“The Real Housewives of Orange County” are spending the day at a self-defense studio. Why? Despite their skills at verbal sparring, it seems there’s room for improvement when it comes to hand-to-hand combat.
That’s clear from the moment the housewives start to arrive. Gretchen Rossi, who is hosting this outing, is dressed in a pretty good facsimile of a Lara Croft costume, which doesn’t suggest she’s taking it all that seriously.
The fun begins as the other housewives arrive, unaware that the studio has decided to stage a role-playing scenario to test their readiness. That it gives the show footage of them freaking out a little doesn’t hurt either.
Gina Kirschenheiter and Tamra Judge arrive first. As their SUV driver slows to a stop and muscular, tattooed man approaches their window, asking for change in a threatening manner, and then insulting them.
“That is not funny!” Gina says, her voice shaking. “You’re a scary gentleman!”
Meanwhile, Tamra doesn’t waste time on talk; she literally crawls over Gina to get further from the open window that the man, who is secretly an employee of the self-defense business, is standing next to.
“She was like, ‘Take her first!’” Gina says later. “Every Tamra for herself.”
Shannon Storms Beador and Jenn Pedranti roll up next into the same scenario.
“Give me your (bleepin’) phone,” the fake bad guy snarls.
“What are you doing?” Shannon asks in a remarkably calm voice.
“Are you prepared to die over that phone?” the bad guy replies.
“Is this part of the thing?” Shannon asks, cool as the proverbial cucumber.
Inside the studio, they all spar with trainers, learning to protect their heads with their arms clasped in front of them, their elbows pointing out. Shannon tries to ram the trainers with elbows because, yeah, Shannon does those kinds of things.
Gina, meanwhile, decides there’s no point in any of it.
“I’ve never taken a self-defense class before because I pretty much know that I will die,” she says to the camera. “What are you going to do, really, if a big man comes at you? ‘Wait, wait, sir, let me do my move’? No, you’re (bleeping) dead.”
Heather Dubrow decides she’s got enough money to not need the classes.
“I don’t really see myself being a hand-to-hand combat girl,” she says. “I think my money would be better spent on a panic room.”
In the first of two classes with fake guns that don’t fire real bullets, Tamra impresses Jenn and Emily with her target-shooting skills.
“I don’t know why any of them would doubt I’m good at it,” she tells the camera. “I’m a sniper with my words, so target shooting? It’s a breeze.”
After Emily Simpson fires her fake bullets at the paper targets, she drops a bombshell in Tamra’s lap.
The previous week, Emily was at a sleepover at Heather’s house with Gretchen, when Gretchen, loosened up by shots of Fireball whiskey, revealed that Tamra once recorded a song, badly, according to Gretchen, with an unnamed boy band star that Gretchen claims Tamra got frisky with.
Tamra is unperturbed when Emily tells her about the song, admitting it wasn’t good. But she’s perturbed when Emily adds on the allegation about her makeout session, which Gretchen’s fiancé Slade claims to have on tape.
“Wow, I’ve got nothing to hide, so I don’t really care,” Tamra tells the others. “It just proves my point, and the reason why I haven’t wanted to be around her for 12 years.”
Now, all of the housewives come back together, the group with Tamra and the one with Gretchen, for a handgun-shooting competition. The goal is to knock down your digital targets with a digital gun – essentially in a first-person shooter video game – in the least amount of time.
Tamra Judge steps up to the line and, like Judge Dredd with hair extensions, knocks down two dozen or so targets in 27 seconds, seemingly without missing a shot.
“Tamra is very good at locating her target and hitting it,” Emily Simpson tells the camera, smirking at her little joke about Tamra’s takedown skills in arguments with the others.
“Tamra being the sharpest shooter; I could have predicted that,” Heather Dubrow adds in a similar vein.
They should have also predicted what comes next: Tamra, having thought about it for a few minutes, forgets all about self-defense and goes on the offense against Gretchen at lunch.
“What is your problem?” she demands of Gretchen, who looks worried as she tells Tamra she doesn’t have a problem.
“Well, obviously you do have a problem because I heard what went down,” Tamra replies.
Emily, who started the whole thing by blabbing about the sleepover gossip, now tries to calm things down by saying it started with a silly story about Tamra recording a song that sounded like “a drowned rat,” according to Gretchen.
“Then it turned into I was having sex with (bleep),” Tamra yells at Gretchen, who looks like she wishes she could be raptured and escape the wrath of Tamra.
“And I was having an affair, and you hear me moaning in the background,” Tamra continues.
“That’s not what I said; that’s on Slade,” Gretchen says, desperate now.
“Oh, of course, Slade said something stupid,” Tamra replies. “That is the (bleep) that you’ve been doing to me for 12 (bleeping) years, and I have had it.”
Her back to the wall, Gretchen fights back.
“Oh, you don’t want me to talk because it’s going to be ugly,” she shouts at Tamra.
Now it goes entirely off the rails with Tamra and Gretchen shouting at each other about what they’ll reveal about the other before Tamra raises both middle fingers at Gretchen and storms out of the room.