‘The Real Housewives of New York City’: Sorry not sorry

The Real Housewives of New York
“Making Up is Hard to Do”
March 27, 2019

OK, so remember how the last episode ended — at Sonja’s magazine party, with The Countess marching over to the bar to talk with Dorinda for the first time in months and a big TO BE CONTINUED screaming at us, implying that something BIG! and DRAMATIC! and MUCH TOO IMPORTANT TO BE GLOSSED OVER SO WE WILL HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL NEXT WEEK TO SEE IT ALL UNFOLD! was going to happen?

Yeah, not so much.

Instead, The Countess comes over, she and Dorinda exchange polite air kisses and compliments on how good the other looks, The Countess tells some story about a missing hair dryer, Dorinda tells The Countess that she misses her, and they agree that they should talk at some later time. That’s it. That’s all that happens.

YEP. DEFINITELY WORTH THE HYPE.

Elsewhere, Sonja declares Barbara “fuckable” but Tinsley “unfuckable;” Ramona finally expresses her condolences to Bethenny — and does so briefly and politely, praise be; and Sonja is sexually assaulted by some strange woman. Wait, I mean, Sonja clearly arranged for some strange woman to come over and shove her tongue down her throat and then leave without a word.

The next day, let’s say, The Countess goes to a soup kitchen to fulfill some community service hours and does a piss poor job of ladling soup before helping herself to the food that is meant for the homeless. A+++ JOB, COUNTESS, VERY GOOD HELPING THE POOR.

At Tinsley’s hotel-apartment bar, our socialite meets her mother for drinks, and her mother arrives wearing shoes designed by Tinsley’s ex-husband’s new wife. Mother proceeds to go on and on about how adorable Tinsley’s ex-husband’s baby is before showing Tinsley the stocking she’s making for Tinsley’s brother-in-law? It’s unclear. What is clear is that Mother is an unrelenting bitch about Tinsley’s love life and how Tinsley needs to lock Scott down or break up with him already and find someone to marry and make those frozen babies with. Mother is exhausting.

As for Sonja, she returns to her townhouse with Dorinda to prepare it for a new renter, finds that a leak in the skylight has damaged some curtains, and just finds herself generally bummed out, dragged down emotionally by her old home. Oh, and Dorinda announces she’s moving to a new apartment in Sutton Place, which, OK.

In my favorite moment of the episode, we tag along with Ramona as she goes on a date arranged by her matchmaking friend Rori, and this guy, he’s a real treat. While he’s no Red Scarf, according to Ramona, he is supposedly “educated, successful and worldly,” and she’s willing to give him a shot. He explains that he was born in Germany, speaks German and French because he lived in Paris for two years, and orders a bottle of wine because he likes the soccer team from the region. So far, not great but not terrible.

However, the red flags begin flying when Ramona begins outlining what she’s looking for in a man:

1. He has to have been married before.

Our dude here explains that he’s never asked anyone to marry him but has almost been married EIGHT TIMES.

2. He doesn’t have to work 8 to 5.

Our Dude explains that he works from 8 to 8 every day.

3. He must be sociable.

Our Dude is very excited about his place out in the woods where he can’t even see his neighbors.

4. He must have strong morals.

Our Dude begins to lecture Ramona about how unnatural it is to be monogamous. When he argues like some dumb college sophomore that other creatures are not monogamous, Ramona points out that humans aren’t like other animals. Our Dude then asks if he can give her his “philosophy” of marriage, and when Ramona says, “NO,” Our Dude says, “I’m going to anyway … ”

… before declaring that while the divorce rate might be 50%, in reality, it’s more like 90% because of all the unhappily married people who stay together for other reasons: kids, money, not wanting to die alone … Ah, yes, and who is a better expert on marriage than a man who has never been married?

So, yeah, the date, it does not go well.

Speaking of not going well, Bethenny arranges a lunch to bring The Countess and Dorinda together, and this Barbara woman is there, too? For some reason? She sure is getting a lot of screentime for a mere “Friend of the Housewives….” Anyway, they meet at some restaurant in Little Italy, so Dorinda decides she will go “gangster.” And she interprets gangster to be a shoulderless Adidas sweatshirt and temporarily-dyed pink hair.

