Katie Ginella seems like the nicest of “The Real Housewives of Orange County.” She doesn’t scream at the others. She seldom gets as drunk as many of them do. Her husband Matt seems like a normal guy.
But is it all a sham? The rest of the cast sure think so at the end of the episode that aired Thursday, Aug. 28.
Emily Simpson invited everyone to her home for a celebration of Nowruz, the Persian New Year. It’s sweet, in way, because her mother-in-law is Persian and, until Emily’s father-in-law’s illness this year, had always made a big deal of the Nowruz festivities.
According to Emily, the traditions include breaking eggs all over your front steps to “create a barrier so evil spirits can’t get in.” “Your HOA is gonna get pissed!” Gina Kirschenheiter warns her as she helps Emily egg her front porch.
But Emily also has an ulterior motive for the gathering, she tells Gina. Tucked away in two black-curtained rooms elsewhere in her home are two polygraph examiners with lie-detector machines plugged in and ready to go.
In a season that so far has been bogged down in endless she said/she said arguments, Emily is going to get to the bottom of who’s right and who’s wrong, at least within the limits of the inexact science of polygraphs.
Happy Persian Year 1403! Hope you weren’t lying your butts off in 1402!
The key target for the housewives’ ire this season has been Katie, who allegedly spilled all kinds of tea on most of the others to a “Real Housewives” blogger named Kiki Monique. But Emily, Gina, Gretchen Rossi, Tamra Judge, Jenn Pedranti, and Shannon Storms Beador are all getting examined by the black-clad examiners, too.
Before the reveal, each of them was asked to write down things they wanted to know about their castmates, which then turned up in the polygraph questions. Questions included:
— “Did you call the paparazzi to meet you at Disneyland?” Last season, Katie told everyone that a friend told her Heather did this, which Heather vehemently denied all season long. While hooked to the machine, Heather denied it again.
— “Do you talk badly about Heather Dubrow in front of your children?” Emily’s issue with Katie stems from Katie’s daughter returning from babysitting Emily’s kids last season to report that they said mommy didn’t like Heather. Emily said she did not.
— “Does Travis have big (bleeps)?” Gina, for reasons we’ve tried to forget, told the housewives a season or two ago that her boyfriend Travis had a pair of particularly large (bleeps). Gina broke out laughing and then in a camera confessional wondered how she could be sure. “I’m panicking because I think they’re big, but I haven’t seen that many (bleeps).
The answers to those three were, according to the show, Heather didn’t tell the truth, Emily did tell the truth, and the producers spared us further thoughts of Travis and the fruits of his loom.
The big showdown came when Katie and Gretchen were called in last. On the table: Did Gretchen tell Katie that 17 years ago, Tamra slipped her a mickey? And that she went to the hospital the next day because of it? Or did Katie lie to Gretchen about that happening to Kiki Monique, a well-known “Real Housewives” podcaster.
And the results could not have been worse for Katie or better for Gretchen, as the polygraph examiner said everything Gretchen said was truthful and everything Katie said was not.
Here we should note that Katie, even before the polygraph, was feeling both physically ill – at one point feeling so nauseous she vanished into Emily’s bathroom – and mentally stressed – when Gretchen arrived, she was unusually cold to Katie, which made Katie wonder what had happened. (Unbeknownst to Katie, Gretchen and Gina had met with Kiki Moniique, who said Katie had told Gretchen had told the roofie story at a dinner one night.)
And, we should further note, one of Gretchen’s answers that the lie detector said was truthful was contradicted by Gretchen on camera on a trip to New Orleans just a week or two earlier.
“Did you go to the hospital after ‘Naked Wasted’?” the examiner asked Gretchen, using the name the housewives have given to the night in question. Gretchen said no, but when the examiner ruled that truthful both Tamra and Shannon shot each other looks. They’d both been in the car with Gretchen in New Orleans when she said she had gone to the hospital the next day.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Shannon said in a confessional.
“Some liars, if practiced, can pass,” Tamra said, seemingly reading from an online article on the accuracy of polygraphs. “Well, there you go. She’s a known liar.”
Neither Shannon nor Tamra felt the need to share that with the others, who quickly turned on Katie, with Emily ultimately ordering her out of her house.
Outside the house, a tearful Katie told the producers she had not lied before getting into a car and heading home.
“No one is going to believe me,” she said. “But I can lay my head at night knowing I told the truth.”
But can she come back from this? Of that, she’s less sure.
“This might be the last time anyone sees me with this group of women,” Katie said in a confessional, and with that, the “To be continued …” text filled the black screen.