The Real Housewives of New Jersey Review: Rise of the Lycans
May 5, 2010 by Mallory Elis
Filed under Feature, feature overlay, Television
The Real Housewives of New Jersey‘s second season opener provides a quick refresher for latecomers and reviewers who got assigned to recap this show last minute and will probably be using easy-to-remember nicknames to keep track of all the Dramatis Personae. So. Last season: toddler beauty pageants, sullen teenagers, grandmothers in Juicy sweatpants, pursed lips and sunglasses, “prostitution whores [sic],” and oh my Lord, everyone hates everyone else. I can see we already have something in common, Housewives.
Dina. Teresa. Caroline Short Hair. Jacqueline. Danielle. Jersey girls are hot, are hot, Jersey Girls are so hot. Got it.
Jacqueline’s pregnant! She gives birth! There’s just a cut-away to reveal the baby, which leads me to believe she put something in her contract about no cameras in the delivery room. Now that Jacqueline has proven her fertility, Caroline is ready to accept her as part of the family. How very Medici of her.
More importantly, Dina owns a hairless cat and it is absolutely horrifying. It looks like an armadillo with lupus! Dina likes surrounding herself with “positive things,” which apparently includes freakishly low-hanging chandeliers over end tables and fleshy demons.
Cut to Danielle, who I think is the one everyone hates, saying she wants to forgive everyone for what they’ve done to her. She meets with Father Richard and brings her Starbucks cup with her. Whatever executive handed it to her before that scene, nice touch. Danielle knows she is not garbage, and she’s not going to let that priest get a word in edgewise. She is going to enumerate her points on her fingers until he agrees with her.
I am exhausted and it’s only the first commercial break. Time to start drinking!
Teresa’s family is making red sauce in their driveway, which actually looks pretty awesome. Teresa is also pregnant! Some blonde talking head suggests that any son of Teresa’s would be of the gaysexual persuasion, so she’d be better off with a girl. Come on, no Italian family is complete without a closeted, self-hating son! Also, menstruating women aren’t allowed to make red sauce and the youngest daughter doesn’t want “to marry a Jewish person.” Is this family from New Jersey or 1385?
Caroline! Thank God, she has short hair, so I don’t need a name card to remind me of who she is. She’s taking her husband to Barneys New York to get him some skinny, post-angina clothes. That’s it.
A baby is wearing a T-shirt announcing “Lock Up Your Daughters.” I think novelty tees officially constitutes child abuse. I think it’s Dina? No, it’s Jacqueline? Whoever it is, her husband is pissed that Danielle didn’t acknowledge the birth of the child they are currently torturing. It’s Jacqueline! Her husband just called her Jacqueline, so it’s probably Jacqueline.
Teresa, taking her daughters to school, tells the camera she’d love a pet gay son. Great?
Danielle takes her daughters to “Posche,” a fabulously misspelled boutique in which she hopes to “bling out” her children. Her daughter Christine wants jeans, her mother wants faux leather leggings. Danielle claims that she and store owner Kim really understand what family and friendship is all about. Kim so clearly does not care about what Danielle is saying.
Jacqueline’s daughter moved out to avoid curfew, but apparently is not paying for her own car or other bills. She’s also bringing her boyfriend’s dog over and I start drinking my whiskey with a straw. Jacqueline asks Fatface McMoneybags (aka Ashley) if she’s on birth control, pointedly holding her baby in their direction. Ashley’s greasy-haired troglodyte works at a Blockbuster. He is 23 and he works at Blockbuster and I think that is just fantastic. I hope he gets a spinoff called Return Slot.
Apparently Caroline hosts an annual “fundraiser” for local “businessmen” WINK WINK WINK. She and Albert sends their kids out to do a total “dog shit inspection” of the yard. I think Ashley should move in with Caroline. That would solve a lot of problems.
Danielle is telling her pedicurist about her financial problems, and I am pretty sure that this show cannot get any tackier. There’s still fifteen minutes left, though, so I may be drinking my words later. There’s salon gossip, and then there’s just embarrassing. Is it weird that the only friends Danielle has confided in during this episode have been the women selling her clothes and doing her nails?
At the “fundraiser,” Lauren and Vito canoodle happily. Lauren hopes Albi will understand, and I have no idea what that means. Caroline thinks everything will turn out well, which I guess is good.
Danielle is still angry about not hearing about the “annual” party, which makes me wonder how long she’s known these women. Like, if it’s less than a year, why would it bother her that such nascent friendships didn’t work out? And if it’s more than a year, she shouldn’t be surprised, right? Whatever, Kim shows up at the “fundraiser” and denies being friends with Danielle. Dina and Jacqueline look uncomfortable while everyone bashes Danielle. Michael claims one of his friends slept with her, and Caroline totally takes credit for the whole “putting lipstick on a pig” joke. Dude. If you are cribbing from Sarah Palin, you need to take a serious look at your priorities.
Danielle drives to the “fundraiser” and rhetorically asks why, if these women are “thick as thieves,” they “need to raise money for the sheriff’s department.” This seems like an absurd question. It’s like asking why do you need to eat if you like the color orange?
Staged faux-confrontation. Danielle keeps saying she “could care less” that she hasn’t been invited, and I ditch the straw and start swigging from the bottle. Her kids talk her out of driving by the party. She goes home. I pass out. It’s going to take me like four episodes of The Wire to recover from this.
Season 2, Episode 1: Water Under the Table (originally Aired May 3, 2010)
For more on The Real Housewives of New Jersey, click here.
