quickly into a new chapter in the feud between Jenn and Tamra Judge, who lands in the hot seat for showing Heather a photo of Jenn as proof of Tamra’s allegation that Jenn has remade herself in Tamra’s image.
— Tamra is more fragile this week than usual. There’s been bad news about her BFF and podcast partner, Teddi Mellencamp, formerly of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” who’s been diagnosed with cancer. She bails on the housewarming early in tears over Teddi.
— As mean as Tamra can seem in her fights with other housewives, I have not given up hope for her redemption arc. That’s largely due to the sweetness we continue to see between her and 19-year-old daughter Sophia, who this week almost shyly tells her mom about the number of monthly listeners on Spotify for her original music.
“This song is about a girl who meets a guy online and he ends up being a cannibal,” Sophia says of her newest song, which, c’mon, sounds awesome.
“Do you think you would ever do a song with me?” Tamra asks.
“No, no, no,” Sophia replies, laughing.
“Why?”
“Because you can’t sing.”
“Can’t you put auto-tune on me or something?” Tamra asks.
“You can put lipstick on a pig, but … ,” Sophia replies.