It’s appropriate that this finale should start off in the back of a Sprinter van, where so much Real Housewives drama begins. Luann feels like the whole cast is “bullying” her because they just told her that she’s been obnoxious and that she was not as disrespected, “in my own town!” as she originally anticipated. Porsha tells her that she needs to pick a better word than “bullying.” She says, “You have a great vocabulary and French. Put them together.” Thank God for Porsha, truly the only funny one on the cast. Okay, Gizelle has her moments, but what really makes for a great Housewives program is humor, and Porsha (and a little bit Gizelle) are the only two who can make comedy happen just by looking down their noses and being themselves. That’s not to say the rest of the women aren’t funny, but they’re unintentionally funny, like when Teresa says, “A fresh of breath air,” with a complete lack of irony, or Lisa Barlow says, “They’re making something out of nothing, like origami.” I have no idea what that means, but it’s hilarious.
Strangely enough, Porsha’s humor gets through to Luann, who listens to what the rest of the cast has to say about her and decides to take stock of her behavior and try to do better. Do better? You have about 36 hours left with these women, and then she doesn’t need to see them again unless she’s invited to BravoCon, which seems unlikely since The Golden Life isn’t even going to be on Bravo. Wait, was Luann passing the torch — really an enormous candle shaped like a queen’s head that I would like for the center of my dining room table — on to Jessel Taank and Erin “Mew Mew” Lichy with her acknowledgement that she’s leaving the network for good? And how pissed must Luann have been only two months later to find out that Carole was going to be carrying that torch right back to being the center apple of the show?
It takes the crew eight hours to get from Manhattan to the Berkshires, and I can’t imagine what they talked about for that long. Did Lisa Barlow convince them that she is the nicest person in Salt Lake City? Did Vicki finally convince anyone to buy life insurance? Did Porsha convince Kyle to finally just be a lesbian already? The women are restless and starving, and they pull over to get Wendy’s mid-trip. Okay. Lisa Barlow may be wrong about many things, but she is right that there is nothing better than a cheeky Wendy’s in the middle of a road trip. (Dipping fries in my Frosty while staring out the window singing along to Alanis Morrisette. There’s nothing better.) Lisa walks in with everyone’s orders and walks out with three giant bags of fast-food goodness. Do you think they have her picture behind every register at Wendy’s? When she goes in to order off of the giant touch screens, do they use facial recognition and just have Lisa’s order pre-programmed, and she doesn’t have to pay? Is this like when Dina Lohan had a Carvel black card?
While I totally get what Lisa is doing, is this real or is this product placement? I will give Bravo credit that no one can integrate a product as seamlessly into one of their shows as they can, but because they do it so well, I think we need a little #ad in the corner of the screen like they force influencers to do when showing off their new Dyson Supersonic Hair Dryer. Like, could this have been Taco Bell or Raising Cane’s or Chick-fil-A or just whatever chain they happened to pass by on the way to Dorinda’s, or was this always going to be a Wendy’s stop because what they paid for this placement funded the entire extravagant party at Bluestone Manor?
And, oh, what a party it is. After the ladies are greeted by their fans in the Berkshires and Kyle lures Porsha to her bedroom to scare her (is that the only reason Kyle wanted Porsha in her bedroom?), the bulk of the episode is taken up with the Housewives-only party at Bluestone Manor, a cursed residence that was built on a Hellmouth but didn’t have Buffy there to defend it. Dorinda’s residence is perhaps the single most iconic location in all of Housewifery because that demonic energy caused friction in every single interaction that took place there. While we get a somewhat comprehensive montage of everything that’s happened in the Berserkshires, it isn’t nearly exhaustive. What about “Mention it all?” What about when Ramona Singer’s dog Coco shit all over the floor and no one picked it up? What about when Carole was hiding in the closet to try to overhear Luann calling her a pedophile, and Jules Wainstein kept trying to ruin her ruse? I could go on.
The theme is The Gilded Age, but no one dresses to the theme, looking like Christine Baranski or Clock Twink. The one who does the best is Teresa with her poofy updo supporting a little crown and a corseted gown that looks like something Bertha Russel would have descended an elaborate staircase wearing. It’s shocking because Teresa’s idea of prestige television is episodes of Dora the Explorer she hasn’t seen before. Everyone else is just really dressed up, which is fine. What annoys me is that this whole thing is called Roaring 20th, so why was there not a flapper and Great Gatsby theme? Even Andy rocked up in an old sedan like he is at a party in West Egg. I know that I have banned this overused theme from ever being used again, but considering the name of the show and the theme’s ubiquity, you would think setting the theme would be even easier than Lisa Barlow getting you some extra dipping sauces at her local Wendy’s. (Great on a road trip! I’m open for collabs!)
The strangest dress decision goes to Luann and Dorinda showing up in the same Jovani gown. This whole bit is totally misplayed (though the gown is spectacular). First of all, it needed to be more of a moment. Everyone needed to witness the moment when Luann and Dorinda first saw each other and realized they were in the same dress. The crowd needed to think it was organic and be worried about the outcome. Instead, they just stumbled into each other in the living room while a million different conversations were happening and started shouting, “Jovani!” at each other. The other problem with this bit is that back in the day Dorinda wasn’t yelling Jovani because they were wearing the same dress; it was because she was pissed at Luann for not inviting her boyfriend John, Santa’s magic bag if the only gift inside were coke sweats. And Luann didn’t yell Jovani back at her from the stage. So now here they are, recreating a moment that never happened in front of an audience of people who didn’t care.