Photographs courtesy of Bravo, Virginia Sherwood, and Andrei Jackamets.
These women are contadine, the lowest class of southern Italian, with money. This show is an insult to all decent Italian-Americans.
Rise Of The Lycans do have some great fighting scene between the werewolves and the vampires, it is a nice movie *’”
quick question i thought that Theresa is a sister in law to caroline and dina? wouldnt teresas last name be laurita?
Caroline Manzo! Ugly is ugly is ugly…no other way to say it. Recent weight loss is not a facial or body improvement. She needs a bra and some Spanx that work to help gravity effects. Aged bubbies are saggy beyond belief! Stomach in need of serious exercise too.
Caroline should be very, very worried now that her husband has lost weight & looks great. It hurts my eyes just to look at her face. Ick, yuck, ahh—my eyes burn. Caroline confirms that NJ is a warped, truly bottom of sub-par, tacky, lowered physical attractiveness standards, Why would Bravo put this Frankenstein, horror show geek there for everyone to see? With all the recent NJ reality shows, it just confirms that there is a vacuum there. A warped sense of reality, if not total absence, of any good taste.
The NJ definition of fashion, or lack thereof, is the black-hole vortex of tackiness to the rest of the USA. With some money & family connections, Caroline may be fortunate enough to have some people act nice to her to her face-to=face in person. Caroline is a real bonafide eyesore—a witch with a glandular problem. Words cannot even describe, maybe she’s just not photogenic (trying to be kind!). Her speech is totally uneducated and this only adds to the sad overall picture. Don’t know how old she is, but I don’t think age or surgery will help mellow the awfulness of it all.
Too much ungrounded superior attitude without an education, poor grammar, bad taste, honest parental guidance, or even a ounce of any passable attractiveness are absent, No redeemable way to offset the horror of it all. Drag queens look way better & have more soul than this hot mess of a female.
Feel so sorry for her daughter—she does not have much to look forward to—given the way her mother looks. That’s always a sign of what will become of a female child’s future appearance. The daughter’s boyfriend should take serious notice of how Caroline looks. The daughter is unattractive and overweight now & will only decline with age.
No amount of plastic surgery, weight loss, emotional enlightenment, or divine intervention could help the monster facial qualities of this creature. Her high opinion of herself only adds to the creepiness of it all. Make it go away, please!
What I don’t understand is why Caroline, Dina and Teresa believed they had a right to hurt Danielle and her daughters with outed that book? YES, YES,YES, Danielle’s moral clock doesn’t always point North, but NO ONE HAS A RIGHT TO HURT ANYONE! Danielle wouldn’t have attacked the ladies at the season finale with that book, IF Caroline and others did not take it upon themselves to hurt Danielle and her girls like that. There is no doubt in my mind that Teresa and her husband is prejudice to others outside of her culture. No gays, hispanics, jewish, or any other race or color is allowed in their world. I’m glad Danielle call out her husband on the gay slur. SHE DID NOT DISRESPECT HER HUSBAND, she called him out on the GAY comment and Andy Cohen got offended too. Danielle will not leave that show, the more, they push her the more she will push back!!!
In all fairness, can you blame me for mixing them up? They all have easy-to-swap two-syllable names, terrible weaves, and dead eyes.
Hatedom aside, thanks for the many assists, readers. I’m definitely on a learning curve here.
Who was that drunbken guy who was bashing Danielle at the fundraiser? He is the last one to be talking trash about someone considering he almost fell off of his chair in a stupor.
As far as “putting lipstick on a pig”. these women better take a good look at themselves in the mirror before passing judgements on others.
Some backstory:
Dina and her hubby Tommy were featured on My Big Fat Fabulous Wedding. (the wedding costs $2 million, but he also admitted to cheating on her and that any girl could take her place if he brought out the checkbook.)
The Manzos all deny mob affiliations but Tommy and Albert’s (Caroline’s hubby) dad was murdered mob style along with his partner in a casino biz.
Teresa’s husband owns a construction company, and she only pays cash. Even for purchases into the tens of thousands. of dollars. Suspicious?
Danielle is divorced and last season was stood up my a man she had phone sex with for yrs..guess it ruined the fantasy.
Caroline runs the family and forbade her sister-in-law, Jaqueline, to hang with Danielle which caused a rift in the family.
Caroline has a son Chris who wants to open a car wash/strip club and she said it ‘would make mommy proud.’
Dina has a daughter (previous marriage) who won’t appear on this season. Neither will her husband. Word is, he’s living with his mistress.
Hope this helps!!!!
Last season synopsis: Dina and Caroline are sisters that are also married to two brothers (Albert and Tommy Manzo). (I’ll give you a minute to process that). The ladies’ maiden name is Laurita, and Jaqueline Laurita is married to their brother, making them in-laws. He has 2 sons with Jaqui…Ashley isn’t his kid.
Teresa is a friend and Danielle was Jaqueline’s friend and Dina’s enemy. Last year, they discovered a book by Danielle’s ex-hubby that implicated her in drug deals, kidnapping, the works. These ladies smeared her all over town, resulting in a big blowup in last season’s finale. When the dust cleared there were no allies for Danielle.
Oh, and Lauren, Caroline short hair’s daughter is dating/screwing her brother’s best friend. Awkward.
Absolutely dead on! They are horrible!
In your blog, you misname Dina as Rita.
Thank you for this amazing review of the show. It was just what I was searching, (googling) for.