Anyone else still recovering from the two back-to-back Real Housewives episodes last night? Bravo provided us quite the anthropological spectrum as we moved from the gaudy materialism of Orange County to the somewhat more refined but no less catty drama of the Hamptons. Watching the two back to back, some glaring difference came to the fore. First, the Real Housewives of New York City is a shockingly different beast. Whereas the OC ladies exist in their own tacky vacuum, there really is a sense with the New Yorkers that they do operate in some sort of greater social context. They attend parties, they concern themselves with etiquette, and they communicate through Cindy Adams. That’s why their garish behavior is all the more entertaining: it clashes mightily with the behavior one would expect from their socioeconomic circles. And that’s half the fun.
Coming into season two, all the women seemed more or less the same. Alex managed to spiff up her house a little (not to mention her notoriously stringy hair). Jill continued to cluck around like the Mother Hen that she is. LuAnn still engages in a haughty laugh (with an accompanying hand on the shoulder) to smooth over any awkward moments or off-color remarks. Bethenny still talks a mile a minute with every word being just as juicy as the next. And Ramona… well, she’s still Ramona. Every time she spins onto the screen I laugh. And yes, she literally spins onto the screen. Like every other housewife in the franchise, Ramona twirls into view when we switch to her storyline, but unlike every other housewife, she seems to actually lose balance â€â€Ã‚ almost as if she just spent the past forty-five minutes riding the Teacups in Disneyland. It’s only appropriate, really, as “balanced” is not a word that I would often use with Ramona.
Of course, we also had our new housewife, the glamorous Kelly Killoren Bensimone â€â€Ã‚ a former model and current socialite who has the bizarre appearance of looking both old and young at exactly the same time. She didn’t really bring much to the table last night beyond a passing interest in piggyback rides and babbling about equestrian. When Ramona cornered her at Jill’s charity event, I thought we’d surely be in for a total disaster, but nothing really happened. According to the previews, it looks like Kelly and Bethenny will be getting into it, but then again, I don’t put it past Bravo to take a non-event out of context for the sake of drawing in viewers.
Overall, I enjoyed the premiere episode greatly. Normally, I’d spend some time talking about Jill and Alex’s catty tiff (and then I’d spend even more time talking about the Van Kampen’s strange rental property), but I sadly am lacking the energy. Instead, I’m just going to restate my favorite line of the night as Jill screamed at her audience: “FABRIC! FABRIC! FABRIC!!!” Ah, it’s great to have the ladies back. Onto the photocap…
