Tamra Judge is trying her best to patch things up with her old frenemy Shannon Storms Beador on this week’s episode of “The Real Housewives of Orange County.”
She invited Shannon, Jenn Pedranti, with whom she’s also trying to make peace, and Gina Kirschenheiter, one of the lucky few with whom Tamra has no beef, for an overnight trip to the Temecula wine country.
Tamra’s even gone and bought Shannon a friendship gift, a book titled “How Not to Be a Miserable Cow.”
Oh. Boy.
“You can’t help yourself,” says Tamra’s 19-year-old daughter Sophia, who always seems aware of the true ridiculousness of the show. “It’s a passive-aggressive self-help book.”
“And it’s got big giant letters,” Tamra says, proud of herself for finding a large print book for Shannon.
“This is just dis after dis,” Sophia says, smirking a little at her mother’s obtuseness. “You’re like, ‘Oh, you’re a miserable human and you’re a (lady) who can’t see. Here’s the big old letters for you.’
“You can’t help but be petty.”
Alas, we don’t get to see how Shannon reacts to Tamra’s oh-so-thoughtful gift because things go south before dinner is done that night, even though the day had started off nicely as the Four Housewives of the Apocalypse rode toward Temecula.
Everyone meets at Tamra’s place to ride out together. Tamra, Gina and Jenn all arrive with one very large suitcase for the one-night stay. Shannon shows up with two.
“Shannon, it’s 24 hours!” Tamra says in astonishment.
“One is my pans,” Shannon explains as if it’s the most natural thing in the world to pack half your kitchen cabinets for a night away in a fully furnished vacation home.
Shannon remains in fine form throughout the drive.
“I lost my flipper, Gina, look,” she says, pulling down the side of her mouth to reveal the gap where a prosthetic tooth no longer resides.
“That is so weird!” Gina says.
“How long has it been missing?” Tamra asks.
“Couple of years,” Shannon answers.
“I can’t with Shannon,” Gina later says to the camera. “I don’t know how she’s going to get a date. She doesn’t even have all her teeth!”
At the house, Shannon plops her pans suitcase in the middle of the kitchen floor and begins to empty it. Out come a pair of muffin pans, platters, an immersion blender, a mixer, utensils, an egg white cooker, spices and other ingredients.
If Mary Poppins were on “The Real Housewives of London,” her carpet bag would have trouble keeping up with Shannon’s suitcase.
“Honestly, Shannon Beador is a feral animal,” Gina tells the camera. “This is direct access to what it looks like inside Shannon Beador’s brain, and it is gnarly.”
With the kitchen rearranged, it’s time for a trip to a nearby winery to taste some fancy grape juice and walk among the vines.
“OK, our limousine is here!” Tamra shouts to the others.
“It better not be a motorcycle,” Shannon says apropos of nothing.
In fact, it is not a motorcycle. It’s two motorcycles with two-passenger sidecars attached, and off the roar.
“My nose!” Shannon shouts, her words drifting back to Jenn in the rear seat. “I have snot coming out!”
“If your snot comes back here – ” Jenn begins, and then realizes if it does she probably wants to have her mouth shut.
At the vineyard, they taste wine at lunch and then go for a stroll. Later, at dinner in Temecula, Tamra really does seem to be trying to win Shannon and Jenn over. But it’s the “Real Housewives,” and things go off the rails spectacularly before the plates are cleared.
“I’m telling you I’m sorry; what do you want, blood?” Tamra says in frustration as the episode comes to its end with the rest of the trip’s drama held for the next episode.
Meanwhile, Heather Dubrow has invited Emily Simpson and Gretchen Rossi to a sleepover at her Beverly Hills penthouse, a trip that begins with Emily bringing a bottle of Fireball whiskey in the car that’s driving her and Gretchen north to Heather.
Heather has ordered in a trio of princess beds, the kind with transparent bed curtains that surround you while you toss and turn over the pea beneath your mattress.
We also meet Maya, who is identified on screen as a sleepover consultant, which is perfectly on point for Heather, who, among other thing,s has put together a table of fancy cookies, cakes and candies for later.
Emily and Gretchen arrive and are introduced to Nate, the sleepover butler. I start to wonder how far the sleepover trades go. Is there a sleepover tucker-inner on Heather’s staff? A sleepover bedtime story reader? A sleepover old lady who is whispering, ‘Hush’?
At one point in Temecula, Heather wondered out loud what the Beverly Hills trio was doing at that moment.
“Probably, like, counting money,” Gina says, cementing her claim on Best Lines of the Week.
And she’s not far off either, because when the scene cuts back to Heather, Emily and Gretchen they are marching down Rodeo Drive with Heather going on about her black card and how they might use it.
Suddenly, there’s a paparazzi on the corner, which prompts Emily and Gretchen to joke about Heather calling him, a sore point for Heather, who was deemed to have failed the polygraph test she’d taken a week earlier in response to a question about whether she’d called the paps to snap pics of her in the past.
“I know for a fact you didn’t call the paparazzi,” the Mystery Pap tells the trio. “It was just a random shot.”
“Vindicated, thank you!” Heather crows.
Something seems fishy about this encounter to Emily and Gretchen.
“Did you plant this photographer here?” Gretchen asks.
“I mean, is that a paid actor?” Emily says to the camera.
Heather is taking acting classes along with classes at the Groundlings improv comedy troupe, so … .
They head to dinner when Emily has no qualms about ordering a five-ounce Wagyu A5 steak for $149. Why would she? Heather’s got a black card!
She also reveals why she brought the Fireball, which we really haven’t seen much of yet.
“I brought the Fireball so we could take out the perfectly coiffed Gretchers and bring out the fun, (bleep)-hanging out Gretchers,” she tells the camera.
Finally, if you have the math skills of the average housewife, you may have noticed only seven of our eight housewives have been mentioned here. Alas, Katie Ginella, who took a beating from the others after failing every question on the previous week’s lie-detector tests, was not seen this week.
In fact, no one even mentioned her name.