When Tamra Judge announced she was throwing a Spring Fling party and that it would involve all six of “The Real Housewives of Orange County” decorating their own cakes, well, you had to expect at least one of those gluten-free butter cream beauties would end up in someone’s face.
Alas, ’twas not to be! Instead, the soiree ended in tears for Tamra and the saddest-looking cakes this side of MacArthur Park on a rainy day in L.A.
This week flowed directly from the previous week’s episode in which Tamra had discovered Gretchen Rossi and her fiancé Slade Smiley had spread a rumor that Tamra slept with a singer from a ’90s boy band in 2017 while married.
Tamra denied it but she and the other housewives are still talking about that and the furious argument it sparked between Tamra and Gretchen.
“You know, like Gretchen and Tamra were ripping each others faces off, but like I was so excited that this is about [bleeped band name],” Gina Kirschenheiter tells Emily Simpson while shopping for something pink for Tamra’s party. “This is your millennial girl’s moment.”
Gina shows Emily a photo of her at the unnamed band’s concert in 2021.
“Did you sleep with [bleeped singer’s name]?” Emily asks.
“Unfortunately, no!” Gina replies.
Emily is first to arrive for the party, and for inexplicable reasons she decides to tell Tamra that while the sleepover on which Gretchen spilled her spicey tea, both Emily and Heather Dubrow and declared Tamra the housewife they trust the least with personal information.
Tamra, who to be fair to Emily has weaponized her friends’ secrets in the past, is still rightly upset to hear this news. She storms upstairs in tears, which is fine, because it is her party and she can cry if she wants to.
Gina, who arrives next, catches up quickly: “I feel like when you’re storming off in your own house it’s not a good start,” she says just before Tamra comes down the stairs to resume her hostess role.
“I have to tell you, personally, I kind of think it’s cool you you slept with [bleeped singer’s name], ” Gina tells Tamra. “I kind of hope you did.”
“I didn’t,” Tamra replies. “But, by the way, I could have.”
Tamra isn’t just offering cakes to decorate, she’s got receipts, too, in her scorched earth campaign against Gretchen, and anyone who might be on her side. It turns out [bleeped singer’s name] had received a social media friend request from Jenn Pedranti the day after Tamra and Gretchen had their big blow up, and that’s shady as heck in Tamra’s Big Book of Real Housewives Etiquette.
After Heather Dubrow and Shannon Storms Beador arrive, the gang’s all there. Tamra announces that she’s decided to meet with Katie Ginella, who was excommunicated from the housewives’ congregation for alleged lies and rumor-mongering.
The others are aghast that that Tamra would consort with Katie, whom they probably wish they could make wear a scarlet R.H. on her clothing when in public. But in her wrath against Gretchen the scales have fallen from Tamra’s eyes, and now she thinks Katie might not have been lying when she said Gretchen had alleged that Tamra has slipped Gretchen a mickey that sent her to the hospital years earlier.
“She’s going to tell me everything,” Tamra says ominously. Emily is the maddest of the Housewives Katie Haters sorority, and after a bit of shouting back and forth Tamra ditches the crowd on her patio and heads to the kitchen.
“I’m going to bake cakes,” Tamra tells Heather. “This will be the last time I ever film after what you did to me.”
“Me? What did I do?” Heather replies, to which Tamra replies something along the lines of, ‘Oh you know what you did.”
Heather replies that she heard Tamra was trashing her renewed interest in acting, and specifically that she’s taking comedy acting and improv classes at the Groundlings in Los Angeles.
Tamra throws Shannon, Jenn and Gina under the tiny little clown car filled with an unbelievable number of housewives, saying that all four of them talked about Heather’s so-called comedy career and how funny that was. Heather grabs Gina and starts to lecture her about how she’s a very funny person.
“Who’s telling her she’s funny?” Gina says to the camera. “The sales clerks’ at Bergdorf’s?”
Heather accuses Gina of being a bad friend for not knowing “I was on sitcoms for years.” [After 36 episodes of “That’s Life” between 2000 and 2004, Heather’s IMDB page gets thin as she started her family.]
After Heather explains that it’s very hard to think about going back into acting and scary to take Groundlings’ classes with 25-year-olds, she and Gina hug it.
“Heather’s very funny,” Gina says in another confessional that proves she’s consistently funnier than Heather. “I was wrong. She’s my funny friend. Just don’t make me take a lie detector test, OK?”
The cakes get decorated to varying degrees of success. Jenn’s is probably the prettiest. Emily’s is a mess. Tamra gets reminded of her hurt feelings over Emily and Heather not trusting her. The tears start flowing again.
“I’m dealing with the most difficult thing in my life right now,” she sobs in reference to her BFF Teddi Mellencamp, formerly on “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” who is facing a serious cancer diagnosis.
“You’re not helping,” Tamra says as she turns to ascend the stairs again. “Have a great season. I’m done. I’m absolutely done. I hope you’re happy with yourselves.”
Tamra “quit” the show earlier this season on a trip to New Orleans. What are the odds that this time she means it?
The trailer for next week’s episode rolls and who do we see? You get three guesses and if two of them aren’t Tamra and Katie you haven’t been paying attention.