The Countess and Barbara arrive and the begin making small talk about The Countess’ new upstate house which apparently is mid-century and round. Dorinda explains that a round house is designed so that the “devil can’t catch you in a corner.” The Countess counters that her people tell her that a round house has good feng shui and that animals live in round spaces so that predators can’t catch them. Predators, the devil, same difference.

Dorinda then cuts to the chase: the reason they are there is because she wants to tell The Countess that she loves her, that they need to work this out, but that she understands if they can’t be friends right now. The Countess insists that she just wants to make this better, and not uncomfortable. She had moved on from Cartagena … but then the cabaret show happened …

Dorinda interrupts her to remind The Countess that she didn’t invite Fudgie the Whale to the cabaret show, which she found incredibly insulting, to which The Countess points out that heckling her by screaming “JOVANI!” wasn’t exactly polite. And Dorinda, bless her delusional heart, Dorinda insists that she “didn’t heckle the Jovani.”

To be fair, Dorinda wasn’t heckling the Jovani, she was heckling The Countess. So, technically, she’s not wrong.

Bethenny, realizing that this lunch is accomplishing nothing, wonders why she even bothered and comes to realize that one day these two are just going to beat the shit out of one another.

Prognosis: Likely to very likely.

Later, Dorinda has her real estate agent Laurie come over to look at her apartment and give her assessment as to how much she could expect to rent it for. Laurie decides that the apartment — the entirety of which could fit into my living room, and I do not have a huge living room — could ask for $8,000 a month. New York City is an insane place to live. Laurie then calls Dorinda fat zaftig, the end.

Elsewhere, Sonja meets Tinsley and Mother for drinks at a hotel bar. There, Sonja reveals that her daughter has graduated … something … high school? cum laude, before they move on to the discussion they are actually there for: Tinsley’s love life, and how she needs to dump Scott and find someone who will marry her and fertilize her old eggs. Tinsley argues that even though they’ve been together for a year and a half or whatever, really, she and Scott only been dating for a couple of months because of the whole distance thing and that she just needs to give it all a little more time. Mother is skeptical, and Sonja insists that there are enough men out there that Tinsley would have to “beat them off.”

Sonja’s words, not mine.

Finally, Dorinda invites Barbara over to the apartment with the intention of hiring her to do a few touch-ups and prepare the space for being shown on the market. Dorinda is thinking about refacing the kitchen cabinets; Barbara is thinking about ripping out the whole damn kitchen (and if Dorinda really wants to sell it, Barbara is probably not wrong).

After disagreeing about that, Dorinda and Barbara sit down with some champagne and discuss how lunch with The Countess went. Barbara informs Dorinda that The Countess was frankly surprised that Dorinda refused to apologize. Dorinda sighs that The Countess seems awfully stuck on this dumb point, obsessed even, maybe she should talk to someone about it? When Barbara counters that Dorinda is making no effort to fix the situation, Dorinda warns her that she needs to be careful, she’s starting to look to the other women like she’s “drunk the Kool-Aid.”

Barbara asks about some story wherein Dorinda was waving around the lawsuit papers The Count brought against The Countess, and sure enough, we are shown through that Housewife flashback filter that three weeks earlier, at a lunch with Sonja and Tinsley, Dorinda was talking about how at least her ex-husband wasn’t suing her. Sonja tried to defend The Countess, arguing that Dorinda doesn’t know the whole story, at which point Dorinda whipped out her phone and showed her the public filings. But in her conversation here with Barbara, she insists that she didn’t wave any papers around — it was Sonja.

Barbara argues that if Sonja was doing that, Dorinda should have shut the entire conversation down if she wants to be The Countess’ friend again, before quipping that if she’s drinking Kool-Aid, Dorinda is sniffing glue.

Barbara returns to the apology, and Dorinda snaps, half-weeping, half-yelling that SHE WAS THERE FOR THE COUNTESS, SHE TOOK HER TO CHURCH, SHE HAS PRAYER CARDS (?), SHE CAN NOT TAKE ANY MORE OF THIS SHIT AND IF THAT’S WHAT BARBARA CAME HERE TO TALK TO HER ABOUT, SHE CAN JUST GO.

So I guess she won’t be doing the renovation?

The Real Housewives of New York airs on Bravo on Wednesdays at 8/9 p.m.