That’s what was different about Dorinda and Luann among all the other Housewives this season. They were trying to relive and recreate their best moments. They were trying to get another gasp out of the iconic behavior of the past, like reanimating a corpse for a final dance. This is also clear when, after the fireworks at the end of the party, Dorinda gets everyone to shout, “Make it nice!” No, this party isn’t about Dorinda; it’s about everyone celebrating their joint mission. Why are we even doing this?
Contrast this with the cast of Rhode Island, who are mostly sitting alone because they don’t know anyone there and their show hasn’t aired yet. I love when some of the vets gather around to give them advice about navigating the stardom that is about to come crashing down on them like a giant nutcracker falling out of the sky. The RHORI gals keep fighting with each other about God knows what. Rulla is mad at Jo-Ellen, Kelsey is mad at Rosie, and Ashley I is mad she doesn’t have anything to cry over. The stark contrast is that the arguments are new; the drama is fresh. It’s not doing CPR on one of our cherished memories. I also love how Dorinda tries to shut down the fighting in her home as if everyone who enters is not possessed by an aggressive and argumentative poltergeist that will make them behave spectacularly poorly. The whole point of Bluestone Manor is conflict — why is she pretending otherwise?
There is also quite the contrast in the two feuds that Andy Cohen tries to put to bed. He calls together Teresa and Melissa and wants to talk about how Melissa came onto the show and whether she needs to apologize to Teresa for it. Melissa started in 2011. These are 15-year-old nachos he is trying to reheat, and they have already been rewarmed every single season. They have fought about this, apologized, argued again, relitigated, and beaten this dead horse until the stick got an AARP card. Do we have to do this again? What’s worse is that Melissa apologizes to Teresa when she did nothing wrong. She went on a show that was offered. Just because Teresa was there first doesn’t mean she has any kind of monopoly on it, and that we’re still having to assuage her ego after all these years is a testament to what a terrible Housewife Teresa truly is. (Her whiff of an appearance on this series just further proves it.)
While these two are delving into the past, Andy also tries to get Heather Gay and Lisa Barlow to find some kind of peace between them. Like the Sisters Gorga, this is another feud that I don’t think will ever end. Neither Heather nor Lisa can see the awful things that they do to each other and feel justified in their animosity. However, like Teresa, Lisa can’t see how she’s done anything wrong. She doesn’t see that Heather is somewhat right about her, that she is just as culpable of the chaos in their group as anyone else. However, pointing that out while Lisa is taking a victory lap on this trip is just making Heather look jealous and unsupportive. Still, this feud feels like the future, like something vital and ongoing that is going to give us years of drama. The Teresa and Melissa feud feels like a WWII documentary that your father falls asleep watching on a Sunday afternoon.
This whole series has been about honoring the past without having to relive it. We get two great speeches to this end. When Andy arrives, he gives a speech and says, “People don’t know how hard it is to do what you do. You share your lives with us. You serve yourselves up for the judgement of millions of strangers. You make us laugh and cry and mad and sad, and you have us cheering from our living rooms, and you are each proof that being yourself is all you ever need to be.” It brought a tear to my eye that all of these women we love (and hate) desperately have given up so much in the Faustian bargain for fame and given us so much pleasure as a result.
The other great speech is when Luann finally learns selflessness on that long Sprinter ride to the Berkshires and decides that Vicki needed to be celebrated in a way that her cast in Orange County couldn’t manage because they were all having the same fight for the 17 billionth time. Luann gathers everyone and literally gives Vicki her flowers and thanks her for putting Housewives on the map. That’s all Vicki ever wanted, and that Luann is the one who gave her the moment where she got to sit on a literal throne and have everyone pay homage to her sacrifices is something of a miracle. I’m shocked she didn’t break out into a chorus of “Money Can’t Buy You Class.” With that, Dorinda gathers everyone (except for Chanel Ayan, who is too beautiful for the cold) out into the freezing night for the fireworks that end this celebration.
The party raged on late into the night until the women all gathered in the tent in front of the door to collect their furs and get into the Spinters that were taking them to the Great Barrington Courtyard by Marriott, where they would be spending the evening before Bravo shuffled them back off to their home cities the next day. But not Dorinda. She had nowhere to go. This is where she lives. She woke up in the morning, her head feeling like a wilted flower, and she walked into her living room and saw the devastation everywhere. There were half-drunk espresso martinis on nearly every surface after Heather Dubrow tried to drink the bartender out of coffee. There were scuff marks on the coffee table where Porsha got up and tried to teach everyone how to twerk. There was one of Melissa Gorga’s sprinkle cookies ground into the carpet, and there was Kelsey Swanson, passed out under the piano and drooling on the parquet. Dorinda wasn’t ready for this yet. She turned around at the bottom of the stairs and decided to put herself back to bed. As she walked, putting all of her weight on the hand on the banister as she hauled herself back to her duvet, she muttered so softly that even a hot mic would have trouble picking it up. “I made it nice. I really made it nice.”
